The Josh Duggar Scandal Is Part of a Much Larger Christian Abuse Problem

By Drew Millard
Vice
May 29, 2015

http://www.vice.com/read/josh-duggar-scandal-is-part-of-a-much-larger-christian-abuse-problem-529

The story of the Josh Duggar scandal—that as a teen, the 19 Kids and Counting Star molested multiple young women, only to have his father, Jim Bob Duggar, underplay and cover up his actions—is simple. The narratives surrounding it, however, are not, exposing underlying questions about faith, morality, and abuse in the Christian patriarchy movement, a fundamentalist set of beliefs popular among Evangelical homeschooling families like the Duggars.

The scandal is the latest in a series of sexual abuse allegations that have rocked the Patriarchy movement, which holds that women in general should be subject and subordinate to men. According to Evangelical leaders, including Home School Legal Defense Association founder Michael Farris, who has distanced himself from the movement, biblical patriarchy goes beyond even typical Christian fundamentalism in treating women as subjects, discouraging females from voting or attending college and promoting the idea that "unmarried adult women are subject to their fathers' authority."

The Duggars, who homeschool their children, belong to an even more specific sect known as "Quiverfulls," which advocates for large, patriarchal families. Each family member is an "arrow" in a "quiver." Vyckie Garrison, a former Quiverfull adherent who runs the Patheos blog No Longer Quivering, which acts as a watchdog against the movement, describes the "quiver" metaphor this way:

The whole point of having a quiver full of babies is to... out-populate the "enemy"... and to shoot those many arrows "straight into the heart of the enemy." And by that, we meant that our children would grow up to be leaders in all the major institutions of our society.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a central tenet of Quiverfull beliefs is a rejection of any and all forms of contraception. The Quiverfull website contains links to articles with titles like "The Case Against Birth Control," sells a booklet titled "Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions?," and includes a link to a now-disabled site that encourages vasectomy reversals. The message is clear: Women ought to have as many children as possible, regardless of their personal preferences.

Writing of her time in the Quiverfull movement, Garrison has said that "using any form of birth control was tantamount to playing God, so I was kept perpetually pregnant or nursing, or both for more than 11 years." She wrote that her husband would downplay her arguments in a discussion by saying, "What you are suggesting SOUNDS reasonable, but how do I know that Satan isn't using you to deceive me?"

Another harrowing account posted on Garrison's site recently by an anonymous woman detailed how her bipolar estranged husband manipulated her into calling off their divorce by impregnating her.

"He seemed overjoyed but not surprised," the blogger wrote. "We rejoined our church, I had another baby and then had more pregnancies, one every year as the pressure to be Quiverfull increased in our group." She continued, "Charles had planned everything, his seduction of me, poking holes in the condom before hand and the renewal of our marriage. He purposely impregnated me in order to control me—the real essence of Quiverfull: Men controlling women via their uterus."

In an interview with VICE, Miranda Blue, a senior researcher for special projects at People for the American Way, an advocacy group founded by Normal Lear meant to challenge the Moral Majority, explained that all this fosters a high potential for abuse among right-wing Christian groups."If you're in an environment where girls are brought up to submit to men and being told they're the property of their father until they're the property of their husband, that's not a safe place for women and girls," she said.

Victims of abuse in these situations tend to not seek out police, Blue added, because these sects view "the family unit and church as a separate governing body from the secular world."

"Women in these situations would be very reluctant to talk to an authority," she said. "They won't necessarily get a fair hearing from their church if they come forward."