i posted what follows elsewhere but thought it might be of interest here as well.
my forst posting here so i apologize in advance if this is not in the correct place.. a tribute to ray franz (on what would have been his 98th birthday) and to ed dunlap, his collaborator.
last week would have marked the 98th birthday of a man for whom most of us here have high regard.
If anyone is interested in all of Ray Franz's published writings in their original versions (everything that used to be on his Commentary Press website), someone has put up a website where you can find all that material for free here:
www.friendsofraymondfranz.com
This includes PDF versions of his books Crisis of Conscience (2004 edition) and In Search of Christian Freedom (2007 edition). He'd be glad to know they are back online and available for free and neither "updated" nor "altered".
http://www.thejournal.org/issues/issue92/crisiscn.html .
a 'crisis of conscience' opens eyes part 1.
he continues on page 346: .
It looks like all of the old Commentary Press material, which
includes the original PDF versions of Ray's books as well as his essays
and other commentary, are finally back online again and available for
free:
www.friendsofraymondfranz.com
a while ago the user vinman started a forum thread called: "ray franz was an idiot".
the reaction to it was quite negative but i have to admit that the title of that thread was intriguing to me.
by nature i am an iconoclast.
I was friends with Raymond Franz starting in the 90's. He spent the rest of his life quietly helping people who contacted him by offering encouragement and support through letters as well as answering questions. He didn't go out and start a church or do anything else that would indicate he was AT ALL interested in power or glory. He told me he avoided forums on the internet because they often devolved into baseless accusations and ridiculous speculations (as sadly happens here too). He refused to partake in anyone else's agenda or be forced to take a public position to further that agenda. He was extremely measured and thoughtful in his public statements. He felt the moral responsibility of having led people in the wrong direction as a GB member and so spent the rest of his life trying to compensate for that. I believe his character was unimpeachable and was friendly with him right until his passing nearly 10 years ago.
All of the old Commentary Press material back is online, which
includes the original PDF versions of Ray's books as well as his essays
and other commentary, and are available for
free:
www.friendsofraymondfranz.com
It looks like all of the old Commentary Press material, which
includes the original PDF versions of Ray's books as well as his essays
and other commentary, are finally back online again and available for
free:
www.friendsofraymondfranz.com
the significance of raymond franz.
in the light of the passing of raymond franz this week, it is clear from the reaction that many were affected by the deeds of this man.
while he was called gentle by those who knew him (for the record, i never got to meet him personally) his reputation preceded him both in the ex jehovah's witness community, and still to this day at the world headquarters of jehovah's witnesses.. while his writings were indeed fair and reasonable, (i challenge anyone to read his books and find bitterness associated with him toward his former peers) i think it would be a mistake to remember ray franz as somewhat of a gentle, doting old man.
It looks like all of the old Commentary Press material, which includes the original PDF versions of Ray's books as well as his essays and other commentary, are finally back online again and available for free:
www.friendsofraymondfranz.com
I'm happy to see this because Ray would have been saddened that it was taken down in the first place.
Ray never recorded an audio version of any of his books, but he did do one audio commentary on a talk given by a governing body member and made it available on his website as a CD.
I assure you Ray was more concerned with making sure his work continued to be freely available than he was making money off his work and creating even one small barrier to getting it.
This website appears to host an unsecured PDF version of Crisis from 2004, which is a Ray Franz-sanctioned version:
http://www.watchtowerwayback.org/en/static1/library
We also used to sell In Search of Christian Freedom in PDF form but this has yet to see light of day. Why? I have all the original artwork and ready-to-go PDFs that could be given away if Debbie would simply agree to that. Anyone want to ask her if she would endorse that since it doesn't appear she plans to do anything with it.
I'm going to try to set the record straight here on what really happened. I assisted Ray Franz for many years in page layout and technical support, including building his first website for him. Shipping physical books was hard on Ray after his stroke, and so we prepared a PDF version of Crisis of Conscience that could be sold online. I cobbled together a system that automatically emailed a link for a protected PDF file using a code to access it once payment had been made. Ray was very happy with this system because it required no labor and the few hundred dollar a month it generated helped supplement his meager retirement savings as well as allowed his work to be read in a format that may have been more appropriate for someone trying to keep evidence of their doubts hidden from family members still in the Witnesses.
Towards the end of his life, he had hoped to find someone who could take over the management of Commentary Press, his publishing imprint, but no viable candidates presented themselves. Upon his untimely death in 2010 from a gardening accident, I managed the website and made sure the funds were properly deposited into Cynthia's bank account, which was Ray's main hope even though no proper succession had been put in place. (By the way, I never took a penny for any help I provided.)
Debbie Dykstra was close to Cynthia and assisted her personally in many ways. But Debbie convinced Cynthia that she should manage Commentary Press, something myself and a few close associates of Ray's felt was inappropriate. We wanted to keep things as they were, where people could purchase e-versions of Ray's books and the money would continue into Cynthia's accounts. At Debbie and Cynthia's request, I turned over control of the domain name to her and soon after, she shut down the website that provided automatic fulfillment of Crisis of Conscience, claiming she would shortly replace it with something better.
Instead, it sat fallow for many years while she prepared a revised edition that incorporated her own story into the mix. Ray would not have approved of this in any way and as happy as I am that there is finally some version available again, I believe Debbie overstepped her bounds by trying to "improve" on Ray's last efforts and he would have been frustrated and saddened that she kept his last sanctioned revision of Crisis off the market for so many years. I offered to restore the previously functioning web store and to make sure all funds went to Debbie, but was rebuffed.
I can't pretend to know her motivation for this. Ray often complained of certain evangelical Christians wanting him to endorse some denomination of Christianity that they had embraced after leaving the Witnesses, but he refused, always pointing out that their agendas were distractions from cultivating a simple and personal relationship with God and Jesus. Ray's defense of a simple Christianity, that wherever "two or three were gathered" in Christ's name, there Christ was, seems to be the most reasonable and loving interpretation of that religion. Everything else was more about ego than about essence, he felt.
