Duggar Family News: Religion Based Training Like ‘Cult’, Age And Gender Rule Keeps Jill, Jessa, Jinger Out

It’s that time of year in which the Duggar family starts promoting the ALERT Basic Training. The name that the organization has given to their religion based training has gotten everyone confused. Most people associate Basic Training with the very first steps in joining the military. While ALERT does not feed into the US military, it does have a heavy physical component to it that is very similar to a real army.

The age requirement to join this training is 17, and while the website does not outrightly specify that only men can apply, in the pictures, there are only male Christians taking part. In fact, when Jill Duggar Dillard uploaded an Instagram post promoting this camp, she wrote that some of her “bros” and “guys” she knows have done it before, which hints that it is very unlikely to see women participating in it.

More and more fans are speaking out about the fact that this religion based training is like a cult. While the Duggars like to call it a “wonderful” and “great opportunity,” it comes across differently to the followers of Jill & Jessa Counting On.

A fan commented, “This is sick! Disgrace & disgusting! Looks like some cult-like BS!” and another wrote, “Their close association with Gothard and vice versa is textbook definition of cult.”

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Some even went far as to link the Duggar family with Alt-RIght movement that wrecked havoc in Charlottesville.

“I wonder how many ALERT graduates were marching with the Alt-Right in Charlottesville last Saturday,” Laurie Reiz Altman wrote in the comment section.

She also went on to link that “[f]ake military-style boot camp” leads to the formation of “militia/hate group.”

And other fans noted that it seems rather unpatriotic for the men to actually not join the “real military” and that if the Duggars “love God and country,” they should be in the in the frontlines to defend other people’s rights.

This isn’t the first time that the Duggars made the news by promoting an event that only invited certain age and gender groups. Last week, Jim Bob Duggar, the patriarch of the family, led only the boys to Courageous Men of Word camp organized by Fort Rock. During the three-day camp, the boys honed their archery skills, as well as to how to fire a handgun and shotgun.

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Because these kinds of trainings are only available to boys, Duggar girls like Jill, Jessa, and Jinger have been able to avoid “cult” like camps. In fact, Jinger, who recently moved to Texas after getting married to Jeremy Vuolo, showed that getting away from her family has made her a much more liberated person in the way she dresses, and captures images with her photography skills.

[Featured Image by Duggar Family/Facebook]