Jehovah's Witnesses: A Coercive Organization?

by john.prestor 18 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • john.prestor
    john.prestor

    So in sociology we divide organizations up into three categories or types, you got utilitarian, voluntary, and coercive. Utilitarian means people join to accomplish some purpose like selling food or making furniture, voluntary means they join up just for fun or to hang out with people like the Freemasons or a lot of churches, and coercive means they don't really want to be there but they gotta because someone will punish them if they leave, so labor camps, armies, or prisons.

    In a paper I wrote for a class a while back I argued that Jehovah's Witnesses should be seen as a coercive organization. Yeah, people join up and they do leave, nobody beats you up if you stop attending or preaching, nobody imprisons you, shoots your dog, kills your kids that kind of thing, and nobody makes you join up either. But that doesn't change the fact that the Governing Body and other elites tell Jehovah's Witnesses that if they leave Jesus will kill them at Armageddon. In my mind that's the essence of coercive. In fact, what could be more coercive? Just last year Kenneth Flodin got on JW Broadcasting, compared a wine glass to lax Witnesses, and then smashed it on the floor and gave the camera a long dark stare. Now Tony Morris tells audience he's going to help Jesus kill unbelievers at Armageddon, and the Watchtower prints the same thing, along with colorful illustrations of the carnage, the kind of suck stuff they showed kids in the 60s and 70s, I mean, can you make more blatant threats?

    Jehovah's Witnesses don't qualify as a voluntary organization, period. There's no real difference between telling someone your friends (Jesus and his angels) will kill them soon and you'll kill them soon, and besides... the Governing Body already said they would kill the unspecified 'wicked' any day now on multiple occasions.

  • Sea Breeze
    Sea Breeze

    They should be careful what they wish for. The Watchtower is the one being killed off.... one law suit at a time.

  • Brokeback Watchtower
    Brokeback Watchtower
    Now Tony Morris tells audience he's going to help Jesus kill unbelievers at Armageddon, and the Watchtower prints the same thing, along with colorful illustrations of the carnage, the kind of suck stuff they showed kids in the 60s and 70s, I mean, can you make more blatant threats?

    These types of shameless displays by AM#3 are going to cost them big time in the courts $$$$. Lawyers getting ahold of this stuff is going to sink their sinking ship$$$

  • BourneIdentity
    BourneIdentity

    It’s all fear mongering. Once you realize it isn’t the truth, it all goes in one ear and out the other. Like listening to a dog with all bark and no bite. Being PIMO and listening to it is quite comical, but I do feel sorry for the ones that truly believe it and are driven to serve the Organization out of fear. Let’s not kid ourselves, everything is done out of fear, not love. People are not preaching because they love their neighbor, they are preaching to save their own skin and appear righteous to the rest of the congregation.


    When some have asked why I don’t seem worried about not doing all the things I’m supposed to be doing, I act very relaxed and careless about it. I say well, if Jehovah wants to murder me because I’m not good enough, that’s fine with me, it is what it is. I will not be bothered about stressing over things, especially since we’ve been hearing it’s coming for what, 140 years. That usually shuts them up and they don’t know what to say or how to help me so I can get all scared and be moved to action.

  • BourneIdentity
    BourneIdentity

    I think it was back in 2013 when we had the annual meeting and a bunch of congregations were tied in listening to all the talks live. It was the one where we received the new silver Bibles.


    That was the one Tony Morris went off on brothers wearing tight pants and how homosexuals love to see them wearing them, not the sisters.


    He also chastised the sisters that were jogging in the neighborhoods wearing spanx. He said that was totally inappropriate for a Christian. No Tony, it would be inappropriate to wear spanx to a meeting, it is appropriate when you are exercising.


    It was then and there I realized this guy is nuts and he wants to control every aspect of a persons life, no different than the Scribes and Pharisees did back in Jesus day. I can’t imagine how much screaming Jesus would aim at the Governing Body.


    I was thinking if I was one of the brothers sitting through that in tailor fit pants, I think it might have been the last meeting I’d ever attend with him coming off like such an asshole. Nothing loving or appealing of that delivery. I think he really envies men and women that have good figures. He’s probably pissed he’s fat or feels guilty that he gets turned on by these nice figures and then feels the need to take it out on them.

  • BourneIdentity
    BourneIdentity

    This is about exactly the same thing I heard on that day.

    https://youtu.be/HCCckKkgpxQ

  • jp1692
    jp1692

    From one jp to another, interesting OP. Thanks!

    You overlooked the highly coercive effects of shunning or even the threat of it.

    As I know you well know, this keeps many a PIMO JW attending meetings just to avoid losing their families; and many of us that leave do so at the cost of broken and lost relationships.

    Because of our deep need to belong, the threat or reality of losing our families is a highly coercive and manipulative tactic used by many cults and other high-control groups, JWs being just one.

    No, they don't shoot your dog, but the destroy families. Something which in my opinion is far, far worse.

    jp1692

  • Finkelstein
    Finkelstein

    Of course it is, the WTS sells its products by saying they have the most accurate and honest interpretation of the bible, then made false doctrines such as they know when Jesus took his throne in heaven (1914) and that mankind living right now will see the end of this worldly system of things.

    Quite a big doctrine to make but its not inline with what Jesus said about preaching his Gospel, the WTS's Gospel is a tainted commercialized version to promote the proliferation of the literature it published .

    The WTS is and has been a fear mongering apocalyptic religious cult.

    It isn't being guided by god but by corrupt sinful men.

  • john.prestor
    john.prestor

    Thanks jp, I appreciate that. I'm totally with you, emotional coercion is still coercion and that's what disfellowshipping amounts to, a way of punishing you socially. They say it's biblical, that's besides the point, it reinforces the rule of the Governing Body and that's why they keep it around.

  • smiddy3
    smiddy3

    I think tight pants tony just wants to get into tight pants Tonya ,he sounds like a sexually frustrated male to me.

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