Has anyone read this book? Is it worth buying? It just appeared on my Amazon recommendations page.
A Voice from Inside: Notes on Religious Trauma in a Captive Organization.
Lost in the fog
JoinedPosts by Lost in the fog
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Does anyone recommend this book?
by Lost in the fog inhas anyone read this book?
is it worth buying?
it just appeared on my amazon recommendations page.. a voice from inside: notes on religious trauma in a captive organization.. https://amzn.eu/bow8qkt.
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Is This New?
by Lost in the fog init is a very long time since i was an elder and the elders textbooks have changed multiple times since then.
going back to when i was an elder, to the best of my knowledge the only way a spouse could divorce from his/her partner was porneia, if that person had sexual relations with a man, woman, child, or beast.
but it had to be proven and that's the dubious 2 witness rule.. in fact, if it was not proven and the innocent party divorced and married someone else, then they could be hauled up in front of a judicial committee and be charged with committing adultery and disfellowshipped!
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Lost in the fog
"the governing bodies deluded minds sex only happens at night and if you spend the entire night at someone’s house."
That's a fair point. If the individual goes to work every day he could be spending time with his secretary - so would the elders or others stake out his place of work with their binoculars? Lol, I'm just trying to picture that in my mind...
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JW's in war zone
by Gorb inthere is so much silence about the jw's in the ukraine conflict.
are the jw men arrested because they don't want to fight?
how is that going in the hyper nationalist fase the country is in?
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Lost in the fog
I find it amusing that nowadays everyone says that Putin's references to de-Nazifying Ukraine are wrong, that Ukraine never held extreme right-wing views.
Why do I find it amusing? Because in 2014 after Russia annexed part of Ukraine, foreign fighters flocked to Ukraine to fight against Russia.
What were the political views of most of these fighting men? For the most part they were right-wing, neo-Nazi, white supremacists. And why were they going to Ukraine? Because the Ukrainian forces held similar beliefs.
There were several articles from various countries at the time in 2014. Here's a link to one of them - - https://www.vice.com/en/article/vb95ma/far-right-extremists-have-been-using-ukraines-civil-war-as-a-training-ground-theyre-returning-home
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Is This New?
by Lost in the fog init is a very long time since i was an elder and the elders textbooks have changed multiple times since then.
going back to when i was an elder, to the best of my knowledge the only way a spouse could divorce from his/her partner was porneia, if that person had sexual relations with a man, woman, child, or beast.
but it had to be proven and that's the dubious 2 witness rule.. in fact, if it was not proven and the innocent party divorced and married someone else, then they could be hauled up in front of a judicial committee and be charged with committing adultery and disfellowshipped!
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Lost in the fog
It is a very long time since I was an elder and the elders textbooks have changed multiple times since then. But is this something new?
Going back to when I was an elder, to the best of my knowledge the only way a spouse could divorce from his/her partner was Porneia, if that person had sexual relations with a man, woman, child, or beast. But it had to be proven and that's the dubious 2 witness rule.
In fact, if it was not proven and the innocent party divorced and married someone else, then they could be hauled up in front of a judicial committee and be charged with committing adultery and disfellowshipped! Leaving the original adulterous spouse not only in the congregation but free to marry a new partner if they so wished without reproach!!
However, if the innocent spouse chose not to divorce, what followed was the messy business of alleged forgiveness by this wronged spouse if they resumed sexual relations with the guilty partner which would imply they were accepting them back into the marriage bed.
I say "messy business" because I used to squirm if I had to sit on one of those committees as I was a young single man at this stage of my life; and one of the mature married brothers would be chairman, and asking very probing questions about the poor wife's (it usually was a woman who had been cheated on) bedroom sexual activity and frequency.
I did once chip in with a couple of questions for her as to whether it was consensual or whether there had been any coercion from the husband to resume marital intimacies - only to be chastised by the other 2 members afterwards for going off script and (nobody told me there was a script!) taking the committee's purpose in a different direction.
I guess it was tricky enough to be looking at adultery and forgiveness without it moving into the area of domestic abuse. In fact I recall another occasion where the presiding overseer actually said at a meeting of elders that "since the police don't interfere in domestic disputes unless someone has been killed, us elders shouldn't intervene either, no matter how many bruises we see." His motto was "if it ain't broken don't fix it." Because it would mean work for him and possibly scrutiny from the higher-ups which was not what he wanted in HIS congregation.
Anyway let me get back to my original query. Is this new? In the latest elders manual I saw on an ex-jw webpage I see that there's a part on brazen conduct, and what is referred to as "circumstancial evidence" of adultery, which can lead to a committee etc, etc. But it was the last sentence that caught my attention. That based on this scenario, the spouse can not only divorce, but can marry someone else, and won't be criticized by the congregation for doing so. Surely could be manipulated by someone who just wanted out of a marriage to marry a different person. Pity help the poor man if he spent the night on a sofa, with his secretary in the bedroom, because the hotel reservation had been cancelled by the office junior in error.
The whole judgemental thing inside congregations is so unChristian and part of the controlling nature of those in charge and their deputies. It is rules, rules, and more rules. That's why I was surprised at what appeared to be a loophole in their previous procedures.
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Increased Watchtower Income
by Lost in the fog inin the united kingdom.. .
https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/over-1000-charities-combine-in-one-of-largest-mergers-ever.html .
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Lost in the fog
In the United Kingdom.
https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/over-1000-charities-combine-in-one-of-largest-mergers-ever.html
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Another one.
by Lost in the fog inhttps://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/aug/15/lawsuit-claims-former-spokane-jehovahs-witness-lea/ .
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Private and Prayerful Deliberations!?
by Lost in the fog init is more likely that the notes will have the elders' doodles and scribbles in the margin rather than any evidence of prayerful deliberation.
or maybe it's just a ploy to give the boe more time to open the blue envelope and sanitise the content.
we'll have to wait and see what happens, if anything.. https://www.nsnews.com/bc-news/bc-jehovahs-witnesses-challenge-record-production-order-in-court-5691559.
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Lost in the fog
It is more likely that the notes will have the elders' doodles and scribbles in the margin rather than any evidence of prayerful deliberation. Or maybe it's just a ploy to give the BoE more time to open the blue envelope and sanitise the content. We'll have to wait and see what happens, if anything.
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Magnum Actor died.
by Lost in the fog inhttps://news.sky.com/story/magnum-pi-actor-roger-e-mosley-dies-after-sustaining-injuries-in-car-crash-12668467.
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Elder Arrangement
by vienne inhi everyone, (including the person who down votes all of my posts).
as some of you know, i'm working toward my master's degree.
comments from those associated when the elder arrangement was introduced would help me with a research paper.. what was the reaction among adherents?
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Lost in the fog
I remember that when the rotational elder arrangement came in in the early 70s it caused a lot of frustration for some very organised brothers.
You're the Secretary, as a highly organised person you create a perfect filing system for the congregation paperwork. But, at the end of the year you have to hand it over to a brother who works as a car mechanic, he in turn hands it on next year to a window cleaner, who hands it on to a pig farmer, who hands it back to the highly organised brother. He opens the file, and everything is muddled up, utility bills mixed in with letters or committee meeting minutes. Dirty greasy fingerprints on publishers record cards making some them illegible. It takes him 12 months to get his filing back to perfection. At the end of the year he doesn't want to hand it on, and is verbally critical of the others who can't see what the fuss is about! Nervous breakdown pending.
A circuit overseer I knew well (no longer with us) told me that it was one of the reasons why the WT stopped revolving the Presiding Overseer, the Secretary, and the Field Service Overseer. He said he knew of congregations where the super efficient brother literally came to fisticuffs with others on the body or a shouting match where non-Christian language was used to describe other elders resulting in the CO having to get involved and delete some of them as elders.
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I’m a current elder ex bethel in London
by Mikejw ini was in bethel for years early 2000s and was heavily involved with brd from start to finish .
im current elder in one of the congregations in london.
what i’ve noticed is huge changes since covid .
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Lost in the fog
I wonder what will happen when door to door witnessing resumes?
I've heard on the grapevine that locally many new publishers were created during the Covid pandemic, both reactivated baptised publishers and a large number of unbaptised publishers.
I'm sure for them it was dead easy to sit on their comfortable sofa and write letters copied off a template and send them anonymously to strangers in the mail.
But it's a different ballgame entirely if they are expected to get dressed and go out knocking doors and be seen in public identifying themselves as JWs.
Who wants to bet that lots of those people will start to drift off into obscurity rather than go house to house?