Why You Shouldn’t Put Your Faith in the Duggars… Or Any Famous Christians

Why You Shouldn’t Put Your Faith in the Duggars… Or Any Famous Christians May 27, 2015

My husband, David French, wrote about the Duggar situation:

I’ll never forget the first time I learned that I couldn’t put faith in Christians. I was in middle school, and our church had hired a new “pulpit minister” (that’s what my church called pastors) — a man widely known for his ability to deliver a sermon. During one of his first weeks at our church, he proudly declared that when he preached, he didn’t want to hit “bunt singles.” He wanted to “belt home runs.” But he didn’t just boast. He delivered. Week after week his messages moved, taught, and inspired. The church started growing, and even bored young teens (like me) looked forward to Sunday.

Then, one day he was gone. He ran off with another man’s wife, and we never heard from him again. I was crushed. I was angry. I couldn’t comprehend how a man could say one thing with such conviction yet live another way entirely — even to the point of forsaking his wife, his kids, and his church. When I was at my angriest, my dad pulled me aside and said, “David, our faith is in Christ, not any man.”

If the past 30 years of very public Christian scandals should teach us anything, it’s that no one should put their trust in famous Christians. They often can’t even get the basics right, much less serve as shining examples of faith lived the right way. In the case of the Duggar family, they hid sexual abuse from everyone but those they most trusted, delayed notifying the authorities for months (and then afterward telling only a close family friend), escaped prosecution only through the expiration of the statute of limitations, and then had the audacity — knowing full well that these events had occurred — to put themselves out to the public as a role-model family. The abuser himself decided to become a leader in the Christian pro-family movement, as the executive director of the Family Research Council.

If the past 30 years of very public Christian scandals should teach us anything, it’s that no one should put their trust in famous Christians.

This is outrage piled upon outrage. Imagine the pain of the victims — denied justice — who watch their abuser not only escape any legal consequence but also rapidly ascend a very specific ladder of power, in a movement designed to advance the very values he so grotesquely profaned. The Duggars report that the victims have forgiven their abuser, but even if this is true, forgiveness does not heal all hurts, nor does it relieve the state or the community from the obligation to deal justly with sexual abuse. I’ve known all too many abuse victims, and there are few things more painful to those I know than the knowledge that there is no justice.

Read it all on National Review here.

 


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