When Control Turns Into Oppression

...And Then What?

[Note to subscribers: I’m giving up on the “what’s coming this week” predictions. The ideas that provoked me in the middle of one week seem not worth exploring once we get to the point of writing. When other things crowd into my writing schedule, not only do I not feel as perturbed by whatever I read last week, but now I feel guilty for not writing what I said I was going to. So my solution is to rely on either the immediate provocation or an idea that’s been bouncing around in my head for a long time. I guess you’ll need to be surprised.]

I’m only one episode into “Shiny Happy People”, the Amazon documentary series about the Duggar family and the role that Bill Gothard’s Institute for Basic Life Principles played in their story. I’m not sure how I avoided IBLP in all my studies of evangelicalism — probably incorrectly saw it as fringe. I was aware of the accusations against Gothard that emerged in the last couple of years, but it wasn’t until complementarians began sharing the umbrella metaphors that I really connected.

I knew who the Duggars were (you couldn’t go through the grocery line without knowing about them!). I don’t watch reality television and its sanitized semi-scripted structure.¹

As evidenced by the Duggars, the IBLP structures worked well for home-schooled families, providing them with clear rules and boundaries when they perceive the outside world as hostile at worst and a hotbed of temptation at best. Gender roles were concisely defined and enforced, parental authority was absolute, and following the system was paramount. David French described the approach as a combination of “authority and superstition.”

The beating heart of Gothardism was a combination of authority and superstition. One of Gothard’s keys to Christian life was something called the “umbrella of protection.” So long as the wife placed herself under the husband’s authority and the husband placed himself under Christ’s authority, then the family would flourish. Defying Gothard’s teachings, by contrast, placed you outside of this zone of God’s protection and rendered you (and your family) vulnerable to disaster, destruction and even death.

I’ve tried to read stories of those who came out of this environment. Two that stood out to me recently come from NPR’s Sarah McCammon and Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson. Both look back on their time under IBLP with significant distance. They seem to understand what they were immeshed in and what was required for moving beyond it.

Sarah, who has a book coming out on Exvangelicals, argues that Dobson’s Focus on the Family had a parallel track to IBLP (but without the necessity of the QuiverFull movement). Alissa explains the role that these groups played against even contemporary Christian culture:

Fundamentalists tend to cut “the world” a wider berth and create elaborate lifestyle rules to keep themselves separate, which is part of what made the Duggars’ appearance on a TLC reality show so unusual. To us, though, this boundary was vibrantly alive. Not only was most secular culture off-limits, but most Christian culture was, too.

So what happens after the system no longer works for someone, as happened to Jinger Duggar Vuolo? Where does one go after The System proves insufficient, either due to its extremism or engagement with the broader world or the moral lapses of its leaders/exemplars?

For many, the whole idea of faith in tied up in The System. When it fails, so does the structure of belief. For others, they are religiously homeless, trying out new options that allow more personal freedom of choice.

At the beginning of this month, Diana Butler Bass² had a provocative thread about exvangelicals considering mainline churches.³ One of those tweets suggested that these churches can’t simply say “welcome, everybody!”

Don't expect this is a trend where folks will knock down your doors. You're going to have to prove yourselves trustworthy, open, loving - and you'll need to overcome years of stereotypes these folks learned in evangelicalism - you'll need to earn their respect.

She observes that we need to think much more about “the multi-generational nature of exvangelicalism”. I’ve been pondering this ever since I first read it. As I’ve written before, I’ve had a focus on the early cohort of millennials and why/how their views shifted dramatically.⁴ Clearly, the factors influencing younger millennials and the GenZ population may be considerably different.

My own argument is that technology destroyed the boundaries that were so carefully constructed. Social media provided access to like-minded others and allowed one to operate outside the parameters of the gatekeepers. The internet lets one see what the outside world is like and the ways in which it is often at odds with what one was told for years. Add to that the moral failings of leaders and disillusionment is a natural result.

Here’s the end of Diana’s Twitter thread in paragraph form.

And, again, mainline types: Dump the magical thinking. Nobody's going to save your church (or your denomination) unless you put in the hard work of listening, learning, and authentically caring about the lives and hurts and hopes of the people who wend their way to your community. FYI: ex-evangelicals aren't coming to your church because they want it to be like what they left - they might come because they are hoping, with all their hearts, there's a different way of being Christian. One that isn't mean. And that isn't in the news every other week about hypocrisy and scandal. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love the messy, beautiful diversity around you. Love the wounded world. Practice joy and justice. Trust. Tell the stories of faith over and over and over again. Create, imagine, envision. Be your most beautiful, welcoming selves. Don't be fake. If you hang out a rainbow flag or an "Everyone is Welcome" sign, do it for real. Make sure no one who comes feels like a stewardship target. Welcome them as pilgrims - brave people (do you know how much COURAGE it takes to go to church these days?) looking for God, hope, love.

At the end of the week, I’ll be in Colorado Springs, attending the annual assembly of the Mountain Sky Conference. Even as traditional UMC churches move to the new Global Methodist Church, we need to be a place of welcome for those whose System has been harmful. We need to offer Grace and Freedom to those who are trying to find a new and meaningful faith that is not couched in control and fear of the world. That somehow they find a faith that is vibrant and real and meaningful — a faith that allows people to pursue happiness without pretense and performance.

It might not make for good Reality Television but it might just turn out to be actually REAL.

1. It is disturbing that The Learning Channel (which was focused on “weird stories”) became TLC which became Discovery and now owns CNN.

2. Diana and I were part of a grant consultation funded by the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicalism (through the Lilly Foundation) over 30 years ago(!). We spent a few days at an off-season ski resort and got to visit the Ben and Jerry’s plant.

3. Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, United Church of Christ.

4. This is what I call my evangelical millennial memoir project. This was a large part of a chapter in my previous book project. I need to add Sarah McCammon’s book to that analysis.