The Duggars and the Bizarre Regressive “Quiverfull” Movement
The TLC channel announced today that they’re pulling “19 Kids and Counting” from their schedule, following the reports of Josh Duggar’s admitted sexual abuse of five underage girls. TLC’s statement was posted on Facebook:
Effective immediately, TLC has pulled all episodes of 19 Kids and Counting currently from the air. We are deeply saddened and troubled by this heartbreaking situation, and our thoughts and prayers are with the family and victims at this difficult time.
Maybe with this Duggar family story in the news, people will start paying attention to the deranged, dangerous “Quiverfull” cult that inspires them and many like-minded conservative Protestant Christians.
The Quiverfull movement promotes copious procreation, rejects all forms of contraception, and treats women basically as brood mares; second-class citizens who must be subservient to men, and whose primary purpose is childbearing.
The name “Quiverfull” refers to how cultists like the Duggars see their gigantic families: as arrows in a quiver — weapons in a religious war. It comes from an Old Testament verse:
Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man;
so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:
they shall not be ashamed,
but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
It’s an explicitly theocratic and essentially racist doctrine; in an article for The Nation, author Kathryn Joyce described their obsessions this way :
Population is a preoccupation for many Quiverfull believers, who trade statistics on the falling white birthrate in European countries like Germany and France. Every ethnic conflict becomes evidence for their worldview: Muslim riots in France, Latino immigration in California, Sharia law in Canada. The motivations aren’t always racist, but the subtext of “race suicide” is often there.
If you’d like to learn more about Quiverfull, I recommend Joyce’s book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. I read it years ago, and have been watching the rise of groups like the Duggars with great trepidation as a result. The news that this reactionary theocratic cult spawns sexual predators should come as no surprise.