There may be even more tension over the holidays in the Duggar family home this year.
Jessa Seewald, the third-oldest Duggar daughter, shared a post on her family’s website that was written by her father-in-law, Michael Seewald, and critical of her brother Josh.
Josh Duggar was revealed last month to be one of millions who had used the cheating website Ashley Madison. Duggar apologized after his name was released as part of a hack of the site, and he said he had “been the biggest hypocrite ever.”
He has since entered rehab.
The scandal came months after Duggar was forced to apologize when reports alleged that he molested girls as a teenager, including his sisters. He said then that he “acted inexcusably.”
On the Seewald site, in a post headlined “Grief, Shame, And Taking The LORD’s Name In Vain,” Michael Seewald writes that he does not “wish to add any more distress to a family still recovering from the indignity of the publication of a police report detailing Josh’s sins as a teenager.”
“Though I have never gotten to know Josh very well, I have great respect for his sorrowing parents and immense sympathy for his dear wife Anna and their four children,” Seewald writes. “I myself have been mourning over the irreparable damage that has been done to many by this whole circumstance, yet the reason I feel obliged to make these remarks is an overwhelming desire to vindicate the name of God.”
He goes on to call Duggar a “pretender.”
“True Christians fail often, but their lives are truly being conformed to the image of Christ,” Seewald writes. “Do not look at Josh and justify your own sins by dismissing the reality of genuine faith and a holy God.”
Jessa Seewald said in June in an interview with Fox that she was one of the girls at the center of her brother’s molestation scandal. Following the news of the Ashley Madison scandal, she posted a sermon about adultery on her Facebook page.
She married Ben Seewald in November 2014, and the couple is expecting their first child in November.