When we first learned that Josiah Duggar was courting Marjorie Jackson, it was widely assumed that the arrangement would end in marriage.
After all, when the Duggars reach the point where they’re announcing their romantic relationships to the world, it usually means the potential spouse has been thoroughly vetted, and a wedding is already in the works.
But after weeks of hype and engagement ring shopping, something strange happened.
First, Marjorie disappeared from Josiah’s Instagram page.
Shortly thereafter, it was announced that Josiah and Marjorie had ended their courtship, an almost unheard-of move in the Duggar’s world.
A few months later, word got out that Marjorie was writing a book, and the news was met with a decidedly mixed response.
The Duggar faithful feared a damaging tell-all, while critics of the family eagerly awaited the very same.
On Monday, Marjorie’s book – Devoted: A Girl’s 31-Day Guide to Good Living With a Great God – finally hit stores (and Kindles) and it seems she’s managed to pull off the difficult task of satisfying those on both sides of the Duggar debate.
Not surprisingly, she doesn’t throw any direct shade at the Counting On clan.
(For better or worse, the Duggar’s remain her number one claim to fame.)
However, there are some excerpts that are being interpreted as Jackson’s subtle commentary on the Josh Duggar sex scandals, which many believe are the primary reason she decided to end her relationship to Josiah.
Not surprisingly, Marjorie spends much of the book emphasizing the importance of sexual chastity:
“Where promiscuousness once would have been the hush-hush elephant in the room, it now seems that purity sticks out loudly more than ever in a world where anything and everything goes,” she writes at one point.
She later adds:
“How do we handle relationships? What kinds of movies, music, websites, jokes, and conversations do we allow and engage in? Is our dress suggestive and provocative, or modest and proper for a girl professing to have Jesus in her heart?”
Without the context of a young woman who recently cut ties with a family who’s famous for covering up a series of sex scandals, perhaps those quotes wouldn’t seem so damning.
Marjorie goes on to warn her young readers about the pitfalls of entering a courtship blindly, without foreknowledge of the family one might be entering into:
“Be sure to screen each potential suitor through your dad or anything trusted Christian spiritual leader first!” she writes in the book.
“That will help weed out the creepers and determine character.”
And just what makes one a creeper?
Well, in Marjorie’s book (literally) creepers are those who perv out on the Internet, not unlike Josh Duggar when he used the Ashley Madison website to cheat on his wife:
“Those words we text, e-mail, write and post on social media…God sees it all,” Marjorie warns, adding:
“Jesus never excluded any of our methods of communication, on or out of cyberspace.”
Watch for Josh’s confessional memoir about the pain of being roasted to a crisp by a teenage girl, which will probably be released this fall.
We kid, but seriously – that’s some nice passive-aggressive shade on Marjorie’s part.
