It's not a message you're likely to hear from her parents, but Jinger Duggar Vuolo maintains birth control is a blessing.
In a new book she calls her "personal theological memoir," Vuolo quotes Christian author John Piper's view that "birth control is a gift from God that may be used for the wise regulation of the size of one's family, as well as a means of seeking to have children at the time which seems to be wisest."
Vuolo also believes she can listen to popular music, wear slacks and work outside the home without endangering her soul.
Those aren't necessarily the tenets she was taught when she was being homeschooled in Springdale, but she has come to embrace them since marrying six years ago and starting a family of her own.
Raised in Arkansas' most famous super-sized family, the 29-year-old mother of two has spent years discovering God for herself, a journey she shares in "Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear."
It's a pathway illuminated by Scripture; the Bible is mentioned more than 250 times, and she quotes from at least five different translations. Her book contains roughly 175 references to Jesus.
The title echoes Jesus' words in John 8:36: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." It also offers a retort to the "Free Jinger" online movement, which portrayed her as a captive to fundamentalism.
Thomas Nelson, a subsidiary of HarperCollins, is the publisher.
"Becoming Free Indeed" isn't an expose or a compilation of Duggar dirt.
The sixth of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar's 19 children says she had a wonderful, albeit highly publicized, childhood, thanks to cable network TLC and its "19 Kids and Counting." The appearances made her famous.
"My parents loved me and sacrificed so much for me. For all of us. They invested their time and energy and souls into raising me and my brothers and sisters. Their patience, kindness and love are things I want to imitate in raising my girls. They pointed me to Jesus. So, this is not a book about them," she notes early on.
BILL GOTHARD
While embracing the core tenets of the Christian faith, Vuolo has rejected the teachings of an evangelical leader they long admired, Institute in Basic Life Principles founder Bill Gothard.
Vuolo's book details the ways she believes his teachings have hurt people over the years. In "Becoming Free Indeed," Gothard's name comes up hundreds of times.
Gothard was viewed by many followers as an anointed Bible teacher with keen insight into successful parenting, marriages, procreation and ideal womanhood.
Some of his principles were based on observation, rather than first-hand experience, however.
"He was never married, never had children. But he had all the answers to life's problems, apparently, he claimed," Vuolo told the Democrat-Gazette.
Gothard opposed dancing and dating, and his views influenced how his followers ate, drank, dressed, worked, worshiped, prayed, played and handled their financial affairs.
He promoted "courtship" and homeschooling and warned of the harm caused by "generational curses." His rules for living were treated, by many followers, as gospel, Vuolo recalled.
Young people were not taught critical thinking skills, they were simply given rules to obey, Vuolo maintains.
Gothard, now 88, resigned in 2014, after more than 30 women accused him of sexual harassment and in one instance sex abuse, an allegation he denied.
RE-EXAMINED LIFE
After her marriage in November 2016, Vuolo began to re-examine many of the religious teachings she had previously accepted. The last several years have been "a disentangling process," she says.
"The more I started to process the teachings I was raised under by Bill Gothard, I started to realize how much it was really fear-based, superstitious, and it was really damaging, and my journey out of that the past six years has been difficult," she says.
Many of the people her age who grew up attending the institute's gatherings ultimately broke ties, with several she knows rejecting Christianity altogether, she says.
Vuolo dedicated her book "to those who have been hurt by the teachings of Bill Gothard or any religious leader who claimed to speak for God but didn't." She hopes the book will reach some of them, she says.
"If they've been burned by these false teachers, or people who claim to have this special element [of] truth outside of the Word of God, I want them to be free from that," she says.
Her goal was to "share my story, hopefully in a tasteful, winsome way, at the same time speaking truth," she says.
Vuolo, who lives in Southern California, is married to Jeremy Vuolo, a minister and former professional soccer player currently working for Grace Community Church, an evangelical megachurch near Los Angeles.
"He is shepherding one of the college Bible studies, and he loves doing that. On Thursday nights, he gets to preach to the college students," she says.
In May 2021, the couple jointly wrote an autobiography titled "The Hope We Hold: Finding Peace in the Promises of God."
A PERSON OF FAITH
While she has turned her back on Gothard, Vuolo remains a person of faith.
"From my perspective, I can't find anyone more lovely, or any story more compelling, than the story of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is what I live for. It is my hope and strength. It carries me through these difficult seasons," she says.
The difficult seasons include April 2021, when Joshua James Duggar was arrested on child pornography charges.
He had already been accused of sexually abusing five girls in 2002, though no charges were ultimately filed. After learning of the allegations, his parents sent him to work, for a time, at a Little Rock building belonging to Institute in Basic Life Principles, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has previously reported.
Convicted in December 2021 and sentenced in May to 12 years in prison, Duggar is housed in a low-security federal prison, roughly 20 miles southeast of downtown Dallas.
Vuolo believes the jury reached the right decision.
"I'm grateful for the justice system and that justice is being served," she says.
Asked what message she would have for her eldest brother, Vuolo says, "I would tell him that there is repentance found in Jesus Christ, in repenting of our sins and turning from that."
Jinger Duggar, one of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar's 19 kids, has moved to California with her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, and has written another book, "Becoming Free Indeed," which went on sale Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023.