Some incredible new publisher statistics and Graphs

by jwfacts 66 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  slimboyfat

  LittleToe,

  I don't think you could accuse me of producing a thesis, yet I did manage to provide hard evidence for my conclusion that fewer young people are going to church in Scotland.

  And it is a bit disingenous to imply that a thesis would be required anyway. Just some evidence to back up your claim, that is all - the way I did.

  You claimed that I am not willing to listen to your evidence, but then admit you don't actually have any apart from one local experience. So how can I have been unwilling to consider it? I am in fact very interested in hearing about new figures, and I am eagerly awaiting the release of the English figures this year.

  Of course my experience of churches is very limited, but that doesn't negate the well-documented decline of the churches in Scotland of course. I am unsure if you are trying to make some sort of connection, but I will spell out the obvious anyway.

  I don't know why it is relevant when I learned of the "2002 report" either, but for what it is worth I have been reading Brierley's publications since his Prospects for Scotland 2000 published in the mid-1990s. (that is probably before you were appointed an elder by the way)

  You write:

  It may well be that the current reversal is just a blip, but nonetheless it's an interesting one.

  But it is more than simply "interesting", it is a figment of your imagination until you can produce any evidence for it. I don't mean that to be cruel, but claims of "revival" are not exactly new, and it is no secret that for all the bluster of Christians about them in the past they have never amounted to anything.

  I have done considerable research on this subject and I have read all about the previous "revivals", all the excitement there was about the "new churches" and the "house church movement" in the eighties... again, they amounted to very little in the long run. So don't think the current talk about revival is anything particularly new either. It is old hat.

  I did not mean to be inflammatory in talking about "hiding" information. It was intended as humourous and ironic - as if to say you would want to "hide" your best evidence for your argument. Obviously you would not want to "hide" such good evidence, and the point I was trying to make is precisely that you are not hiding evidence for the simple reason that you don't have any.

  Slim
• 

  BluesBrother

  I double checked this figure . When I last attended a Circuit Assembly a clone on the platform made a big point of how great it was that over 250,000 were baptized last year . This was "Surely evidence that Jehovah was speeding up the work in his own time"

  He was either a liar, or more likely taking it from an outline and had not checked up .

  "yb98

  p.31WorldwideReport:1997GrandTotals***

  Total Number Baptized: 375,923"
• 

  BluesBrother

  I double checked this figure . When I last attended a Circuit Assembly a clone on the platform made a big point of how great it was that over 250,000 were baptized last year . This was "Surely evidence that Jehovah was speeding up the work in his own time"

  He was either a liar, or more likely taking it from an outline and had not checked up .

  "yb98

  p.31WorldwideReport:1997GrandTotals***

  Total Number Baptized: 375,923"

  !Whoops!)
• 

  slimboyfat

  AuldSoul,

  I am sure you agree that trends can turn on a dime, that certain events can spark renewed interest or renewed activism in generating interest in that which demonstrated a trendnig toward waning interest. You'd have to be oblivious to the last 50 years of fashion trends to believe otherwise.

  Some trends can turn on a dime AuldSoul, but not this one.

  Please get clued up on this issue, reading your posts is painful. Secularization is not like a fashion trend, it is intrinsic to the very nature of modern society. Claiming that secularization could have a sudden reversal is like saying industrialisation is just a fad, or this new reliance on science over superstition will never last. We are talking about deeply rooted societal developments here, not the pop charts! Have you read anything on the subject at all?

  He is not just speaking anecdotally of what he has witnessed, but is relating the general anecdotal reports he has heard from others in a position to know, as well.

  Maybe so. But church people have a long track record of talking up "revivals" that turn out to be damp squibs. There is no reason to think this time is any different. And besides, as I am at pains to point out, the most recent data shows that the decline, much less than being reversed, is actually accelerating.

  I never claimed that Britain was a barometer for the world by the way. There are very complex arguments about the relation of various modern societies in the secularization process produced by sociologists in the field. But I am not going to get into that when you will not even concede the mountain of evidence showing rapid secularization in Scotland.

  Anecdote of the sort LittleToe offered would be akin to anecdote from a member of Parliament reefrencing a recent upsurge in the number of young people who are activated in the political process. It is still "just" anecdote, but does not lack any authority due to that fact since a member of Parliament would be in a position to know the more recent general trends.

  And this is also precisely the sort of anecdote that serious students of the subject would have no interest in. Why rely on such poor evidence where there is pleny of good quantitative data that one can refer to? There can only be one reason for such a strange selection of poor evidence over good, and that has to do with wishing to reach a particular conclusion.

  I believe it is very shortsighted of you to insist that we must wait for a statistician to confirm what LittleToe stated he has observed and has heard reports of others in similar positions observing.

  It actually has more to do with sociological theory than statistics per se. But if I can't get you to listen to some basic figures on the subject it would be highly ambitious to try to get you to read such studies as I have: by Max Weber, Bryan Wilson, Callum Brown, Steve Bruce, James Beckford, Peter Berger and others. But I would be happy to share my favourite books on the subject if you are interested.

  Slim
• 

  LittleToe

  SBF:Boy oh boy, your'e obtuse
  Let's remind ourselves of what I actually wrote, before you continue inventing straw men:

  While making the claim that kids are becoming Christian all over Scotland, without qualifying that with numbers or any indication of a trend, I offered the following wee fact that is more up to date than the evidence you've considered:

  The numbers attending a local Scriptural Union, in one Secondary school on this wee island, has grown from 24 to 100+ in the last four years.

  Further, rather than merely speculate I wrote of that fact:

  I offered just one piece of local evidence because I could verify it and because this is merely one thread on a webboard, not a thesis on the subject.

  This wasn't a claim to needing a thesis, a derogatory remark regarding your own posts, or a claim that I intended to write thesis. It was a simple statement that this is merely a webboard, the kind that you have discussions on, like down your' local pub, ya know? Further, that it wasn't an unsubstantiated report of heresay, but something I had personally witnessed.

  Now get of yer high horse and drink some milk. It may help that irritable bowel of yours...
• 

  AuldSoul

  slimboyfat: It actually has more to do with sociological theory than statistics per se.

  Yeah, I knew that. However, secularization has occurred many times in the past and there has always been a sociological reaction to it, a resurgence of spirituality. Usually within one or two generations of the trend toward secularization. There is no reason to think this time will be any different than any other time.

  The Western mindset is evident in the works of Weber, Wilson, Bruce, Beckford, and Berger, in that they are each marking spirituality versus secularity according to false assumptions about behaviors associated with spirituality that are unique to historically Western expression of spirituality. Weber being an outstanding example of that bias. Wilson researched sectarian religous movements to a greater extent, but retained a distinctly European approach to the concept of religion in his analysis.

  Of those you mentioned, Berger comes the closest to a concept of spirituality that extends outside the Western perspective, but still insists on separating the objective from the subjective in his analysis, a peculiarly Western thing to do. His theory of the reification process has been described in detail in spiritualist writings dating back hundreds of years, it is hardly unique, but as with most advances in understanding, a concept isn't discovered until the Europeans discover it, isn't that right?

  Bruce's pet theory, from which the bulk of your postings to this thread actually originate, is not proven. In fact, there is quite a lot to indicate that organized religion (the Western model of religion) is the actual societal construct that secularization is impacting, but that secularization is having little effect on people's self-identification (subjective reality) as spiritual people. Since secular and spiritual are opposites, and secular and organization are not opposites, I am hard pressed to support Bruce's paradigmatic assertions. They rest on false assumptions.

  How do you respond?

  Respectfully,
  AuldSoul
• 

  AuldSoul

  Of the ones you mentioned, I am unfamliar with Callum Brown.

  [edit] From a search on Google, it seems Brown's work focuses rather narrowly on Britain. I thought I remembered the name from somewhere. Has he written anything more recent than Death of Christian Britain?

  If he limits his perspective to the impacts to traditional Christianity with its accoutrements, I am in agreement that secularization is having a huge impact. However, that has nothing whatever to do with spirituality.

  Respectfully,
  AuldSoul
• 

  Qcmbr

  My UK experience is that very few people are religious anymore. I have no statistics but I know from my door knocking days (over ten years ago) the vast majority of people don't seem to care beyond being annoyed by a door step call. I used to enjoy talking to people who cared enough to actually discuss faith on the doorstep but it seemed most people are worried more about current events and money. I rarely see the media portray religion favourably (Muslims are always shown to be the veiled threat, Anglicans constantly divided over gays, Catholics linked with paedophilia and all other fringe groups as slightly weird and dodgy.) At university I knew almost no fervent believers beyond my immediate circle (the christian union met in a small campus classroom - we had 20000+ students) and there were no religious education credits to be earned. The UK is very secular amongst the up and coming educated peoples as far as I can see. I wish it wasn't but on the other side I'm glad we aren't facing a fundamentalist bible belt in our political life.
• 

  Anitar

  What complete nonsense this all is. Not the research, but the very idea. To put it simply, God doesn't need "publishers." Nowhere in the bible does it say to attain your salvation you have to be a member of the WTS and "pioneer" door to door for a certain number of hours a month. Guess what? Each and every person's salvation was determined when Jesus died on the cross for our sins. No amount of works of men you do can change that. No one can give you or take away your salvation.
  
  However, a sharply brainwashed JW will say "the bible says that faith without works is dead." That's true. But notice the operative word is FAITH. It never says that salvation without works is dead. The passage means that if you believe in God and call yourself a Christian, and yet do nothing to help your fellow man, then you are a hypocrite, and your faith is meaningless. It doesn't say you need to buy your salvation by being a JW. Yet this is the basic foundation of the WT teaching!
  
  They do absolutely nothing to help the community. There are no Jehovah Witness soup kitchens, or homeless shelters, or hospitals. In a religion that values honesty above all, it is ironic that true honesty is discouraged. It is better to give the appearance of a good person than to actually be one. And so, no matter how faithful and "honest" the rank and file are, their faith is worthless.
  
  My mom was watchting a witness video yesterday about how youths can deal with the pressure of growing up in the "truth." It featured absurdly photogenic teenagers that looked suspiciously like paid models, from many countries of the world, using obvious token racial profiling. It was a thinly disguised "see how universal the watchtower is" message. Anyway, whatever questions they had, the answers they were taught were from watchtower sources. The outside world was portrayed as violent, perverted, and diseased. There was no mention of getting help from outside sources, and Jesus was never mentioned. So, basically, the idea was if you have a problem with being in the org, go to no one outside the org, and "pray more."
  
  And this is what they call Christian.
  
  Anitar
• 

  jwfacts

  Good comment Anitar

  AuldSoul - I am sure you agree that trends can turn on a dime

  Yes, it is hard to know without empirical evidence what is happening to the post 9/11 religious world.

  What my question is "Can the WTS trend turn on a dime?" Is there anything they can do to change the downward spiral?