MrsJones:
Are you saying that the experiences of unbaptised born-ins are of less importance than baptised born-ins and baptised walkins?yes thats what i'm saying.....oh boy
Your question kinda begged for full capitulation or antagonistic agreement. If you're gonna work the odds, sometimes they don't fall out in your favour I don't think the question was that fair, as it asked for a gross uber-generalisation in black or white terms, if answered without qualification. The experience of anyone who has been influenced by the WTS is of worth and there's little baseline by which to quantify the importance of that influence. Do we suggest that some one who was abused as a child and silenced by a body of Elders has an experience that is more important than someone who was DFed for smoking, for example? How do you quantify it?? I will say this, that whereas JWs might bend the rules concerning "necessary family business" if they really want to keep in contact with a DFed person, that the rules aren't so strict for someone who was never baptised. I will however qualify even that comment, however, by expressing that in my experience (I have no hard stats on it) black families were generally more hardline in their treatment of family members who rejected the WTS, regardless of whether they were baptised or not. I didn't see the same level of wholesale rejection in other ethnic groups. Given that Cordy lives in a generally white, working-class area of Britain, and one with which Tij and I are somewhat familiar, may I ask you:- who's experience might be more important? That's a rhetorical question because it's just as irrelevant as the one originally posited. Tij and I are male, whereas Cordy and yourself are female. The chances are that you'd understand certain aspects of the situation that we will not. What other ways can we parse the individual experiences? I think we can likely stuff being politically correct, given that different portions of the population of those affected by the WTS are going to have different responses. It's in the eye of the beholder to sift through it and see what she thinks flies with her own experience. Meanwhile there's little reason to be openly antagonistic towards one another, though if anyone wants to take that course I guess that it's also an option.... ... S P L A T