With yesterday’s arrest of Josh Duggar on federal charges of child pornography, this family of “19 Kids and Counting” fame is once again under the spotlight. Age 33, Josh along with his wife have so far produced seven children, following in his parent’s tradition of gene reproduction without regard, apparently, to the need to actually parent those children, an allegation supported by Duggar’s continuing sex crimes.
As a teen, Josh molested four younger sisters and at least one friend of theirs. Members of their church, the sprawling First Baptist Church of Springdale, Arkansas, along with an officer of the Arkansas State Police (now in prison for child porn) helped Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar cover up these insidious crimes until the statute of limitations had run on any potential prosecution.
On the heels of that scandal in 2015, Josh’s rough treatment of a woman he hired for sex hit the news along with the revelation that he had joined a dating service dedicated to married men who wanted to hook up.
“A few months after apologizing for his “wrongdoing” in the child molestation scandal, Duggar has confessed to cheating on his wife Anna, developing an Internet pornography addiction (which he later removed from his statement) and signing up for two paid subscriptions to Ashley Madison.”[1]
Duggar’s extensive political connections reflects poorly on the Republican slate of elected officials.
Is it finally time to examine the roots of such disgusting behavior? Is it time to look at the repressive nature of evangelical Christianity that lies not only at the foundations of Josh Duggar’s offenses but also of the innumerable cases of youth ministers and preachers and multiple other respected positions of these churches who find themselves embroiled in sexual misdeeds?
Other such abuses appear with crushing frequency not only in Northwest Arkansas but across the country where evangelicals embrace their collective ignorance. Previous posts regarding this issue include a report on earlier Duggar shame as well as the rape of a six-year-old girl rehomed by Republican state representative Justin Harris, owner of a childcare center in the small town of West Fork. [See Footnote[2]]
These are not isolated incidents. Hardly a week goes by without the report of another minister or youth leader or congregational member caught in one or another sex crime. The Washington Post spotlighted the problem of sexual abuse within the evangelical Christian community in a 2018 article:
“Across the United States, evangelical churches are failing to protect victims of sexual abuse among their members. As the #MeToo movement has swept into communities of faith, several high-profile leaders have fallen: Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was forced into early retirement this month after reports that he’d told a rape victim to forgive her assailant rather than call the police. Illinois megachurch pastor Bill Hybels similarly retired early after several women said he’d dispensed lewd comments, unwanted kisses and invitations to hotel rooms.
“…The sex advice columnist and LGBT rights advocate Dan Savage, tired of what he called the hypocrisy of conservatives who believe that gays molest children, compiled his own list that documents more than 100 instances of youth pastors around the country who, between 2008 and 2016, were accused of, arrested for or convicted of sexually abusing minors in a religious setting.”[3]
While on the surface church members who embrace the teachings of Christ might seem the least likely to commit such abuses, it seems that the fundamentalist religious power structure and their teachings lie at the heart of these perversions. Just as Catholic priests (and nuns) have been found disproportionately likely to sexually abuse young children compared to the rest of the population, evangelical Christians hear the same unnatural lessons from the mouths of their preachers. Sex is sin. Touching yourself (otherwise known as masturbation) is sin. But if you sin, God will forgive you (so, in essence, there’s a backdoor if Satan overcomes you…).
Attempting to live outside the demands of the biological bodies we inhabit is nothing but an elaborate game of whack-a-mole. The need pops up no matter how sternly we might try to suppress it. The stronger the urge, the louder they preach, the more likely the urge will slink off sideways into situations where the risk of being discovered is least likely to surface. Little kids can be intimidated into silence. Little kids are gullible, easily convinced that this diddling inflicted by an older person is somehow okay. Little kids are innocent, therefore they don’t taint the abuser in a sexual act the same way an older experienced sex partner might.
Then there’s evangelical power structure of an authoritarian god who delegates his authority to the male who then is enabled to rule over lesser beings like women and children. Those under this male authority can be subjected to his abuses, and those abuses can be covered up on his edict, making sexual abuse very tempting to repressed males.
But the roots go deeper still. The way this religious authority works is to demand adherence to a set of rules. This is the opposite of teaching people how to think or take responsibility for themselves. After all, if you ‘sin,’ it’s not really you, it’s Satan.
Children brought up in this belief system are often forced into homeschooling or church schools where they are taught not to question. Despite humanity’s crowning glory of cerebral function, intellect is switched off in favor of rules. Parents of Josh Duggar are a perfect example of this willful ignorance, refusing to obtain secular psychologist help when their oldest child’s incestuous fondling came to light and instead keeping it in the church family.
“The roots of the Judeo-Christian sexual prohibitions, as well as the sexual prohibitions of religions such as Islam, spring from ancient Jewish tribal law. During early times wives were considered “property” and laws were specifically codified to protect three things: livestock, wives and dwellings–an order or importance that seems clear in Jewish law. Beliefs among different groups ranged all the way from the approval of prostitution, homosexuality, sex with slaves and liberal views toward divorce, to 180-degree shifts in each of these areas.”[4]
“One of the myths of ‘evangelicalism’ is it inoculates the young against ‘sin’ and keeps them pure, compared to the alternatives. While anecdotal stories can be told this simply is NOT statistically true for most evangelical young,” reports this author in a first person exposé.
“It sure wasn’t true at the evangelical school I attended or in the church. In fact, the worst of the bunch was the pastor’s son. Yet the pastor publicly claimed his son was pure and virginal even though he absolutely knew that was a lie. In reality, the son was going through a large number of the teenage girls at the time and it wasn’t all consensual. His wife, who I knew somewhat, later said in an interview they were having sex and the pastor knew it the whole time but lied from the pulpit. ‘Dr. Hyles’ lying was blatant just like David’s. David was a blatant liar. He told lies that he couldn’t possibly get away with. The problem is that his dad has set himself up so good, that everybody doubts everything because that’s how they have been taught.’ But the preacher dad also lied about his own affairs, as did his son-in-law who seduced an underage girl when he took over as pastor.’”[5]
In another article, the relationship between sex crimes and extreme religious beliefs is set out in stark terms.
“While outwardly decrying abuse, extreme religiosity may breed it. In a sample of first-year students at a southern U.S. university, researchers found ‘significant relationships between religiosity and victims of child sexual abuse by both relatives and non-relatives. Persons sexually abused by a relative were much more likely to be affiliated with fundamental Protestant religions.’ A 2006 study of religiosity among Australian men incarcerated for serious sex offenses discovered that those who maintained religious involvement from childhood to adulthood had more sexual offense convictions, more victims, and younger victims than other groups, including atheists. Among Jewish men in an Israeli prison, ‘religious Jews … were more likely to be in for sex crimes,’ according to other research.”[6]
Tragically for all concerned, the evangelical response to the realities of natural sexual desires is to frame sexual misbehavior as a crime of Satan rather than a predictable outcome of their theology. Josh Duggar is the product of his family’s extreme religious beliefs, not an anomaly. It may be a relief to his seven children that he is currently being held without bond.
The family of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, a tribe of potential abusers and victims
Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar at the time of their marriage, ages 17 and 19 respectively.
One year ago, the Duggar family’s oldest son Josh had his coming out party as a perv. News broke of his serial molestation of five young girls. Four were his sisters. Despite some local politics with the newspaper, Springdale police, and Arkansas Department of Human Services, most of the story finally gained a full airing. Shortly thereafter, TLC yanked the Duggar reality TV show “19 Kids and Counting” from the airwaves.
Thank you Jesus.
Attempts by Josh’s parents to smooth things over resulted in the revelation that church elders had experienced this in other families. (Who are these people?) Soon news broke about Josh’s pornography addiction and his two accounts at the ‘cheating’ website “Ashley Madison.” [Because…one wasn’t enough?] He entered a faith-based rehab facility at Rockford, Illinois, where he spent seven months begging the porn and sex addiction demons to leave him alone.
Most knowledgeable observers will tell you these kinds of programs are worthless. Like ‘gay conversion’ therapy. If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you’re a horn-dog, no amount of manual labor or prayer will suppress that drive. What might work is real therapy where the individual learns that control issues and other emotional and psychological motivators propel some people into compulsive behavior. But that’s science based, not faith based, and about as far from the Duggar lexicon as you can get.
Josh has returned to live near his parents at Tontitown, Arkansas, where he spends his days at the family home or the place of his father’s original business, a used car lot. Reportedly, he’s trying to sell off vehicles he collected while rolling in money from his share from the TV show and later from his ‘job’ for the Family Research Council for which, we guess, his credentials centered on name recognition. The sad fact is that for him and the rest of this Duggar overpopulation of ignorance, he doesn’t know how to do anything and, as one wag puts it, “none are well enough educated to get a fast food job.”
Now that his name recognition is a liability, the truth about the Duggar clan rises to the surface. Josh doesn’t have any job training. Like the rest of his siblings, he grew up learning to disrespect education. Anything beyond high school might have been a threat to this carefully cultivated climate of willful ignorance. Some of this home-schooled bunch never bothered to get their GED.
Most recently, Bill Gothard, the Duggar’s former minister and founding father of their home-schooling curriculum, has been sued by five women who claim he oversaw decades of systematic sexual abuse. This is who Josh’s parents brought in to counsel him when his sisters first ratted him out. Gothard’s standard teaching on sexual matters is that a victim of sexual abuse is partly responsible for that abuse. In other words, those young girls made him feel them up.
Compare that to extremist Islam which blames the female if she’s raped. “The laws of Islam came to protect women’s honor and modesty. Islam forbids women to wear clothes that are not modest and to travel without a mahram; it forbids a woman to shake hands with a non-mahram man. Islam encourages young men and women to marry early, and many other rulings which close the door to rape. Hence it comes as no surprise when we hear or read that most of these crimes occur in permissive societies…”
Rape cases in the strictly Islamic nation of Saudi Arabia in 1988 stood at 2.19 rapes per 100,000 population. Under Sharia law, generally enforced by Islamic states, punishment imposed by the court punishes the rape victim if she first entered the rapist’s company in violation of purdah. (Purdah takes two forms: physical segregation of the sexes and the requirement that women cover their bodies so as to hide their skin and conceal their form.) In those cases, the victim can be sentenced to even harsher punishment than the assailant. So maybe there’s a bit of under-reporting going on…
Both Christian and Islamic extremist religionists adhere to the idea that the female is responsible for tempting the male, as much or more than the male is responsible for keeping it in his pants. Just like Eve was responsible for the downfall of humanity, evidently some of Josh’s ‘sin’ was the result of too much exposure to his sisters. Hence their duty to forgive their molester.
In an effort to prevent the ‘spoiling’ of young girls by uncontrolled sexual desires, extremist church fathers advocate early marriage. In Islam, if they give consent, girls who have begun their periods are fair game, pretty much identical to the beliefs of the Duggars and others in the Quiverfull movement. It goes without saying that the more girls on the market, the fewer men will have to suffer restraint.
Recently stories emerged about the Quiverfull movement’s founder Vaughn Ohlman who believes that girls should be married off as soon as they’re “physically mature enough to handle” childbirth “without damage.” Ohlman was organizing a ‘convention’ in Kansas this summer “designed to help parents find suitable arranged marriage partners for girls in their teens so that they can start producing offspring.” Word got out and the campground rescinded its welcome. No doubt they’ll gather somewhere else to practice their unique form of white slavery.
Evidently nothing of the Duggar family’s public humiliation has caused them to rethink their beliefs. They have not repudiated their close ties to the Quiverfull movement or Bill Gothard. They continue to homeschool their children. They continue to adhere to a belief system that sets up young females to be abused and controlled by their fathers, brothers, pastors, and any other male authority figure.
The fallout for the Duggars is that like Josh, the daughters who are married along with their husbands depend on patriarch Jim Bob for support. One report alleges that “Jill and her lazy unemployed husband Derrick scammed for donations for a fake missionary trip and had to give donations back.” Another states that “Jessa lives rent free in her grandmother’s home. Her husband Ben is not employed outside [but does] odd jobs like mowing lawns for her dad.”
Jim Bob has worked hard trying to regain airtime—or any time in the public eye—that might produce an income. The result has been the recent TLC “Counting On” series starring Jill and Jessa, their spouses, and their children. According to one person close to the situation, the show was “supposed to be about what is going on with the girls, yet Jim Bob and Michelle found their way on tv in the very first episode.”
Further, Josh Duggar has recruited his wife Anna to “reach out to people like Dr. Phil and Megyn Kelly so he can have his mea culpa moment. If that goes well and people are sympathetic towards him, he is sure he can convince TLC to give him and Anna a spin-off – something to do with healing their marriage within the Christian faith.”
Thankfully for the rest of us, that might not happen. Sponsor rejections came fast and furious once the “Counting On” series began. “After the first episode of Counting On aired, seven advertisers publicly distanced themselves from the program after their advertisements were run during the episode. Those companies included Pure Michigan, Verizon Wireless, Mattress Firm, Cici’s Pizza, Choice Hotels, The UPS Store and Whitewave foods…It got worse during the second week.” Additional companies retreating from the Duggar family include RCN Corporation, Credit Karma, Gazelle, Ring.com, candy and gum giant Wrigley, and Combe Inc. Chattem, Inc. saw ads aired for its ACT Kids Batman Rinse and more during the program and are now stating those commercials aired “in error.”
(Such ad placements occur when companies buy air time and allow the network to place the ads where they want them. Questions about TLC’s programming decisions have put Nancy Daniels, general manager, on the hot seat.)
A depressing timelime of the Duggar family proliferation can be found here.
The greater issue concerning anyone even dimly cognizant of these goings-on is the failure of TLC or any religious organization to stand up and disavow not only the Duggars but everything they stand for. Unbelievably, the Duggars still enjoy a cult following.
In their isolated east/west coast lives, media mavens may see the Duggars, Honey Boo-Boo, Duck Dynasts, and other cultural deviants as entertainment. They make good money playing these folks to the rest of us. What the network people don’t understand is that by the mere presence of extremists on television, they encourage and inspire others to take up the same beliefs and behaviors.
At the least, TLC and advertisers for such programs should post a large disclaimer with each episode stating this is what NOT to do.
It is irresponsible, selfish, and arrogant to produce nineteen children in a world where too many children already live in desperate conditions. It is morally wrong to add to world suffering. If someone wants to have a houseful of kids, once you’ve replicated your gene pool three or four times, ADOPTION is the only decent route.
There are already too many under- and un-educated people struggling to find ways to make ends meet. EDUCATION should be the top priority of any responsible parent.
Too many women suffer abuse, abduction, assault, rape, marrying too young and/or yielding all autonomy to a male. EQUAL RIGHTS is about females having the same rights as males to be educated, hold gainful employment, refuse sex she doesn’t want, and otherwise be in control of her own body and life. Propagating any other viewpoint is criminal.
For all their pious beliefs, reproduction as practiced by the Duggars is animal behavior. Only animals blindly try to fertilize every egg that rolls down the tube because…predators. We have intellects, undeveloped as they may be in some cases, and have subdued our natural predators.
That leaves us duty bound as humans to think about what we’re doing.
There’s an ignored bigger picture behind the by-now worn out topic of the Duggar family’s hidden sex abuse scandal. In case you missed it, the vaunted head of that household stated last week that when he found out about his son’s incestuous molestation of several sisters, he spoke about it with his peers at church. “Most of them told me their sons had done the same thing to their daughters so we didn’t think it unusual or cause for great concern.”
That’s right. He said that.
For someone not of similar mindset, it’s difficult if not impossible to understand how anyone could be that stupid. In what world, religious cult or not, is it acceptable for a teenage brother to molest his younger sisters? Duggar clarified by adding “This wasn’t rape or anything like that.”
Pardon me while I quietly lose my breakfast. Yes, Jim Bob, it was precisely ‘anything’ like that.
[This space left blank for lengthy rant.]
[One of several excellent commentaries about the victimization and objectification of women within extreme-right religions can be found here.]
Moving on to the less obvious point: Is this radical subculture of the religious community simply less intelligent than the rest of us?
Actually, yes, Virginia, there is a correlation between low intelligence, prejudice, and conservative beliefs.[1] Lower capacity for analytical thinking increases the perceived risk of complicated situations. More than one study has found that “strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.” This is especially true for those raised with the sets of rules inherent in legalistic or evangelic fundamentalist faiths.
In these circles, the only ‘information’ that matters is the Bible. “The Bible says” typically precedes angry proclamations about the sin of homosexuality, abortion, or same-sex marriage. The Bible says God created the world in six days, so evolution can’t be true. The Bible says women are made to serve men, so that means women belong to men. With the Book of Revelations detailing how God will end the world, why should anyone listen to that gobbledygook about global warming?
There is no argument that can penetrate beyond that stubborn wall of self-ordained righteousness. It doesn’t matter if the stated belief is not exactly what the Bible says, or if the Bible also says other things that mitigate or even conflict. It doesn’t matter if the Bible could, shockingly, not be the actual Word of God but instead a collection of folk tales borrowed from older cultures and passed down through narration before finally being written down by men who had their own ideas about what it all meant and didn’t hesitate to edit in order to ‘clarify’ or emphasize a specific meaning. All well intentioned of course, as were the nuances inserted in later translations and transcriptions over the intervening two thousand years.
That the Bible is not the literal Word of God simply does not compute. La la la, I can’t hear you. That God might not be a male patriarch with a flowing white beard or in fact an actual physical presence at all is similarly incomprehensible. These beliefs are seared into the hearts and souls of religious extremists. Losing those beliefs would be a form of death more threatening than physical death because the beliefs promise the eternal existence of ‘self’ if only the Word is obeyed.
Along with facing the challenges of rational analysis and increasingly complicated social constructs, people raised in conservative religions are taught that learning isn’t necessarily a Godly pursuit. After all, wasn’t Original Sin about knowing too much? God guides each person’s life to the challenges that will increase his or her faith, and there’s a risk that too much learning would cause one not to listen to God’s will. This has been the reasoning behind Michelle Duggar’s production of nineteen children following a miscarriage which signaled, in her mind, God’s anger for her use of birth control.
This is not to say that spiritual beliefs and intelligence are mutually exclusive. Many learned men and women past and present embrace and benefit from faith traditions. Yet history shows us that in societies ruled by religious extremists, people were tortured to death for speaking openly in contradiction to the then-known ‘facts’—for example, that the world was flat, or that the heavenly bodies revolved around the earth.
Climate change, men on the moon, a woman’s right to decide what happens inside her own body? These are complicated topics which require a grasp of basic scientific and/or legal principles. Not only are extremist children underserved by (preferred) home schooling, they are (apparently) products of a gene pool less likely to possess the intellectual capacity for learning and utilizing advanced reasoning skills. They are actively trained not to develop such skills in the risk of angering God.
Observers might surmise that behind such intellectual laziness is not only a blind trust in God’s ability to steer seven billion lives through minute-by-minute monitoring down to whether Michelle used birth control but also—more importantly—the urgent and secret desire not to be responsible. Inborn or learned, inadequate reasoning ability fosters an insecurity that predisposes its victims toward herd behavior. The world is simply too much to understand. Who can know enough to decide what to do?
The solution is to put all faith in God and don’t worry about it. Read the Bible again. Come the Rapture, they’ll get their reward and rest of us heathens will burn in hell.
If it stopped there, if these folks simply led quiet lives holy by their own definition, there would be little cause for alarm. But that’s not the case.
They want to take over the country.
They won’t be happy until homosexuals are ‘cured’ and women submit to male authority. We’re left to wonder, if they did manage to achieve their heartfelt goal, which of the disciplines would be banned first: Geology with its flagrant rejection of Biblical chronology claiming the earth is only 6000 years old? Physics with its insistence on the Big Bang theory? Psychology with its exploration of human motivations and denials?
Can we muster any sympathy for the intentionally benighted who don’t understand how climate change can be real when it snowed six inches just last night?
The Duggar sex scandal made big news because for nearly a decade, the family has presented itself to the American public as the model of Christian piety. For those who reacted to the show with disbelief and disgust, it’s been a moment of breathless irony. For their sympathetic fans, the reaction to their fall from grace has been an angry spate of straw-man arguments—the publicity re-victimizes the sisters, the release of information was illegal (not), the poor young man already said he was sorry. A clear-eyed view of the hypocrisy, criminality, and deception involved is simply not possible for those wallowing in their own ignorance.
For the rest of us, the Duggar debacle shines a light on the cesspit of rightwing politics. The family’s celebrity rewarded them with money they’ve used to support extremist political candidates. With his GED in hand, Josh achieved placement among the ranks of the nation’s top extremist political lobbying organization, the Family Research Council. All of them—the Duggars, the rightwing legislators, the Family Research Council—seem oblivious to the elephant in their highly moral living room—that is, the incessant proof of their own immorality.
Leaders in the movement have made their objective clear. Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, cited the movement’s strategy that “…if just eight million American Christians began supplying more ‘arrows for the war’ by having six children or more, they propose that the Christian Right ranks could rise to 550 million within a century.” A stated objective of such an effort is to increase the number of conservatives in Washington.[2]
Extreme religionists cannot fathom the connection between their political choices and the troubled state of their own communities. The largely white, low income, less educated ranks of the religious right are the same populations that rank highest in need of government handouts: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia. They have the highest rates of divorce, child hunger, child abuse, and alcoholism/drug addiction. They have the highest use of Internet pornography. They have more reproductive services restrictions and more teen pregnancy, more high school dropouts and lower levels of education which go hand in hand with lower average incomes. More of these populations are in poor health, obese, and—inanely—resent the Affordable Care Act for providing health insurance.
These facts simply do not compute for the willfully ignorant. Any suffering by the extremists and their neighbors surely means that God is testing them. It might even anger God if they did anything to remove this suffering. That’s why government programs meant to provide assistance to those in need are high on the fundamentalist hate list.
The extremists do not understand that their myth of a Christian nation is contrary to the Founding Fathers’ intent. The concept of separation of church and state eludes them. Don’t bother them with facts or quotes from the U. S. Constitution. They lack the capacity to imagine how they would feel if a religion other than Christianity took control of the nation.
The urgent desire to “get back America” among religious extremists may stem from the creeping realization (despite heroic efforts at denial) that their beliefs somehow fail to inoculate them from sinning. They still molest boys in their care (Hastert). They still commit adultery (Gingrich and too many to name). They still participate in homosexual behavior (CA State Sen. Roy Ashburn, among the many).
In a perfect world by their definition, government would help Christians adhere to the straight and narrow by enforcing God’s law through the power of the state. Efforts to warn of the tragedy inherent in theocracies fall on deaf ears. Don’t they see what’s going on in the Middle East?
Perhaps a form of transference drives the fundamentalists’ need to force everyone else to the extremist way of life in the largely unconscious assumption that it’s the homosexuals and transgenders who somehow infect the good people with sin. Such a concept is discernible in the upwelling of “religious freedom” laws, as if baking a cake for a same-sex wedding somehow rubs the sin of gayness off on the baker.
Did Jesus refuse to touch the leper or prostitute? Evidently these folks don’t read their own literature.
But then, what can be expected of those who are uncomfortable with or incapable of approaching any topic on a logical basis? Sin is a result of demons who come to sit on our shoulders, and we must pray to cast them out. There is no personal responsibility. God wills it or Satan is in control.
Legislators placed in office by zealots do not understand, refuse to acknowledge, and/or refuse to participate in the basic principles of informed debate or negotiated compromise, foundations of a democratic representative government. This enormous beam in the rightwing’s eye results in treasonous acts such as newly-elected zealot Senator Tom Cotton’s direct communication with Iran intended to disrupt the multi-nation negotiation on nuclear energy.
The rest of us have failed to fully recognize or effectively counter the threat. There’s been an underlying hesitancy to criticize those who proclaim themselves avid Christians, especially among more moderate Christians. “19 Kids and Counting” has been one of several exposures of this lifestyle to the public view which has brought little to no public censure. Rather, the program resulted in a bemused sense of wonder that anyone could have that many kids. Why worry? These are the good people, aren’t they?
Do we really think these extremists will stop at some point, fold up their tents, and let the rest of us live our lives as we see fit? Come to their senses? Actually comprehend Christ’s teachings about loving their neighbors and not judging?
Can we accept the Christian nation these fearful, ignorant extremists envision? What’s the distance between the current effort to “take back America” and armed conflict? The instinctive reaction of people who see themselves as cornered and fighting for a ‘holy’ cause is to stockpile weapons. It’s no coincidence that those most vehement about guns and open carry are also eager to rant about secession or claim there are “10,000 pastors” ready to die for the cause.[3]
We may think the Duggars benign, an isolated amusement that crops up on our television screen. Peculiar, out of sync, quaint—doing their best to be good in a difficult world. It’s past time to sit up and realize they and their kind are about as benign as misdiagnosed cancer.
In my last blog post, I wrote about Josh Duggar, Justin Harris, and Arkansas’ continuing stream of revealed perversion by rightwing religious and political leaders. I thought I said it all. I turned off the light and went to bed.
Then came responses in defense of Josh Duggar. Oh, he was a kid. It happened a long time ago. It wasn’t that big of a deal, and anyway he confessed and asked forgiveness. They prayed and he became closer to God.
So let me first address those points.
There is no evidence that Josh Duggar came forward as a penitent to admit his wrongdoing. The heavily redacted police report allows for multiple interpretations of who said what. “Someone” tearfully came to the Duggar parents, stating that “someone” had been sneaking into “their” bedroom at night and that it had happened “four or five times.”
Another objection to the public airing of the poor boy’s ‘minor offense’ is that he was only fourteen. Yes, when first reported in March 2002, Josh was fourteen. His parents considered ‘discipline’ a sufficient response. Four months later in July 2002, Josh was found to have resumed his incestuous behavior. He was again ‘disciplined.’
Because if it didn’t work the first time, it’s sure to work the second time.
This too failed to achieve the expected results. Once again apparently oblivious to potentially permanent psychological and emotional harm suffered by Josh’s prey, the parents continued life as usual. A full year after the first report, in March 2003, the now-fifteen year old Josh’s incestuous abuse again came to the parents’ attention.
Clearly Josh sought opportunities to ‘cop a feel.’ Just as clearly, his targets did not report every single incident at the time it happened. Josh knew how far he could go without triggering a complaint. This is not the behavior of a child, but rather a person capable of calculated predation.
It was only after this third complaint that Josh’s father Jim Bob Duggar consulted with church elders. That’s because everyone knows that in cases of sexual deviancy and incest, church elders are the experts. According to the police report, the initial consensus was that Josh should be placed in treatment. On second thought, Mr. Duggar voiced concern about the possible negative effects of exposure to other youth at the treatment facility. It was this threat of contamination by troubled non-Christian peers that drove the placement of Josh with a known Christian friend in Little Rock.
Apparently the overriding concern focused on Josh. Get him away from his tempting sisters. Place him with an understanding adult male where no such temptation existed. Put a hammer in his hands and set him to hard labor for a while.
Based on statements made to date, we assume the possibility of mental health care never came up. Evidently a treatment program was initially viewed as a punishment, not a means to access therapy that might have helped Josh understand why he felt such urges. Counseling for his victims also apparently never entered the discussion.
A different face of the same problem awaits appropriate closure in the failed adoption of three sisters by Rep. Justin Harris and his wife Marsha. Certain that God guided them to bring the girls into their home, the Harrises pushed through a private adoption against the advice of therapists and caseworkers for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, who warned that the girls had endured significant sexual abuse in the home. According to the foster parents who had kept the girls in their home for over a year, Harris used his position as a state legislator to pressure DHS to sign off on the adoption.
Almost immediately, the oldest of the three, age six, was sent away after the Harrises experienced the extent of her disturbed behavior first hand. For the next year, the two younger girls suffered through the twisted parenting of Justin and Marsha which included being locked in a room stripped of books, toys, and other diversions and allowed no contact with her sister. The girls were signed in as ‘present’ at the Harris preschool, ‘Growing God’s Kingdom,’ but often were not present. And despite denials by the Harris attorney, former and current school employees have described Marsha Harris’ practice of ‘praying out demons.’ [The Arkansas Times’ ongoing coverage of the Harris adoption/preschool story has included use of assigned names for the three girls. The youngest, age four at the time of the incident described below, has the name Annie.]
The former classroom aide recalled a specific incident in 2013 in which Marsha Harris voiced a conviction that her adopted girls’ behavior was fueled by demonic influences. “I remember [Annie] was in the classroom just crying and crying, and [the other teacher] couldn’t even talk to her. I sat on the floor and started saying, ‘I see a purple dinosaur,’ or whatever was around the room. She’d cry, and then stop and look, and cry again, and I kept talking and kind of brought her out of the little tizzy she was in.
“I finally asked her what’s wrong. She said she wet her pants, and I said, ‘That’s OK, we all have accidents,’ and I went out, took her wet ones off, and was getting some other ones. About that time, Marsha came storming in and said, ‘What’s going on in here?’ I said [Annie] had an accident, and she said, ‘That was no accident.’
“And that’s when she told me that it was one of her demons that was making her do that. Then that afternoon or maybe later, she told me that they’d already driven out nine demons, but [Annie] still has one that’s making her do those kind of things.”
It wasn’t long after, in late 2013, that the Harrises gave up entirely on the girls and shuffled them off to another family, Eric and Stacey Francis.
Evidently God had changed His mind.
Only a few months after that, the middle girl now age six was raped by her new ‘father.’ After that incident and several other revealed instances of sexual abuse by Mr. Francis, he was ultimately sentenced to forty years in prison.
Just as the Duggars kept Josh’s secret for twelve years, so did the Harrises fail to notify parents of their preschool flock that a former instructor, Eric Francis, had been convicted of child rape and molestation. Harris also failed to mention that his and Marsha’s adopted girls had been given to the Francis household. Undoubtedly they would have preferred their role in the whole sordid mess never see the light of day. Only the careful journalism of an Arkansas Times reporter uncovered the mess.
Harris has yet to apologize for his role in this little girl’s rape, for his utter and abject failure as an adoptive parent. Instead, his only response has been through an attorney and an occasional Biblical quote on social media such as: The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him.
Oh poor Justin Harris!
Which brings up the bigger problem.
The crushing outcome of the Harris involvement in the lives of these already horrifically traumatized young girls didn’t earn Mr. Harris any censure or removal from office by his rightwing colleagues in the state legislature or a rebuke by the rightwing governor. Based on Mr. Harris’ most recent public appearances and remarks in social media, he continues to view himself as the victim. It surely has not occurred to him that he and his wife might benefit from mental health care in addressing Justin’s god complex and Marsha’s belief in demons.
Where is oversight—government or church—that could intervene? The Harrises are daily in charge of over one hundred vulnerable young minds in an operation funded by our tax dollars.
The failure of the Harrises, Duggars, church elders, and even a state police officer and elected officials to understand the need for mental health care for abuser and victims stems from the pervasive practice of willful ignorance among fundamental/evangelical extremists in general. They view mental health caregivers in the same ilk as witches and ‘godless pagans.’ There’s a belief that what a person ‘thinks’ is between him and God. Prayer is the cure for all ills.
For most extremists, practice of faith has moved a few steps away from refusing all medical care. But anyone can see a broken arm. No one can see the terror and confusion inside little girls who have lived with sexual abuse by meth addicts in their family home, then suffered moving through foster care to finally be adopted before learning—from their new parents—that they are demon possessed. No one can see emotional trauma that results from sexual molestation such as anxiety, fear, or post-traumatic stress disorder likely to surface years later in the Duggar abuse case. No one can see the obsession controlling the abuser’s acts, the neurochemical and dissociative high produced by intense sexual fantasy likely to surface at some point in Josh Duggar’s future.
This willful ignorance and inevitable negative results hold true not only in Christian fundamentalism-evangelism, but also in Amish communities and populations of orthodox Jews. One Israeli study confirmed that “…religious Jews who were in prison were more likely to be in for sex crimes.”[1] A study of freshmen at a southern university in the U.S. found that “…those who had been sexually abused by a relative were much more likely to be affiliated with fundamental Protestant religions.”[2] It probably goes without saying that Catholics have a sordid history along these lines. A study of religious affiliations among adult sexual offenders found that persons who maintained religious involvement from childhood to adulthood had more sexual offense convictions, more victims, and younger victims, than other groups including atheists.[3]
Studies in social dynamics have long shown that placing a person in absolute authority over others often leads to tyrannical behavior. The set-up for sexual abuse is inherent in patriarchal environments required by fundamentalist religion. The all-powerful male gains a sense of divine empowerment: “I can do anything. God is with me.” Abusers believe forgiveness through confession and prayer solves any problem. The abuser struggles with obsessive responses to sexual repression. The victims are within easy access, either siblings, children in a church group, or a church member seeking emotional support for some personal crisis. The victim trusts the abuser and accepts his authority. Fear and shame often prevent the victim from talking to anyone about the experience(s).[4]
In 2001, Dr. James Dobson’s evangelical radio show “Focus on the Family” hosted a discussion about a “crisis” among pastors of evangelical churches. A study had found that 21% of evangelical/protestant pastors had had inappropriate sexual contact with members of their congregations including children and youth. Sixty percent had a problem with pornography. Victims were pressured not to report the abuse—it would harm the church, harm the mission. God does not want you to tell, the Bible says to handle such offenses privately.
It’s almost as if sex offenders self-select for extremist religion because (a) they don’t understand their secret desires would be more appropriately addressed by mental health care, (b) God will cure/forgive them, and (c) they are more able to indulge their illness in an environment rich with molestation opportunities.
The rot goes all the way to the top.
After a particularly threatening scandal came to light in a 2011 20/20 report, the nation’s flagship fundamentalist institution Bob Jones University commissioned an internal study by a group called Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE). GRACE was founded by Boz Tchividjian, a grandson of Billy Graham and a professor at Liberty University. In 2003, driven by his experiences as a sex crimes prosecutor, Tchividjian set up a team of investigators including lawyers, pastors, and therapists. He sums up his work over the intervening years by stating that evangelicals are worse than Catholics at covering up sexual abuse.
[An extensive article about the work of GRACE can be found here.]
GRACE spent over two years working on the Bob Jones University case. They found that men in top positions at the school, one of them charged with providing counseling to students, routinely engaged in victim blaming and shaming in order to suppress complaints. After BJU reviewed preliminary copies of the GRACE study, they attempted to cancel the study. That too became public and they re-engaged. Released in late 2014, the study revealed that Bob Jones III, chancellor and grandson of the founder, and Jim Berg, counselor and dean of students for thirty years, earned the harshest criticism. (Typical for such cases, Berg had zero professional training in counseling.)
GRACE found that students who reported abuse were blamed for bringing it on themselves and that proper authorities had not been notified. The organization said Jones, as the president from 1971 until 2005, and Berg, who stepped down as dean in 2010, were primarily responsible. The report recommended that Jones be disciplined and that Berg be banned from both counseling and teaching counseling and that the school no longer use or sell his books or DVDs.
To date, BJU has ignored these recommendations. Berg remains on staff. BJU ‘investigated’ and found that his teaching materials followed the Bible and there was no reason to discontinue them. The school evidenced no concern for the emotional or psychological health of the victims, not only students at BJU, but people everywhere who relied on Berg’s teaching materials for guidance on how to handle such problems.
What did GRACE find at BJU that caused them to recommend the dismissal of Berg? Here’s a small sample from the report:
[BJU student Cathy] Harris said she was counseled by Berg for six months in 1996 after she started to have flashbacks of childhood sexual abuse. She said she’d go to his office on the second floor of the Administration Building weekly and sit in a wing-back chair. He remained seated behind his desk.
She told him she wanted to go to the police, she said.
“He said the police wouldn’t believe me,” she said.
He told her a report would bring shame on the cause of Christ.
Berg also asked whether she felt any pleasure during any of the abuse and, if she did, she needed to repent, she said.
Tchividjian says the goal of GRACE is to avoid a major scandal for Protestants similar to what happened over a period of years within the Catholic church. He wants churches to be more open, more responsive to the victims’ needs. Tchividjian worries that while a few larger institutions and even a few homeschooling systems have accessed GRACE and followed its recommendations, many who commission studies refuse to accept the final report. It’s a perfect storm of denial and the inability to comprehend the full extent of the problem.
Even worse, many churches and homeschooling networks in particular continue to operate with the traditional patriarchal framework that leads to such abuses in the first place: authority of males over females, an obsession with sexuality, tribalism, hostility to science and anything else modern, and an extremely literal interpretation of the Bible.[5] The persons in charge are those who have the most to lose. They won’t let go easily.
Coming Soon: The Threat of Willful Ignorance
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
[1] Ben-David S, & Weller L (1995). Religiosity,criminality and types of offences of Jewish male prisoners. Medicine and law, 14 (7-8), 509-19 PMID: 8667998
[2] Stout-Miller, R., Miller, L., & Langenbrunner, M. (1998). Religiosity and Child Sexual Abuse: A Risk Factor Assessment Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 6 (4), 15-34 DOI: 10.1300/J070v06n04_02
Based on recent news emerging from Arkansas, a casual observer might assume that a child molester lurks around every corner right along with married cousins and toothless hillbillies. I’m sorry that my beloved native state suffers such disrepute, but the fact is, there’s truth in it. In March, a story came to light about Arkansas State Representative Justin Harris and his wife and how they had ‘rehomed’ two little girls they had adopted, one of whom was raped by the new ‘father.’ Most recently, last week a Duggar family skeleton involving incest and pedophilia emerged from the closet, resulting in the prompt suspension of their popular television show “19 Kids and Counting” which aired for years on TLC network.
Is there any connection between these horrific incidents? I think there is.
The Harrises and the Duggars are evangelical Christians. They have, each in their own way, placed themselves in the public eye to advocate on behalf of their faith. There’s risk in holding up oneself as an example, as they are finding out.
Justin Harris is serving his third term in the Arkansas Legislature where he has introduced conservative measures ranging from abortion restriction to denying funding to the state’s department of human services under the campaign promise to reduce government spending. He and his wife own and operate a preschool in his legislative district town of West Fork, a largely rural constituency with a high percentage of fundamentalist church followers. Alongside the alphabet and fingerpainting, Mr. Harris’ school teaches religion.
In 2012, Harris found himself on the hot seat after a formal complaint was filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Seems Mr. No Government Funding had his hand in the public till by obtaining grant funding for his preschool. Over a million dollars had flowed into his coffers, courtesy of a state agency charged with providing tax monies in support of preschools that addressed the needs of ‘underserved’ youth. Originating through the Arkansas Department of Education, federal and state taxes are channeled to the Department of Human Services (DHS) and its ABC program (Arkansas Better Chance), which awards grants based on a lengthy list of criteria including family income.
Mr. Harris mounted a vigorous and outraged defense of his right to all that money. He brought in a team of attorneys from Arizona who specialized in defending schools who want to teach Jesus on the public dime. Subsequently, the ABC program promulgated a set of rules specifically addressing the issue of religious instruction. It is unknown whether the ‘solution’ was put forth by the Arizona attorneys, modeled on rules operating in other states, or sprang from a singular Arkansas process, but the novel approach defines an ‘ABC day’ as a set number of hours of purely secular instruction. Whether religious instruction occurs before the ABC day commences or after it ends would not be the state’s concern.
Since then, Mr. Harris has expanded his operation and state funding approaches a million dollars annually. His students arrive as early as 7:30 a.m. and leave as late as 6 p.m. The ABC day begins at 9 and lasts until 3. Before and after, it’s all about Jesus.
Soon after the flap over school funding, the Harrises—who already had three sons—decided to adopt little three girls whose dysfunctional family had lost custody. The girls were fairly well adjusted in a foster home, but the natural mother allegedly made a personal plea to Justin Harris. This arguably admirable effort left many to question Harris’ quick use of the girls in a family portrait promoting his re-election campaign (a violation of adoption policy), the nearly $30,000 tax break that came with the adoption, and the monthly stipend allotted to Harris in the form of state support. Clearly, the adoption wasn’t all about benevolence.
Firmly fixated on the adoption idea, the Harrises refused to listen to DHS field agents who reported that the girls would not be suitable in the Harris household. With all the arrogance befitting a person who believed God directed his acts, Harris apparently used his elected office to pressure DHS to approve the adoption. Local caseworkers opposed to the adoption mysteriously changed their recommendation after their boss advocated on the Harris’ behalf. That Justin Harris held a powerful position in the legislative committee which controlled DHS funding seems never to have been examined as a possible contributor to this department head’s advocacy, which resulted in a local juvenile court judge granting the adoption. Unfortunately, because the case involves adoption, DHS has not released any information.
Within a year, the Harrises decided to ‘rehome’ the girls to another family. By early 2014, one of the girls had been raped by her new ‘father,’ Eric Cameron Francis. Later that year, Francis would be convicted of multiple counts of child abuse and is currently serving time. As it turns out, Francis had been an employee at the Harris preschool and his wife was good friends with Mrs. Harris. Not surprisingly, Harris chose to stay quiet about his role in placing the victim in the Francis home until a reporter from the Arkansas Times connected the dots. The story went public in March 2015.
When the adoption/rehoming scandal broke, Harris held a press conference as reported by the Arkansas Times. He presented himself and his family as the damaged party.
“The older girl, who would have been about 6 years old at the time she entered the Harris household, presented an imminent danger to his older three sons, Harris said. DHS ultimately placed the child into a hospital after just a few months of living with the family, and the Harrises did not proceed with the planned adoption [of that child]. He also said the younger sisters, ages 4 and 2 when they entered the Harris home, were violent. He said one of the girls — the implication was the middle sister — had to be medicated to stop hurting her sister, and that he was advised by therapists to treat her RAD [Reactive Attachment Disorder] by removing toys and other belongings from her room.
“After one of the two younger girls crushed a family pet to death, Harris said, he and his wife were advised by “a therapist, a psychiatrist and a pediatrician” to remove the children from the Harris home. He said he sought DHS assistance at that time but was given none. He said he thought he’d found the “perfect solution” in handing the girls over to Stacey Francis, a longtime friend of his wife’s, and her husband, Eric Cameron Francis. Eric Francis is serving 40 years in prison on charges of raping the child.”
[Francis had also been a children’s church group leader in Northwest Arkansas and abused other children besides the Harris adoptee.]
The foster family who had custody of the girls prior to the Harris involvement repudiated Harris’ allegations about the girls. They said the girls had been kind and loving, happy to be in a solid home situation and eager for affection. Other witnesses came forth to give similar statements. Unfortunately, no one other than the Arkansas Times has investigated the facts of this case, and since the Arkansas Legislature is the only agency with authority to remove Harris, he remains in public office despite a petition demanding his resignation signed by over 5000 people.
Within a month of the revelation that Arkansas DHS had no rule or restriction on the rehoming of adopted children, the state legislature passed a law making rehoming a felony. Harris voted for the bill, in essence making himself a retroactive felon. He resigned from the chairmanship of the public health committee, but failed to yield his legislative seat. He has also refused to accept any responsibility for the little girl’s sexual abuse. At the peak of this fiasco, his school billboard proclaimed that “God Himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.”
Throughout the intense scrutiny on Harris and his failure as an adoptive parent, a considerable body of information has come to light about ongoing religious activities at his preschool. Although random spot inspections by the state theoretically rule out the chance of illegal religious activity during the ‘ABC day,’ reports from former teachers and others allege that children who misbehave are routinely taken to the office where they are prayed over to ‘cast out demons.’ Harris has made efforts to gain official approval for singing religious songs during the lunch hour, since this was not an education period. It’s unclear at present exactly what level of religious activity occurs during the tax-funded ‘ABC day.’ Apparently the state isn’t all that eager to find out.
With the name of “Growing God’s Kingdom,” the school certainly should have received intense scrutiny from agencies charged with the responsibility of appropriately dispensing tax dollars. Instead, as previously stated, the state had blissfully doled out funds not only to the Harris school but also to several other religion-teaching preschools across the state, some of which were owned and operated by others elected to public office. And they continue to do so.
Currently, the new Republican governor Asa Hutchinson and the first-time-since-Reconstruction majority Republican legislature have passed a special dispensation to allow one of those religious pre-school owners/elected officials, Johnny Key, to serve as head of the state education department. The governor, himself a conservative religionist, formerly served as a member of Congress during which time he led the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton for his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky. At the same time, Asa’s brother Tim Hutchinson held elected office as a U.S. Senator. It came to light after the impeachment that Christian family man Tim had been carrying on an affair with his legislative director, Randi Fredholm, whom he married as soon as he divorced his wife. Lucky for him, no one initiated impeachment proceedings.
After the Harris rehoming debacle erupted, a bevy of complaints about DHS surfaced, especially about adoption practices. Governor Hutchinson appointed a special investigator to examine the department’s policies and procedures. While it is too early to say as the investigation results are due any day now, a cynical bystander might assume that the governor’s investigation will not examine whether Harris abused his office to obtain the adoption.
Also unclear is the legality of Arkansas preschool operations which comingle the Bible and education. Queries to the compliance office at DHS receive less than informative replies. For example, a recent question asked whether there is a viability test (for preschools which include religious instruction) to determine whether religious instruction could exist without tax funding of the ‘ABC day.’ Local contributions, the only funding that can be legally used for religious teaching, comprise only ten percent of the school’s funding. Would that ten percent be enough to provide the facilities and support needed to provide religious education?
No one knows. DHS confirmed that there is no viability test.
Like Justin Harris, the Duggar father Jim Bob served a stint in the state legislature, elected from a conservative district near Springdale. (The geographical distance between West Fork and Springdale is about twenty miles.) Duggar gained media recognition after his wife Michelle produced their twelfth child (or at some count along in there). Their home-schooled family has promoted themselves as the model for clean Christian living as Michelle continued to squeeze out another Duggar clone every other year. While Duggar originally supported his tribe through used car sales, the income from their television appearances superseded used cars sometime around 2010. It helped the bottom line that the family became a hot ticket item for talk shows and other celebrity circuit events.
Well, probably not so much since last week, when it became known that the Duggar’s oldest son Josh had been sexually molesting his younger sisters and other young females unfortunate enough to spend the night at the Duggar family home. The story first came to the parents’ attention in March 2002 when one of Josh’s victims came crying to her parents about his nighttime visits to her bedroom. He admitted his bad behavior and was disciplined. Four months later, he admitted to more of the same. More discipline.
The family had adopted ‘basic life principle’ instruction from Bill Gothard’s “Advanced Training Institute for Homeschooling.” As advised by Gothard, persons involved in a sexual abuse situation shouldn’t ask why God let it happen but instead consider what the abused person did wrong, such as dress immodestly, indecently expose the body, or hang out with evil friends. Further, “if the abused is not at fault,’ he/she should welcome the gift of gaining spiritual strength from the experience.
[Mr. Gothard resigned in March 2014 after female employees alleged over thirty incidents of sexual abuse. Evidently, they didn’t find their ‘gift’ of spiritual strength sufficiently rewarding to offset the experience of Mr. Gothard’s harassment.]
In March 2003 the now fifteen-year-old Josh Duggar was again outed by his siblings that he was still slipping into his sisters’ bedrooms at night to fondle their breasts and genitals. His touching also occurred on the living room couch, in the laundry room, and on at least one occasion, outside the home. At this point, the father arranged for Josh to spend three months with a family friend in Little Rock who put Josh to work helping remodel a house.
Upon his return home, his father took him to speak with an officer of the Arkansas State Police. It seems Corporal Hutchens was selected for good reasons. He did not file an official report despite a mandatory reporting requirement for law enforcement officers in such cases. Rather, the young man was subjected to a “very stern talk.”
[Subsequently, unrelated to his dereliction of duty in the Duggar case, the now 69-year-old Hutchins is serving a 56-year sentence for repeated child pornography.]
No doubt everyone prayed over everyone’s demons.
The cover-up of Josh Duggar’s pedophilia continued over the years until the statute of limitations had run for any sexual abuse charge. Then, triggered by a note that came to light in 2006 describing these activities, the local police department interviewed all family members and established a record. That too would remain a secret during the coming years including during a 2014 campaign funded and led by the Duggars in an effort to overturn a city ordinance passed in the neighboring city of Fayetteville, Arkansas, which established anti-discrimination protections for gay, lesbian, and transgender people seeking housing, employment, etc. Michelle Duggar personally narrated a robo-call that urged the ordinance’s overthrow because under the law, she alleged, a transgender male could get into the women’s bathroom and sexually molest little girls.
Oh, the irony.
Die-hard supporters of Justin Harris and Josh Duggar lament that everyone is casting aspersions on them when they’ve asked Jesus for forgiveness and promised never to rehome or molest again. Duggar fans vow to boycott TLC programs until the “19 Kids and Counting” show returns to the air. They’ll probably be waiting a long time. Reportedly General Mills, one of the show’s top sponsors, made it abundantly clear to TLC that they would not be in that parade. Pundits remark that the Duggar explosion “taints the whole brand.”
One can only hope. Never mind that for years the Duggars have made a sickening spectacle of indiscriminate and unconscionable reproductive excess. Never mind that a more caring and responsible approach to a large family, assuming one absolutely must have a house full of children, would be to produce one or two of your own gene pool and then, for God’s sake, adopt some of the many children languishing in adoption facilities and foster homes here and around the world.
Above all else, the hypocrisy involved in the Harris and Duggar stories staggers the imagination. While firmly denying funding to DHS based on his campaign promise to reduce government spending, Mr. Harris fought for government handouts to fund his religious school in spite of the fact that he knew he was breaking the law by teaching religion in a tax-supported program. As an elected person who held himself up as an example of Christian righteousness, he should have been the first person to recognize he was crossing the line between church and state as delineated in the U. S. Constitution. Instead, assuming he understood the thrust of the Founding Fathers’ intent, he no doubt privately justified his behavior with his belief that God willed it.
Eric Francis, intake photograph at time of arrest, Benton County, Arkansas. 2014
We’re left to wonder if rehoming was God’s will. Or if God wanted that already traumatized six-year-old little girl to suffer rape at the hands Eric Francis.
Similarly, the Duggars must have decided that hiding Josh’s sexual perversion was God’s wish. After all, they undoubtedly prayed on it and God didn’t say to tell. The family had a mission to spread the Good Word to the world via their television show. Even a moron could figure out that TLC probably wouldn’t like to hear about Josh’s nighttime recreation. The Duggars called in favors from local friends and church members to sidestep the law. They failed to put Josh in the hands of a professional therapist who might have helped the young man overcome his predilection for sexually assaulting young children.
As it is, Josh now has a captive audience within his own family and only God knows whether he manages to resist the temptation to fondle them. We can only guess whether his sisters and other victims of his teenage abuse have received any professional help. Chances are, they prayed on it.
Underlying this sickening avalanche of news about Harris and the Duggars is a growing national problem. The evangelical right believes in demons, and they believe that praying can send the demons packing. The implicit teaching from infancy onward is that we as individuals are not responsible for our acts, but rather it’s those damn demons who creep in when we’re not looking. If we can just send those demons away, we’ll be smiled upon by Jesus and everything will be fine.
This kind of simplistic medieval thinking lies behind the ability of political handlers to capture votes from the evangelical demographic. The compelling argument is that demons rule the ‘other’ party, that gay marriage, abortion, and other private activities are the proper province of political action, and only by voting for Mr. Righteous can we satisfy the will of God. So far self-sustaining through multiple election cycles, this obsessed minority turn out to vote in numbers unlike other less fanatical segments of the population. In the most recent Arkansas election, the prevailing vote represented about 30% of the eligible voter base.
By voting sympathetic legislators into office, adherents are able to skirt the intent of the law that requires no tax dollars be spent in promoting religion and to place compatriots in positions of authority such as, in Arkansas, to head the state’s entire educational system. Johnny Key does not hold the master’s degree or ten years experience as a teacher which, until the 2015 actions of the Arkansas governor and legislature, would have barred him from serving the state’s top education post. Now, as long as the number two man meets those requirements, the state can put a favored religious legislator in the top slot.
Further, evangelical right wingers are able to spawn a network of pseudo-professional responses to serious matters of sexual abuse and direct the blame for such abuse toward the abused.
Fundamentally, the movement toward dozens of children, homeschooling, and the non-response to incestuous sexual molestation has to do with—at least in part—the liberation of women from their long history as male property. I’ve recently learned that my own great-grandfather molested one of my aunts, and probably many more, but none of this was discussed openly, nor was any action taken. It was his ‘right’ as the patriarch to thump his Bible and fiddle one of his pretty little ‘properties’ on the side. The aunt herself did not speak of it until old age, at which time she shared it with her sisters. Some of those sisters chose not to believe it really happened and continue to attend fundamentalist churches where women are not allowed to speak.
There are many features of modern life that scare the hell out of those who simply cannot understand science or other changes increasingly widespread in the world. Our technology and culture have evolved faster than our mental or physical state. Everything is too fast and too complicated. It’s only been a hundred years since picking peas and saddling a horse served as the requisite skill set to get through life.
Obviously not all evangelical Christians sexually abuse children or try to use tax dollars in support of religious education. However, a study examining the correlation between fundamentalism and such abuses would be interesting. A January 2014 article in Psychology Today summarized several studies which found positive correlation between low I.Q. and religious belief. One result of the studies was the conclusion “that conservative and fundamentalist religious beliefs can discourage learning.”
From ignorance comes fear, and for many fundamentalists, fear rules the day. Fomenting that fear serves a calculated political purpose that ultimately assures that power rests in the hands of the super-rich. The success of their calculation is demonstrated in increasingly skewed wealth distribution and an exponential increase in fear mongering.
For many, especially in southern states where low income and poor education help spawn the idea that cultivated ignorance is a form of virtue, the solution is to crawl back into the Middle Ages and believe that the problem is abortion, minorities, immigration, or homosexuality. We’re in real danger of allowing this misbegotten movement to gain power over our schools, political structures, and way of life. As long as the system loops back on itself with brainwashing in the early years and rejection of any understanding beyond their closed belief system, the Taliban is looking more and more like a local organization.
denelecampbell 