Not so Shiny, and definitely not happy: The non-stop undoing of Bill Gothard and The Dugger Family

Amazon Prime released a 4-part docu series titled Shiny Happy People on June 2nd, 2023.

If you are of a certain age, you can hear this image

No, it's not about REM. Although you may want to use that link as a palate cleanser after watching each episode.

Despite its title, Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets is about more than just the Duggars. The family, and the shenanigans of their patriarch, Jim Bob Duggar, are used as a launchpad for critiques into the structure and enduring influence of the Institute of Basic Life Principles and its founder, Bill Gothard.

I've written previously about Bill Gothard and his connections to New Zealand here. If you are feeling like you want the cliff notes, Gothard is the founder, and now ex-leader, of the ultraconservative Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). He has some Christian bonafides, as the son of onetime Gideons International executive and editor William Gothard.

Yeah, Gideons. The bible in the bedside drawer of your hotel room; that Gideon's.

But, anyhoo. Gothard initially made his name appealing to the parents of baby boomers, with promises to improve relations between rebellious teens and adults. This soon expanded to a prison ministry and character education programmes in American public schools. As the baby boomers grew up, and had children of their own, Gothard's real hat trick came into play with the creation of a homeschool programme, and several ministry programmes (including a bootcamp for boys) that appealed to the continued survival of the white, heterosexual hegemony.

Gothard had a history of visiting New Zealand since the 1960s, and was lecturing in Dunedin in 1979. When Gothard was expanding his influence overseas, New Zealand was allegedly one of the first countries where Gothard and the IBLP established an overseas centre. But it wasn't just some big bucks from American billionaire David Green that made it happen, but also a full-on invite from the Government of New Zealand, via the Department of Justice, to consult on crime in New Zealand. The IBLP would have a foothold in prisons for the next several years, working with high risk offenders.

Predation and criminal behaviour were always in the shadows of Gothard's ministry. Back when the IBLP was known as the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, Gothard's brother Steve was accused of preying on youth employees - back in the late 1970s/early 1980s. More bothersome was Gothard's 1992 visit to New Zealand. Its aftermath was just a part of the many accusations of sexual assault, molestation, and rape made by 34 women, with 10 (including a New Zealand citizen) going on to be plaintiffs against Gothard in a failed 2018 lawsuit. But more on that later.

So, what about this docu series?

As a longtime Duggar-skeptic, having been watching the mega-family in its many iterations as the brood grew, I was surprised at how often this documentary caught me off-guard. Although this had more to do with Jill Duggar's allegations of malfeasance by her father Jim Bob against his children, even the adults, than it did with testimonies by victims of the IBLP. And even then, Jill's revelations were more of a sad confirmation of long-standing theories and rumours held by Fundie snarkers and participants in internet forums like Free Jinger.

Before I offer mini summaries into each episode, it's important to contextualise the significance of Jill Duggar being the whistleblower, for lack of a better word. Jill was frequently used for talking head segments throughout the Duggar's many television incarnations, more so than any of her siblings. It would be Jill who would explain the beliefs and traditions of her family; which sadly shouldn't be shocking, as she was essentially a parent to many of her younger siblings.

When she was 11/12 years old, Jill was molested by her oldest brother Joshua, and was the one who told their parents. When the news broke in 2015, she and sister Jessa were coerced into going on network television to defend Josh and state they had forgiven him.

As Jill grew up, significant milestones such as her courtship and marriage to now-husband Derick Dillard, and the birth of her children, were televised, some even being the highest rated episodes of the series. Even the fallout of Josh's scandal was commercialised through the spin-offs of Jill and Jessa: Counting on and Counting on.

Derick's transphobic comments towards another TLC star, Jazz Jennings, got him kicked off the spin-offs, and Jill stepped away from Counting On in 2017, citing a lack of control over their lives and hinting at family tensions. In 2019, Jill began hinting at the source of the trouble being Jim Bob's financial decisions, and occasionally posted evidence that she was slipping away from the Dugger's strict rules, such as getting her nose pierced, drinking alcohol, and gasp wearing pants.

Jill was presented as Jim Bob's favourite daughter, and an overall goody two-shoes. While that made her the ideal poster child for the IBLP, and for her parents, it also made her a villain to many watchers. In comparison, the stylish and eye-rolling Jinger was the fan favourite, with everyone betting on her being the first to ditch. While the fans weren't wrong, they weren't quite right. Jinger certainly broke ranks and wore the pants, but her book, Becoming Free Indeed, is a theological memoir and a condemnation of Gothard and the IBLP; neither of the Duggar parents are attacked. Jill's ongoing emancipation, albeit one that has played out on YouTube, various social media platforms, and the pages of People Magazine for the past four years, still feels dramatic and devastating. I'm not condoning any of the problematic beliefs still held by Jill and Derick but, you know, none of this was on my bingo card back when the original Duggar documentary, 14 kids and Pregnant Again, aired back in 2004.

But, on with the episodes.

Episode 1

A small chuckle at the start when Jill struggles to name all of her own siblings, including Jennifer, whom Jill was directly responsible for under the Dugger's own version of extreme parentification called “The Buddy System”. This episode generally sums up the origin story of the Duggars. Jim Bob was raised in a missionary baptist household with sister Deanna, which was very conservative and prohibited activities like cheerleading and wearing jeans. While Deanna would raise her daughter Amy with significantly more freedom, Jim Bob obviously doubled down on the restrictions and then some. But, nonetheless, the families were close, and Amy, despite her portrayal in the show as the “wild one”, loved her cousins and idolised her uncle.

Jim Bob and Michelle married young and, after a miscarriage which they attributed to wife Michelle being on a birth control pill, gave god the reins when it came to their family size. Still, Jim Bob was deeply affected by his impoverished childhood, and would work several jobs to keep the family afloat. A fortuitous meeting with then-Governor Mike Huckabee after a pro-life rally kicked off a brief political career as an Arkansas State Representative, and a failed run for Senate. An opportune photo of the children printed in the New York Times led to further media attention about the mega-sized family, and eventually to the most profitable Duggar partnership with Discovery Health/TLC leading to their TV series.

However, the Duggars were hiding a devastating secret about Josh's molestation. Speculation had been rife since 2005 in forums like Free Jinger, spurred on by Jim Bob's claims that a Sin in the Camp contributed to a failed political bid. Looking for clues, commenters had noticed Josh's absence in certain episodes/specials, and a change in haircut indicative of being sent to an ATI bootcamp. Further rumours abound that a letter listing Josh's crimes was found in a library book, but it was a random 2007 blog comment that blew everyone out of the water and haunted everyone online until 2015. Still, Jill has every right to be devastated that it became public, as it wasn't done on her terms.

For the uninitiated, you just had a brief overview of the Duggar's gender-segregated lives, and come blink-and-you-miss-it Christian culture ephemera like the “Managers of their homes” chore chart (I mean, read the 15 years of Maxwell family blog posts. It's…. a ride). Instead, we get a meditation on reality TV and how its emphasis on those traditional values of at least performative femininity can be appealing to an audience. So much so that the Duggars could be seen as a catalyst to TLC/Discovery's upward trajectory to Discovery now owning Warner Bros.

We also get an introduction to Gothard's non-denominational ministry, and the promises he made with the Basic Seminar that if you worship god and follow Gothard's teachings, God will reward you. Essentially, a version of the prosperity gospel with the bonus of Gothard stepping in to make decisions about what clothing people should wear, why they shouldn't listen to music with a beat, and what they should teach their children.

We are introduced to Jim Bob's longtime friend Jim Holt and his wife Bobye (pronounced Bobby). Jim and Bobby met when he was 19 and she was 14, and the way Holt talks about that is more than cringey. Both Holt and Duggar had dysfunctional childhoods. When they were 15 and 14 respectively, the boys were introduced to the IBLP when they attended a seminar led by Gothard. The Holts have 11 children; their eldest, Kayleigh, was the same age as Josh, and Josh was her first boyfriend. That all sounds sweet, but the Holts' involvement in Josh's scandal and general IBLP beliefs about dating sours the picture. There is no real dating in IBLP but only courting, with the expectation that marriage will be the outcome. Josh and Kayleigh were 15 and dating when the Duggars revealed to the Holts what had happened, and admitted that they were not going to have Josh confess until after the marriage.

In Holt's version of the story, he confronted Jim Bob about Kayleigh being used as an incentive, and Jim Bob's own hypocrisy; Duggar recently wrote a bill that created a sex offender website which meant that Josh's name and crime needed to be listed. Dugger invited Holt to join him at the State Troopers' office when he brought Josh in. The State Trooper let Josh off with a warning, but was later revealed to be a friend of Jim Bob's that Holt didn't know. Josh spent a short amount of time at a Gothard run facility for troubled youths, before returning in time to be part of the media blitz. Said State Trooper, Joseph Hutchens, would be convicted in 2012 for his own set of unrelated child pornography charges.

But, in the grand scheme of things, Holt isn't necessarily the most reliable of narrators.

As the episode closes out, the thesis of the rest of the series is laid out. That crimes such as those committed by Josh, other forms of serious mistreatment, and both educational and medical neglect, are baked into the IBLP.

Episode 2

The Fallout of the publicising of Josh's crimes, and the subsequent damage control, fall to Jill and her sister and fellow victim, Jessa. Jim Bob presents a ‘sanitised' version of events to the media, which downplays the crime and over-states the rehabilitative actions taken by him and Michelle. Members of the IBLP, sadly, were not surprised by the fact that an older brother was the perpetrator. While Jill's sacrifice wasn't enough to save the original show, TLC was amenable to producing a spinoff, starring just Jill and Jessa and their new lives as adults.

Several commentators are profiled throughout this episode, talking about how they or their families got into Gothard.

Part of the episode does go into the outright bizarre claims Gothard made about what his followers could and could not listen to, buy, or do. For those who were children through the 80s and 90s, which toys and games brought evil into the home was a source of anxiety.

A lot of focus is given to Gothard's homeschool wing, the Advanced Training Institute. Despite Gothard's claims that it was a high-school, pre-med, and pre-law curriculum rolled into one, former students describe the materials in the so-called “wisdom booklets” to be anything but wise. Amongst ATI's failings were its anti evolution stance, bizarre claims like “hands are composed of nonliving atoms”, and which outfits will cause too much temptation for men. For girls, their education could be quite dire; one anecdote recalled an unsupportive father denying his daughter a mathematics education beyond fractions, because that was all she needed for baking.

Women faced further disadvantage with regards to what their so-called spiritual gifts were in the wider Gothard ministry, with women often ascribed the gift of “mercy giver”. Mercy givers basically took on the burdens of others, and relieved their suffering. This was reinforced early on for girls, who were often in charge of caring for one or more younger siblings. In the Duggars, once a baby was weaned, it was assigned to an older sibling until they were old enough to take care of any younger siblings their parents may have had.

This documentary also explores the particular system of child discipline that the IBLP promotes to its followers, largely spanking and beating. Michael and Debi Pearl's book, To Train up a Child, was the endorsed text. This controversial book has been brought up in two trials where adherents to its teachings murdered their own children in the name of “discipline”. The book encourages striking children and infants with rods, switchings, or pipes. This book hits the New Zealand newscycle every few years, when it's found on the shelves of Whitcoulls or a public library. Despite attempts to ban the book in New Zealand, its current rating is unrestricted. Another practice used on infants was called blanket training; children as young as 6 months were put on a blanket with an item that they like placed out of reach. Anytime the child moved off the blanket to get the toy, they would get a swat or a smack.

Within marriage, women are advised to be available for their husbands, and to submit to a domestic discipline contract. This is more or less an extension of the Pearls' teachings where it is often the woman who has to agree with how they are punished, and how they respond to the punishment if they step out of line.

Episode 3

So, while a new series based on the adult Duggar daughters seems to have been a move in the right direction, in reality it was an exploitative cash grab by Jim Bob, one where only he profited. With decades spent ingraining obedience and adherence to parental authority into his kids, it was easy for Jim Bob to get his children to sign anything. In the midst of wedding planning, and without any inkling that her father would act in anything other than in her best interest, Jill unwittingly signed a contract that committed her and Derick Dillard to five years of filming for TLC. That meant that while Jill did not want a crew at her birth, she was still obligated to film it; which she did through video diaries. When she approached TLC to be paid, in order to offset insurance costs associated with the birth, TLC advised that they had already paid Jim Bob.

Neither Jill or her siblings received any cash, cheques, or payments during the filming of the original 19 kids and counting seasons.

This frankly abusive position about child labour and fair remuneration of children is endemic in the IBLP. It is not unusual for ATI families to send their children to one of the several occupational training centres, for anywhere between a couple of weeks and several years. Young people and older teenagers would work real jobs in kitchens and at construction sites for free. In Josh's case it was as a punishment, but for many families working at these centres was an honour. It was also a relief, as children would, ideally, be working with other “godly” people.

However, teenagers can suck. And putting them in charge of disciplining other children is explored in the classic text Lord of the Flies. But that's a book for heathens, and likely not on any reading list for an ATI student. Instead, think of a cohort of young people, fed a lifetime of corporal punishment for the most insignificant of infractions, jostling for any scrap of positive attention and reinforcement and being given the power to punish. For the young people working at an IBLP centre, their peers were the ones sending them to a room for days at a time, with only a bible for company, for crimes like buying tampons or wearing a shoe with a small heel. Sexual assault also occurred at these centres.

Jill found out about the reality of her contract the hard way. While she and Derick had committed to a 10 month mission trip to El Salvador, TLC was no longer interested in filming the couple while they were working, and demanded that they come back to America. Jim Bob sent Jill the contract that she signed the day before her wedding, and points out that she is obligated to do as the show says. The couple then try to negotiate a payment with Jim Bob, initially lowballing at 10$/hour before finally offering the adult kids a lump sum that would be equivalent to minimum wage. But they would only get a lump sum if they sign a contract that commits them to the family forever. So, Jill and Derick walked.

The perception of Jill being an IBLP lifer and suck-up to Jim Bob made her the subject of additional criticism, with regards to missteps made by her in terms of her careers as a midwife and missionary, and even the apparent slow growth of her own family. Putting my own feelings about missionary work aside, Shiny Happy People does rehabilitate Jill with regards to her actual commitment to this missionary work.

This episode touches briefly on Gothard's political connections, but the hardest part of the episode are the testimonies and stories of the women who were the target of Gothard's attention. One participant reflected that they knew it was weird, but didn't know it was wrong; a lifetime of their boundaries being tested, and the rules of faithfulness being drilled into them, made them easy pickings for Gothard. The IBLP also taught that a woman who didn't cry out during an assault was as guilty as the perpetrator.

With Gothard being dethroned from the kingdom he built, IBLP ended up in the awkward position of still needing the materials and business that Bill created, while scrubbing all mention of Gothard. There was also the issue of nearly $90 million in assets, and who gets to control that. The docu series believes that Jim Bob and Michelle currently hold the keys to that particular kingdom.

Episode 4

The last episode kicks off with Josh's recent child pornography conviction. Despite her shame and anger around the molestation allegations being made public, Jill was willing to testify against Josh. Bobye Holt also testified about the open knowledge of Josh's history.

The documentary then makes a quick beeline through the beliefs of the Quiverfull movement, and through to the Joshua generation. This is described in the documentary as a decades-long, multi-generational plan by evangelicals to raise an elite force of Christian homeschool graduates to get into high levels of government. This was achieved through training in speech, debate, and organising, as well as a motivation on the part of parents to allow their kids (including their daughters) to be eligible and attend either elite secular universities, or one of the many evangelical equivalents, that are anecdotally referred to as the Harvard of christian colleges. The documentary God's Next Army explores this phenomenon in more detail. For the kids who don't garner an internship in the White House, they can still help the Joshua generation by being a Christian influencer, peddling the umbrella of authority on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. In some ways, the Venn diagram with Tradwives looks uncomfortably close to a single circle.

In the aftermath of Josh's conviction, Jill requested TLC send her all contracts with her name on them. It was discovered that, despite becoming an adult in 2009, her parents were still signing contracts in her name in 2012.

The series then touches briefly on the lawsuit against Gothard, and the current state of the ATI curriculum. At present, it is no longer advertised as a homeschool curriculum, but rather as an at-home bible study programme.

Final thoughts

This is a very fast paced documentary that cuts out a lot of the fluff to get the point across, but I found the thematic linking between some of the segments within an episode to be weak, and think it could have benefitted from combining tonally similar content, i.e. combing the sexual abuse in a single episode, for example. There were points in the documentary, such as the Joshua Generation, ALERT training, and the question of why hasn't Josh's wife Anna left, that needed a bit more information or discussion to provide more context as to how pervasive this form of training is.

Follow-up material has also been released, including an official Aftershow featuring several of the participants. Emily Anderson is also interviewed by YouTube channel Cults to Consciousness, where she gives further insight into her history with IBLP, ATI, and being groomed by Gothard.

Soon after this documentary was released, Bobye Holt and one of her sons requested a protection order against Jim Holt. No further details are available at this time.

Jill Duggar will be releasing her own memoir in September 2023. Unlike Jinger's theological memoir, publisher Simon and Schuster are making it sound like Jill is spilling some pretty damaging tea.

It won't be out until 2024, but there is another documentary related to Gothard and the IBLP in the works - "Until the Truth" is not a story about Gothard, but it is about the stories from the plaintiffs in the legal case against Gothard, and will include accounts from former IBLP staff and other spiritual leaders. The trailer is very intense, and mentions sexual abuse and rape. There's no indication yet if the New Zealand victim of Gothard will be included in this.