What percentage of JWs have been disfellowshipped?

JWoods

I was just thinking about people I knew - and I come up with around 15% who were disfellowshipped. Some got re-instated, some left for good, I even know a few who were disfellowshipped more than once. It may be even higher than that - certainly it is pretty common in JWland.

I know that other religions have a theoretical state of disfellowshipping - the Catholics have excommunication, for example. And it is pretty rare, it seems in other faiths that follow it.

So - is there any other established major religion which has disfellowshipped so many of its own members as the witnesses?

asilentone

50 percent, there are about 40,000 df'd each year, it has been going on for years, Count them up!

pirata

Here's a statistical guess:

"Elders disfellowship 50,000 to 60,000 Witnesses around the world each year, Brown said." (http://www.religionnewsblog.com/7784/spiritual-shunning). That article was in 2002, in which year there were 6,000,000 publishers. That makes about 1% per year when comparing the number disfellowshipped to the number of publishers. This jives with the stats at http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php.

Applying 1% per year from 1961 to 2009 yields approximately 1,600,000 disfellowshippings.. Assuming that all those disfellowshipped in the past 50 years are still alive today, that means that ~ 1,670,000 / (7,000,000+1,670,000), 19% of the people, who have been or are JWs, have been or are disfellowshipped. The percentage number stays about the same even when applying a death rate of 0.85% per year to DF'd ones.

Numbers (publisher statistics taken from: http://www.jwfacts.com/images/publisher-table.jpg)

Year Publishers Est DF'd
1961 884,587 8,846
1962 920,920 9,209
1963 956,648 9,566
1964 1,001,870 10,019
1965 1,034,268 10,343
1966 1,058,675 10,587
1967 1,094,280 10,943
1968 1,155,826 11,558
1969 1,256,784 12,568
1970 1,384,782 13,848
1971 1,510,245 15,102
1972 1,596,442 15,964
1973 1,656,673 16,567
1974 1,880,773 18,808
1975 2,062,449 20,624
1976 2,138,537 21,385
1977 2,117,194 21,172
1978 2,086,698 20,867
1979 2,097,070 20,971
1980 2,175,403 21,754
1981 2,247,486 22,475
1982 2,342,634 23,426
1983 2,501,722 25,017
1984 2,680,274 26,803
1985 2,865,183 28,652
1986 3,063,289 30,633
1987 3,237,751 32,378
1988 3,430,926 34,309
1989 3,624,773 36,248
1990 3,846,311 38,463
1991 4,071,954 40,720
1992 4,289,737 42,897
1993 4,483,900 44,839
1994 4,695,111 46,951
1995 4,950,344 49,503
1996 5,167,258 51,673
1997 5,353,078 53,531
1998 5,544,059 55,441
1999 5,653,987 56,540
2000 5,783,003 57,830
2001 5,881,776 58,818
2002 6,048,600 60,486
2003 6,184,046 61,840
2004 6,308,341 63,083
2005 6,390,016 63,900
2006 6,491,775 64,918
2007 6,691,790 66,918
2008 6,829,455 68,295
2009 7,046,419 70,464
TOTAL 1,677,751

asilentone

where did jwfacts get those figures?

edited: I noticed that he said "est"= estimated.

Mad Sweeney

As he said, it is 1% of the number of publishers in any given year. It's an approximation but a good one.

pirata

They are the average publisher stats published yearly in the yearbook/watchtower (current year available online at http://www.watchtower.org/e/statistics/worldwide_report.htm)

The 1% figure I arrived at using a different source, but agrees with the 1% figure at jwfacts.

Note that the 19% is NOT 19% per year. It's 19% of those DF'd in the past 50 years compared to the average number of publishers today.

Mad Sweeney

So approximately for every 5 active Dubs on earth there is 1 DFd Dub.

5 against 1. I think we can take 'em.

JWoods

Very interesting - so my guess at 15% was a little low; probably it is more like 20%...

Now, asking again - is there ANY other religion who has disfellowshipped such a large number of their own membership?

I would guess not. I would also think that this number is a shameful stat for JWs.

Of course, JW leadership would be proud of it - they are "keeping the congregation clean".

I say if the organization were really so clean, they would not need to DF this many.

keyser soze

50 percent, there are about 40,000 df'd each year

Either your math is really bad, or there are only 80,000 JWs.

undercover

And remember... DFing is the official way out the door.

How many more have gone the 'fade' route... just quietly quit and never been tallied as someone removed.

Someone somewhere on this forum some time ago did some number crunching and came up with a hypothesis that the religion basically turns its memebership over every so often. Except for a fairly small percentage of die-hards, it's a revolving door of those coming and those leaving, especially among the young ones raised in it.

What percentage of JWs have been disfellowshipped?

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