A Duggar Finally Spoke out Against Their Controversial Church…

Well this is something we never saw coming. A Duggar has spoken out against Bill Gothard, the leader of the Institute in Basic Life Principles — the church which the famous family follows — on social media. Sure, it was their cousin Amy Duggar — who has always been significantly more liberal than her famous family — but hey… It’s a start!

“I have to be honest, and true to myself by tweeting this. I do not support Bill Gothard and the Institute of Biblical [sic] Life Principles in any way, shape, or form. I find his ‘teachings’ extremely questionable,” she tweeted. “I am a Christian. I believe in God’s good Grace and freedom to be ourselves! God gave us emotions, personalities, and He wants us to live our best life. Legalism is the opposite of what my Bible teaches.”

She clarified in an additional tweet that she gets many private messages asking her about her views on the church, so she felt the need to “clear the air.” The Duggar’s connection to the controversial leader took center stage in the fallout after Josh Duggar’s molestation scandal, as he went to “counseling” with Gothard.

In an interview with In Touch, a former member of IBLP named Rebecca Ishum opened about life in the “cult.” In his teachings, young people — particularly girls — are indoctrinated to blindly follow Gothard’s ultra-conservative teachings. “I was conditioned to believe anything that anyone in authority told me without question,” Rebecca told us. “Because of that, I internalized all of the teachings and brought them back home with me. So, for example, there are a lot of physical requirements with IBLP. The physical requirements weren’t enforced to that degree at home (I wore shorts as a kid), but by the time I got home from my time in the training center, I was wearing skirts all of the time because I had been told that I was immodest otherwise, and I didn’t want to cause myself to be raped. There is a lot of victim- and women-blaming in that cult.”

In addition to the harrowing teachings of the group, more than 30 people have come forward to accuse Gothard of sexual harassment (which begs the question — why is he of all people qualified to “counsel” someone like Josh Duggar?). We don’t blame Amy for distancing herself from this organization of her family’s.

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