by Marvin Shilmer 7 Replies latest jw friends
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Watchtower’s Collective
Today I added a new article to my blog highlighting a fairly recent study of the Watchtower organization’s treatment of raced people. What she ends up stating is shocking to read, but it’s what folks have been saying for years and years. Now an academic puts it in plain English.
My article is titled Watchtower’s Collective and is available at: http://marvinshilmer.blogspot.com/2013/04/watchtowers-collective.html
Marvin Shilmer
Thanks Marvin!!!
Nothing really new, Marvin.
After all, hasn't the Watchtower been prepping the Jehovah's Witnesses to be "one nation out of all nations" and earthly subjects of the Kingdom of God, where national boundaries and language barriers won't exist anymore? Aren't the anointed collectively called "a new nation"?
Well spotted, tho. Thank you.
Eden
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“Nothing really new, Marvin.”
The hive building idea is not new. We see experienced people speak of Watchtower’s “Borg” building all the time.
But having analysis from an independent third-party academic of the race deconstruction employed to achieve the hive is new.
Marvin Shilmer
Colossians 3:11: "In Christ there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all. " (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
Doesn't that scripture argue that there is, to some degree, a "deconstruction" of race, with Jesus Christ (as opposed to a particular religion) as the focus of allegiance?
The argument, of course, is to what degree the WTS replaces Christ. But whatever the case, Christians are asked to set aside racial and national divisions in the interests of unity in Christ.
Comments on this scripture, from Barnes' Notes On The Bible "But Christ is all, and in all - The great thing that constitutes the uniqueness of the church is, that Christ is its Saviour, and that all are his friends and followers. Its members lay aside all other distinctions, and are known only as his friends. They are not known as Jews and Gentiles; as of this nation or that; as slaves or freemen, but they are known as Christians; distinguished from all the rest of mankind as the united friends of the Redeemer".
Jehovah's Witnesses, of course, claim to "lay aside all other distinctions" too, in the interests of their religious unity.
Does the third-party academic allow for the fact that Christianity calls for a setting aside of racial distinctions? If so, then the question is simply whether the WTS substitutes itself for Christ. But if not, then that academic may not fully appreciate that what occurs among Jehovah's Witnesses in this regard is something that the Bible calls for among those claiming unity with Christ.
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“Doesn't that scripture argue that there is, to some degree, a "deconstruction" of race…”
No.
Early Christians were not asked to forget or displace from whence they came in order to follow Christ.
Marvin Shilmer
I read the Scripture differently than you do. I see at least a degree of deconstruction of race implied. I'm not saying it says to "forget" or "displace" their racial ties. I'm saying that there's a matter of degree implied.
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“I read the Scripture differently than you do. I see at least a degree of deconstruction of race implied. I'm not saying it says to "forget" or "displace" their racial ties. I'm saying that there's a matter of degree implied.”
rocketman,
It’s okay to see something in biblical text that others don’t, so long as you don't assert it beyond what's sustainable. Given the history of religion, I’d be shocked otherwise.
That said, my point is that nothing in the text you cited suggests the sort of race deconstruction author Heyward speaks of and that Watchtower practices, and particularly what it attempts to do with blacks among Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Marvin Shilmer
