The Institute in Basic Life Principles began in 1961 as seminars by Gothard, an evangelical minister from Illinois with a master’s degree in Christian education.
Over 30 hours, he taught attendees how to lead successful lives by following his interpretation of Biblical principles and warned them away from television, popular music, alcohol, dating and public schools. The group says more than 2.5 million people have taken the Basic Seminar.
At the heart of Gothard’s teachings was the importance of respecting “God-given authority.” He preached a strict hierarchy of divine authority, with Jesus at the top followed by church elders, employers and husbands, who are responsible for protecting their wives and children below them.
In marriage, a man’s role is to provide “servant leadership” while “the woman responds with reverent submission and assistance,” preached Gothard, who has never married.
One former member said such teachings are damaging. Elizabeth Hunter, 27, was raised in Greenville, Texas, knowing her future role was to be a wife and mother and that her father would one day help pick her husband.
Hunter said her parents had attended Gothard’s seminars and committed to having no television. Like the Duggars, they home-schooled their children using the Advanced Training Institute curriculum, which the ministry said was based on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
The family saw the Duggars and Gothard at biannual IBLP events, where Hunter said Gothard was treated “like a god.”
"Nobody wanted to cross him. They feared him, in a way," former IBLP follower Elizabeth Hunter said of Bill Gothard.
“Everywhere he went, everyone credited him with saving their lives, opening their eyes. Everyone swarmed him,” Hunter, who no longer follows the ministry, said.
The IBLP’s programs appealed to conservative Christians who had grown up in the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and ‘70s and mistrusted secular authorities to help them raise their families, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and author of “Jesus and John Wayne.”
“There is this real market within conservative Protestantism for safe and authoritative advice … Gothard was in at the ground floor of this,” Kobes Du Mez said.
