are Jehovah's Witnesses a cult? You decide...

under_believer

There are no new thoughts in this post, but I felt like this topic was timely, what with it being convention time again, and with the anti-education rhetoric they've been spouting lately.

There are many definitions and lists of criteria for the concept of "cult." This is only one of them, so your mileage may vary. This one is from the U.K.'s Cult Information Centre (http://www.cultinformation.org.uk), an educational charity that's been in existence for 20 years, focusing on cult education and research.

According to the CIC, every cult can be defined as a group having all of the following five characteristics:

1. It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain its members.
2. It forms an elitist totalitarian society.
3. Its founder/leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma.
4. It believes 'the end justifies the means' in order to solicit funds and recruit people.
5. Its wealth does not benefit its members or society.

I'd like to stress that, again, this is only _one source's_ definition of "cult." There are others. Now, do the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Watchtower Society, meet these criteria?

#1 might be the easiest one to see. The JW recruitment style often uses bait-and-switch, love bombing, and fear to get people to sign up, to indoctrinate them, and to retain them. How is it not psychological coercion to tell people they'll die if they quit the religion? How is it not psychological coercion to cut off all contact with family members and friends if someone steps out of line? How is it not psychological coercion to insist, overtly, that people not think for themselves?

#2 is pretty clear too, at least to me. Spend 5 minutes listening to a group of Witnesses talk about "worldly" (i.e., non-Witness) people and you will have no trouble putting them in the "elitist" category. Almost any Public Talk will do as well; non-Witnesses are painted as greedy, craven, immoral, evil people, with only Witnesses able to understand the Bible and act on the morality contained within. And as far as totalitarianism goes... Witness wives are not supposed to think for themselves, but instead to follow, without question or complaint, the direction of their husbands, EVEN IF THEY KNOW FOR A FACT THEY ARE WRONG. Families are to do the same with elders, elders with Circuit Overseers, Circuit Overseers with District Overseers, District Overseers with the various "departments" at the Brooklyn, NY headquarters, and the "departments" with the Governing Body. This is a strictly enforced hierarchy and stepping out of it will bring down sanctions on the disobedient one, up to and including being kicked out of the faith (see: #1). Mothers are encouraged to observe and report to the elders the wrongdoing of their children, as are husbands with wives, children with parents, friends with friends. Each member is expected to fill out a form stating exactly, down to the hour spent and the booklet "placed," what activity in their personal ministry in God's service they perform each month, and these are all sent to the Society who keeps them in a massive database detailing each member's activity. Orwell could not have designed a more totalitarian environment.

#3 is also a no-brainer. The Governing Body is the head of the Witness organization, which they refer to as "Jehovah's [this being the 17th-century English mistranslation of the tetragrammaton that they have decided God wishes to be referred to as by people of any language worldwide] Organization." The Governing Body takes its authority from what it says are the fulfillment of various prophecies from the Bible, fulfillments that they say they qualify for. Who has interpreted these various Bible passages? You guessed it, the Governing Body. They are therefore self-appointed--the Body itself appoints new members, and individual Witnesses have no say in the matter whatsoever. They most certainly are also dogmatic--as already discussed, it's their way or the highway. Frequently, "understandings" or interpretations of scripture are introduced without any context or proof, and of late they have grown bold with pronouncements and rules that they don't even attempt to back up with anything but their own authority, such as the recent ban on casual clothes after one leaves their summer convention. They are accountable to no one but Jesus and Jehovah, they say, and they are the ones who decide what Jesus and Jehovah want their followers to do.

#4 is the only point on which it is possible to vacillate. Certainly the Society is very mercenary when it comes to obtaining funds, encouraging elderly people to write their heirs out of their wills and make the Society the sole beneficiary of their estates. Certainly the pyramid-scheme-like fundraising of the three yearly conventions, where one can always be guaranteed to hear that the funds are thousands and thousands of dollars short, implicitly passing a virtual collection plate if not a physical one, lends credence to the "anything goes" notion of collecting money. On the other hand, they're not beating people up in the hallway and stealing their milk money. Recruitment is easier to prove, though... there is a Witness concept called "spiritual warfare." This is a policy wherein any member including the leadership is allowed to lie if it is a subject which a government authority "has no business to know." This seems like a "end justifies the means" policy to me if there ever was one.

#5? Fahgeddaboudit. The Society brings in billions of dollars in cash and estate donations, real estate appreciation and sales, and stock growth every year. This money goes into the Society, and only a (comparatively) little bit comes out in the form of a Kingdom Hall Building Fund for third world countries, printing of literature, building of facilities, and support of certain classes of full-time employees of the Society. They don't pay taxes. Where is this money going? What is it being used for? Nobody knows, but it certainly isn't benefiting society at large. It's not benefiting members either, unless you count efforts to recruit more new members into a totalitarian society as benefiting them.

So, what do you think? Are they a cult by this or any other definition? I've gone back and forth on this question since I've been posting here but at this point I'm solidly in the "yes" column.

are Jehovah's Witnesses a cult? You decide...

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