The first Finnish disputation on Ex Jehovah's Witnesses has been accepted at Turku University. 20 Ex JW's and the Finnish Watchtower spokesman were interviewed in this study. Here is the abstract in English.
The study “Vartiossa maailmaa vastaan” (On Guard Against the World) discusses the religious movement of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and issues involved with leaving the organization. The examination of the movement is built on earlier research on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the movement’s own literature, as well as the experiences of people who have left the organization. The description of withdrawing from the organization, in turn, is based on the interview material of ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses (hereafter Ex-JWs), and the framework of the subject treatment is the process-likeness of leaving the organization. The purpose of this study has been to determine how the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization maintains segregation and controls the dealings of people inside with people outside the organization, and what factors make members resign from the movement. Further questions of interest concerning withdrawal from the movement were how the withdrawal itself takes place and what kind of effects does withdrawal have on Ex-JWs.
I have examined, on the one hand, the Jehovah’s Witnesses (hereafter JWs) as a religious community from the viewpoint of internal and external segregation, and on the other hand, withdrawal from the community as a narrated experience. In my work, I have applied the grid-group cultural theory about social context developed by anthropologist Mary Douglas to examine the JWs community as the social environment of the withdrawal. The JWs community represents what Mary Douglas’ four-field model identifies as an environment of strong grid and group dimensions, where there is high tension between the inside and outside environment. In the grid-group cultural theory, the grid dimension refers to how much the social system, with its various role expectations, rules, and practices, limits and regulates the individual’s choices. In environments of strong grid dimension, institutional classifications heavily regulate personal activity and limit individual autonomy. In the research data, a strong grid dimension is revealed by the common and shared doctrine and the hierarchical normativity of the community.
In an environment with a strong group dimension, group membership is central, and the group’s interests often override those of individuals. The group also regulates its members’ human relationships both with each other and outsiders. Group unity is boosted, for example, by favoring intra-group marriages and encouraging mutual control among members. Both of these themes recurred in the research material. In environments with a strong group dimension, the group boundaries are also emphasized. From the viewpoint of Professor Veikko Anttonen’s theory concerning the sacred, a community that guards its external boundaries sees itself as unique and holy, and the outside, respectively, as profane. It follows that such communities strive to keep the inside and outside distinctly separated and to block outside influences, which they view as evil, as efficiently as possible. By highlighting the boundary between the inside and outside in various ways, the JWs try to keep views that differ from their own established truth outside. For example, the community has strong reservations about studies, which may broaden the individual’s thinking and lead to questioning their prevailing practices and adopting new views. However, keeping people completely isolated from external reality is not entirely possible, and sometimes members will inevitably come into contact with the surrounding world. This may lead to a comprehensive questioning of the collective reality and abandoning the community, even at the risk of personal losses. All informants claimed to have been aware of the effects of their withdrawal on, for example, their close relationships, but were nevertheless convinced that withdrawal was the correct, and at the moment the inevitable solution. The JWs organization tries to keep thinking and opinions in the community as uniform as possible. Not everyone is content with this, however, especially if one’s thoughts differ from the prevailing model of thinking. Since the formation of individual opinions is not desirable, adopting free, independent thinking is not easy. Withdrawal from a fenced-in community that restricts individual activity towards independent decision-making in personal choices was often the result of long consideration, and it demanded both courage and determination.
It is evident from the research material that the withdrawal process from the JWs community is often long and multi-phased. Although the experience of each Ex-JW is unique, and there is no single explanation, some common elements can be seen in each withdrawal narrative. The research data highlighted three theme areas, namely the doctrine/meaning system, normativity and human relationships, through which the research participants described their lives as JWs and their withdrawal from the community. Often considering withdrawal involves contemplating different alternatives and trying to leave in a way that causes as little harm to one’s self and loved ones. The actual withdrawal is preceded by multi-level doubts and questioning, which describe the person’s gradual diverging from the community. The withdrawal itself takes place either actively through an independent decision or passively by excommunication. However, this is ambiguous, since often people who were excommunicated felt that they had already made a decision which they believed would have eventually led to their resigning. Furthermore, there were characteristics in the active leavetakers own behavior that might have led to excommunication.
Doubts concerning doctrine and the meaning system may start at an early stage. Some of the participants who had voluntarily joined the movement claimed that their first suspicions had already begun around the time of their joining, and even those who had been acculturated to the community as children reported sprouting doubts concerning the accuracy of specific doctrines during their youth and even childhood. Doubts about the accuracy of doctrine ultimately led to questioning the meaningfulness of belonging to the whole community. Various themes related to independent thinking were presented in several withdrawal narratives. Especially with young people, there were also occurrences of questioning the normative structure of the organization, which often led to actively opposing the rules. JWs are usually well informed about the rules and the possible consequences of defiance. Because one of the possible consequences is being excluded from the group and being classified as a “non-person”, one possible solution for young people wrestling with a withdrawal decision was to assign responsibility for the withdrawal to the community. Thus, while provoking excommunication, they felt fear of the future and, in particular, fear of losing important relationships.
In some cases, the events leading to withdrawal were preceded by disappointment in the community or some of its members. Disappointment was often evident in the narratives of participants who had joined the JWs with a sincere mind. Disappointment could also be associated with certain life crises, when various problems were intertwined. In such cases, it is not necessarily easy to distinguish whether it was a clear resignation from the JWs or if withdrawal was a by-product of, for example, a divorce or other family problem. It was possible that after withdrawing from the JWs as a consequence of a crisis, people had feelings of guilt, and the anxiety could last for several years. How Ex-JWs relate to their past is largely dictated by the withdrawal experience. If it entailed much controversy, Ex-JWs can have negative and bitter feelings toward their former social environment. In addition, new knowledge acquired from different sources may generate negative thoughts, even after a long time has passed. Similarly, ill-treatment by the community as well as losing important relationships can affect the views of Ex-JWs. If the Ex-JW had managed to maintain at least partial contact with his or her family, the narrative was often conciliatory and positive, and it expressed understanding of the parents, family, friends, and the JW community.
After withdrawing, people also redefine their relationship with their own religiosity and with religion in general. According to the interview material, it seems that no matter what kind of religious orientation people have adopted after withdrawal, it will inevitably have changed form in some way. After withdrawing, Ex-JWs often acquire a more flexible and critical attitude toward religion in general, other religions, and their own religiosity. They have either completely abandoned religious reflection and religion means little or nothing to them, or they have chosen to adopt a suitable way of believing independently and through their own reflection. It does not seem to be essential if this new form of religion is found through an organization, church, or movement, but rather, if it is suitable for the person him or herself.
The nature and difficulty of the withdrawal process was seen in my research in many ways, for example, on the narrative level. When describing how they had joined the JWs, the respondents took responsibility for the events, but did not think they were the only active players in the process. Sometimes people saw themselves as passive background figures at the mercy of the situation itself, finding themselves somehow having joined the JWs. Similarly, descriptions of the time when participants had still belonged to the community reflected a feeling that their agency was limited and individual thinking was replaced by a shared and collective reality. On the narrative level, when participants described their withdrawal from the JWs, a change occured, which could be called taking over agency. Ex-JWs no longer think up defensive explanations for their activities, but appear as determined agent, thus justifying their choices. Participants felt that disassociation from the JWs seemed to be something they finally had power to influence. They described themselves as active players and did not deem it necessary to defend their decision to leave the movement in any way. However, they often gave reasons for their withdrawal and wanted to justify it, which could be seen in interpretations embedded in the narrative units’ evaluation sections or in direct responses to questions about reasons for leaving. To give grounds and justifying explanations for leaving the organization, the participants referred to various values, the most common of which were authenticity, truth, freedom, justice, equality, and happiness. Participants also justified their withdrawal by stating that they no longer perceived the collective doctrine as truth and that it had been replaced by a different interpretation. The community was also felt to be unfair and restrictive of freedom, where equality is not realized in a way that the narrator would have wanted. The pursuit of personal happiness was also seen as a key objective, and if the person did not feel happy to be a JW, withdrawal was seen to be justified.
My study confirms the view that membership in a religious movement is made up of many factors, and social rewards are not always enough to motivate commitment to the community. If a social environment goes beyond group commitment and community spirit by limiting the individuals’ freedom and autonomy, people can experience it as oppressive and suffocating. When reality is unequivocally defined from above, forming and cultivating people’s own views and convictions is not easy. A person contemplating withdrawal is faced with a difficult choice. Staying inside would entail stability and continuity, but also restrictions and pre-defined views. Stepping outside would entail freedom of thought, speech, and activity, but personal losses as well. The participants of the research material I used have made that choice. Some have lost more, some less, but they all reached the freedom they longed for. Personal happiness, freedom, independence, authenticity, truth, and honesty seem to be such important human values that people are even willing to sacrifice their personal relationships, their feelings of security, and the promise of eternal life in paradise to achieve them.
http://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/72132/AnnalesC318Ronimus.pdf?sequence=1