Did Tony Morris Get Sideways with His Bros.?

Sea Breeze

Interesting video connects the dots.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ff1ibYbFE4&t=205s&pp=2AHNAZACAQ%3D%3D

It’s amusing if the GB have contrived to bring about the worst of all worlds for themselves where they have failed to convince governments that their policy on shunning has actually changed (because technically it hasn’t) but ordinary JWs have perceived the new wording as permission to end shunning if they wish.

They were perhaps aiming for a formulation of words that allowed them to pretend the policy had substantially changed while keeping the practice in place, but may have ended up with the reverse.

NotFormer

It makes me feel ill to watch them realise that they need to change, but they implement the tiniest amount of change that they think they can get away with, and then brag about their merciful approach. They wouldn't know mercy if it bit them on the proverbial. Matthew 5:7  “Happy are the merciful, since they will be shown mercy". That verse has proven to be true, since Tony was shown the same amount of mercy as he was willing to give the R&F JWs*.

* All speculation, of course. The reason for Tony's removal (isn't that use of the word an amusing coincidence? 😂) is the WT's best kept secret. The above paragraph by me is correct, if the maker of the quoted video is correct in his assumptions. It's as good a theory as any.

MeanMrMustard

@slimfatboy - likely the line will be held at the local level. You know, when the elders have their "school". They review the elders manual, and all the direction the WT doesn't want to have in writing gets filled into the "side notes" during those meetings.

dropoffyourkeylee

The OP video is a reasonable explanation.

It wouldn't be the first time that 'doctrine' changed due to maneuvering to satisfy a legal requirement. I have my own theory that many of the changes that dated to the '40s and early '50s were maneuvers to satisfy the courts (particularly in the US) regarding getting ministerial status for JW men. It was all about the draft back then.

FFGhost

It certainly is a reasonable conclusion about “connecting the dots” between TM’s dismissal and the flurry of significant changes.

I don’t so much buy the argument that the changes are “merely semantic”, however. This is a pretty seismic policy shift in how df-ing, er, “removal” will be done. As written, pretty much the only people who will ever be “removed” from this point forward are brazen apostates and those who really really REALLY want out.

What’s more interesting to me is the implication of how precarious the financial situation of the WTS must be.

Power is the cocaine of the WTS in general and the GB in particular. Power over their adherents’ lives. For a certain subset of humanity, control and power are far more desirable and pleasure-inducing than money, sex, drugs, glamour, fame….combined.

For them to give up what really is a significant chunk of that absolute control is noteworthy. And for what? 1.5 million dollars a year from a little Scandinavian country?

Are they really so economically fragile that the removal of 1.5 million dollars coerces them to loosen their grip on the one thing they crave more than anything else?

Maybe it’s not so much the actual 1.5 million, maybe it’s, as mentioned toward the end of the video, fear of other countries doing <something> for similar reasons. Maybe removing their tax exemptions?

But again, if your business model is fully dependent on “free government money” and/or “complete and total tax exemption”, such that you nearly completely decimate your primary control element over the flock (fear of being “removed”)…..it’s not much of a robust business model, is it?

How bad off are they, financially?

no-zombie

As I understand things FFGhost, every country is basically a standalone business unit, where profits above the local branch's operating expenses go to the US. The Governing Body don't mind if things run neutral, however funds never flow out the the US. Thus while 1.5 million annually is nothing globally, it is probably critical for the Norwegian branch and without it, some very embarrassing restructuring (read here, Kingdom Hall sell offs) would have to occur.

road to nowhere

Funds never flow out PERIOD

careful

the line will be held at the local level. You know, when the elders have their "school". They review the elders manual, and all the direction the WT doesn't want to have in writing gets filled into the "side notes" during those meetings.

Spot on, MMM.

LongHairGal

MEAN MR. MUSTARD & CAREFUL:

So, there you have it. Really.

The rules, regulations and practices in the Jehovah’s Witness religion are in the elders’ manual - along with the pencil scribbled notes.. This is the book that nobody is supposed to see but the elders. The rank & file don’t see it..so they can claim to somebody “that the religion never said that” or “that is not in writing”. The fact: it IS in writing. It is just that the writing is in a secret place.. Very easy to destroy if they are instructed to do so.

I am sure back in the day when I was soft-shunned and not invited (because I had a full-time job which I’m glad I kept) - that this ‘treatment’ or any other hate campaigns against certain individuals in the congregation ..were not written down in any literature seen by the public.. But, I have no doubt this was probably written and/or scribbled somewhere in some idiot elders’ manual.