Duggar Doc “Shiny Happy People” Should Be Warning To Church

 By Warren Cole Smith - Posted at Ministry Watch:

Published June 9, 2023

I found myself both frustrated and mesmerized by the new Amazon Prime documentary “Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets.”

As the title suggests, it purports to be the behind-the-scenes story of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their children, the stars of the TLC hit television series “19 and Counting” and a number of spin-offs. The original show ran for 229 episodes over seven years, and was a ratings juggernaut for TLC, elevating it from a fringe cable television network into the mainstream. The show was TLC’s most popular, averaging 2.3 million viewers per new episode in Season 10 and scoring in the “Cable Top 25,” according to Nielsen.

But all was not well in DuggarWorld. In 2015, Josh Duggar publicly apologized for having “acted inexcusably” following reports he molested five girls, including some of his sisters, by fondling them. TLC announced that the show was officially canceled and would not resume production. A spin off show, “Counting On,” aired in December 2015 and was cancelled in 2021, due to Josh Duggar’s arrest for child pornography. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his crimes.

All of this has, of course, been tabloid fodder for the past dozen years. In the beginning it was a “feel-good” story of a large and happy family, and more recently it was a train wreck from which we could not avert our eyes.

The problem with treating the story as tabloid fodder, which this new documentary continues to do, is that it will likely prevent the church from dealing with important issues.

Continue here.