7
. . . For there is no power but of God: The powers that be are ordained of God.
—Romans 13:1
GOD USED A SERIES of supernatural events to clearly lead our family into making a difference in the world of politics. And it’s a path that our family firmly believes in and has thoroughly enjoyed. It all began with a rally on the steps of the Arkansas capitol in 1997. We had traveled three hours to Little Rock for our infant brother Josiah’s doctor appointment. A few days before, Dad had heard on a Christian radio station that a rally was going to be held at the state capitol a few hours after Josiah’s scheduled appointment. The focus of the rally was to urge the legislature to pass a ban against the heinous procedure of partial-birth abortion.
Mom and Dad decided that since we were in town, we would stop by the rally. When we got there, what we saw was inspiring: more than two thousand people were passionately advocating for the lives of these innocent, almost full-term babies whose lives were being destroyed through this gruesome act. But despite the large turnout and urgent pleas, instead of passing the ban, the representatives and senators voted it down!
That day changed our lives.
Dad says that as he watched those events unfold, God laid it on his heart to run for the legislature. He’d never been involved in politics, didn’t consider himself a public speaker, and honestly didn’t know the first thing about running a campaign. But he knew he could vote the right way on life-and-death issues, which was better than what most of our elected officials at the capitol were doing.
A few weeks later, when Dad heard about a candidate campaign class that a Christian man was going to teach, Dad was one of the first to sign up. However, during the first training session, the instructor announced his plans to run for the very representative seat Dad was considering. For a moment, Dad was shocked. Had he heard wrong? Was God really calling him to this?
In some ways he actually felt a bit relieved that God had provided someone else who Dad knew was a very qualified, Christian man to run for this office instead of him. He felt sure God had just been testing him to see if he was willing to do whatever He asked him to do. Nonetheless, Dad enjoyed learning about campaign strategies, so he returned to the class the next week.
Imagine his surprise when he heard the instructor say that he had just taken a job out of town, and he would no longer be able to run for the representative seat! Even though Dad still felt totally inadequate, he became even more convinced this was what God was calling him to do, and he filed to run for office.
Over the next several months, God kept confirming to him through little circumstances that this was what He wanted Dad to do. For instance, during this time a family friend asked if she could introduce our family to a young couple in need of some encouragement. Mom and Dad worked out a time the following week to have them over for supper, and during some delightful conversation with these new friends, Dad mentioned the direction God was leading him—to run for office. We were unaware that this man’s forte was graphic design and printing—until he graciously offered to help us put together Dad’s campaign cards!
Family photos were taken, and a few days later we were holding in our hands a professionally designed campaign card with our family picture on the front and, on the back, a message explaining the values Dad stood for. With several thousand of these printed up, Dad, Mom, Grandma Duggar, and a handful of friends began canvassing our legislative district, always with one or more of us kids in tow, knocking on doors and talking with the voters.
By the time we took this photo in front of the U.S. Capitol, there were eleven Duggar kids, including the second set of twins, Jeremiah and Jedidiah.
While most people were kind and gracious, some were not, and in those cases they were not afraid to speak their minds. The newspapers that interviewed Dad had already endorsed his Democrat opponent, and we began to notice that the articles they published about Dad were negative and slanted.
Dad told us he went up to one house and knocked, and when a lady came to the door, he said, “Hi, I am Jim Bob Duggar, and I’m running for the office of state representa—”
The lady immediately cut in and, obviously not of the same opinion when it comes to family size and children being considered a blessing from God, she said, “I know who you are, and I am not going to vote for you until you get a vasectomy!” Then she slammed the door in his face.
Another incident occurred after a long day of campaign work when Mom called up one of our favorite hometown restaurants to order pizzas for supper. When she gave them her name, the employee on the other end of the line recognized who she was and told her, “Your husband is going to lose—and lose bad!”
But because Mom and Dad knew this was what God had called our family to do, they didn’t let things like that discourage them; instead it reminded them to continue praying and trusting God. During family Bible time one evening, we discussed how being constantly worried about what other people think about us can hinder us from doing what is right. We prayed together as a family, giving God our reputation.
In giving our family’s reputation to God, Mom and Dad were, in essence, saying, “God, we care what You think about us over anyone else, and no matter what other people may say against us, we are willing to keep doing what You have called us to do.” This freed us from those feelings of wanting to be people-pleasers, and instead set our focus back on faithfully doing what we knew God had asked of us.
Little did any of us know what God had in store.
When the votes were counted, Dad won with 56 percent of the vote.
Our parents rented a house near Little Rock to live in while the legislature was in session, and Dad took some of us kids along each day to the capitol. We worked on our homeschool assignments while we sat in committee meetings or watched the proceedings from the House gallery. Since Josh was eleven years old then, he had the highly esteemed privilege of working as a page from time to time. He could practically give the capitol tours because he knew the place inside and out, and he loved to converse with the representatives, gaining for himself the endearing title of “the little governor.” It was a wonderful, hands-on homeschool experience for us all.
The next election cycle, Dad was reelected to a second term in the House of Representatives, and during that time he had another “lightning bolt” moment. This time he felt God urging him to run for the US Senate.
By then, we Duggar kids felt we were old hands at campaigning. Usually accompanied by our parents or Grandma Duggar, we rang doorbells, passed out leaflets at county fairs, rode in parades, and asked people to vote for Dad every chance we got. We even wrote and recorded our own jingle for Dad’s statewide campaign.
And then, he lost.
We had worked hard, despite the fact that we were outspent by our opponent twenty to one. But even though he didn’t win, Dad said he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had called him to run for the national office. “God called us to run, but He didn’t promise we would win,” Dad told us. “As John Quincy Adams said, ‘Duty is ours; results are up to God.’ I know we did what God asked of us.”
Dad led us in a prayer of thanksgiving for leading us through the race—and even thanked Him for the outcome. Then, at the end of the prayer, he said, “Lord, we are ready for our next assignment!”
ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER . . .
AS WE WERE FOLLOWING God’s leading with our political involvement, God opened up another—and very unexpected—door of influence. On Election Day, Mom and Dad had taken all of us kids along when they went to vote. They try to use everyday events as part of our homeschool training, and on that particular day, Mom had said that voting would serve as a civics class field trip for all of us Duggar children.
It just so happened that an Associated Press photographer was at the polling place and took a picture of all of us (we numbered thirteen at the time) as we walked into the voting precinct. Dad later jokingly said, “If all the kids had been old enough to vote, I would have won by a large margin!”
Our family found out later that the photo was picked up by the New York Times, which ran it with a caption identifying a US Senate candidate in Arkansas walking in to vote with his wife and their thirteen kids. A freelance writer saw the photo and wrote a story about our family that later appeared in Parents magazine, where it was noticed by Eileen O’Neill, the president of the Discovery Health Channel. She asked Bill Hayes with Figure 8 Films to call and ask Mom and Dad if they could do a one-hour documentary about our family.
During Dad’s campaigns we loved dressing in red and making appearances together as a family.
As with every major decision, our family prayed together about this one and sought wise, godly counsel. Mom and Dad believed this could be an avenue to share with the world their strong belief that children are a blessing from God, and believed it could be a way to encourage families to draw closer to Him and to each other. They told the network we would allow them to do the documentary as long as they didn’t edit out our faith in God, because that is the core of our lives.
The executives agreed, saying, “It’s your story. You can tell it.”
While they were filming the show, Mom became pregnant with our fifteenth sibling, Jackson, and he was born on the show. The name of that first show was 14 Children and Pregnant Again. It aired in 2004, pulling in what network officials said was one of the biggest audiences in Discovery Health Channel’s history. That first documentary led to another, which led to another, and another. After the fifth documentary the network asked if they could film a reality TV series with us.
We had never even heard of that type of show, but we agreed to do it based upon our hope that it would enable our family to share encouraging Bible principles with many other people. We filmed a series called 17 Kids and Counting. Then Mom had another baby, and the name was changed to 18 Kids and Counting. Then to 19 Kids and Counting, which now airs on The Learning Channel (TLC).
When Mom and Dad were asked to do the first documentary, none of us dreamed that it would turn into more than two hundred shows in ten years. We are powerfully encouraged by the hundreds of letters and e-mails we receive each week from families all over the world who have shared how their lives have been spiritually challenged by watching the shows. Many couples have told us they have started taking their family to church. We’ve learned of fathers who have started leading their family in Bible time each evening. We’ve even heard about abortions that have been canceled as women have decided to view their child for what it truly is—a blessing from God!
Hearing about the TV show’s history often leads to the next frequently asked question: “What’s it like growing up with TV cameras around your house all the time? Is it difficult?”
Well, first off, they are not around all the time. On average, our production crew usually films two or three days a week for two or three hours per day. The members of the film crew have become our dear friends, as close to us as family, as they have been a part of almost every major family event during the last several years. They were there when some of us older kids got our wisdom teeth pulled, and when the majority of our family got really ill with motion sickness during a sightseeing flight over the Grand Canyon. They cheered us on as we precariously boarded a jet boat for a wild ride up the Niagara River as well as when a few of us were determined to brave the twelve-thousand-foot jump out of a skydiving airplane.
The cameras have captured a lot of smiles and laughter over the years, including a zillion birthday parties and quite a few births, one lovely wedding (featuring Josh and Anna as the bride and groom and twenty of their brothers and sisters as attendants), and some pretty exciting adventures all over the world. But the cameras have also continued to roll as we’ve struggled through challenge and heartache. They recorded the fear we faced when Josie was born several months early and Mom came closer to dying than any of us wanted to think about. And they were there when we grieved over Grandpa Duggar’s illness with brain cancer and also when he passed away. They were there for his funeral. And when we lost baby Jubilee in 2012, our grief was once again shared with millions of viewers.
Even though these were very difficult times for us, we prayed that God would somehow use our sorrow and that others would see what a difference having faith in Jesus Christ can make when we go through hard times. As Scripture says, we don’t grieve as though who have no hope. We have seen that God used these times to draw us closer to Him and to each other, and we are comforted knowing that, without a doubt, we will see these loved ones again someday in heaven.
Our desire is to build family unity and a oneness of spirit, which comes as we work to apply God’s principles to our daily lives. We look at the television show as our family ministry and as an opportunity to tell of God’s greatness and His love to those we might otherwise never have the opportunity to meet.
Meanwhile, the show aims to satisfy the curiosity of the general public by providing an inside look at how a supersized family operates—from daily mounds of dirty laundry, dishes, and homeschool assignments, to the impending adventures that are certain to occur with any family outing or road trip. Throughout the years, our prayer has remained that people will see that it is only by God’s grace that our large but otherwise ordinary family can maintain strong relationships with one another and pull together through challenges big and small.
We’ve grown up in front of the cameras filming our cable TV series 19 Kids and Counting. This photo was taken when we kids did our first TV interview with a local reporter back in 2000.
It’s interesting to see how everything is linked—how one response to God’s calling leads to another: God prompted Dad to run for political office, and because of his obedience there, God continued to lead by opening other doors of ministry. Even though we will not always understand God’s leading at first, it’s vital that we follow where His Word guides us, regardless of the opposition that comes our way. Otherwise we will miss out on the opportunities He’s providing to be a witness for Him.
OUR CONTINUED INVOLVEMENT IN POLITICS
DAD’S LOSS IN THAT Senate campaign did not end our involvement in politics. During the last few years we have been more involved than ever, and we’ve enjoyed helping behind the scenes with campaigns of conservative Christians running for office.
We believe that our freedoms to vote for and support the candidates of our choosing are not something to be taken lightly. We’re thankful to God and to all the soldiers who have fought and died to keep those freedoms alive. We believe it’s our duty as citizens to get out and vote on Election Day and show our gratitude.
If you have never been involved in helping a campaign, you are missing out on a lot of fun! We all love it. So here’s what you need to do:
First, if you are eighteen or older, go register to vote.
Second, find a conservative Christian who is running for office and then call and ask them where he or she stands on the issues.
Third, check the candidate’s past voting record to see if it matches what you were told about his or her stand.
Fourth, if those answers are satisfactory, volunteer to help in the candidate’s campaign. You don’t have to know much in advance because you will get on-the-job training (making phone calls, putting up yard signs, organizing events).
Fifth, when you’re old enough to run for office, pray about taking up that challenge to make a difference.
Patriot Academy and TeenPact are two excellent organizations that teach young people about the godly principles America was founded on and how government is supposed to work.
Since Dad’s first experience in politics, our family has worked together to investigate and support candidates who share our conservative Christian beliefs. Almost every election cycle, we campaign for local and state candidates the same way we campaigned when Dad was running: we walk the neighborhoods, ringing doorbells to encourage residents to vote for our candidate.
One evening many years ago during Dad’s first campaign, some families met up at our house to divide into teams for some neighborhood canvassing. We don’t celebrate Halloween, and everyone totally forgot what day it was—October 31. So that evening as we girls walked through the neighborhood with an adult, all of us wearing our ruffly dresses and hair ribbons and carrying our bags of campaign leaflets, people were offering us candy and telling us they loved our dresses. We eventually caught on and suspended our campaigning efforts till the next morning, but that day we received the friendliest greetings ever while knocking on doors during a campaign season!
More than fourteen years later, in 2012, we older siblings stepped up our political work and took campaigning to the next level. First we met as a family to talk about which presidential candidate shared our values and beliefs. We older kids, along with Mom and Dad, had done our research, and we all discussed the various candidates, what they believed in and what values they would be promoting as president. We prayed, asking God to guide us in making our choice. We studied the real issues, the candidates’ core values, and their voting records. We talked about which person, running for the highest elected office in our country, would have the backbone to stand for what is right?
If we were going to endorse someone, we really wanted to make sure the person we chose was someone whose core beliefs and philosophy agreed with our own. Everyone knows that politics can be a dirty, misleading business. We’ve all seen candidates who say one thing but then do another when they’re elected.
After lots of prayer, research, and discussion, as a family, we all agreed that Rick Santorum, a Republican former US senator from Pennsylvania, was a presidential candidate we could fully endorse. We admired his courage and confidence, and we especially like that he had the courage to author the bill that finally ended partial-birth abortions in America. (If you remember from the beginning of this chapter, this was the very issue God used to bring our family into politics back in 1997.)
With the Iowa caucuses about a week away, we knew we had to work quickly. Dad said that with so many candidates in the race, he expected that this election would be very close. We discussed the idea of gathering some friends from the area and driving up to Iowa to lend a hand, and Dad added jokingly, “Maybe our mobile support team could help put Santorum over the top!”
Dad called the Santorum campaign headquarters, where the staff said they could gladly use as many volunteers as we would bring. Dad asked where the candidate would be appearing in the next few days. We called some friends we knew who would be up for a last-minute adventure and invited them to jump on the bus, as we would be heading to Iowa the next morning. Our oldest brother, Josh, had the idea of using his vinyl-cutting machine to cut out letters that spelled “Rick Santorum for President.” He and a couple of the other older boys stayed up all night cutting out the letters and plastering them onto the sides of our bus.
As we hit the road that morning, our team totaled twenty-six people, including Dad, several of the older Duggar kids, and many friends. We arrived in Iowa about 1:30 A.M. and settled into a hotel near where Senator Santorum was to appear that day.
We got a little sleep, and the next morning, Dad went down to the hotel lobby and phoned one of the campaign staff members to say we had brought a big group from out of state to help in the campaign and we were ready to get busy. While Dad was on the phone, he was surprised to see Rick Santorum himself walk into the hotel lobby. We had no clue he was staying in the same hotel.
Dad approached the senator and introduced himself, telling him we had brought reinforcements from Arkansas to help him in his campaign. Senator Santorum expressed gratefulness and said we could meet him at his next event.
One of the first campaign stops we attended with him was a meet-and-greet at a coffee shop. We pulled our bus up out front, and all of us came swarming out to stir up enthusiasm for the candidate’s appearance. More than a hundred journalists from all over the world had showed up at that coffee shop that morning, and when we pulled up, several reporters recognized our family. Dad started doing one interview after another, saying our family had driven up from Arkansas to get the word out that Rick Santorum was the conservative Christian candidate that our family was getting behind and we were asking others to join us in supporting him. Dad went on to share how Senator Rick Santorum had authored the bill to ban partial-birth abortion in America and that he knew Rick would stand for what is right. Dad said over and over again that Rick Santorum has a backbone of steel and a heart of gold.
Our younger sister Joy was happy to chauffeur US senator Rick Santorum around our home while little brother Justin served as tour guide.
At a later event, Senator Santorum told supporters he had been (and still was) driving all over Iowa in a pickup truck, campaigning on a shoestring budget. But when he pulled up to the hotel that morning, the first thing he saw was a huge bus covered with “Rick Santorum for President.” He assumed his staff had gone out and leased a very expensive bus for his campaign, and he was incredulous, demanding, “Who authorized the money for that bus? We don’t have money to spend on this sort of thing!”
His staff reassured him they had not spent a dime on the bus and that it belonged to a group of volunteers who had brought their own bus to help out. When we heard this, we all had a good laugh!
We attended several Santorum campaign appearances in Iowa, and as his crowds grew, the need for a sound system became apparent. Josh and John went to Radio Shack and bought a small portable karaoke-style amplifier for the candidate to use.
We continued to go from one rally to the next, the twenty-six of us serving as a mobile support team, cheering and handing out literature wherever he spoke. We were delighted to see his poll numbers going up—not because of our work on his behalf but because people were learning what he stood for and liking what they saw.
On January 3, 2012, Santorum ended up losing the Iowa caucuses by eight votes. Eight! We rode back home to Arkansas thinking, Oh, man! We should have worked just a little harder. We were disappointed, but we also saw that our candidate had tremendous momentum, and we still wanted to help. (Later in January, the official recount tally showed that Santorum had actually won the Iowa caucuses by thirty-four votes, increasing his campaign’s momentum even more.)
Two weeks before the South Carolina primary, Jessa, Jinger, and I (Jill), along with our brother John-David, loaded up the bus and took off for South Carolina. It was the first time we kids had taken the family bus on the road campaigning by ourselves. Other friends came along—not as many as before but enough to make another small but energetic mobile support team when needed.
At first we made calls from the campaign headquarters and served as an advance team, putting out signs and helping make sure things were ready before the candidate’s appearances.
As time went on, Santorum had a multitude of requests to hold rallies in many different states. Because he could only be in one place at a time, our team was able to join with local volunteers to hold separate events and speak on Santorum’s behalf. Grandma and Jana volunteered to hold down the fort one weekend so that Dad and Mom could come to South Carolina and help out. They did a couple of events with the candidate, and we Duggar kids did some on our own.
As the campaign grew, so did the size of the crowds—and the challenges. We would help set things up, have signs ready to hand out to supporters, hand out literature, and give media interviews when asked.
We had studied the candidate and knew what he stood for, so we were happy to share when people asked about Santorum’s stand on lowering taxes, improving education, strengthening families, and pro-life issues.
Santorum’s campaign had attracted negative attention as well as positive, and we quickly learned to recognize the people who showed up to cause disruptions and “glitter bomb” the candidate and crowd, throwing red and green glitter all over everyone. Until his campaign grew large enough to have its own security team, we helped with those jobs, too. When we saw the glitter bombers at a rally we would keep an eye on them and notify the police officers working at the event of what they most likely would do.
If they got overly disruptive, Josh and John, along with some of the boys in the Bates family, who had joined us, would gently but firmly edge the glitter bombers out of the crowd.
At one rally, I (Jill) was standing next to an older man, a very wealthy Iowa banker who had come out to support Santorum. I saw the glitter bombers making their move but not in time to warn the gentleman, and he got covered in green glitter. He was pretty upset! I’m not sure what the glitter bombers’ goal was, but if they were trying to win people over to their side, it wasn’t working.
We lived on the bus for several weeks during that time and actually got pretty good at understanding how truck stops work (although we never got over the sense of feeling like prisoners whenever they called our number for our turn in the shower).
In all, we campaigned for Santorum in ten states: Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, living on the bus everywhere except Michigan.
It was exciting, exhausting work—and very rewarding to watch the campaign grow from tiny stops in Iowa, where only a handful of voters showed up, and then to be thrust into a massive movement complete with professional-level event preparation, Secret Service presence, and a media frenzy wherever he showed up.
Our goal was to get the word out that Santorum was the family-values candidate everyone should get behind. We said that over and over wherever we went on the campaign trail.
Everyone on the campaign worked hard, but by early April, it was apparent that the vote had been split by other candidates running in the Republican primary and Santorum wasn’t going to gain enough delegates to put him over the top. In the first week of April, Dad was part of a conference call when the campaign team was told the campaign might be coming to an end. On April 10, 2012, Santorum made it official. His campaign had endured some losses and other setbacks—including his young daughter Bella’s near-fatal illness back home—and he pulled out of the race.
We were sad, but also grateful for all the experiences we’d shared in helping with a national campaign. We made many memories along the way, and we look forward to the next race.
Later in 2012, we were able to be a part of several local senate and representative races; many of the candidates we supported are now in office. You win some, you lose some. In the end it depends on the hearts of the voters. All we can do is get involved and do our part.
Our desire is to impact the world for God through the political scene. I (Jill) get energized by this work. We joke that it runs in our blood! And while Josh and I are willing to speak in front of crowds, others in our family would rather avoid that aspect. But we can all get involved in one way or another.
Jana, Jessa, and Jinger are happier being part of the crowd, handing out literature, chatting with the people who show up, working the phone banks, and taking care of behind-the-scenes duties. (Plus, our fearless sister Jana is right at home driving the bus—and although some of us have done it here and there, we’re happiest turning that job over to Jana and the guys!)
When we volunteered to help Senator Rick Santorum in his presidential campaign, Jinger was often called on to take campaign photos, but occasionally she found herself on the other side of the lens.
Some people think Christians should stay out of the political arena, but we strongly disagree. Our family believes faith and politics should go hand in hand, and we’ve seen countless examples of how that happens. For example, earlier this year, the Arkansas legislature passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, banning all abortions after twelve weeks’ gestation—even overriding the governor’s veto to make it final. Most of us older Duggar kids went down to the capitol to lobby for this, and our oldest brother, Josh, spent a good part of the session helping guide this bill through. The effort was led by conservative Christian legislators who campaigned on the principles they believed and then followed through when they were elected.
Our nation was founded on the Bible and on Judeo-Christian principles, and we see it as our responsibility to protect those freedoms by supporting candidates who hold true to those same values and principles. Our prayer is that by sharing our political experiences with others, many will see the need to get involved, and together we can all make a difference!