by spider 5 Replies latest jw friends
This question is inspired by a post just written by Scully
When resolutions were passed in my hall they always needed someone to second the motion and for there to a show of hands. Of course as a show of unity everyone would always dutifully raise them and the motion would be passed unanimously. I can't remember an occasion where this wasn't so. Does anyone have any experiences of dissention when a lot of people openly disagreed with motions suggested by bodies of elders?
this alwayz used to piss me off for a few reasons:
a - no voting, yet we voted.
b - whats the point of voting if not allowed to question.
c - women not to question in the hall, only to ask husbands at home blah blah blah,
so it woulda been "political suicide" in that setting for me to actually ask
the questions i had over many of these "resolutions".
d - they would call it a "congregational" resolution, when basically it was a decision by the
boe that we had no real choice but to "support".
this is an excellent example of how we were to just blindly follow.
trust the elders. don't think, don't question.
that could have asked but didn't.
then again, they were somewhat in the same boat as the sisters politically speaking.
don't question the elders. this setup is political bs.
i did however respect it the few times they did ask "are there any questions"
and especially respected those bros that had the cajones to ask the questions i wuz thinking.
i did not respect it when the bro on the podium would answer the question with, "well, the elders went over this already, and this is their proposition".<BR><BR>too political.
i simply wouldn't put my hand up to vote
if i didn't feel i had been given the information i needed
to make an informed vote.
i also found it interesting that they never asked "how many against it". LOL.
Only the "for" votes counted.
it just seemed pointless to me to even hold the "vote".
they might as well have simply done what they were gonna do.
did they really think that by being asked my "opinion", in such a manner, i would be stupid enuf to think it was actually agreed upon by the entire cong? can you imagine how someone speaking up against these things would be treated? even just asking a question about it was frowned upon and whispered about. without a doubt they'd be hauled into the back room and quoted scriptures about dissention and about supporting those "taking the lead" among you.
bunch of bs if you ask me.
SPAZ
I only saw it happen once. Way back in our hall in 1977. There was firece disagreement between two sides: one who wanted Sunday meetings at 1:30 p.m. (it was our turn to have afternoon meetings) and the other who wanted Sunday meetings at 6:00 p.m. so they could watch the entire Dallas Cowboys games (VCRs were rare and expensive back then). It covered two entire Service Meetings before the football faction won out. Later when the Cowboys went to the Super Bowl and everyone found out it started at 5:30 p.m., we went through the whole thing again in order to change it to 1:30 p.m.
lmao. typical.
In my congregation there was one brother who would always vote against any resolution no matter what, but he was nuts!
Congregation resolutions are a marvellous example of democracy in a theocracy, very similar to so called elections in many islamic states.
i simply wouldn't put my hand up to vote
if i didn't feel i had been given the information i needed
to make an informed vote.
That was me also. Sometimes I didn't agree with what the majority did but I knew my one lone vote wouldn't matter so I would just abstain. Sometimes someone would notice that I didn't vote and ask about it later. I just said I was remaining neutral. That usually stunned them enough to not ask anymore about it.
The worst case that I remember was a voting for a change in meeting night. One elder was on a campaign to switch the book study night and the MS/SM night. He lobbied support from other elders and pioneers. Most of the regular publishers preferred it the way it was. The night of the vote came. About half voted for, half against. They had the attendants do an actual count. There was only a differance of 2-3. The elder said we better count again. They voted again and counted. This time the votes swung 2-3 the other way. OK. Another vote. By then a lot of people just gave up and didn't vote. The usurpers ended up winning because everyone else just didn't want to make a big deal out of it. I rememeber that feelings were quite strong about the subject with actual arguments breaking out between different ones. It was then that I decided to abstain from voting if it was something trivial or if I really didn't care one way or the other.
