Bill Gothard

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Okay after meeting and talking to Jim Bob Duggar and the Duggars they really love Bill Gothard and the IBLP program.

They even do his ATI program.

When they had him over at thier house they acted like it was ahuge honor. Like a pope or something.

Have you all ever heard of him and what is he all about. I personally feel weird saying I’m Catholic in front of the Duggars because they really don’t think Catholics are ‘right’. Anyway what do you all think? I think it sort of weirds me out.
 
PattyPryor said:
Okay after meeting and talking to Jim Bob Duggar and the Duggars they really love Bill Gothard and the IBLP program.

They even do his ATI program.

When they had him over at thier house they acted like it was ahuge honor. Like a pope or something.

Have you all ever heard of him and what is he all about. I personally feel weird saying I’m Catholic in front of the Duggars because they really don’t think Catholics are ‘right’. Anyway what do you all think? I think it sort of weirds me out.
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Gothard has a lot of ideas I disagree with–a very strong doctrine of male headship, for instance (which makes explicit the general tendency in conservative Protestantism to interpret “priesthood of all believers” as “priesthood of all male believers”). And he has a more conservative view of birth control than the contemporary Catholic Church–NFP is definitely out for his followers. Folks who listen to him also seem to be rather hostile to higher education, preferring an “apprenticeship” model. I actually think there’s something to be said for this–probably way too many people are going to college right now, when what they want really isn’t a “liberal arts” education (though my job depends on this situation!). But the Gothardites (as I used to call them back when I was running into them regularly) seem to have no room for the idea of a liberal arts education, period.

That being said, I would not say that his ideas are without value. I like a lot of what I’ve seen in families influenced by him. Like any set of human ideas, there are good parts and bad parts!

Edwin
 
I have read comments by people who considered his child rearing methods to be potentially abusive. I do not know myself as I have never done more then a superficial look into their practices.
 
PattyPryor said:
Have you all ever heard of him and what is he all about. I personally feel weird saying I’m Catholic in front of the Duggars because they really don’t think Catholics are ‘right’. Anyway what do you all think? I think it sort of weirds me out.
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That is sad that you feel uncomfortable.😦 I have found that being open to questions about my faith helps to dispel some of the common misconceptions that people have about Catholicism. You could be an ambassador of your faith, not by converting them, but by gently and politely correcting any misinformation that they might have.🙂
 
deb1 said:
I have read comments by people who considered his child rearing methods to be potentially abusive. I do not know myself as I have never done more then a superficial look into their practices.
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Prior to moving to Vermont 14 years ago, we were involved in a church that was heavily influenced by Bill Gothard.

To be more accurate I should say heavily influenced for half the time we were there. During the second half they were moving away from it.

The controlling atmosphere in this environment in my mind constituted moderate spiritual abuse.

As far as specifics noted in this thread:
(1) Yes the above is true.
(2) Yes, natural family planning methods are forbidden. When I heard about the Duggars, I suspected they were Gothard influenced and my suspicions were correct. The problem is that for every family like the Duggars that follow his teachings, there are 10 where the results are…well…problematic.
(3) Another thing is all debt is forbidden, including mortgage.

But what sticks out in retrospect is folks following a person instead of Jesus Christ.
 
mozart-250 said:
(3) Another thing is all debt is forbidden, including mortgage.
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I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s certainly on the strict side, but when you think about all the foreclosures going on these days, avoiding mortgages (and other forms of debt) may be quite smart.

Edwin
 
I attended one of his seminars. What I got out of it was an understanding of authority that, when the time came many years later for me to want/need to understand it, helped me understand what authority is, and where the Catholic Church gets its authority from.

I also think it’s important to avoid debt as much as possible, and I probably got that idea from the Seminar, as well. Life is ever so much cheaper, and easier, and freer, when you aren’t paying interest on everything. 🙂
 
I guess what sort of I guess ‘scares’ me is the Duggars have done 5 specials and tons of interviews. In the beginning Jim Bob would say he did a financial freedom seminar and now he is throwing out names like Jim Sammons and the website is FULL of Gothard.

I was in the Duggar home and I guess it scares me how the women and girls are treated. I think this may be a Gothard teaching.

I also love that they are debt free. I did the finincail freedom seminar through dvds and let me tell you as a women I felt belittled.
As a Catholic Women I still want my husband to be the head but I also want to have a say.

I worry the more programs they do the more Gothard influence will come out. Is it wrong to say to the people who follow Gothard he is almost like prophet?
 
jmcrae said:
That men are Christ, and that women are the Church - especially in marriage. That to be in debt to man is to be in debt to Satan.
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If men are Christ, wouldn’t being in debt to them be a debt to Christ? Sounds like yet another pop-Christianity star who will fade out when most of his followers start thinking, to be succeeded by the next when they grow tired of it and so on and so forth
 
strngrnrth said:
If men are Christ, wouldn’t being in debt to them be a debt to Christ? Sounds like yet another pop-Christianity star who will fade out when most of his followers start thinking, to be succeeded by the next when they grow tired of it and so on and so forth
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He’s been around since I was a kid, so he doesn’t seem to be “fading out.”
 
jmcrae said:
He’s been around since I was a kid, so he doesn’t seem to be “fading out.”
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I’d never heard of him.
I was thinking about all the books, like the Prayer of Jabez, and that one about how men don’t need love and women don’t need respect (despite what both statistics and the Bible tell us) and all the books on the Christian way to diet and get out of debt and raise kids that contradict each other, and LaHaye’s stuff on personality types (which end up having to fudge as much as any astrology book to seem relevant to real people at all) and how fast the Purpose Driven Life, which was supposed to show how your life should revolve around Jesus, ended up with groups that revolved around other stuff, and the Bondage Breaker series about how practically the whole world is secretly tying you to bad spiritual influences and Bob Larson exorcising people who call his radio show who turn out to be the same few people calling again and again and they work there… all these authors who suddenly realize what the Bible means for the first time ever for however long they are famous.
 
I have heard bits about Bill Gothard over the years. Most of what I have heard is that he is socially and financially very conservative, and that older couples (people now in their 60s or older) are especially fond of his teachings. I checked his website, which is quite large and seems set up like a direct sales site in some ways.

He proclaims that he has 7 life principles. These are listed on the site, billgothard.com/bill/teaching/basicprinciples/.

There are seven steps for proper courtship as well. Also listed are 49 commands of Christ, 49 character traits of a good servant of Christ, (Do the numbers 7 and 49 have special significance to Gothard? isn;t that numerology? ) , and an extensive discussion on proper interpretation of Scripture, which basically says every person must discern for themselves, if I understand what he is saying. Very American Protestant.

I also noticed that the website is very Caucasian. At least 30 pictures of white people are on there for every one shot of a non-white person.

I’d love to hear from some folks who know more about the seminars or have attended some.
 
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