Jim Bob Duggar infamously makes potential suitors jump through hoops before they can “court” his daughters.
For years, people have wondered about the questionnaire that determined if they could date his daughters.
Jim Bob uses his wealth to control his adult children, ambushing his kids to control the narrative on social media.
Now, Jeremy and Jinger are revealing the exact questions that he used to gatekeep whether they could side-hug.
Jim Bob Duggar’s infamous Courtship Questionnaire, revealed!
On the Wednesday, December 3 of Jinger Duggar and Jeremy Vuolo’s Jinger & Jeremy podcast, they revealed the full Duggar Questionaire.
This infamous piece of lore has entertained and horrified longtime Duggar-watches for many years.
As Jeremy tells it: “10 years ago, I met a really cute girl, and I wanted to take her on a date, and then I met her dad.”
He recalled: “And when I asked her dad if I could take her on a date, he sent me a 60 page questionnaire with 235 questions that I had to answer before I took her on the date.”
Now, they’ve revealed all of the questions that Jim Bob Duggar asked before he would allow Jer to court Jing all of those years ago.
Jeremy did not list the literally hundreds of questions in their entirety. That would have made for a somewhat boring podcast. However, he did give viewers just a taste.
“What idols do you struggle with in your life? What is your church going history?” he listed.
Jeremy continued: What is your parents’ church going history? Was there ever any sexual immorality in your family? Please explain.”
That last question is a bold one, given that Jim Bob Duggar’s father was a monster in several ways, and we all know what sort of creature Josh Duggar decided to be.
“Have you ever kissed a girl?” the questionnaire asked. “How do you feel about having done this before marriage?”
The theology quiz really made Jeremy think
One key revelation is that this questionnaire did not come from Jim Bob Duggar himself.
Sure, he sent it to Jeremy Vuolo all of those years ago. But Ron and Rebekah Coriell penned “The Courtship Questionnaire.”
As we have seen with other material in this cult, from the abysmal homeschooling materials and beyond, there’s a market for extremely specific things like this within the fringes of society.
Jeremy returned his full answers at 107 pages.
Now, this may come as a surprise, but not everything in this questionnaire was a bad question.
“Some of them were on topics I hadn’t yet considered,” Jeremy admitted.
“He asked me everything from how I became a believer in my position on theological issues to my opinions on parenting and how I handle finances,” he listed.
“Because they were the kinds of questions that would save married couples a lot of pain and heartache,” Jeremy added, “if they asked them before they walked down the aisle.”
Those do sound like very valuable questions to ask before marriage. As we said, these are not inherently bad questions. (Well, most of them)
The issue, of course, is asking them before people even date. Actually, in this case, before they enter a courtship — chaperoned side-hugging isn’t even dating for tweens, let alone young adults.
Is there a silver lining to this gatekeeping?
Interestingly, Jinger did acknowledge that it was a comfort to her that Jeremy jumped through these hoops for Jim Bob Duggar.
It isn’t that she desperately needed to know his theological stance on the First Council of Nicaea’s alignment of Christmas with the existing Dies Natalis Solis Invicti holiday, or whatever.
Rather, she said that Jeremy proved himself just by filling it out. Obviously, with her family growing up on television, some people with bad intentions (as in, even worse than growing a fundamentalist family) came sniffing around.
Meanwhile, Jeremy was quick to point out that plenty of people might have aced the written test but not meant any of it. They both stressed the importance of getting to know someone.
Dating is for, among many other things, getting to know someone. In the fundamentalist world, however, courtship — a poor vehicle for knowing someone’s true self — is a prelude to marriage, and thus feels too late for asking the important questions.
Jinger grew up in a backwards world. She appreciated that Jeremy humored her parents in order to be with her.