I have never followed the Duggars but when I heard about this book where Jinger Vuolo talks about leaving Bill Gothard’s IBLP (Institute for Basic Life Principles), I was intrigued. I have heard about Gothard’s IBLP, his predatory and probably sexually abusive relationships with the “Gothard Girls”, and I hoped that this book would expose the inner workings of the IBLP.
Well, I didn’t quite get that. I think this is more of a marketing issue because in the first chapter of Becoming Free Indeed, Jinger says that this book is more about her personal theology, and how she arrived at the faith she holds today. In fact, she calls this process “disentangling”, differentiating it from the deconstruction movement going on in the American evangelical church today. As such, anyone looking for a book that spills all the tea about the IBLP or the Duggars will be sorely disappointed – Vuolo spends her time talking about her beliefs and that makes for a completely different sort of book.
The most interesting chapter, from the gossip point of view, is chapter 11, titled “Did the Lifetime Guarantee Work?”. Here, Vuolo discusses the Gothard Girls and her brother’s trial. In both cases, Vuolo shies away from details. However, what looks like tact towards Gothar’s victims comes across as minimising for her brother. Despite her honest look at how her previous beliefs were deeply flawed, Vuolo seems unable to clearly face the fact that her brother is a sexual predator and acknowledges as much. Perhaps this is also due to the fact that Vuolo largely remembers her childhood in positive terms and judges Gothard’s teachings mainly on its effect on herself; to acknowledge that your older brother is a predator disrupts that narrative.
Apart from this, Becoming Free Indeed is an honest look at Vuolo’s own spiritual life. She freely admits the effects of IBLP on her and the spirit of fear that it produced in her. I found those to be the sections where she is introspective and willing to admit where she had gone wrong to be the most impactful ones.
Reading Becoming Free Indeed so soon after reading She Deserves Better and The Great Sex Rescue gave me a lot of fruit for thought. Vuolo has basically lived out what Gregoire, Lindenbach and Sawatsky have been saying in their books: that toxic teaching produces toxic fruit. In fact, while Vuolo portrays this rules-based, toxic teaching as Gothard specific, Gregoire, Lindenbach and Sawatsky’s books show that this type of teaching has been everywhere in the American evangelical Church, which explains the trend of deconstruction that Vuolo mentions but does not explore in depth.
All in all, I think Becoming Free Indeed is a book that will be picked up by a lot of people who are expecting something different. It’s important to remember that this isn’t a tell-all book on either the Duggars or IBLP. It is, however, a hopeful book and might be encouraging for Christians who are interested in Vuolo’s spiritual journey. Additionally, readers who are interested in how the American Church has been changing might be interested in this as an example of a subculture and how one person approaches deconstruction/disentanglement.
P.s. I had the song Who You Say I Am stuck in my mind the whole time I was reading this.
I bought this book to give to a loved one, but I have yet to pre-read it. However, I have listened to a couple of lengthy interviews with Jinger and her husband on podcasts.
It’s not “everywhere” in the American evangelical church, unless you define “evangelical” to exclude Reformed churches. There are large bad patches. IMO this actually comes from a lack of deep theology, specifically a lack of a deep understanding of human sin nature. In one of the podcast interviews she gave, Jinger and her husband mentioned how shockingly widespread very deep and persistent perversions like her brother’s are in the Gothard communities compared to the Reformed community in which her husband grew up. They attribute this — rightly, I think — to a shallow understanding of human depravity, which goes along with the legalistic, external-rules-based lifestyle that Gothard teaches. As Paul says, “Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.” Col. 2:23
In other words, Gothard did not really understand or teach the Gospel, which left people like Jinger’s brother without power to combat their sin.
It’s interesting that Jinger got progressively freed of Gothard’s subChristian theology through being exposed to Reformed teaching through her husband.
I’ve not listened to any of Jinger’s podcast interviews – do you have one you recommend? I will try to fit it in if I have a free audio hour haha.
I agree with you that Gothard had a very shallow understanding of what it means to be a Christian – Jinger’s book showed the contrast between her former and current beliefs beautifully.
I will say though, realising that she went to John MacArthur’s Church, with its somewhat suspicious teachings on abuse, makes me wonder how much “freer” she is. But I think she has definitely made a lot of progress towards understanding of what it means to be saved by faith and not by works.
By the way, when you said “reformed”, do you refer also to the hyper-calvinistic Churches (which is probably what I had in mind)? From what I understand, a lot of evangelical Churches that embrace a very strict form of hierachy (which tend to be the Calvinists for some reason) tend to have more cases of Church abuse (via Church discipline/legal covenants) and more legalistic teaching, especially in areas like purity, relationships between members of the opposite sex, etc.