Review: "Becoming Free Indeed" by Jinger Duggar Vuolo

Becoming Free Indeed by Jinger Duggar Vuolo
Published January 2023 via Thomas Nelson
★★★

When Jinger (Duggar) Vuolo was growing up, the rules were clear: follow Bill Gothard's seven principles, don't ever step out from under her parents' (and more to the point, her father's) authority, and her religion would protect her. But step outside the "umbrella of authority" (later rebranded as the "umbrella of protection") and you set yourself up for downfall.

It was in many ways a very sheltered upbringing—but then Jinger* grew up, and for the first time she had conversations about religion that were not held in an echo chamber. And then she got married, and she took another step outside that echo chamber. And then—well, let's come back to that.

As a book, it's...pretty specific. It's not really a memoir: the stories in here are few and pointed, and it's clear that Jinger has carefully selected the parts of her life that she is willing to talk about and brought those out for the book. Considering that she grew up on television with little say in what parts of her life were made public—and then had private details about abuse made public—this is not unreasonable, but it does not making for a particularly exciting book. Rather than a memoir, this is...the current version of Jinger's theological reckoning, I suppose. So much of the book is about 1) what Gothard said, 2) why that's wrong, and 3) why what her current church preaches is right.

Coming back to the and then: the teachings under which Jinger was raised have come under quite a lot of scrutiny, and she freely criticizes them. But...her husband studied for his MDiv (and now I think PhD?) at a seminary connected to a church, John MacArthur's Grace Community Church, that has also been under recent scrutiny (e.g., for kicking a woman out of the church because she left her abusive husband), and it's the communications guy at that seminary who did the ghostwriting on this book. Although Jinger talks a good game about having studied the bible and come to her own conclusions, it's hard to read this as anything other than propaganda for a particular viewpoint and associated church—like a different echo chamber. I'm a liberal heathen and her beliefs aren't likely to ever align with mine, which is fine, but...I suppose I find it sad and frustrating to see these shifting beliefs so much in lockstep with what her husband and her husband's seminary believe.

Jinger talks about disentangling rather than deconstructing her faith, because in her view deconstructing involves walking away from faith and she wants to make clear that she's still Christian and has never questioned the validity of the bible or the status of Jesus as her savior. Again, we do not share a belief system, but I've always thought that faith should be able to stand up to such scrutiny. One of the stories Jinger tells in this book to explain why she didn't throw Jesus out with the bathwater is about her husband getting putty stuck in his hair when he was a child, and his mother taking hours and hours to detangle it rather than cutting it out (195). But it feels like an imperfect metaphor (truth by analogy?) to me, because...what would have happened if the hair had been cut off to remove the putty? It would have grown back. Instead I think what she's done is stripped off the wallpaper of her faith to find the paint underneath, but she's not interested in then removing the paint to see what might be under that, and whether she wants whatever's underneath or a fresh coat of the same paint color. (Or new MacArthur-striped wallpaper. Whatever.)

Critical thinking was not important as I was growing up, writes Jinger, because what was there to think critically about? There was a right and a wrong way to do everything (157). I am genuinely glad for her that she can see this as a gap in her education and something that is worth working on, but...those gaps are still there. Take this late-in-the-book look at why she still holds the beliefs that she does: First, I trust the Bible because it has proven again and again to be historically accurate. There are hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament. Those are predictions people made about what was going to happen in hundreds, if not thousands, of years. All of them came true. Every single one. That includes the prophecy that the Messiah would be born in a small town called Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). And the strange, specific prediction that the Messiah wouldn’t break a single bone when He died on the cross (Numbers 9:12). If you take the time to read what the Bible says, you will discover all kinds of stories that can’t be disproven. (201)

I'm in no way a biblical scholar, and I don't know what events from the bible have been proven or disproven—but as far as I can tell, what Jinger is saying here is that she believes in the bible because the bible says it's true (and she's then citing New Testament plot points as proof that the Old Testament is accurate). That's...not how critical thinking works? It's a great example of circular reasoning, actually. And "can't be disproven" is not the same as "has been proven".

Oh, this makes me tired. Three stars because I imagine that to Jinger this is a wild departure from her upbringing, and wildly different from anything she could have imagined believing for the first two decades or her life. But I can't recommend this as a book, and I hope that she can continue to grow and change and think in ways that haven't been vetted by a given church.

*First names for clarity