Posts by breakfast of champions

Of all major U.S. religious groups, members of the Jehovah's Witnesses have the lowest rate of formal education - that according to a Pew study. And as Luke Vander Ploeg reports, that can have a real impact on people who choose to leave the religion.

LUKE VANDER PLOEG, BYLINE: Cracked leather couches and pictures from mission trips line the walls of a borrowed room at a church in Long Beach, Calif.

DEAN: My name is Dean. I was baptized in '93, left '95.

BECKY ALVAREZ: Becky Alvarez. I left in '94.

DAVE HAMPTON: My name's Dave Hampton. I'm married to an ex-Witness which is always fun.

VANDER PLOEG: This is a meeting of the ex-Jehovah's Witnesses of Los Angeles, a support group that gets together once a month. Today it's about 12 people strong. Zachary Linderer left the Witnesses about five months ago. He's new to the meetings.

ZACHARY LINDERER: Actually this one today was my first time.

VANDER PLOEG: How did you feel about it?

LINDERER: It was a little funny, a little uncomfortable, but I don't know. I still relate to them very strongly because of my background. So it's kind of a mixed feelings.

VANDER PLOEG: A main function of the support group is talking about that shared background. This week, the topic of discussion is how Witnesses treat higher education. It's something that's played a major role in Zachary's life.

LINDERER: I wanted to be a physicist or an oceanographer or something having to do with the sciences, but it was very clear that I wasn't going to be able to do that.

VANDER PLOEG: Zachary's dad had heard stories about college.

LINDERER: He told me that he knew people who were into science, and it drug them right out of the truth.

VANDER PLOEG: There was some secret dangerous piece of knowledge that universities taught.

LINDERER: I didn't know what that was, but it was just like a bogeyman. It's just there, and it's going to get you. And if you do it, it's going to ruin you.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ANTHONY MORRIS III: I have long said the better the university, the greater the danger.

VANDER PLOEG: That's Anthony Morris III, a member of the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses. Witness leadership declined to speak to NPR for this story. This is Morris in an online video.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MORRIS: One brother likened his experience in a university setting to being in a house that is on fire. Spiritually speaking, he said, even if you escape alive, your clothes still smell like smoke. It has an effect on you.

VANDER PLOEG: Corrupting influence is just one of the reasons Witnesses frown on higher education. They also believe the end of the world is imminent and time in college would be better spent going door to door winning converts. Zachary Linderer's family discouraged education so strongly that he never even finished high school. He did end up going back to get his GED and becoming an electrician, but he says that longing to study science never left him.

LINDERER: I think I had that feeling, that sense at 17 years old or so that that was like - that's what I wanted it to be. That's what I needed to be, and there's been this hole ever since then.

VANDER PLOEG: That's a sentiment I heard from nearly all of the 100 plus ex-Witnesses I talked to, that feeling of being robbed of something. It's not unheard of for Witnesses to graduate college, but it's very unlikely. Pew Research shows that only 9 percent of Jehovah's Witnesses get a bachelor's degree. That's well below the national average and the lowest of any faith group. The same study also shows that Witnesses have some of the lowest income of any major religion. Amber McGee falls in that category. She grew up a Witness in rural Texas. Her parents pulled her and her siblings out of school at a young age.

AMBER MCGEE: My mom herself who was supposed to be our homeschool teacher was not capable of doing it emotionally, mentally.

VANDER PLOEG: Amber's mother never finished high school.

MCGEE: She had three young children. She was by herself very far from family and even just grocery stores and that sort of thing.

VANDER PLOEG: Eventually, Amber's mother gave up teaching them. The girls had to do it themselves using workbooks.

MCGEE: I would do all the multiple choice and true and false, and they would write all the essays for all the subjects. So it was really bad. I literally barely graduated.

VANDER PLOEG: That's made life difficult for Amber. She's 34 years old and the most she's made in a year is about $14,000. Amber and her husband left the Witnesses a year ago. They're doing better now financially, but it's still far from what Amber had hoped for her life.

MCGEE: I was taught very, very young to stop dreaming, to not have dreams, that you'll never ever be a famous person or a doctor or nurse. It's not possible. So now as an adult, I'm learning to start dreaming again.

VANDER PLOEG: If not for her own future, then definitely for the futures of her kids. For NPR News, I'm Luke Vander Ploeg in Los Angeles.

23

No Longer a JW Expert But Starting to Figure Out Life

by AllTimeJeff in

jw
friends

consider this an update for those that remember me here.... when i left in 2006, it started a 10 year journey into a new phase.

no more "safety".

some people want to be their own person.

breakfast of champions

This is a great post.

I have pretty much come to terms with having a "limp" for the rest of my life myself.

One of my professors suggested "Don't try to undo the past" but just do the best possible moving forward. . .. which is exactly what I've been doing.

21

Why do trolls do what they do?

by Londo111 in

jw
friends

i truly don't understand the mindset of a troll.

i know it's been explained, but i still don't get it.

it is hard to distinguish between a troll and a jw apologist at times because the reactions are very similar.

breakfast of champions

Because they can.

It's kind of like what some might see on their morning commute in rush-hour traffic:

People who wouldn't even look at you square in the eyes if you brushed by them on a sidewalk will give you the finger for some perceived offense when you're on the highway.

Not that this happens much during my commute ;)

74

This site should be called Anti-Jehovahs-Witnesses Cry-babies

by the-Question in

so, you left because of a bad example(s).. why all the whining?

nothing better to do with your time?.

you at least know far more about the bible than any church-goer?.

breakfast of champions

This site should be called Anti-Jehovahs-Witnesses Cry-babies

Actually this site should be called Occasionally an Asshole Shows Up.

144

2.16.2017 NJ Star-Ledger Ad: "Were you sexually abused by the Jehovahs Witnesses?"

by breakfast of champions in

my wife found this 1/4 page ad on page 2 of yesterday's nj star-ledger, probably the biggest newspaper in nj.

pretty telling.. .

breakfast of champions

Ok, so several posts back I said

I do not think any of this will be a slam dunk.

Then RICHARD OLIVER said

I said that people on here think that it will be a slam dunk or now will just be easy wins here on out.

If that isn't trolling, I don't know what is.

18

When The Persecution Comes

by cofty in

when i was young everybody used to fantasise constantly about how brave we would all need to be "when the persecution comes".

we worried about what "they" would do to us and how we would never talk or betray other jws.

psychologically it was a damaging environment for children; but maybe that's another topic.. who would have thought that when it finally came it would take the form of being sued for protecting pedophiles.

breakfast of champions

When I was young everybody used to fantasise constantly about how brave we would all need to be "when the persecution comes". -- COFTY

Part of my "awakening" was doing research and seeing that this "persecution fantasy" or "persecution complex" was not unique to JWs, but part and parcel of any fundamentalist christian's worldview.

144

2.16.2017 NJ Star-Ledger Ad: "Were you sexually abused by the Jehovahs Witnesses?"

by breakfast of champions in

my wife found this 1/4 page ad on page 2 of yesterday's nj star-ledger, probably the biggest newspaper in nj.

pretty telling.. .

breakfast of champions

My only contention is that this is going to be extremely hard even if they win, it is not a slam dunk for future cases. --RO

I do not think any of this will be a slam dunk.

I also do not think that this firm went to the trouble of all this publicity with the mindset, "I think we'll win very little if anything."

What I think this firm (and whoever their associated firms are) brings to the table is bringing lawsuits en masse against WT -- something we haven't seen with the Zalkin/Simons one-offs here and there around the country.

Again, we'll see what happens.