Stroup's "The Jehovah's Witnesses."

by em1913 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  em1913

  I have to say that just speaking for myself, it was the "lefty" aspects of JW doctrine that attracted me to the movement. I was not particularly concerned with the "social conservative" stuff, and didn't really swallow it even when I was active -- I found a lot of it to be very actively distasteful in some of the crude sexism, especially, that I had to listen to from the platform, and my disagreement with those aspects of the program helped push me out the door.

  But reading the old Rutherford books where he'd go to town on Religion, Politics, and Commerce got me pretty pumped up, and I once expressed disappointment to an elder that we didn't seem to be emphasizing those angles as much anymore. He gave me such a look, from the superior position of his advanced degree in engineering and his ten room house and his $50K a year job that I figured I'd better not raise that topic again.
  
• 

  Vidiot

  slimboyfat - "However socially conservative JW social attitudes may be, it’s worth noting that the Pew survey finds that, while most JWs are neutral, of those who express a preference, JWs lean to the Democrats by a margin of more than 2 to 1."

  Huh, I didn't know that.

  I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised, though...

  ...in retrospect, the racists and facists have come to dominate the American Right in the media so much, that even JWs probably would think twice about identifying with them, particularly given their history. It's certainly hard to imagine them showing any preference for Trump (even privately).

  It's funny...

  ... about ten years back, I'd been learning about the Christian Right (for semi-related reasons), and it was specifically the WT's similarities with them (the Org seemed like the Christian Right in microcosm) - and my subsequent suspicion that the WT would play ball with them if they ever achieved political dominance - that significantly contributed to my fade.
• 

  Vidiot

  dropoff - "Rutherford and Father Coughlin definitely hated each other. "

  That makes me chuckle...

  ...I've long believed that in another life, those two could've been BFFs.

  Maybe they were just too similar.
• 

  em1913

  There was no room on earth big enough to contain those two.

  Coughlin was in pretty close contact with actual Nazi agents thru most of the late 1930s, which influenced much of his broadcast content -- a lot of what he had to say, especially about the Poor Suffering Sudeten Germans and that Christian Gentleman Gen. Franco, came direct from Goebbels by way of these contacts.The Judge had his own skeletons in the closet viz. Hitler, but there doesn't, at least, seem to be any evidence that he was pen-pals with Goebbels.