If this kind of discussion was allowed among Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’m sure the organization would collapse. It couldn’t stand against a free circulation of thoughts and ideas. I want to say I appreciate the points Terry and Moshe have made and agree with them in principle. We must not and should not remain silent in the face of evil, and these disfellowshipping procedures and the judicial committees that spawn them are nothing short of evil.
I suppose that we’re now talking about reality versus idealism. I’ve been coming from the former because I really don’t believe that any kind of protest is going to change things in the organization. The ruling clique in Brooklyn seems to be immune from the pressure that might come up from below. They only respond to external forces being arrayed against them. We’ve seen how that works in the past, the switch to the voluntary donation arrangement for literature being just one example.
This really is a discussion about human rights, as Terry has said. I completely agree with that point. The difficulty here arises with what I’ve been saying all along. Human rights violations are usually committed by secular governments and commercial interests. When that happens, there are legal and legislative avenues for redress. However, when a religion does this, then our options become very few. There is no legal recourse and legislatures will not involve themselves. We’ve also seen how courts have consistently refused to intervene in these cases as well.
Writing to the WTS is futile and useless as we all know. When I was disfellowshipped, I made my judicial committee look at its own rules of engagement. I cited the Bible and what I knew their elders’ manual said to force them to concede that I was right. They didn’t like it one bit and I’m sure used that to deny my reinstatement for years. Furthermore, I might have won the individual battles with them, but wasn’t winning the war because they alone had the power of granting reinstatement. The conflict with them ended when I decided that I no longer wanted to be reinstated.
But one thing I did not do was violate WTS protocols. Do these violate human rights? Absolutely! But the fact remains that no external pressure can be brought to bear that would force changes. This organization is no more capable of reform than the old Soviet Union was. It is a religious dictatorship answerable to nobody else.
In the final analysis, I am saying that I believe it is a waste of time and effort to get either the WTS or the congregations it controls to change the way disfellowshipped people are treated. The harsh shunning is as effective a measure of controlling the rank-and-file publishers as the old Soviet gulag prison camp system was. Soviet violations of human rights ended only when the Soviet Union imploded. But for its entire 74-year existence human rights violations were rampant and routine, bringing misery to tens of millions of people.
If, however, we decide we want to protest the WTS regimen, then I believe it is essential that we do this the right way. To hark back to Terry’s citing of MLK and the civil rights movement, King made sure that his protests were legal, peaceful and non-violent. In that way, nobody could accuse him and/or his followers of breaking the law and using that as a pretext to perpetuate the injustices they opposed.
Protestors against the WTS must do the same. Follow its rules. Give congregation elders no pretext to summon law enforcement or impose some kind of ban on attendance at congregation meetings. Do not incite others to anger or in some other way intrude upon their personal space and right to choose their association. In other words, “seek peace and pursue it.” There are ways that can be done and some among us have found success. I encourage those who wish to protest WTS human rights violations to do the same.
Quendi