If it hadn't started here, Jehovah would have started it somewhere else...(rocks cry out, or some such)
Only in America?
by cedars 16 Replies latest jw friends
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NewChapter
LOL Cedars---to use your turn of phrase, America is a bloody big country.
You visited our most boisterous and driven city. To many American, New Yorkers seem loud, LOL It is America on fast forward.
But yes---you made a lot of valid points, and I'm just teasing.
There is a puritan work ethic that has been woven into the culture by those original Europeans. And there is also this sense that if you do things right (by god, originally) then you will be healthy and wealthy. I read an article about it, and wish I could remember more. It's part of why half the country resents social service and safety nets so much. It's the idea that if you aren't making it, you must be doing something wrong or you are lazy. I am not elevating this above other outlooks, because there are both positives and negatives, but it explains some of the undercurrent. And it's also not to say that other countries don't have good work ethics.
But I move pretty slowly in a New Yorker's eyes. And other regions move pretty slowly in my eyes. When my brother came back from living in NYC for a few years, it took him forever to wind down and adjust his pace. When my long-haired, guitar playing, everything is cool, hippy friend moved to NYC and came back for a visit, we hardly recognized him. The guy who had been content to just pluck strings for hours and chat away an afternoon, was jiggling his foot, and asking over and over "Why do things close so early? What can we do now? Is there ANYWHERE we can go?"
Yeah, America is driven. There are upsides and downsides to that---but I suppose we do seem pretty boisterous to a more restrained culture.
NC
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designs
Lin mania has taken hold in America. Price for Mavs v Knicks scalper ticket $727.00.
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Band on the Run
I read a lot of American colonial, Revolutionary (War of Independence. No revolution occurred), and Federalist history. The stereotypes about America, which are largely true, began with early colonization. Many attributed to three factors: 1. the wilderness. Manifest Destiny was present from the start. Land in Europe had failed b/c of deprivation of soil nutrients. Europe was overpopulated. If you could work in America, you lived on a nice scale compared to England. Church groups provided a social safety net. The frequent battles with Native Americans presented an urgency about survival. 2. the class system, while not absent, was minimal. Middle class people dominated American life. Most of the Founders were middle class. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin would have been locked in the middle class in England. They could not strut their stuff. 3. Americans always viewed themselves as English citizens with Magna Carta and other rights. The English government ignored America for several generations. Powerful General Assemblies arose. Americans were used to self-determinatin on local matters.
Washington, Franklin were proud members of the British bureaucracy. Shortly before the outbreak of violence, they wrote how fortunate they were. Certainly, no country had a better ruler than George III. They were American British. Unfortunately, the unwritten English const'n changed overseas. Tax revenues were needed. Uprisings were feared in the homeland. Next, George III is burned in effigy. Many times through the conflict, Congress secretly negotiated a path back to English comfort. The Irish had quite a different status.
It seems that NY personifies American stereotypes about brashness. Besides the wilderness, the colonists had to be self selecting. Religious dissents willing to cross the Atlantic to a wilderness when Holland was comfortable. I would stay in England, knowing my own personality. Fortune hunters emigrated. It was not a random cross selection of English people.
The British WWII signs "Keep Calm and Carry On" are showing up for sale all over the place in the states. Compared with "Uncle Sam wants you", they show the difference in sensibility. Anyway, everyone knows Al Gore invented the Internet.
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Sic Semper Tyrannis
Actually, the first packet switching network dates back to ARPANET in the 1960's, which was created by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - notice the American spelling of 'Defense') which was under the US Department of Defense. The involvement of the DOD in its creation was a type of answer for keeping the government functioning after a nuclear attack, which in turn grew out of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway initiative. The British equivalent known as Mark I, was conceived in 1970, while the French packet switching network, CYCLADES, was a couple years later. While there is no individual responsible for the internet, it also cannot be said to have been solely the responsibility of one organization, since all subsequent "internets" have largely borrowed on and improved from ideas their predecessors formulated. Still, if you were looking for the first actual packet switching network, look no further than ARPANET. Alan Turing, a British subject, was the father of the modern computer which might be what you were thinking of.
Yes, a movement like the WT, not to mention the Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists, along with the umbrella evangelical movement have distinctly American attributes. Freedom of religion is enshrined in the US Constitution, and goes back even further than that to the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts (Anglican Puritans), Lord Baltimore's Maryland British Catholic haven, and William Penn's Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. From US grade school lessons onwards, it is burned into our consciousness about how the US was a beacon for persecuted religious sects. Thus, forming a sect is not as frowned upon as it might have been elsewhere. Regardless of who formed it and what the ideology contained, it was always their 'right' to do so. CT Russell would have been dismissed as an eccentric in Europe. Rutherford would have been thrown in jail for a lengthy sentence for agitation and libel. FW Franz would have been quickly labelled as a provincially minded zealot hack. In America, these men actually found followers which coalesced around their fanciful writings. CT Russell built upon the already existent Second Adventist movement in the late 19th Century. J.F. Rutherford tapped into American isolationism and populism by attacking the Church, clergy, League of Nations, and the business and medical establishment. F.W. Franz took advantage of the 1950's puritanical style morality which was the culture of the time. The Witnesses as we know them today are largely the creation of these three doctrinaire men who all had either dysfunctional (Russell and Rutherford) or non-existent (Franz) relationships with the opposite sex. These men, were products of their times and the prevailing culture of the time. With that said, I doubt a CT Russell could found anything other than an isolated rural church group nowadays in America. There was a closing window at the turn of the 20th century and Russell found his way in. With the notable exception of quasi-religious Scientology, there have been no significant religious movements founded in America in the 20th Century. The times have changed.
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Juan Viejo2
One thing about the Watchtower Society is its lack of understanding of its own charter to "spread the good news of God's Kingdom throughout the world."
C. T. Russell realized the power (and the profit) of the printed word. So his first act was not to form a religion, but a magazine and book publishing company.
C. T. Russell also understood the untapped power and profit of slides and moving pictures. His "Photodrama of Creation" was a landmark advance that matched motion pictures with colored slides and sequenced recordings. Going to see his Photodrama was like going to Technicolor movies in the 1930s and Cinerama in the 1950s.
Thanks to C. T. Russell's ability to harness the power of those fledgling technologies, his own fame spread far beyond his own ability as a speaker or as an self-proclaimed Bible expert would have taken him. Thousands of converts were gathered into the ranks thanks to his publishing and cinematic efforts - even as crude as they were.
J. F. Rutherford used the new technology of radio to spread the word. His national and international radio station linkups using telephone lines were among the very first of any note. The Watchtower actually owned, partially owned, or had a monetary interest in several radio stations across the USA and Canada from the 1920s until the 1960s. Rutherford's speeches were on the air for several hours a day, seven days a week. He was every bit as famous as Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson were at the time thanks to the reach of radio.
J. F. Rutherford also promoted regular door-to-door preaching. His techniques were observed and later modified by companies like Amway, Avon, and Mary Kay Cosmetics. They not only used his door-knocking ideas, but also used conventions and near religious and cult-like fervor to expand and control their sales forces.
J. F. Rutherford also used portable phonographs and sound cars handled by unpaid volunteers (publishers) to spread his speeches.
My point is that Russell and Rutherford used the new technologies of their time to spread the word and to generate money and converts. The modern version of the Watchtower has failed to use the two most powerful informational technologies even conceived to spread the word of God to the ends of the earth - which they both can do easily and rather cheaply: Television and the Internet. On the contrary, they have branded both of those communication resources as sinful and distractions of the Devil.
Nathan Knorr may have been a good corporate organizer and Fred Franz a self-appointed prophet, but neither one had the foresight or intelligence to understand the amazing technologies placed before them.
I also think that they thought that countries other than the USA, Canada, and Britain would never really have enough people of means to support the Society, so they were considered to be distant and unimportant "missionary territories." As late as 1990, Gilead was still sending missionaries to Europe, even though hundreds of congregations were already in place there.
Actually I fear the day when the Watchtower Society wakes up and starts using TV and the Internet to spread their cult propaganda. That could make them a far more formidable foe for those of us who oppose them.
Oh, and don't tell me that they are using the Internet now. Their piss-ant websites are puny and outdated in every way compared to Freeminds.org, JWN, JWfacts, and other ex-JW discussion websites. The quality of WT sites shows they lack the understanding of how to harness the power of the Internet. They still prefer to do their witnessing the hard and expensive way - door-to-door.
Obviously, they aren't being guided by Almighty God, the creator of science, education and the Internet Machine. Maybe they could have gone that way long ago, but could never get 2/3 of the Governing Body's old farts to understand what they had available to them and actually vote for those changes.
One well-produced YouTube video could have been seen by 1000 times more people in one weekend than could ever have been preached to door-to-door in five years. But the Governing Body just doesn't understand. They are blinded by their own ignorance. And if there is a Jehovah God, he might be the very one throwing a veil over their blind eyes.
Thank goodness!
JV
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transhuman68
To start a new religion, you need a lot of money- just to set up the initial organization. And then, by the time that money runs out, and the original founder dies, the religion has to be big enough, and have enough revenue coming in, to be self-sustaining. So it helps to start a religion in a rich country with a large population, such as America.