Over the course of 10 seasons and seven years, the world watched the Duggar children grow up on 19 Kids and Counting.The popular reality show followed parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar andas the name suggeststheir 19 kids, who were raised under the teachings of Christian evangelist Bill Gothard, founder of the Institute of Basic Life Principles (IBLP). Gothard founds the Advanced Training Institute, a homeschooling program with a curriculum based on the Sermon on the Mount. Paige Patterson, long lauded for saving Christianity from the clutches of liberalism (and who once wrote positively on Gothards doctrine of authority), was fired this past May as president of the influential Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for a series of misogynistic comments and his dismissive, allegedly abusive handling of sexual assault claims. Illustration by Kiersten Essenpreis. Ive learned that God is a restorer of dreams. He just came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and gave me a once-over, Frost recalls. It broke me. He was "highly impressed with me" and praised my character. It is loving others because I understand His love for me that has healed my heart, and I can love from a healed heart. Its most recent tax filing shows that the once-flush group spent nearly $5 million more than it took in during 2014. The people who attended those conferences were better than me. When I told that story to my therapist, she looked at me and she said, Elizabeth, not only is that child abuse, but your parents are a part of a cult. And it just dawned on me, and I was like, Oh, yeah, youre right. The IBLP website celebrates Gothards seismic influence on the organization specifically and the fundamentalist movement in America more broadly, going back decades to when he packed arenas with thousands of Christian conservatives eager to hear how his seven basic principles could shield their families from the cultural upheaval of the late 1960s and early 70s. I just got thru watching a few episodes of The Tudors .. a no holds barred retelling of the lives of !ing Henry the VIII of England in the 1530s to 1557 when Henry died. I too, experienced the dense fog of gothardism as a significant part of my upbringing (five week-long Basic institute seminars, every year of my teens). Ive got to keep my legs back, because maybe I am sending him signals, you know?, Another young staffer, Charis Barker, who worked in Hinsdale from 1999 to 2000, recalls uneasy encounters with Gothard. Jinger's account is a devastating expos of Gothard's work. Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), which he founded, are well known in conservative Christian circles.
