Shiny, Not-So-Happy People: A Legacy of Legalism

The Heidi St. John Podcast

Heidi St. John

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By now, many of you have seen the documentary on the Duggar family, "Shiny Happy People." As a woman who grew up under spiritual abuse, I am glad to see any form of abuse unearthed and exposed. Rules without relationship injure people, and the legalistic way in which Gothard and others like him control people using the Bible as their excuse to do so is wrong. However, I believe this was the wrong way to expose it. This documentary was salivating at the chance to give Christians stones to throw at people — even those who did not deserve it—and that's exactly what they got. Today I'll be sharing my thoughts and directing us back to the gospel that changes us. SHOW NOTES

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Heidi St. John podcast. I am your host, Heidi St. John.
0:04.8	And today I'm going to go through a documentary. I'm calling it a shock
0:09.8	humanery. They came out about the Dugger family recently called shiny happy people.
0:14.5	I have some thoughts on this having grown up in the IBLP myself.
0:18.4	And I'd like to share them with you today. Stick around. I think you're going to be encouraged.
0:30.9	Well, I appreciate you guys tuning in today. I want to talk about the documentary that
0:36.8	recently came out. Some of you guys have heard me mention it in passing here at the show.
0:41.7	But I wrote some thoughts out that I had. I've written a couple of articles that have come out
0:46.2	from various places, The Washington Post, Time Magazine. Of course, every, you know,
0:52.2	the fundamentalist Friday people and every Christian hating liberal on the face of the earth
0:56.8	has decided to write about this documentary because frankly, it's great fodder for them.
1:01.6	It's absolutely good fodder for them. And I watched the whole thing. I watched all the episodes
1:08.9	of shiny happy people. And I'll be very honest with you. There were some moments in it that
1:16.4	brought me to tears. I feel great compassion and understanding for Jill Dugger and her husband
1:27.2	Derek, so Jill and Derek Dillard. And I think that their pain is real. And I think their
1:34.8	anger and frustration at their parents is justified because they grew up under what can only be called
1:43.2	spiritual abuse. It's certainly not to be confused with the message of Christ and the gospel of
1:49.5	Jesus Christ, which teaches us to love each other. But there were a lot of things. And I think
1:56.6	might take away from this as someone who passionately speaks out against the patriarchal movement.
2:02.8	You guys heard me talk the other day about my frustration with this rise in men speaking now again
2:10.4	about how women are not allowed to teach theology to other women. Bill got their love that stuff.
2:16.0	And I'm going to be coming on the show next week with a pastor friend of mine. And we're going to
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