NOTE: This was a paper I wrote several years ago, obviously prior to the current news about the Duggar family. This paper also uses data from the shows seasons six and seven. It is much longer than a normal blog post, as it was, originally, meant as an academic paper. I would argue that the analysis is current, however, and thus thought it might be interesting to people right now.
19 and Counting:
Religion, Gender, and the
Hermeneutics of Agency in Liberal America
The Duggar
family is nothing if not adorable. The
19 children of Michelle and “Jim Bob” (James
Robert) Duggar are attractive, funny, and opinionated. The cameras of their TLC
reality show, “19 Kids & Counting,” frequently turn to 9 year old Jackson
and 8 year old Johanna, who offer their wisdom on everything from which of
their older sisters will be the first to marry, to how many “bajillions of
people” came to the family’s book signing in Harrisburg, PA, and whether their
mother will have another baby. Just as
frequently, the episodes feature matriarch Michelle calmly recounting the daily
activities of homeschooling her large family, and patriarch Jim Bob often
chimes in with the challenges of getting everyone to the airport on time to make their trip to New York, or organized for a mission trip to Central America. As a result of their
reality-show fame, the Duggar parents have published two books and regularly
appear on daytime shows such as Good Morning America and the Today Show. Now in
its seventh season on air, 19 Kids and Counting has proven to be one of TLC’s
most popular shows.
Although the extraordinary size of the clan is certainly one key to
the show’s popularity, the producers highlight a second, and arguably more
intriguing aspect of this family, the unusual theology and cultural practices
they embody. In the first season of the show, the family self-described during
the introduction as having “conservative values,” referring to the
fundamentalist Christianity that is a regular feature of each episode. They are
shown praying together, attending church, and visiting Christian conferences. Father Jim Bob makes frequent mention of his
conviction against being in debt for any purchase, and it is a staple of the
show that it is their faith that motivates their commitment to un-restrained
fertility. Mother Michelle is very clear
that she cedes authority in the family to her husband and views herself as
“under his covering.” A popular story
arc followed eldest son Josh through his “courtship,” engagement, and marriage
to Anna, a young woman from a “like-minded family.” Their relationship and
engagement was overseen, and largely arranged, by their fathers. What is remarkable about the popularity of
this show is that this fringe theology is not portrayed, nor largely consumed,
as a spectacle of a repugnant subculture, but as a beloved and embraced family.
How has a religious expression that seemingly runs counter to wider American
views of gender, family, and social mores become a mainstream hit known not as
a domestic train wreck but as a more fecund, real world Waltons? This article argues that despite the countercultural
fundamentalism and conservative gender norms the family embraces, the show
serves, through those who accept and those who critique the family, to
reinforce the hegemonic ideology of liberal autonomy.[1]
Like most reality shows, of course, there are aspects to
the backstory of which most viewers are likely unaware, as well as more
implicit “realities” that are evident, but submerged. In terms of the Duggars’ religious identity, the
show does not provide context to the theology animating the Duggars’
choices. The Duggars follow what is
known as the “Quiverfull movement” or the “new Patriarchy,” (Joyce 2009). The name comes from Psalm 127: 3-5: “Children
are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from him./ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are children born in one’s youth./ Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them” (NIV).
Teaching that unrestrained fertility and male authority within marriage
is a divine mandate, this movement has a number of key spokespeople, including
Mary Pride (The Way Home, 1985), Nancy Campbell (Be Fruitful and
Multiply, 2003) and Rich and Jan Hess (A Quiver Full: Family Planning
and the Lordship of Christ, 1990) and, most influentially for the Duggars,
Bill Gothard.
The family holds to all the practices supported by Gothard’s
theology including refusing to hold debt of any kind, the avoidance of pork,
and “courtship,” a form of quasi-arranged marriage. They embrace Gothard’s fundamentalist
interpretations of scripture including rigid gender roles reflecting post-war
U.S. ideals of the gendered spheres of private/public life, the male
breadwinner and the capable homemaker. Gothard, and the Quiverfull movement
generally, take this gender ideology further by joining these gender ideals
with a prohibition on birth control and radically countercultural views on
marriage and sexuality.
The theological context represented by the Duggars has not escaped
the notice of all observers, of course. Feminists and Christians of other
theological convictions have written to critique the show as reflecting, at
best, a fringe theology, and, at worst, a destructive patriarchy. But unlike
other TLC shows such as “Toddlers and Tiaras” and “Sister Wives” (about a fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon family),
the audience of “19 Kids & Counting” is not encouraged to view the Duggar
family as fundamentally aberrant or, principally, as a foil for the viewing
audience (cf:, Freidus 2012.) The Duggars are portrayed as likable and
relatable to the viewing audience, and to judge by the many positive blog
posts, book signings, and public appearances, it seems to work.
It is this issue of the portrayal of the Duggars, rather than the
details of their theology or religious practice, that forms the core of this
paper. The Quiverfull movement itself has been explored in a number of venues,
sometimes using the Duggars as a prime example of the movement (e.g., Harrison
& Rowley 2011; see also Joyce 2009).
Given the rigid and hierarchical gender roles at the heart of this
movement, most of the published, academic research has been critical, examining
how particular biblical passages or theological traditions have been woven
together to produce a contemporary patriarchy accepted by thousands of families
throughout the world (e.g., Nadar & Potgeiter 2010). The purpose in this
article is to explore how the hermeneutics of representation employed by “19
Kids and Counting” has reinforced the hegemonic ideology of liberal autonomy in
public life. Specifically, the
representation of the Duggars and, by extension, the Quiverfull movement,
employs a neoliberal language of freedom and individuality to frame their
theological positions as compatible with the wider viewing public. Presented
through the language of choice and freedom, the Duggars’ potentially repellant
views become, paradoxically, the embodiment of the free liberal democratic
ideal. Those viewers who resist the depiction of the family as laudable or even
likable first and foremost challenge the show’s assertion that every member of
the family is practicing a freely chosen, morally autonomous life, as opposed
to suggesting that such views should be suppressed or resisted by society. In
this way, “19 Kids and Counting,” and its attendant debates, reinforces the
secular public square in which any religion, no matter how illiberal, must
conform to the ideals of freedom in a neoliberal public.
The first part of this paper introduces “the Duggars” as a
television family. Taken solely from
their representation in the show, this is not an exploration of the Duggars’
family life and theology as practiced day to day, but as it is self-consciously
presented by particular members of the family and mediated through the
representational work of the producers. The next section explores this
representation of the Duggars’ religious identity in the context of the
Quiverfull movement, particularly the
Quiverfull movement as expressed in the writings and teaching of Bill Gothard.
Although the Duggars likely draw their theology from sources in addition to
Gothard, their books and personal testimony are for sale at the website of the
Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP), the ministry of Gothard, and the
convictions they do express on the show map entirely onto the teachings of the
IBLP. Finally, through the portrayal of
the Duggars on the show, and the framing of their beliefs and practices, the
program appeals to a liberal discourse of choice and market freedom, revealing
the kind of postsecular discourse (Habermas 2006, Calhoun 2011) in which
religion in the public sphere adopts the privatized and liberal framework
defining the public square, covering over the hierarchies embraced by those
within the religion. Gender and power
ideologies at the heart of this theology, and central to the lived religion of
the Duggar family, are sublimated to this overarching language of liberalism,
allowing the non-fundamentalist viewer to relate to and even embrace the
Duggars. Translating their lives into this accepted public ideology of liberal
freedom, the family and producers not only make this religious fundamentalism
acceptable, the Duggars can be framed as a kind of American ideal of family and
faith.
The
Daily Lives of the Duggars.
The show is largely promoted as the quotidian realities of a big
family. The titles of Michelle’s blog entries hosted on the TLC website are
mostly general parenting advice such as, “Guiding Your Teen to Adulthood” and
“Making Memories at Thanksgiving” (TLC 2013).
Michelle often comments on the authenticity of the program, commenting
either on camera or in voice over, saying something along the lines of, “People
say how much they love the show, but I tell them, it’s not a show; this is our
life.” Yet in spite of such
claims of unmediated access, and the foregrounding of everyday life in
promotional materials, there is no question that the episodes themselves filter
and construct a view of the family in which the audience is routinely exposed
to the hyper-conservative religious ideology of the family. In pop-up bubbles and voice-overs (and, as
seen below, occasionally through entire episodes), the viewer is reminded of
such things as “Each Duggar girl is assigned a younger child to care for,” or
“We believe it’s important for young ladies to keep their hearts pure.” As the
episodes condense days or weeks of the family’s life into a one-hour episode,
complete with individual family commentary, the constructed nature of the
representation of the Duggar family and their conservative religious identity
becomes obvious. In order to position
this as part of the liberal public, the construction serves to place their
religious ideology as solely a reflection of individual agency and choice.
Most episodes follow a narrative formula such as “Duggars Take a
Dip” (2010). The episode tracks several mini-narratives, along with vignettes
of family life. This episode opens with
Michelle in the nursery, caring for Josie, their youngest, prematurely-born
daughter. The camera approaches from behind with a view of Michelle leaning
into Josie’s crib, and a wall plaque in the foreground that reads, “As for God,
His way is Perfect.” After briefly explaining Michelle’s need for convalescence
and Josie’s developmental stage (she is being weaned off supplemental oxygen),
the focus moves to an account of Jim Bob taking the children to swim at a
friend’s pool. Over a montage of the coordination necessary to get eighteen
kids out the door, the viewer gets a very common kind of voice-over from
12-year-old Jason: “Since we have so many kids, it takes us a long time to get
ready!”
When they arrive at the pool, we meet Theresa, one of the
“like-minded” people with whom the Duggars regularly associate. The pool is owned by Theresa’s mother- and
father-in-law who line the Duggar kids up on the edge of the pool to provide a
swimming lesson. The boys are wearing
short-sleeved wet suits, and the girls are wearing wet-suits, leggings, skirts,
and t-shirts. After the lesson, a montage of swimming is accompanied by
talking-head interviews and voice-overs of Jason, Jessa and Michelle talking
about the swimwear. Jason begins:
Jason: We wear diving suits and the girls wear…wholesome wear.[2]
Michelle: The goal really is to just keep our focus on our
countenance. And to not be drawing attention to places that our eyes don’t need
to be going.
Jessa: In our family our parents have always taught us that it’s
important to be modest, so we’ve chosen to wear modest swimwear. And our modest
swimsuits are comfortable.
Michelle: It doesn’t really make any difference to them, and they
want to be covered. So it makes it really easy for them to really enjoy
swimming.
Heather, the teen daughter of Theresa, is shown throwing Josiah
around in the pool. Heather is also
wearing a t-shirt over her swimming suit (or wholesome wear.) Josiah says, “Heather Fedosky is very much
like her mom. Very funny. She dunked me quite a few times.” “Because,” Joy Anna breaks in, “you were
being a rotten boy.” With a wry smile
and an elbow to the ribs, we are again brought back to the happy relationships
of the family, the smooth inter-gender banter, and a sense that everyone is
living the life they chose.
The swimming theme takes up roughly the first third of the
episode. The next third follows
newly-licensed daughter Jinger taking younger brother Jeremiah to buy a chess
set for his birthday, followed by scenes of Jeremiah beating his siblings in
multiple games, along with a few other everyday activities, including several
of the middle boys cooking a brunch, and one of the older girls, Jill, cooking
with the youngest children. The final vignette is devoted to Michelle’s trip to
speak at a nearby church seminar on motherhood. Michelle has taken her five
oldest daughters (who Jim Bob calls “her credentials”). At one point during the final segment,
Michelle gives a voiceover saying, “I want them to be a part of any ladies
meeting, because I feel like they can learn what it means to be a godly woman.”
The episode ends with a brief montage of the girls posing for pictures with
other teen girls from the conference, and groups of women hugging Michelle,
while Michelle’s voice over concludes, “I think Moms are open to help from
other moms. I figure if they’re there, they’re open to be encouraged.”
The focus on gendered practices appears in numerous episodes,
highlighting the unconventional practices and beliefs of the family, but
framing them as personal choices without judgment on those who choose
otherwise. Although these choices are often explained through a gender
essentialism, suggesting the transcendent morality of gender roles, the focus
always comes back to the freedom of each person to make such decisions for him
or herself.
In the episode “Duggars on Fire,” one of the narratives of the
episode is following two of the older teen girls, Jana and Jessa, through their
process of putting together a dress-uniform for their roles as volunteer members
of the local fire department’s EMT team. The dark-blue suit, for men and women,
normally consists of a jacket and slacks. However, as a pop-up bubble informs
the viewers, “None of the older Duggar girls have ever worn pants.”
Josh’s wife Anna provides much of the commentary in the episode as
she ends up doing much of the work to convert a pair of dress slacks into a
skirt. At one point, while the shot
moves between images of the Duggar girls shopping and Anna and Josh being
interviewed in their living room, Anna comments on the conviction of the Duggar
family to wear skirts:
I think the main reason Joshua’s sisters don’t wear pants is just to be feminine and to look like
a lady. [At this point a shot of the clerk is interposed as she is saying:
“These are unisex; they’re men’s and women’s pants, so…”] I don’t sense a
judgmental spirit from them. If someone
wears pants, it’s obviously each person’s decision and it’s…I mean, it’s not a
really big issue but just for them….
Obviously they would wear the fire suits. You can’t walk into a fire in
a skirt. If someone wears pants it’s obviously…
Anna
hesitates at this point and Josh interjects:
I think and in business too and even in the fire department you
know it’s important for them to keep it just that to where…Their focus is on
doing what they’re there for, and nothing else. And when you start, and you’re
talking about different things like that, you know you’re drawing interest,
especially when it’s a bunch of guys.
Anna: It’s really a way to show they’re different to…men.
In this
exchange, like the earlier apologetic for their use of “wholesome wear,” there
is a clear reference to the gender essentialism supporting their views, but it
is predominantly framed in terms of personal choice and the individual freedom
of self-expression and marketplace liberalism. The astute viewer can detect
subtle Christian theological language in their account (“a judgmental spirit”), but they do not appeal to theological categories
explicitly, quoting scripture or theological teaching, either regarding the
wearing of pants or in the affirmation of “wholesome wear.” In this way, the
viewer can readily accept the Duggars’ ideology as mere preference rather than
moral stricture. As a preference, though
perhaps a bit odd, it is harmonious with so-called U.S. middle-class
culture. Even when the parents are
discussing the behaviors of the children it is often framed as the free choice
of the children themselves (“…it doesn’t make any
difference to them, and they want to be covered…”) that leads them to accept
the convictions of their parents.
Occasionally, the program highlights
criticism of the Duggars’ lives by providing an opportunity for the Duggars to
address viewers’ questions. Several of these “Ask the Duggars” episodes have
aired over the past seasons, with questions ranging from the innocuous (“How
much cereal does your family eat every week?”) to the politically challenging
(“How can you justify having so many children in a world so overpopulated?”) Through the same combination of voice over,
montage, and talking-head interviews, the family accepts these questions good
naturedly and directly. In response to the question about overpopulation, for
example, Jim Bob responds that overpopulation is “one of the greatest myths” in
the contemporary world, noting that the whole population of the world could
“fit inside the city limits of Jacksonville.” Yet the real critique of the
Duggars continues to come back to the question of freedom and individuality. In
their own defense and in the public criticism, the questions from critical
viewers return to the notion that the children are not free to make independent
decisions as free, autonomous moral agents, as demanded by liberal virtue in
the public sphere. For example, one of
the viewers posed the question: “Why is it a family rule not to dance?” The first response comes from older daughter
Jill, who says, “I don’t think it’s necessarily a
rule.” The answer then cuts together statements from Michelle and Jim Bob
before returning to Jill.
Michelle: It’s a personal conviction that I have, and I know Jim
Bob also has that.
Jim Bob: We try not to shake body parts around to draw attention to
our bodies.
Jill: We don’t want to stir up desires different things that
cannot be righteously fulfilled, that cannot be…I don’t know, our family has chosen not to dance.
Through
the progression from Jill, to Michelle, Jim Bob and back to Jill, the montage
suggests that this is a family decision, personal to each member of the
family. Of course, the reflective viewer
will understand that, like most families, children do not come to “decisions”
about their own convictions in the same way their parents do (or did). This is true of families generally, of
course. Parents and other adults always take an active role in socialization
that strongly shape, if not determine, children’s preferences. In a family such
as the Duggars who are all home-schooled by their mother and older siblings,
who socialize only with “like minded” friends, and who do not have internet or
television in the home, it is easy for some viewers to imagine that the
children are not quite so free as the narratives seem to suggest.
“Free
Jinger” : The Liberal Critique
One of the more aggressive anti-Duggar voices comes
through a discussion forum (and associated Facebook page) called
FreeJinger.org. Jinger, now 18, has long
been a fan favorite for her slightly edgy look (she frequently wears black
chokers and heavy eye liner) and mildly sarcastic manner (she has been “caught”
giving eye rolls during some of her siblings’ on-camera interviews). For the
Free Jinger activists, the question around all the children, but particularly
Jinger, is the extent to which they are going to “break away” from their
parents’ theology, or the degree to which they are suppressing true desires
under the guise of conformity to the family’s headship theology, gender roles,
and religiously defined standards. In the words of some of these anti-Duggar
voices, Jinger represents the “best hope” for one of the Duggar kids to “break
away” from the family.
The primary forum for these critics are internet
discussion pages, blogs dedicated to critiquing fundamentalist Christianity
generally, and snarky entertainment sites featuring contributors who monitor
celebrity life. Here, the Free Jinger
participants have made Jinger Duggar a metonym for a phantasmagoria of all
their frustrations with conservative religion.
That Jinger is imagined to be “enslaved” supports a vision of human
freedom rooted in liberal views of civil rights and autonomy. On the celebrity gossip blog “Crushable,” one commentator gushed about Jinger’s declaration
that one day she’d like to live in a city as a sign that Jinger was ready to
become “a free individual.” The commentator asserts, “But for a second we saw
her breaking out of that mode and expressing her desire to be a free
individual. It was like watching the classic ‘give us free’ scene from Amistad.
But with a girl in an oppressive jean skirt, rather than shackles.” (Maier
2012) An article referencing the same
“19 and Counting” episode appeared on another media-watch blog,
“RadarOnline.com,” eliciting from one enthusiastic Free Jinger supporter: “I hope she does get away. It is very creepy that all
the girls dress alike and wear their hair alike. Girls like individuality. The
Duggar girls seem to have none. And mom and dad saying they can't kiss until
they marry? How will that happen if they can't date? Find a nice town somewhere
Jinger and be careful, be safe but make a life for yourself.” (Tereszcuk 2012)
On the Free Jinger site itself, in the largest discussion forum called “Quiver
Full of Snark,” (343,000+ posts), threads only occasionally address the Duggar
family themselves, and are more likely to be diatribes against conservative/fundamentalist
religion generally (including Islam), anti-abortion politics, and the
opposition of gay rights. Commensurate
with a political rhetoric that associates liberal social politics with
self-determination, freedom of personal expression, and libertarian sexual
ethics, Jinger’s “bondage” to her parent’s authority
symbolizes the oppression of religious hierarchy and traditionalist kinship
arrangements generally.
The
producers themselves do, occasionally, raise the question of individual
autonomy, though it typically does so in order to give the Duggars the
opportunity to confirm the independent conscience and full information afforded
the children, even if their “choices” and beliefs are outside the
mainstream. One of these unusual
episodes followed the Duggar family to the Creation Museum near Louisville,
KY. After chronicling the mundane
aspects of traveling together in their coach bus (outfitted with sleeping berths, a bathroom, and small kitchenette), the
family arrived at the museum to be met by Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in
Genesis, a conservative Christian organization promoting literal six-day, young
earth creationism (cf:, Numbers 2006). After showing the family touring the
museum featuring dioramas of dinosaurs and humans inhabiting the pre-flood
Garden of Eden together, the producers interview several of the children about
their experience. Josiah, then age 13, is asked by the producers, “Do you ever
wonder if your parents are censoring...? Do you know what ‘censoring’ means?
[“like taking out?”] Yeah, do you ever
wonder if your parents are trying to not let you see the other side of
things?” He begins to answer: “I don’t think our parents are trying to not let us see the
rest of, you know, the world…” His
response is cut off as the producers switch to short interview segments from
older siblings John David, Jill, Jessa and Jana giving their conviction that
the creation museum’s portrayal of so-called creation science is superior to
evolutionary explanations.
Jill: I think the world, definitely, is as the Bible
says, 6,000 years old…
John David: It’s pretty
obvious once you start looking into it what really would be, you know, more
factual.
Jessa: It’s actually, you
know, more scientifically proven than billions of years old. God had everything
planned whenever he created the world in six days. The Bible clearly displays
all that.
Jana: Some things that they
say in evolution make sense, but then if you read in the Bible you can…it lines
up to where its not, you know, its not correct; it’s totally different.
The camera then turns on new voices in a “man on the
street”-style video in which four people (three men and one woman) who are not
part of the show’s cast respond to questions such as “Do you believe the earth
is only 6,000 years old?” and “Did dinosaurs and humans live together?” There
are no context clues to place these individuals in relation to the Creation
Museum or the Duggar family, but their answers are juxtaposed with images of
the family touring the museum. All four of these random interview subjects
reject the young age of the earth, and three of the four correctly give the
answer that dinosaurs and humans were not contemporaries. The final interview
clip suggests that the man is not quite sure if dinosaurs and humans
co-existed, but he has his doubts (perhaps stoked by the nature of the
interview and questions.) His answer,
which the producers select as the final word left with the viewer, returns to a
theme of liberal tolerance if not freedom. “I don’t know if dinosaurs and humans were kickin’ it back
then,” the 30-something man responds.
“How about to each his own?”
The segment is admittedly ambiguous,
as the montage of the family in the museum accompanied by the anti-creationist
views of the non-Duggars could be read as an ironic indictment of Josiah’s
conviction that his parents are not, in fact, concealing the world from the
kids. What is not ambiguous is the revelation by the producers that they’re not
against highlighting the conflicts between the unusual beliefs of the Duggar
family and the wider society, but with the final statement – “To each his own”
- they lead the viewer to accept the notion that the children’s views are
gained in essentially the same way as their parents (rather than primarily from
their parents), along with suggesting that these differences should be simply
tolerated as quirky views. The central problematic, for the critics and the
producers, is not the religiously based hierarchies or kinship structures
themsevles, but the question of how “free” the members of the family (i.e., the
children) really are.
The
Duggars and Quiverfull Theology
The theological support for their lives comes from a general
movement known as the “Quiverfull movement.”
The Duggars follow the teachings of a particular member of this movement,
Bill Gothard. Gothard, a controversial
figure in the Christian world, is known for his conservative views on gender,
marriage, and popular culture. He has
drawn sharp criticism from inside and outside Christian circles over his
un-conventional interpretation of scripture, secrecy, and sex, even while
building a multimillion-dollar publishing empire and massive following (cf:,
Veinot 2003, also Joyce 2009). Emphasizing a patriarchal family structure as
the “biblical family,” Gothard preaches the importance of dating and marriage
as approved and overseen by fathers, the importance of living a completely
debt-free life (including mortgage or student debt), the centrality of
childbirth for a woman’s life (obviating the use of birth control in any way),
the avoidance of pork, and strict gender roles in dress, behavior and family
life.
From his official web site, Gothard’s theology is described as
being rooted in the Bible and his ministry experience
After 15 years of working with inner-city gangs,
church youth groups, high school clubs, youth camps, and families in crisis,
Bill wrote his master’s thesis on a youth program that eventually led to seven
Biblical, non-optional principles of life which, when followed, will result in
harmonious relationships in all areas of life.[3]
The seven
“Biblical (sic), non-optional principles” are described under the headings of
Design, Authority, Responsibility, Suffering, Ownership, Freedom, and
Success. These are each developed
according to verses and theological statements drawn from the Bible. While several of these might seem to fit a “civil religion” model of Christianity (e.g., Bellah et al, 1985),
the teachings of Gothard all run contrary to liberal notions of negative
freedom typical of U.S. political philosophy.[4] For example,
the principle of “freedom” is explained in the following paragraph:
A young person who loses his or her virtue is robbed of a power
that God uses to produce spiritual initiative, creativity, wisdom, and
understanding. For this reason, there are warnings throughout Scripture for
young people to flee youthful lusts and to keep themselves pure for the Lord
and for the one they marry. No principle could be needed more urgently in our
day, when lust and perversion are taking multitudes of young people captive in
sexual addictions that destroy the very foundations of life, health, riches,
and happiness. Moral freedom is not the right to do what we want, but the
power to do what we ought, and that is the goal and message of this
principle (emphasis added.)
While
this runs counter to the prevailing negative freedom of U.S. life and thought,
it is not outside the liberal view of the autonomous moral agent. It is this
positive freedom, some could argue, that compels the Duggar family to wear
“wholesome wear” in order that their eyes would not go where “eyes don’t need to be going.”
But Gothard’s theology is not simply
built on the freedom to choose moral rightness for independent moral agents.
Gothard began his international ministry through the Institute in Basic Youth
Conflicts. With little more than a
collection of simple sketches and a fairly dry outline of advice, Gothard built
a speaking juggernaut that was filling 10,000 person arenas in the 1970s and
1980s (Veinot et al, 2002). In
particular, he focused on the importance of a “dating” life organized around
the principle of male authority, particularly the authority of fathers, and the
centrality of marriage as the context or goal of all romantic relationships.
Although he does not explicitly call for arranged marriages (he allows for the
possibility of young people being the initiators of a relationship), the
practice of initiating a marriage is built on the wisdom and authority of
fathers to approve a relationship very early in the dating (or “courtship”)
process (Gothard 1981).
This submission to hierarchy goes
beyond a positive understanding of freedom to establish a hierarchy of value,
in which fathers, and to a lesser extent mothers, have a divine right and duty
to control the choices of children.
These hierarchies of value directly contradict liberal notions of
freedom. An inability to reconcile
accounts of freedom, which necessitate the defense of a public square free of
interference on individual conscience, and universal commitments to morally
transcendent hierarchies, creates crisis in the public square, often leading to
the exclusion or persecution of religion.
Keep in mind, hierarchical authority
is the normal state of affairs in most families, at least up to a point. Most
TLC viewers would likely be comfortable with any family having parental control
of matters relating to young children, issues of education, value formation,
and the like. On the other hand, choices
about marriage/sexual partners, clothing, music, and use of leisure time are
generally thought to be areas of personal (i.e., negative) freedom beyond
authority. In the now-classic
sociological study Habit of the Heart, Robert Bellah and his co-authors
(1985) quoted a Gallup poll that 80 percent of U.S. Americans agreed with the
statement that "an individual should arrive at his or her own religious
beliefs independent of any churches or synagogues." In the political sphere, as well, the role of
religious language and values are frequently characterized as illegitimate bases
on which to build political opinion, social policy, or public discourse.
While the Duggars are not advancing
a political agenda per se, their presence in a
public setting sets up a potential conflict between the vision of a social
ethic enforced by authority as seen in the theology of Bill Gothard, and the
liberal notions of individual autonomy, in which free moral agents exercise
choice, particularly over the most intimate, embodied aspects of life, such as
sexual morality, family planning, and gender identity. As Charles Hirschkind has argued, “As for
religion, to the extent that [religious] institutions enabling the cultivation
of religious virtue have become subsumed within (and transformed by) the legal
and administrative structures linked to the state, then the (traditional)
project of preserving those virtues will necessarily be political if it is to
succeed” (Hirschkind 1997 as quoted in Mahmood 2005: 193). For the producers of
TLC, and even for the Duggar family themselves, they have chosen to engage the
political through the language of individual freedom and moral, autonomous
choice; what makes their admittedly odd, even potentially offensive, theology
acceptable in the public sphere is the suggestion that each family member,
including the youngest children, are presented as making a free moral choice in
response to personal will and desire, rather than external authority. While some clearly doubt the legitimacy of
that claim, it is on this ground that the acceptance or rejection of the Duggars
seems to turn, and the key discursive strategy of the producers in making the
Duggars a sympathetic, perhaps even enviable, family.
Freedom
and Agency in Submission
What
emerge from this tension – are the Duggar children freely choosing their lives,
or are they imprisoned in a system imposed by tyrannical parents? – are
questions about the relevance or legitimacy of the cultural framing imposed by
TLC. In a number of innovative studies of contemporary religious movements
emphasizing gendered hierarchies, women’s submission and rigid gender roles are
being re-theorized away from a liberal-illiberal dichotomy, suggesting that the
women embracing these systems are generating “a variety of substantial yet
flexible meanings through which they experience some degree of control, however
limited it may often appear” (Griffith 1997: 183). In other words, for women in the Quiverfull
movement, including the Duggars, there may be a different matrix of choice that
is not best understood in terms of liberal dichotomies of oppression and
resistance.
In her examination of a
fundamentalist Islamic women’s movement in Egypt, Saba Mahmood (2005) also
makes this argument. She suggests that
feminist analysis rooted in liberal notions of freedom cannot make sense of the
agency involved in forming these Islamic subjects.
How do we conceive of individual freedom in a context where the
distinction between the subject’s own desires and socially prescribed
performances cannot be easily presumed, and where submission to certain forms
of (external) authority is a condition for achieving the subject’s
potentiality? In other words, how does one make the question of politics
integral to the analysis of the architecture of the self? (2005: 31)
Mahmood’s
answer to these questions is a subtle ethnographic exploration of religious
debates, embodied gender practices, and kinship within these Muslim families by
which Muslim women learn a habitus in which the self is formed in relationship
with others, to authority and hierarchy, and as a political action outside
liberalism.
In her analysis of the North
American female submission movement “Women Aglow,” R. Marie Griffith (1997)
works more comfortably within a liberal framework of choice and freedom, yet
also comes to a position complicating categories of oppression or resistance.
Throughout her two years of intense fieldwork, she uncovered a complex and
nuanced range of meanings the women constructed from and within this seemingly
sexist movement. In the end she remains unconvinced that by embracing “God’s design” in marriage, the women of the Aglow movement are not
likely losing more than they gain, yet she also recognizes that “the hope
created within that context may well have greater significance than any
outsider can fathom; so the women themselves have told me, again and again”
(1997: 213). It may be that this greater significance can only be understood,
not simply from the inside, but from a vantage that does not start with a
liberal subject as the only unit of agency and analysis.
TLC provides no such space for questioning the appropriateness of
individual freedom as the metric by which the Duggars are to be judged. Mahmood notes that her study explicitly does
not explore the hermeneutics of agency (2005:122). As a product of reality television, the
reality-show version of the Duggars are only subject to the hermeneutics
of agency, in this case drawn exclusively from a liberal frame. That is, while TLC, the Duggars’ fans, the
Duggars’ detractors, and even the Duggars themselves, wrestle over the degree
to which their views can be framed within liberal notions of positive or
negative freedom for the acting subject, the possibility of religious agency
outside the categories of liberal freedom remains unspoken and unexamined. “19 and Counting,” like the fundamentalist
Baptists of Susan Harding’s (1991, 2001) work in the 1990s, becomes a prism
through which various interested parties imagine and project their own
understandings of the liberal ideal and public religion.
Conclusion:
Religion in Liberal America
In his argument for the
“postsecular” conception of the contemporary public sphere, Jurgan Habermas
(2006) suggests that the religious person is now required to consider his or
her own faith reflexively, translating it from a sectarian discourse into the
language of a secular public (cf. Calhoun 2011). TLC accomplished this postsecular turn
through its presentation of the Duggars as 19 independent moral agents
voluntarily embracing the American virtues of freedom of conscience. The
difficulty (if not impossibility) of imagining the children in terms of moral
agency leads critics to suspect the testimony of the older Duggers as coerced,
insincere, or as a form of oppression on the part of the parents. (The Free
Jinger sites are replete with speculation as to which of the children are
really “drinking the Kool-Aid.”) But as
the family itself is placed in the position of advocating for an understanding
of their lives as the collection of freely chosen preferences, made in the
presence of the wider world of choices, they complete the circle in which
everyone exists only within the arena of the modern liberal subject.
On the official TLC Facebook page
for 19 Kids & Counting (760,000+ “likes”), the page is loaded with comments
expressing how “inspired” and “moved” viewers are by the morals and family
bonds of the Duggars. The occasional
snarky or critical piece there mostly reflects the idea that the children are being
“exploited” or “used” against their will. But even as the debate goes on, it is
clear that the terms of the debate are settled. In the U.S. public media, and
its attendant political sphere, media producers such as TLC and the viewing
public collude to put forward the position that the theology and public
religion of the Duggars, or anyone, should only be acceptable as the free
choice of a liberal agent. Debating the rightness or wrongness of any
theological position becomes secondary, if not off-limits, while the real
question concerns the degree to which those practicing the faith chose to do so
and are free to leave. Oppression is only and ever defined as coercion. Anything else would be, almost literally,
unthinkable.
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[1]
Research on U.S. American attitudes towards gender roles and marriage
(consistent themes of the show), reveal Americans’ divergence from the
practices and beliefs of the Duggar family (see Medora et al., 2002;
[2]
The term “wholesome wear” is not their own, but is the trade name of the
company producing the swimwear. See www.wholesomewear.com
[3]
http://billgothard.com/about/bio/
[4]
There is a great deal of literature about the nature of freedom/liberty in U.S.
political thought and life.
A good
introduction to this discussion can be found in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (2012). Carter, Ian, "Positive and Negative Liberty",
The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), URL =
