Excerpt from Barbara G. Harrison's book, Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses:
"We at Bethel used to point with pride to the fact that while missionaries of "false religion" traveled in first-class comfort to their assignments, our missionaries were sent third class and, like a religious Peace Corps, lived like the people among whom they served. It never occurred to us to worry that Knorr traveled first class. We were an adaptive group.
" The phenomenon of denying the evidence, and making no connections or faulty connections, is common to all people whose need to believe overcomes their rational judgment. Faced with the fact that some of their leaders have been suspected of hitting the bottle with a passion, confronted with the rumors that a small brothel was once maintained on Willow Street in Columbia Heights for the entertainment of Bethelites around mid-century, Witnesses' eyes glaze, and they will either refuse to countenance the charges or stoutly maintain that God's servants are "imperfect vessels.”
" Time speaks softly of the dead. In the case of the Witnesses, it is often mute. The Witnesses have notoriously short and selective memories. The Society smothers unsavory parts of its past under the blanket of its current preoccupations. During the 1940s and early '50s, when I was a Witness and a member of the headquarters staff, it was as if Charles Taze Russell had never existed. This vivid, controversial personality had at best a shadow life; he was seldom, if ever, spoken of. Any discussion of him was likely to be aborted with the phrase "We are not followers of any man." The Society does not talk unkindly of its dead; it doesn't talk of them. It was not until the mid and late '50s that edited accounts of Russell's life and activities began to appear in Watchtower histories. Merciful time (with help from revisionist historians) has blurred Russell's difficulties. In Watchtower histories, the man who died on October 31, 1916, with $200 in a personal bank account-having invested his money in the Society in return for voting shares that gave him complete financial control-goes down as a simple, homey man."
I loved this book. I was a shunned apostate for nearly ten years, never having contact with any other ex-witness until this book came out. I wrote to Barbara and she wrote back to me, wishing me a good life. I've never understood why this book hasn't been read by more ex-witnesses.
