When I was in you were only supposed to wear either white or light pastel colours, but there was a pioneer who wore shirts in paisley pattern. Ghastly. But he got away with it on a regular basis. My brother too, used to wear hugely flaired pants and 6 inch platforms and he got away with that, he was a pioneer. Perhaps some could get away with more than others.
Colored Shirts?
by Marcos 26 Replies latest jw friends
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Francois
Shirt colors? White and pale blue when I was in.
But that's not all. Any other thing they can turn into a control issue they will use. That's what they DO. That's what they're all about...control.
Colored Shirts
Wide ties
Narrow ties
Pants suits
Steel rimmed glasses
And every other thing you can think of, and some you'd never think of. The livin' end of course was their attempt to arrogate themselves into married couple's bedrooms. No oral sex. Right. You show me a man who doesn't, um, go down as they say on his wife and I'll show you a shaky marriage. And vice versa.I say the JW's are a damned cult, damned by the real God, and I say screw 'em.
francois
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Gordy
Here in Britain when I became a JW in 1971, no one said anything about having to wear a white shirt.
I hated white shirts so never wore one.
I've worn, blue, green, purple, lilac any colour except white.
The only thing they didn't like was loud gaudy ties "it would distract the audience" the elder said.
That was until a Circuit Overseer came who wore the loudest ties you could imagine. Then after that all us brothers did so.
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refiners fire
..."The livin' end of course was their attempt to arrogate themselves into married couple's bedrooms. No oral sex"....
Frank. It coulda been worse. They coulda said no sex at all. Only the PO can have sex with all the women in his congo so as to breed a pure spiritual line. Now that would be cultic.
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benext
White shirts were a particular congregation's rule. I've heard some congregations required brothers to wear suits when giving talks in the KMS.
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freedom96
I remember fully that colored shirts were considered wordly attire at the hall. A moustache was for a while a complete no-no, and never beards. I knew one brother ever who had one, and only until his skin rash healed up.
You will not find any brothers in the states with beards having any sort of responsibilities. Don't think it is quite a df'ing offense, but then they would question the motives behind the beard, and maybe that would work for df'ing.
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NeonMadman
Perhaps it is time to lay this urban myth to rest. It was the Watchtower itself that gave this ruling ,by a certain congregation, as bad example and not to be followed :-
Right, and it only took them 20 years of elders' enforcing this rule in thousands of congregations to see what was going on and say something about it. The "white shirt" rule went back to the time when colored shirts as dress clothing were becoming widely popular, about the late 1960's and early 1970's. The article you cite appeared in 1989, by which time the rule had been abandoned virtually everywhere, anyway. This wasn't a case of the Society resolving a "grass roots" problem among the elders; it was more a case of them jumping on the bandwagon after the problem had largely resolved itself. They got to make themselves appear "reasonable" without actually sacrificing any control.
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Siddhashunyata
1968 no colored shirts allowed on the platform (Delaware). NeonMadman has it right.
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AlanF
In the New York area where I grew up as a JW, colored shirts were not allowed for speakers, and those who wore them at all were highly frowned upon. In the early 1970s this began to change, and by about 1975 it was no longer an issue. I remember getting quite irritated by this around 1971, and deliberately wearing a pastel pink shirt. I got a few looks, but no one said anything, and soon many younger men began wearing colored shirts.
Mustaches were allowed only on black men, because "that's a normal thing for black men", I was told by elders. By the late 1970s this rule was changed, and today plenty of elders have mustaches.
Beards have always been a no-no. I know of instances where an elder who was on his way out grew a beard, and the local body of elders had no problem with it, but the Circuit Overseers threw hissy fits and the "problem" had to be referred back to Brooklyn. Brooklyn said it was entirely up to the body of elders to decide if it was in keeping with local conservative standards. But the COs always won out, since for elders to buck them usually results in loss of eldership.
It's diagnostic of the goofy JW mindset that a WT article actually had to be written about colored versus white shirts. Talk about making mountains out of molehills! I doubt that the Society will ever change its unwritten stance on beards, though. The custom is by now ingrained in JW males, especially the old men at Bethel who set policy according to their personal tastes.
AlanF
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Francois
RF, you're exactly right. But I'm saying they took one look around at the general run of women in the KH and decided against such a rule. (Ducks to avoid flying brick). Just joking. But it wouldn't surprise me to hear they had introduced New Light that elders were to spend the wedding night with each new bride in the Kingdom Hall. Wouldn't that frost your early June peas? There was a law like that in the middle ages in England.
I don't know about you and yours, but I was about 28 when that New Light about oral sex came out and my then wife and I looked at each other and laughed out loud and got up and walked out in the middle of the service meeting.
However, I was one of those brothers that the elders didn't look forward to visiting for the purpose of adjusting my thinking. When they tried it, it was the elders who left wondering what the hell was the number of that truck. Moral: don't deleted with the kid.
francois
Edited by - Englishman on 7 January 2003 5:40:59