Thanks steve2. It looks like a universal trend, but more pronounced in Canada. As someone said on another thread, there must be an increase in PIMO's and/or a decrease in POMI's in renect times, for these figures to make sense.
shepherdless
JoinedPosts by shepherdless
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Census & Publisher Trends for JWs in Australia, Canada & New Zealand: 1996-2016
by steve2 ini have graphed jw census and average publisher data from 3 countries with similar western democratic governments: australia, canada and new zealand (nz).
the census data is sourced from respective government publications and average publishers from jw organization yearbooks.. census data is incomplete either because a country did not have a census in the year under review or results from 2016 for that country are not currently available or i have not been able to source the data.
i welcome others filling the gaps!.
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Aust Census Data shows decrease while Yearbook shows increase
by shepherdless inon threads about 8 or 9 months ago, i put up some detailed data from the 2011 and 2006 australian censuses.
data from the 2016 census is becoming available in stages, and i mentioned recently that i would do an update.
finally, as of about today, some data of interest is available, and i have started to look at this, but it is time consuming, and i am time-poor.. anyway, the first search i have conducted is just a simple breakdown of the number of people describing themselves as jw's.
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shepherdless
Thanks everyone for comments. I kept thinking I must have made a mistake extracting the data, because I was not expecting a fall at all, let alone 3.5%.
What would be really fascinating would be an age profile of JWs from the latest data if possible. I predict that the average age of JWs is climbing rapidly.
Yes I am keen to extract this as well. It might have to wait until tomorrow, though.
steve2: Yes, I would expect whatever trends are occurring in Aust would be occurring in NZ as well, given the close cultural ties. Looking forward to seeing your data.
I will be back with more data when I get the chance.
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Aust Census Data shows decrease while Yearbook shows increase
by shepherdless inon threads about 8 or 9 months ago, i put up some detailed data from the 2011 and 2006 australian censuses.
data from the 2016 census is becoming available in stages, and i mentioned recently that i would do an update.
finally, as of about today, some data of interest is available, and i have started to look at this, but it is time consuming, and i am time-poor.. anyway, the first search i have conducted is just a simple breakdown of the number of people describing themselves as jw's.
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shepherdless
Yes sbf, that explanation is broadly what I am thinking. I wasn't aware of the results of the Canadian census. I am still surprised, though.
Joe: I'm surprised that there is only an imbalance of 11,000 between male and female JW's.
It is around the same imbalance that came out of the 2011. There is no gender imbalance in the age groups below 20, so that 11,000 imbalance is worse than it initially looks.
I will try to extract more interesting data over the next few days.
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Aust Census Data shows decrease while Yearbook shows increase
by shepherdless inon threads about 8 or 9 months ago, i put up some detailed data from the 2011 and 2006 australian censuses.
data from the 2016 census is becoming available in stages, and i mentioned recently that i would do an update.
finally, as of about today, some data of interest is available, and i have started to look at this, but it is time consuming, and i am time-poor.. anyway, the first search i have conducted is just a simple breakdown of the number of people describing themselves as jw's.
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shepherdless
alanv: I dont believe the Australian service report is wrong.
Personally, I don't think Watchtower is lying or making up figures. I suspect the av pubs numbers are just as reported to them. I suspect something else is going on.
jwfacts: yes, given that Australia was one of the first places outside USA where Watchtower was established, it really has been a disappointing "Land" for Watchtower.
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Aust Census Data shows decrease while Yearbook shows increase
by shepherdless inon threads about 8 or 9 months ago, i put up some detailed data from the 2011 and 2006 australian censuses.
data from the 2016 census is becoming available in stages, and i mentioned recently that i would do an update.
finally, as of about today, some data of interest is available, and i have started to look at this, but it is time consuming, and i am time-poor.. anyway, the first search i have conducted is just a simple breakdown of the number of people describing themselves as jw's.
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shepherdless
On threads about 8 or 9 months ago, I put up some detailed data from the 2011 and 2006 Australian censuses. Data from the 2016 census is becoming available in stages, and I mentioned recently that I would do an update. Finally, as of about today, some data of interest is available, and I have started to look at this, but it is time consuming, and I am time-poor.
Anyway, the first search I have conducted is just a simple breakdown of the number of People describing themselves as JW's. Here are the results, for each of the last 3 censuses:
Year 2006 (when Watchtower Yearbook reported 60,022 av pubs): 80,918
Year 2011 (when Watchtower Yearbook reported 64,498 av pubs): 85,498
Year 2016 (when Watchtower Yearbook reported 66,689 av pubs): 82,512
Just to repeat what I said in an earlier post, e census numbers are always going to be larger than the Yearbook number, because the census numbers include kids in the same household. Eg, the 2011 census listed 5,162 JW's aged 10 to 14, 4,857 aged 5 to 9, and 4,538 aged 0 to 4.
I couldn't initially believe the data for 2016, but I extracted it two separate ways, and repeated it for each census database in the same manner. I also extracted a breakdown by gender, which gave for the 2016 census: 35,913 male and 46,600 female (totalling 82,513).
So from 2011 to 2016, when Aust population grew by about 7 or 8%, average publishers increased by 3.4%, the number of people who stated they were JW's on the census DECREASED by 3.5%.
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Watchtower teaches that Jesus dying on the stake is no longer certain
by Listener inthe watchtower has held for many years that jesus died on a stake and held strongly to this teaching.
w 1951 3/15 the above agrees with the new world translation of the christian greek scriptures in its appendix, page 769, in saying that the instrument upon which jesus was nailed was a stake without a crossbeam, and not the religiously represented “cross”; and that the greek word used for that instrument in ancient time meant a “stake” and not the conventional religious cross.
they are no longer certain on this point.
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shepherdless
It seems like they are laying the groundwork for a change.
For a thorough discussion on whether the bible supports the "torture stake" dogma, the following link is excellent:
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/92381/facts-on-crucifixion-stauros-torture-stake
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Reading technology as a driver of religious change among JWs
by slimboyfat ini wonder if jws are currently undergoing a more significant transformation than generally appreciated.
and i wonder if the drivers for that change are a combination of legal, economic, and technological factors.
legal challenges changed jws stance of whether they are a "religion" with "ministers", in the 1950s, and stopped them charging for the literature in the 1990s.
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shepherdless
I agree it is a driver of significant change.
My take on it is slightly different. Up until recently, Watchtower had an advantage over other fundamentalist Christians in that it had a highly successful business model based on its publishing business. Technology has destroyed that business, and now Watchtower now depends solely on donations from its own adherents.
As a result, Watchtower is becoming just another fundamentalist religion, competing in a crowded field, where much of the competition have business models that still work (eg SDA with its food businesses and retirement homes, Catholics with their schools, hospitals, etc). Worse, Watchtower is at a disadvantage, because it is now managed by a committee of morons who can't make changes without a 2/3 majority, believe their own b.s., and seem to be just doubling down on what worked in the past.
Will they become more accepting of outside literature? I can't see how they can survive as a high control group if they do. But not doing so also disadvantages them against the competition. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
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Evolutionist on their deathbed.
by Nimble duck ini would really like to read the thoughts of an evolutionist as they lie on their deathbed.
their "honest to nogod" thoughts.
their terrors.
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shepherdless
Most Christians accept the theory of evolution, and consider the book of Genesis as metaphorical, not literal history.
If you stick around Nimble Duck, you might learn a few things here. But please don't troll; it makes Jehovah sad.
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Fewer christians (and other religions) and more with NO RELIGION in Australia
by fulltimestudent inthe results of the last australian census are trickling out, and the results offer an insight into the changing concepts of contemporary aussies.. in 1966 only 0.8 % marked 'no religion' on their census form.. in 2001 those marking 'no religion" had grown to 16%.. and in 2016 those marking 'no religion" had grown to 29.6%.. so more non-believers than any other group.
catholics (the previous largest group) were now only 22.5% of australians.. ________________________.
the other interesting change is language,.
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shepherdless
It is not mentioned in the article, but a part of the reason for the dramatic increase in the "No religion" category is that in the 2016 census, the "No religion" option was the first option in the list of religions. In the past, it was always the last listed option. That factor probably added 1 or 2% to the category.
From memory, the census doesn't break down different types of Muslims. There is just one overall category of Muslim, which is a weakness in the census in my view.
In relation to steve2's question, I have all that data and more, but I can't get to it for the next few days. If you look through my old posts of about 8 months ago, on a thread started by sbf, you will find it. I am planning to write a little piece on it all, next week.
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Sometimes I am very puzzled ...!!!
by fulltimestudent inrecently the extremely smart (so he tells us) but comparatively inexperienced person, elected by the very smart people who live in the usa, to be their president, announced that he was limiting ties with qatar (a small arab state in the middle east) on the grounds that they were supporting terrorism.. and yet, the very next day, he authorises the sale of twelve billion us dollars worth of modern american fighters (f15s) to that small state, in which is located ... .
" ... the biggest us military base in the middle east, al udeid.
ten thousand american personnel are there, many of them prosecuting the air war against isis in syria and iraq.
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shepherdless
I have watched news in the Middle East quite closely for some time. This blockade mess for Qatar (called the "Qatarstrophie" by some joker in Lebanon) should be getting more news coverage than it does. There must be a significant chance (say 30%?) that Saudi Arabia will invade Qatar in the next 2-3 weeks. That will probably bring Saudi Arabia into direct military conflict with a NATO member (Turkey) that has been flying troops in. Iran may possibly get involved, as Qatar and Iran share one of the world's largest gas fields and has a deal with Qatar to help develop it. This has the possibility (not yet the probability) of being a major mess, and war.
US Secretary of Defence and Sectretary of State are all saying and doing the right thing to de-escalate, but Trump has undermined them with silly tweets. Trump is not the cause of this mess, but could probably solve everything with a phone call. Will he?