Man who grew up in Bill Gothard's religious CULT made famous by the Duggars lifts lid on the harrowing 'fear tactics' used to isolate members

Daily Mail, UK/August 18, 2024

By Rachel Summer Small

A man who grew up in the religious cult made famous by reality TV's Duggar family has lifted the lid on his harrowing upbringing - marred by 'fear tactics' prescribed by the organization to control interpersonal dynamics at the most intimate familial levels.

Chad Harris, 38, an outspoken critic of the Institute of Basic Life Principles, went on the YouTube show Cults to Consciousness to speak about his experiences after his family joined the group when he was just seven years old.

He now runs the anti-IBLP TikTok @ArchRadish in which he calls out the fundamentalist Christian group for being a 'blatant' 'cult in plain sight.'

Speaking to host Shelise Ann Sola, Chad explained he was born in England to two American missionaries - the fourth born after an older brother and two sisters.

His parents, who were stationed as missionaries in the Netherlands and Belgium in the late 1970s to early 1980s, homeschooled him from birth.

His older siblings spent some time going to school in the United States, but their parents didn't approve of the 'Dutch school system' and relocated to Belgium where homeschooling was 'technically' accepted.

As his mom struggled to homeschool her four kids - with the eldest 10 years older than Chad - she sought out advice from a Christian OB/GYN in hopes of finding a non-surgical way to prevent any further pregnancies.

With that, it was always made clear to Chad he'd been an 'accident, and they never really let my forget that,' he explained.

Regardless, rather than helping her prevent further pregnancies medically, the male doctor advised Chad's mother to 'leave it to God.'

And apparently, the doctor successfully persuaded her to do just that - as Chad's parents went on to have two more children after him.

The doctor also introduced Chad's mom to the fundamentalist Christian concept of the 'quiverful.'

Key to the IBPM, the general concept is that 'children are a quiverful of arrows that you shoot out into the world, based on a passage in Psalms,' explained Chad.

'The idea being that the more children you have, the more you can fight against the even oppressiveness of a devil-controlled world.'

Notably, the 'quiverful movement' is larger than IBLP, but IBLP is a direct, major 'subset' of the movement, Chad explained.

And, likewise, the 'quiverful movement,' as introduced to them by the doctor, is how his parents ultimately found out about IBLP.

In Alabama, Chad described, IBLM often did attract people of 'means,' such as the doctor and his family.

With that, membership carried a sort of prestige for his father, Chad explained, with his family being from the more downtrodden area of Walker County, Alabama.

IBLP's infamous founder, the now disgraced Bill Gothard, worked to 'present the best face forward for his homeschooling products,' Chad recalled.

'He would bring all these well-groomed, well-behaved children out in front of parents and say, "See these are how your kids could behave at all times."'

Gothard had designed an extensive homeschooling curriculum for the children of IBLP that elevated stark interpretations of Christian morality far above basic skills tied to reading, writing, math, literature and other core topics taught in public schools, as DailyMail.com previously reported.

A key part of homeschool teachings was dictating the structure of the nuclear family, explicitly putting a husband in charge of his wife, and the the wife in charge of the children.

The whole system was illustrated by succession of umbrellas, with that of Christ's at the top, and Gothard characterized the dynamics as adhering to one's 'umbrella' of authority.

The long-term goal for the quiverful movement, as well las IBLP, is to 'infiltrate' the rest of the world with fundamentalist Christian ideology with their plentiful numbers, 'through getting into government, through getting into the school systems, through the military, or whatever,' Sherise further summarized.

'The reason that you want to have these arrows of children was to fight a spiritual warfare against the rest of the world. They taught that the world system - governments and what have you - were all being run by Satan,' Chris elaborated.

'And your best weapon was to procreate and raise up Godly children to change the future. It's Christian nationalism in its worst form.

'And the the fact is, when you have children, you're having entire individual human beings. They are not automatons, they are not robots. You're not going to be able to program them to doing your will,' he described.

Once his parents went all-in on IBLP, the landscape of Chad's childhood began to change dramatically.

His older brother, he recalled, had been allowed to have access to far more toys, from GI Joes to Voltron action figures, and was allowed to watch movies that his younger siblings were never allowed to see.

For a while, Chad's parents were 'a bit more permissive' when it came to Saturday morning cartoons, allowing him to watch shows like Care Bears and the Disney afternoon animations.

Once his parents began attending IBLP seminars, however, they were unequivocally told that 'good' parents didn't allow any TVs in their home whatsoever - or, if they did, they used it only to watch Gothard-approved media.

This eliminated anything that made any reference to 'magic,' anything that could be 'considered demonic,' or 'any kind of spiritual warfare that my folks felt was being pushed on us from the TV,' Chad described.

In another instance, an IBLP preacher railed against the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip as being 'clearly demonic' on account that Hobbes, a stuffed tiger, only came to life when Calvin's parents weren't around.

'The reasoning was that Hobbes was clearly portraying some kind of demon that went around parental authority - under the umbrella of authority that Gothard always talked about - and was influencing Calvin to do evil.

'Therefore, the series was demonic and my folks literally would staple paper over the comic in the [newspaper],' Chad explained. 'So I wouldn't be influenced by the demonic comic strip.'

He further described how IBLP made it out as though the 'entire world' was 'conspiring against you' to infiltrate your existence with demonic influences, and trying to completely adhere to the organization's teachings likewise shut off his family from myriad outside influences.

Chad further described how 'physical abuse was common,' and the go-to response whenever he as a child would 'talk back' or 'throw a tantrum.'

'My parents would very much take the time to scream at me and physically abuse me,' he said.  

'You were taught to be scared on all fronts,' Chad further described of the constant imagined threat of demonic influence should anyone go against the authority umbrellas.

'Fear was the motivator for you to stay in line, between being afraid that the devil could ruin your life at any point, by your misbehavior.

'Of course, there were other factors that played into it as well.

'My dad in particular told us that our mother had - in his own words - problems that women face on a regular basis that could cause them to go insane if they are too stressed out.

'So therefore, we had to be on our best behavior around mom at all times or we might be responsible for her having to be institutionalized,' Chris went on.

'The man, the father of the family, is responsible for everything that happens underneath him. And of course women, the wives, are considered beneath them.

'They are ultimately responsible and accountable to God for them,' said Chris.

As a child who regularly incurred the wrath of his parents, Chad recalled that his existence was one of 'fear compounded on fear, of the physical retaliation as well as - because I bought in - I'm thinking, "Oh, the devil could also ruin my life at any point."

'There was no escape, You were always looking over your shoulder,' he said.

Chad described himself in childhood as 'quite chatty, very curious, always wanting to know how things work.'

His parents even taught him to read the encyclopedia to get him to 'quiet down,' he said - though the decision ultimately opened his eyes to the world beyond IBLP.  

With that, Gothard taught that adolescence was a myth, and that kids were essentially welcomed into adulthood around 12 or 13 years old.

'So I had a ceremony when I turned 12 to welcome me into manhood,' Chad recalled. 'Where all the men of the church got me up front and had this big ceremony where they laid hands on me and conveyed on me adulthood, I suppose.'

Meanwhile, girls were put into 'finishing schools' beginning at around 11 or 12 years old where they learned skills like 'how to sit properly' and 'set a table.'

In contrast, the boys entered a system called A.L.E.R.T. that put them through a battery of military-style physical challenges.

'There were kids filing into the medical tent all the time, with injuries and stuff like that,' Chad recalled.

'I tumbled down a hill on my first day and they kept making me run. It was very poorly done and I hated it.'

He admitted that some of his friends who were more 'into that sort of thing' enjoyed the experience - but he was simply not that type of person.

Chad's poor performance in A.L.E.R.T. prompted his dad to take him out to dinner and tell him that he failed as a father.
Underlying all of the activities was the sense of a duty to pick up the gauntlet should unnamed figures from the outside world ever try to come in and try and quash the IBMP.

Whenever Chad encountered - or even became friendly with - a peer from beyond the IBLP community, his parents would write them off by rationalizing: 'Even though people look like they're having fun with that, inwardly they're very sad or they're lacking something. "We have the truth and we're happy.'"'

Sherise, who grew up in a strict Mormon household, recalled being told a parallel narrative about 'outsiders' only appearing 'happy' on the outside, which church leadership leaned heavily on as a deterrent against people leaving.

In any case, Chad's family left Alabama for the Netherlands - and later Belgium - when he was 12 to embark on missionary work - a change which also saw Chad become more isolated than ever from the rest of the world.

When it came to playing the role of missionary, Chad was taught not to view potential converts as 'people' so much as 'projects.'

The general game plan was to try and get just enough converts to start a church, which ultimately failed.

At one point, the family's activities had apparently rankled the Belgium government enough to nearly get them kicked out of the country.

However, they were able to stay at the last minute thanks to a partnership with an air force base, where his dad had been working as a chaplain.

Chad ultimately lived more or less full-time between the Netherlands and Belgium, immersed in the very small circle of IBLP adherents there, through age 19.

Still, the experience of living abroad was not one of transformative or eye-opening cultural immersion during those formative adolescent years.

'At the time, we were focused on the mission, which was  to bring in as many people as possible to fundamentalism,' he explained.

'One of my biggest regrets is that I spent so much time in a different culture - having an opportunity that very few people get to have - being immersed in another country, and getting to know a new kind of people, and opening up my world.  

'And I still kept myself in a bubble,' he expressed.

'Granted, my parents had a lot to do with that. But I had sufficient opportunities, even as a teenager, to try to open my mind up. And I kept burying myself deeper into my IBLP zone and such. And it was a wasted opportunity.

'I wish I could go back and appreciate those countries for what they were, not what I wanted them to be,' he admitted of looking back.

All the while, Chad's parents were urging him to go into politics or preaching, 'or somebody who could affect change, because they were like, "You like to talk, you like to get up in front of people, so that should be what God uses you for later,"' said Chad.

'I didn't know what careers there were available, what college would look like  - other than the few fundamentalist colleges that my parents approved of, that I wasn't too happy about.

'I just didn't know what the world had for me. And that's another huge regret of mine, is my world was so small that even on the other side of the world it was still just what was in front of my nose.'

As for relationships with women, Chad was taught in traditional IBLP fashion that the man was 'in charge' of his wife and family.

'And everything that happened in the family was ultimately the man's responsibility,' Chad specified.

'That scared me to death. Because I really wasn't the kind who liked the idea of being some kind of autocrat or some kind of dictator over a house.

'And I especially didn't like the idea of having to be responsible to the God of the universe for what other individual human beings were doing.'

And of course purity culture was heavily enforced outside of the confines of marriage.

There was no dating, just 'courtship' - which was more or less the equivalent of arranged marriage.

This tended to look like a handful of 'dates' followed by marriage within 'a couple of months.'

From the man's point of view, Chad was instructed to listen to a divine voice pointing him in the right direction - and agonized about his uncertainty in this regard.

'We were taught that if you gave pieces of your heart away to other people before you were married, you would never be able to give your spouse your whole heart,' he explained of his anxiety around the matter.

He also felt bewildered at how a 'particular kind' of man seemed to listen to 'divine' guidance pointing him toward his wife without any issue.

'I found out later it was mostly men who were justifying their own wills as some kind of divine inspiration,' described Chad.

After leaving Europe, Chad relocated as a young adult to a church in Mississippi, where he worked under a very young pastor, who had taken over a church that had run the mission that had sent Chad's family out as missionaries.

Apparently, the young pastor had been 'ruling his home with an iron fist,' Chad speculated, because eventually word got out that the pastor's wife had left him on account of emotional abuse.

The young pastor resigned, only to return a month later begging for another chance.

'I smelled a rat. And to his credit, so did my dad,' said Chad.

'We both vigorously opposed that saying, "There is something wrong here."'

When the congregation voted to re-hire the pastor anyway, Chad quit on the spot and moved back to Alabama.

There he joined another fundamentalist church - but was disturbed when he started noticing 'certain patterns' manifest there as well.

He began doing his own research online, and was shocked to discover countless stories of abuse arising out of fundamentalist Christian environments, even discovering entire support groups for those who'd escaped fundamentalism.

Most shocking of all, the pastor at the church where his dad had attended seminary  - Jack Schaap, formerly of the First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana - had been convicted of 'transporting a minor over state lines for sexual purposes.'

When Chad confronted his dad about the incident, he brushed it off, saying 'things happen,' and reiterating the importance of focusing on the ministry.

Chad pushed back, insisting that it 'wasn't good enough' and that he didn't 'sign up to hurt people.'

'And people are being hurt. And if you're not willing to talk about it when it's your friends, then why call out sin at all?!'

The father-son duo had a massive argument about the matter, and the fallout was ultimately what compelled Chad to leave fundamentalism 'entirely.'

His dad even fired Chad from his role leading music at the new church he started.

Not long after, Chad came across the website Recovering Grace, where people who've left IBPM come together to discuss and heal from their experiences.

'That pushed me pretty much over the edge. Because not only was this part of my church life - this went to the very core of what I'd been taught my entire life. My education from second or third grad onward,' he said.

'Everything I'd been taught through the wisdom booklets, through IBLP is now being laid bare. And all these people are about, "Hey, I experienced a lot of pain and hurt in this."

'And then the allegations against Gothard came forward. And I saw it all happening again. And I said, "I'm done... I can't even pay lip service sanction this any longer. I am leaving anything that has to do with fundamentalism, IBLP, IFB, you name it."'

In 2014, more than 30 women came forward alleging Gothard had sexually harassed and even assaulted them - with the accusations ultimately forcing his resignation as head of the IBLP.

'That was the final straw, really, just seeing how this culture of silence and people not wanting to talk and people finally daring to share their stories, that's what got me out.

'At the end of the day, I didn't sign up to hurt people. And I grieve the fact that I was ever part of anything that hurt people. That still haunts me till this day.'

He added: 'Every child that they continue to hurt is one child too many.'