LDH,
I agree that JW followers today often wave away the idea that the Watchtower Society might be a cult because the leadership is so diffuse. It's easy to forget that a corporation allows a group of people to have the same legal powers, rights, and liabilities as an individual.
It is even more difficult to pinpoint leadership and responsibility nowadays, what with at least three different corporations in Brooklyn alone and the "spiritual" leadership of the Governing Body working from the sidelines.
CPiolo,
I agree that Russell and Rutherford, and to an extent, Knorr and Franz, were charismatic leaders. I see Knorr as more authoritarian than charismatic. Franz, from what I've heard, was charismatic, but his influence was mostly under the guise of Knorr's leadership.
In the case of Russell and Rutherford, I'm guessing that people weren't as alert to the dangers of charismatic leaders and cults in the first half of the century. After World War II, totalitarianism became a big concern. I don't recall much mention of cults until the 1970s.
Sinclair Lewis published Elmer Gantry in 1927, but evidently the public wasn't ready for the message. This is from the back of the book:
Today universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church--a saver of souls who lives a life of hypocrisy, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence--is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no record of itself. Elmer Gantry has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since Voltaire.
bluesapphire,
I think an indirect approach is helpful to those who still believe in Jehovah's Witness doctrine. If you try to reason directly about Jehovah's Witness beliefs and the history of the organization, automatic defenses go up, it is viewed as an attack, and you are often viewed as an attacker.
It seems much easier for a JW to look at an example of someone else's twisted religious history and see the flaws. Defenses are down and the information soaks in unconsciously. I would just loan your sister the book if you buy it. Allow her the time and space to make the comparisons on her own.
Scully,
I agree that the cumulative damage done by the WTS is far worse than what Jim Jones did. And that's only counting those who died literal deaths. What about all the people who have been killed in spirit, as Scott Peck describes in People of the Lie?:
When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is also that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life--particularly human life--such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head. Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others--to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredictability and originality, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity.[bolding mine]
Ginny
