by Chemical Emotions 5 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I cannot find anything remotely racist, and yet I know that some of their older publications that they do not include on the CD has some racist opinions. I was wondering if anyone else found anything from newer publications.
I don't WANT there to be any commentslike that, I'm just curious. I'm still looking.
Here is a good website to start with.
Thank you blondie you are an A++++ investigator! I found something from 1975 about "spirit and truth" that I shall post on another thread.
There was a lot of racist stuff in the Russell/Rutherford era publications, as the Watchtower's perceptive was pretty much representative of lower and middle-class white America of that era. It was in the Knorr era when the Society focused more on the 'global brotherhood' (an international multiracial 'great crowd'), with an ideal of fundamental equality between the different peoples of the earth and there was publication of a good deal of anti-discrimination rhetoric. Much of was presented as a criticism of the misdeeds of Christendom and a promotion of the supposed egalitarianism of the organization (however segregation was practiced in some congregations even as late as the 1970s). The Society also still generalized about qualities of the black 'race': "Really, our colored brothers have great cause for rejoicing. Their race is meek and teachable and from it comes a high percentage of the theocratic increase" (2/1/1952 Watchtower, p. 95). Many Gilead missionaries also held mainstream American views about other exotic cultures, and thus less than progressive views of indigenous peoples would find their way into the publications; the 9/15/1954 issue of the Watchtower, for instance, has a report of a missionary's fearful encounter with the Afar people in Ethiopia during a "forced landing in the heart of savage territory in dark Africa" (p. 557). Also the Society had a pessimistic view of the fight for civil rights in the 1960s, preferring instead to wait on Jehovah to correct injustice: "Equality of rights and privileges for all races ... will not be as a result of any civil rights movement or present-day social reform. Prejudices and hatreds are too deeply engrained...Man's attempts to eradicate them ... continue to fail" (7/1/1966 Watchtower, p. 391). At the same time, the Society began to express more reflective views about race and colonialism: "In many cases this colonial rule has been oppressive. It has kept subject peoples in ignorance through poor education. Local economies have suffered so the controlling power could benefit...Also, the attitude of superiority frequently displayed by the white powers made the colored persons constantly feel like second-class citizens, often in their own land" (5/1/1964 Watchtower, p. 262). And by the 1970s, we begin to hear the voices of PoC discuss their experiences of racial oppression in autobiographical articles in the publications (12/1/1974 Watchtower, pp. 707-714). Inequality and bias however still persist in the organization (e.g. see http://www.freeminds.org/life-stories/leaders/favoritism-and-the-jim-crow-laws-among-jehovah-s-witnesses.html).
Most of their predjudice is gender based. Women are not qualified for responsibility in the organisation. If they are not permitted to teach in the congregation, then how can they lead?
Thanks, blondie.
@dissed: Yeah, I know. I have found so much mysoginy that it litterally makes me sick sometimes.
