by boyzone 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Have a look at this video, its about Megan, a 13 year old brought up by strict JW parents.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p4dyl
Waddya think?
I had to admire the parents and how they realised the damage they were doing to their daughter by the amount of control they subjected her to. I just wonder what sort of repurcussions they all got from the Kingdom Hall
Rats! The video didn't work when I accessed it. I'll try again later... Zid
I couldn't get it either. It might not be available outside the UK.
Any chance you can rip it boyzone?
Cheers
Chris
Looks good. The parents seem quite laid back JW's.
Paul
I watched the show but something didn't smell right to me.
The point at which I really began to doubt the story was when the mother was reading a good news bible, why would she not be using the NWT if she was a strict witness?
Reading between the lines the bullying the girl received had more to do with her being a lesbian. The bullying seemed to be the reason for removing her from school rather than because her parents were strict JWs (bearing in mind home schooling is pretty uncommon over here even for JWs).
The girls parents seemed to be very reasonable allowing her to do tae kwon do tournaments and go to parties (although granted it could be this was influenced by the presence of the film crew) There was no indication of strict meeting attendance and field service in the course of the film, and the film did little to explore how restricted Megan was by her parents. Overall her parents came across as being more than reasonable given her age and Megan's complaints would, to someone with no knowledge of JW life, seem like the complaints of a very average teenager.
My impression was that this was little more than a puff piece that didn't explore the real issues associated with being raised by strict JWs.
Megan says at 3.40 that she was bullied, "for being a Jehovah's Witness, or at least my parents were anyway".
It seems she was never really into it, and her parents are perhaps inactive now as well.
As I said I was reading between the lines, Megan also says that her bullies were close minded which I assumed meant they were homophobes. Why would she describe bullies as close-minded if they were bullying her for being a JW when she seemed to have no interest herself in being a JW?
It was interesting that she made the distinction that it was her parents who were JWs not her, at 14 I wouldn't have been allowed to make that kind of statement in public.
But I suspect you are right SBF, either they are inactive, or if you prefer a more conspiritorial angle, they were briefed to appear as moderate as possible.
Maybe they are inactive, but still think of themselves notionally as Jehovah's Witnesses. When her mother says things like "for God's sake" and "bloody hell" (I am not saying Witnesses don't swear, but it seems to me they would generally at least avoid doing so on camera) and says that although it's a bit of a test of her religion, she is fine with her daughter having same sex relationships, that's not just moderate, it's pretty detached from JW thinking. That she says these things on TV without apparently worrying about what other Witnesses will think perhaps means they don't even have much social contact with other Witnesses anymore. The likeliest explanation would seem to me that they stopped going to meetings years ago, that is was a bit of an issue when Megan was younger, and when the producers of the show heard about them being Jehovah's Witnesses they wanted to emphasize that angle because it makes a good backdrop for the "strict parents" narrative. The parents probably did not mind doing that, if they are simply inactive and still think of themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses.
The JW issue aside, I have to say the parents don't seem very strict at all, and it is hard to imagine they ever were - socially inept and a bit possessive perhaps, but not strict Jehovah's Witnesses. The whole programme seems a bit contrived, and there are probably other issues going on that don't make it to the surface. It said for example that Megan hadn't seen her cousin much for four years but now they are good friends again. I don't know what that's all about. It doesn't coincide with a period of strict JW adherence because Megan was attending Tae Kwon-do classes during that same time. It's all a bit strange.
SBF
My thoughts exactly, things weren't as simple as the show was portraying them. My parents were a lot stricter than Megan's and mine weren't as strict as some of the other families I knew as a child.
Thinking about it a bit more, you don't hear an awful lot from Megan's dad during the programme. Pure speculation, but maybe he was the one who was brought up as a JW, he is the strict one, his wife became a JW when they got together, but they both since drifted away. That would explain why the parents were strict in the past, and would also explain why the mother is apparently so eager now to see her daughter have a "normal" life and why she doesn't display ingrained Witness attitiudes toward socialising with non-Witnesses and same sex relationships.
