Okay, JanH, if I ask it another way, maybe it will merit a reponse:
What Watchtower beliefs does Ray Franz adhere to that prompts you and SaintSatan to charge that he remains 99% JW?
The reason for my curiosity is that his 3-inch book "In Search of Christian Freedom" essentially exposes every doctrine I know of that is unique to Jehovah's Witnesses, and then some. He even cautions against any adamant interpretation about Armageddon, the millenium, and a literal paradise earth.
If you mean he is 99% Christian, that is unfair. He is 100% Christian.
I think you are also incorrect that his resignation from the Governing Body was purely voluntary. He was pressured into it. In the years since 1975 he had been too effective in achieving what some today would call 'reform'. Shunning was almost totally abolished.
There is even indication of direction toward eliminating the 'two-class Christian' doctrine. That was the big issue that erupted behind the scenes in the 1980 shake-up. Some of those who were not disfellowshipped over that issue left the organization voluntarily then or soon after.
After Ray left Bethel, he continued to have significant influence, not only among the Bethelites with whom he had been so popular when he served on the GB, but with some members of the GB itself. I believe this is why he was ultimately disfellowshipped.
Throughout the proceedings against him, his uncle, who was the WT president at the time, is conspicuously in the shadows, seemingly indifferent to the whole episode. Even in Ray's CoC book, it could appear as if the whole thing was instigated and carried out by a couple of the GB members. Do you really think so?
There were legal reasons why Ray was forced to resign from the GB and then later disfellowshipped after being given a pitance for his years of loyal service. But if he had remained on the GB, the Jehovah's Witness religion would very likely be an entirely different religion than what it is today.
So again I ask, what is the basis for saying that his beliefs are 'only slightly different than JWs', or 99% JW, unless you are saying that Christianity as a whole is 99% JW?
Bud
Bud
'The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size' --Oliver Wendell Holmes
