Oh, honey. Just walk away. Who cares what they call you? Your dignity comes from who you are inside, not from what people call you.
Some interesting news....
by Faithful-n-Discreet Wife 12 Replies latest jw friends
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WTWizard
I believe the only way to play the rebaptism card is if you were unknowingly living an immoral life at the time of the first baptism and then found out after the fact (and with their stupid rules, that is fairly easy to do). Suppose you were married, thinking it was proper, and got baptized. Later, you found out that your mate was not divorced on "proper" grounds. The mate likely had a paper divorce on grounds that would not suit the Watchtower Society. Now, you had been committing "fornication" because the marriage would not have been approved had everyone known the whole story. You now have the chance to fix the problem and then get rebaptized (or alternatively walk out).
In this case, they would be watching you. If you stall, or start doing other things to backslide, I believe they would still disfellowship you. For instance, the "sin" that should have stopped you from getting baptized is technical fornication. Now, you announce your intent to get rebaptized, and then do nothing to fix the problem or you start doing other things (like apostasy). They would then disfellowship you for the new or continued offense, since there is no attempt to make good on it.
Walking away after playing the rebaptism card is also likely to produce behind-your-back disfellowshipping. Once you make the decision to work toward rebaptism, they would expect you to attend all or most of the boasting sessions. If you now start missing most of the boasting sessions, they are likely to treat it as a disfellowship. Even if you temporarily lose your "right" to go out in field circus, it would be expected that, once you fix the problem, you would go back out in field circus early in the following month or in the then-current month. And the rebaptism would be at the next a$$embly following correction of the "problem" (which they would expect you to do in short order).
Note that it only applies to when the sin was beyond your reasonable ability to know about it. If you knew, or reasonably (according to them) should have known, that it was a sinful situation, you can forget rebaptism. Your only options would be to fix the problem and take a reproof, or get disfellowshipped. This also applies for new sinful situations that happen after baptism. Even then, the whole article could be out of date with the blinking light (depending on which one happens to be on at the time).
Of course, the exception would be the pedophile that abuses supposed authority to molest children within the flock, and then coerces the victim to stay silent under the Two Witness Rule. Those people do not have to change anything in order to remain in good standing. In fact, the victim can get disfellowshipped for warning others about it or trying to call the cops. With such hypocrisy, I would suggest just walking out and disfellowshipping them for hypocrisy.
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MissingLink
I doubt they would go along with it, but even if they did - the announcement would be "___ is no longer a Jehovah's Witness". To everyone in the congregation they won't have the distiction of DF, DA, or AB (annulled baptism). They would treat you like you were DF any way.
I've thought about this myself. Since I was 16 at the time and should not have been old enough to enter a contract. I think mine should be annulled.