As an Exvangelical, I had to watch Shiny Happy People. “A limited docuseries exposing the truth beneath the wholesome Americana surface of reality tv’s favorite mega-family, The Duggars, and the radical organization behind them: The Institute in Basic Life Principles.”
I got through part of episode one.
It’s both slow as molasses and maddening to remember and think about. The best parts were the interviews with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne.
The parts about Bill Goddard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles reminded me of how safe and secure it felt to believe I had it all figured out. The church told me how to live, how to dress, how to have sex, whether to marry, how to relate to my husband, and more. It told me my life had a purpose, and that I mattered deeply to the Creator of the universe.
These are extremely pleasant things to believe, especially in contrast to the deeply unsettling and difficult work of finding an ethical framework, purpose in life, and meaning to my existence outside of Evangelicism.
At this point I could not go back. I can’t unknow the way that thinking and behavior ruins lives. And the fact that there’s really no good reason to believe God supports homophobia, misogyny, and sexual shame. And if she does, with all due respect, fuck her.
But I miss it. I miss feeling like I know things. I miss feeling like there’s a purpose to my life that I didn’t have to choose. I deeply understand why people get sucked into this particular brand of bullshit, and all kinds of religious dogma. It’s a deeply comforting lie that ultimately demonstrably makes the world a worse place.
Jesus, I’m fine with. I honestly wish more Evangelicals would take some time to get to know him.
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Cathy, a little off topic, but do you think there's any connection between growing up evangelical and later getting into libertarianism? Many forms of libertarianism also offer the "answer to everything" sort of approach that those craving absolute truth will be drawn to.
For me, absolutely. Ask me about the Non-Aggression Principle 🤣🤣🤣
OMG even as a rad lib I hated that thing so much...
It was a harrowing watch, and I've never been a true believer.
I actually wish it got more into why women in particular stay in the faith. For Gotthards acolytes in particular, there was a lot of violence starting in infancy, but I think it goes further.
They kept showing this nonsense graphic of god having a big umbrella over everyone and then men over women and women over children, which is nonsense if you know even the bare basics about umbrellas! In order for that to make any sense, women would have to have the biggest, catch all umbrella, and I think that deep down, a lot of the women probably know that.
Hahaha great point! I wish I better understood the women thing too. Seems like a much better deal for men.
They definitely have a lot more power and face a lot less violence, but I imagine it has some major downsides. Like, pretending to deserve so much power likely leads to great insecurity, which is why everyone has to pretend they have such big...umbrellas.
I also imagine they end up isolated from real connection to their families, between the constant fear their gonna wanna fuck their daughters (men are disqualified from certain aspects of childcare because of the sexy, sexy babies), the reverance they're supposed to show their wives, or the insane shit they have to do to feed 47 children.
Crazy what people will endure for power.
It’s really only a good deal for men at the top and the military industrial complex. But for women, I think the “a good, Godly man will protect and provide for you” is more appealing than “try to girlboss it out there is the big mean sexualized world.”
Especially when you are kept very naive and married off very young. You have no opportunity to see how the power to protect is the power to control and actually extremely dangerous at worst and with no way to meet your own wants and needs very typically.
Yes, exactly. And especially if this kind of marriage is what's modeled for you. For me, I think the idea of a good, Godly man who will protect and provide for me was appealing because my father very much was and is that. But even for women whose dads are abusive, it's what they see as normal and right and so seek to replicate it.
I'm very lucky in that all three of my parents, my mom, dad, and stepmom, are and always have been feminists, even if they don't self-describe that way. While they support the "complementarian" version of marriage, they also genuinely love women and want the best for them and believe women should be able to support themselves if need be.
Also: https://twitter.com/masonmennenga/status/1671227698088411137?s=46&t=mzC3hPIZqViNIMyjrws4XA
Haha the umbrella made me so mad! How many people were at those conventions, not questioning the umbrella? Even the filmmakers didn't say anything about it!
My dad was a professor and my mom has a PhD but could never get her career of the ground, which exacerbated her already pretty poor mental health, and she became a sahm by default, so the dependency model makes me scream "RUN" from the very depths of my being.
As a former evangelical Christian myself, I found this series hard to watch. Even when you've left you still feel a connection to the faith community in which you were raised and it's hard not to get angry at how debased and corrupt Christianity has become.
I know abuse of women and children is extremely common in patriarchal religions of all kinds -- whether they're Eastern, New Age or Christian. But for us, Christianity (the faith I was raised in) is the overwhelmingly dominate one and the one that's doing the most damage to society and individuals.
For a religion that professes to be so ethically-based, greed and criminality is extremely common within all these sects and the many groups that have spun off from them. Whether it's the Catholic Church or my own Southerner Baptist Convention, they behave more like criminal enterprises than organizations dedicated to serving God..
By making women and children members of a lower inferior class, it encourages the worst, particularly violent traits in men. It's horrible for the abused, but it also harms the men who are indoctrinated into these beliefs. Many of these men can't relate to the women and incapable of relating to any woman who isn't willing to be subservient.
I don't really understand why people get sucked into that brand of bullshit. Hope to read more about that sometime!