Shiny Happy Catholics

A few thoughts on the Duggars documentary

When I was 20, I briefly interned at a charity which compiled data about “new religious movements” (NRMs) - aka cults, but this word was avoided because of the loaded connotations - in order to provide support and resources to people who had been involved with NRMs and their loved ones. We had literally thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of NRMs in our database, ranging from tiny groups of just 2 or 3 people, up to huge international organisations with slick apparatus used to attract and retain new members. Most of the groups were offshoots of existing, historical religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on) but there were also completely new creations.

At that time, I was very much interested in NRMs/cults, and the perspective of the organisation I interned for helped me to see that not all such groups are akin to the ones you see in sensationalist documentaries. Many of them were pretty benign. However, the bigger the structure, the more likely it was that abuse could (and would) thrive. It’s also worth noting that abuse was not particular to certain “origin” religions, e.g. Christianity or Islam. Wherever a movement sprung up with rigid ideals and idolisation/deification of mortal men, abuse of some kind(s) found fertile ground.

So this was my vantage point when I watched Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets on Prime. I have never seen an episode of the Duggars in my life, and I think I only became aware of them when the oldest Duggar child, Josh, was found guilty of possession of child pornography in 2021. I had some vague awareness that the Duggars were a huge family (19 kids) that had a TV series, but I didn’t know anything about their beliefs or ideology.

Since having kids, I’ve largely steered clear of documentaries about cults as I just find the inevitable descriptions of abuse and trauma too heavy. However, I listen to DL and Krispin Mayfield’s podcast, The Prophetic Imagination Station, and I found their recap of episode 1 of Shiny Happy People to be intriguing, so I decided to watch the series. There are billions of things I could say about it, but there are plenty of people who have far more interesting and insightful things to say - people who were members of, or adjacent to, the brand of evangelicalism that the Duggars were/are part of, for starters. What really struck me, though, and what I wanted to note here, were some parallels I noticed with certain aspects of Catholicism.

• Big family = holy family - the Duggars state that they initially used artificial birth control but after experiencing a miscarriage whilst using it (which they claim was caused by birth control), they decided for forego it and “hand this part of their lives over to God”. *Catholics everywhere clap in approval.* The IBLP, (Institute of Basic Life Principles) with which they are heavily involved, explicitly encourages members to have as many kids as possible, with the stated goal of raising up Christians to challenge “the culture”. As far as I know, actual Catholic doctrine does not suggest that the value of having a big family is to increase the concentration of Catholic values/ideas in the wider culture, but that is often the vibe one gets. Raise your kids to know and love Christ? Yes. Raise them to pass the baton of your social and political ideals into the next generation? Ick. Anyone who has spent even a tiny amount of time in Catholic spaces knows that no matter what anyone says, there is an assumption that bigger families are better Catholics. In this respect, the Catholic Church and IBLP are closely aligned.

• Family as a ministry - even though the Duggars do not themselves own a TV or let their kids watch it, they decide to participate in a major, long-running TV series all about their family. Because it’s a ministry. Their kids all smile sweetly for the cameras and are generally cooperative, but presumably none of them really got a say in whether they wanted to be a part of this (in fact, one of the things the documentary shows is that even once adults, the Duggar children were coerced into participating in the show, and did not receive financial compensation for doing so). I have to think of the well-polished, smiley children of some of the big names in Catholic social media, whose parents have decided to very publicly showcase their families in order to “show the beauty of big family life”, or whatever. Like the Duggars, they are undeniably successful in encouraging others to see a (very) big family as something not only feasible but desirable; but I suspect that, also like the Duggars, they are probably sweeping a lot under the rug in order to so, to the point that what they are “selling” is tantamount to a lie.

• If you think the Church is wrong, you’re wrong - a theme that came up a lot in connection with the Duggar family and the IBLP more broadly was that you are trained to abandon your conscience, or any niggling voice telling you that what you are being taught might be wrong. Obey, obey, obey. Survivors of the abuse exhort viewers to lean into that voice, because the very voice they are trying to suppress is usually the one that is touching on a challenging truth. Now, Catholicism has an ambiguous relationship with “conscience”, and I don’t pretend to have a handle on the theology. On the one hand, conscience is considered to be extremely valuable and an important guide; on the other, submission to the authority and wisdom of the Church is more or less prerequisite for partaking of the Eucharist, and obedience to your superiors within the hierarchy of the Church is a virtue. It kind of ends up sounding something like “Your conscience is really important, but if your conscience is well formed then it will lead you to realise that the Church is right, so if your conscience contradicts the Church then it is wrong and you are a Bad Catholic.” Again, I don’t have a great handle on the theology, but the insistence on obedience in Shiny Happy People reminded me a lot of the spiritual and theological gaslighting I see happening in Catholic spaces.

• A single, childless man preaching the virtues of big family life - Bill Gothard, the founder of the IBLP in which the Duggars and countless other evangelical families became heavily involved, insisted that having many children is pleasing to God. Unlike Catholicism which does allow for personal discernment of family size, Gothard’s bottom line was “have all the kids that you physically can”. And yet, he never married or had any kids. I couldn’t help but think of the frustration among so many Catholic women when they have been dismissed or even chided when they’ve shared their struggles with staying open to life. To hear a celibate priest in the pulpit extolling the virtues of staying open to more and more children, even when it feels like your marriage is crumbling and you can barely afford to feed the kids you have and your body is wrung out from however many pregnancies you’ve already had - is galling, to say the least. In Shiny Happy People, it is presented as entirely absurd that a single man would be telling families how many kids to have, and yet in Roman Catholicism, it’s inbuilt in the structure of the Church.

• Cover up of widespread abuse - need I say more?

I’m sure some of what was so appealing about the Duggars was real. There is joy in letting go of societal norms and expectations for family size and living in a radically open way - but there are also real strains and hardships that shouldn’t be dismissed. There is something beautiful about finding a wider community who share your values and who can encourage and bolster you in living them out - but such communities can also become sources of manipulation and abuse. There is value to publicly showcasing a way of life that it is outside of the norm, and giving permission to others to choose a path less trodden - but being so public facing leaves ample room for exploitation of kids and extreme “filtering” of reality.

The same can be said of the ills of Catholicism. These things are rarely black or white, good or bad. Very often, genuinely good intentions get twisted or corrupted or inadequately scrutinised along the way. I think many people do experience something of the abundance of God’s love and provision by exposure to bigger families who prioritise “openness to life” over material wealth or “guaranteed” stability. But to overlook the cost of having many children - the physical toll on the mother, the financial strain on the parents, the particular needs of individual children, and so on - is asinine.

This documentary series was about much more than the Duggars and their enormous family. Really, the Duggars were just a case study in a much further reaching network of abuse, coverups, and what happens when normal people become fixated on building a life and a family according to a very narrow and prescriptive set of rules. There were also many things in the series that made me grateful for Catholicism, in its richer and more robust theology, and its celebration of the great diversity in “small v” vocations. Yet I couldn’t help but acknowledge that some of the big red flags and “shocking” aspects of the Duggar/IBLP story are also alive and well in the Catholic Church.

If you’ve watched the series, I would love to hear what your reflections were in connection with your own experiences of faith communities, or trends you’ve noticed in a faith community you’re familiar with.