UNITED STATES
Baptist News

By Bob Allen

A disgraced evangelical family expert accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing or harassing 10 women was an early proponent of ideas now part and parcel of the Baptist Faith and Message.

A second amended complaint filed Jan. 6 in DuPage County, Ill., charged Bill Gothard and his ministry, Institute in Basic Life Principles, of sexual abuse, harassment and cover-up, with one woman claiming she was raped by Gothard and one of the ministry’s “biblical counselors.”

Today largely forgotten except for a recent brief mention that reality TV star Josh Duggar got counseling from a facility owned and operated by the Institute in Basic Life Principles after he sexually abused five minor girls as a teenager, Gothard once packed out 10,000-seat venues for his Basic Youth Conflicts Seminar, a conservative Christian counter to the hippie movement. It was characterized by a red…