Not long after we settled into our new life, I found myself feeling anxious in social settings, including church,” she wrote. For years, I thought the best way to please others was to hide my imperfections,” Jinger wrote, adding that one of the “harmful behaviors” she picked up was restricting her food intake. It was actually my oldest daughter growing prideful and judgmental towards others over the skirt wearing that opened my eyes. She zealously promoted the Basic Life Principles of Bill Gothard, Jinger, along with three of her sisters, wrote a New York Times bestseller about their religious convictions. I'd be remiss to say she also mentioned abortion being a sin which as of March 8, 2023 is a little ironic considering her sister had one a few weeks ago in a red state where she had to go before a board to justify it (don't argue with me, it will be listed as such by insurance.

During an appearance on the “ Candid: Conversations With Jonathan Youssef ” podcast in September, the mom of two opened up about what it was like growing up on reality TV , admitting that it was “so tough,” especially since the religious family didn’t have a television in their home at the time. Because of that new freedom, we are no longer in bondage to sinfulness, and now we can choose righteousness (Romans 9:12–15). There were probably some IBLP families in my home school co-op, and I noticed a sharp divide in high school between families that were educating their children toward independence, college, and careers, and families who were educating their children toward dependence in a Gothard-like "umbrella of authority.She refers to Josh Harris as the leader of the deconstruction movement, even though he declared his lack of faith years after Recovering Grace and exvangelical communities had formed. I struggled into my late thirties to shed the idea of performance as a means of gaining God's approval when I already have it in full in Jesus Christ. Jinger does such a good job of graciously disentangling her faith in a way that honors her parents, family, and culture with clear honesty about the things that were not right or of Christ. As scandal after scandals began to hit the family, I realized that Gothard was more than different, he was dangerous.

Jinger made several references to her older brother throughout the book, but mostly without mentioning his name.Studying God's Word and especially committing it to memory (not because someone made me but because I wanted to) helped me to meditate on it deeply and understand that God's love isn't based upon our performance, our adherence to rules we believe will make us holier than others, and it doesn't ebb and flow with how well I think I am performing. Another red flag was that when the church viewed his videos, he had employees from IBLP set up tables with only Gothard's materials for purchase, and no one else's.

I was in a time where I was finding my own way in faith and fell into some teachings that led me down paths that were similar to the Duggars’. There's no deep exploration of how IBLP used her family nor how IBLP protected her brother's abuse and dad's control. During the interview with People on Wednesday, Jinger got candid about her "cult-like" upbringing with her parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. Open Library is an initiative of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.The Arkansas native rose to fame on her family's TLC reality series, which debuted in 2008 and aired for seven seasons. While her caption didn’t give too much away – other than it was “Day 1” in the studio – she took the time to answer some questions from fans in the comment section. For instance, I have been in prayer circle with older ladies who, if they knew I listened to Hamilton, Newsies, and Six: The Musical, would probably have coronaries.

She said she didn't think so because when all the children raised in Gothardism in our church hit their teen years, they all rebelled.My parents found Gothard's teachings to be unbiblical and so did not raise us kids under those strict guidelines.