JW's who remain in the organisation but try to reform it - pissing against the wind

by jambon1 54 Replies latest jw friends

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  undercover

  Have any other cults reformed to become [more] benign and mainstream? brackets mine

  The Catholic Church?

  I mean, they're not burning people at the stake anymore, are they?
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  slimboyfat

  Have any other cults reformed to become benign and mainstream? Do you have any examples sbf?

  How about the Church of Scotland as just one example among many? It was only a couple of hundred years ago that such "mainstream" churches were doing things even JWs would not dream about doing today. In 1820 there was a local Church of Scotland minister who was nearly stripped of his position. What was his crime? Writing poetry would you believe! Not salacious poetry, far from it, but simply the act of writing poetry was deemed decadent in itself. I have never heard of a JW being disciplined for writing poety. Then there were the infamous kirk session trials mostly dealing with fornication, most involving vulnerable young women, with punishments including fines and excommunication, a severve sanction in close knit communities.

  Fornication was the bread and butter of session business with fines passing to the parochial fund for the poor, as one historian put it, 'the lascivious regularly providing for the needy'. With fornication cases regularly taking over a year - and sometimes several years - to complete, many kirk sessions were continuously engrossed with the sexual exploits of parishioners. A case usually started when an elder reported a pregnancy of a young unmarried woman. The woman and, if revealed, the father would appear to give evidence, and third parties would be summoned if guilt was not admitted. Kirk session minute books recorded the voyeuristic nature of the meetings... The session of Holyrood in Dumfriesshire believed none of the women in six cases of alleged rape in the eighteenth century, and the Stirling Presbytery of the Antiburgher Church rejected out of hand a woman's claim in 1773 that she had been raped at gunpoint and instead disciplined her for fornication. If a woman denied that she was pregnant, or that she had secretly given birth, or that she had attempted an abortion, or that she had committed infanticide, then it was known for kirk sessions to order that her breast be milked for 'evidence' - a demonstration of 'guilt' carried out by midwives, doctors and, in one case, by a woman's sister. Callum G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707 (Edinburgh, 1997), pages 70 and 71.

  I have not yet heard of a JW judicial committee milking breasts to determine pregnancy.

  To put this into perspective, the Church of Scotland is now generally regarded as on the liberal end of the spectrum among Christian denominations, even to the extent that recent internal debate within the church is on the verge of making it the first large denomination in the United Kingdom to accept openly homosexual ministers. That's a considerable turn around would you not agree?
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  Gayle

  Interesting, sbf,,thank you. Your comments are making me consider more about the evolution of the WTS.

  It is horrible how many organized religions have been in the past,,200 yrs ago and less, so cruel, inhumane,,arrogant,,,giving so much fear to their people,,with rules against music, dance, and movies too. Some churches denounced tv as the devil's eyeball,and that proved not to work for those religions. As the cultures gradually grew with education and awareness, these religions had to modify,,Catholic Church even 50 yrs ago was excommunicating quite a bit to their average parishioners,,like even for their people divorcing were excommunicated. Their people seemed to have gotten more educated in most countries and less fearful of them however many, maybe even most, remain .

  It's obvious,,the WTS is not controlling their youths so much any more,,trying to not let them get too educated with college,,can't get them to stay off Facebook, etc. Will they lower their bar to not disfellowship so much,,sounds like they aren't even disfellowshipping for blood transfusions any more; seems like they are disfellowshipping less, as long as members aren't so "brazen" about these rules. Although, probably disfellowshipping for "apostasy" is increasing. But in this Internet Age will they be able to modify fast enough? Seems like many of their members are doing so much their own way now, anyway, aslong as they just keep these issues to themselves, although creating more and more to be hypocritical. But many members of other religions have been doing it that way for many decades now.

  Can they or will the Governing Body move fast enough? I, myself, do not consider them more rigid than Knorr, Franz or Rutherford. I see them as more dazed and confused, just have been followers themselves all these decades. Knorr, Franz and Rutherford didn't have the challenges like these 7 GB guys do now. There was lots of cheap JW literature available 50 yrs ago brought to their doors/KHs. Now the abundant counter facts of JWs and their history is free right in the public's own homes/schools and even at work at any given moment that anyone wants to know.

  Watching this is sure frustrating, yet very interesting at times.
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  leavingwt

  When I use the word reform, I'm implying at least one thing: They no longer consider themselves to be 'the only true religion'.
• 

  aSphereisnotaCircle

  If the society goes a little more mainstream, they will survive and flourish just fine.

  They will soon stop talking about the blood issue, they will just drop it, then that whole thing will die out on its own.

  Shunning is bad for business, they will eventually see that and let that go too.

  if they drop those two issues and then lighten up on a few more, then they are just another christian religion.

  And then they will survive just fine.

  The above posters are right, if you read up on how religions are born and progress or die it follows the same pattern.

  Some schism breaks off from the main church, they claim themsleves to be the "true religion" and they have very strick rules. Most of these break off religions die out on there own or never progress anywhere.

  A very small minority manage to survive, they get bigger and bigger, but they finally get to the point that the only way they can grow any bigger is to be softer and gentler so that they can attract a larger portion of the population. When they are small the attract the more extreme minority of the population, but once they have saturated that market, they have to go mainstream to grow/survive.

  IMO, the society will be forced into softening up, or die.
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  wobble

  There is a distinct similarity between the way they operate now and Cold War eastern bloc Communist regimes.

  They should learn from the demise of these, once people have seen enough over the wall, they tear down the (Berlin) wall, and the regime topples, some of the old guard hang on to power, but only a few.

  With the Internet giving many people that look over the wall, they need to reform big time, or be ousted.
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  dozy

  The Worldwide Church of God is one example of a church that reformed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Communion_International I suppose the Baptists are as well - they used to be regarded as a fringe religious groups but now are virtually mainstream.

  SBF is right when he says that reform was close in the late 70's - if Ray had been able to muster up a couple of like minded supporters on the GB , then it would have morphed into a much more classically Christian organisation. If Ed Dunlap had been anointed and been appointed on the GB - who knows? Sadly - I suspect in terms of rapid reform from within , this was probably the one chance that the WTBTS had , and the hardliners won out.

  We often forget that the WTBTS has already evolved tremendously - the current set-up is light years away from Rutherford's time. You just couldn't imagine Rutherford attending "worldly" conferences , signing up to the UN charter or doing much of what JWs do now - he was always in tension with "the world" back then. The idea that JWs could take all kinds of blood products would have been impossible.

  I don't perceive too much of an agitation for change from the R&F - the WTBTS makes sure that any independent thinking is suppressed (eg KM Sep 07). They also have closed branches in countries (such as Spain & Italy) where they perceive problems might occur. The move towards a very much dumbed down membership means that the scholarly JWs (like Penton) are few & far between. The few that do stick their heads above the parapet risk expulsion. Any reform would have to come from higher ups in NY.
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  discreetslave

  Matthew 2:21 Nobody sews a patch of unshrunk cloth upon an old outer garment; if he does, its full strength pulls from it, the new from the old, and the tear becomes worse. 22 Also, nobody puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine bursts the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins. But people put new wine into new wineskins.”
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  wobble

  I agree with the wisdom of that quote DS, or to put it more crudely in modern parlance, ;

  " It's no good trying to reform a crock of s**t, reform it is as much as you like, you're still left with a crock of s**t !" or:

  "You cannot polish a turd"

  Hence the thread title is spot on.
• 

  leavingwt

  The Worldwide Church of God

  Two points about this religion, after the reform. (1) They no longer claim to be the only true religion (2) Their membership is now a fraction of what it once was. (On a side note, dozens of splinter groups resulted. Some of these claim to be the only true religion. They are tiny.)