em1913

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Posts by em1913

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  23

  Stroup's "The Jehovah's Witnesses."

  by em1913 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  a book that doesn't get a lot of talk these days is herbert h. stroup's 1945 study "the jehovah's witnesses.

  " which is too bad, because in the field of jw studies it pretty much stands on its own as a serious, scholarly look at the rutherford era of the movement -- one written with no theological or doctrinal axes to grind, but rather with the impartial eye of a professional sociologist.. stroup received no cooperation whatever from brooklyn in writing this book, but he spent a great deal of time among rank-and-file witnesses of the late 1930s and early 1940s, attending their meetings, joining them in field service, and eating at their homes, and what emerges is a picture of an overwhelmingly working-class movement which overlapped in its hopes and ultimate goals the ambitions of other radical social movements of the 1930s.

  the witnesses were not marching in labor parades or participating in sit-down strikes or engaging in other forms of street-level radicalism, but stroup finds that, in their individual views on the social and economic structures of the time, they were largely in harmony with those who were, even in spite of their religion's supposed disavowal of politics, and he sees them as much as a political movement in that sense as a religious one.

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  em1913

  A book that doesn't get a lot of talk these days is Herbert H. Stroup's 1945 study "The Jehovah's Witnesses." Which is too bad, because in the field of JW studies it pretty much stands on its own as a serious, scholarly look at the Rutherford era of the movement -- one written with no theological or doctrinal axes to grind, but rather with the impartial eye of a professional sociologist.

  Stroup received no cooperation whatever from Brooklyn in writing this book, but he spent a great deal of time among rank-and-file Witnesses of the late 1930s and early 1940s, attending their meetings, joining them in field service, and eating at their homes, and what emerges is a picture of an overwhelmingly working-class movement which overlapped in its hopes and ultimate goals the ambitions of other radical social movements of the 1930s. The Witnesses were not marching in labor parades or participating in sit-down strikes or engaging in other forms of street-level radicalism, but Stroup finds that, in their individual views on the social and economic structures of the time, they were largely in harmony with those who were, even in spite of their religion's supposed disavowal of politics, and he sees them as much as a political movement in that sense as a religious one. There's a reason why reading "Consolation" from the late 1930s often feels like reading a radical political magazine more than any kind of a religious one
  

  This is a perspective few other authors have addressed in their studies of the Witnesses -- especially authors whose purpose in writing is largely polemical rather than sociological. It also helps to put into perspective exactly what happened to the movement during the Knorr era -- it wasn't just a shift in surface style or in teaching methods, it was an overt and very specific political shift, from the radicalism of the Rutherford era to an extremely bourgeois conservatism that went to great lengths to embrace aspects of the socio-politcal system that it claimed to oppose. Reading Stroup's depiction of the pre-1945 movement really draws that fact into sharp focus, and it makes understanding what happened to the Society in later years that much more obvious.

  This is a book well worth reading, and I hope that those who haven't will seek it out. It's a fascinating text.
  
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  85

  “Monkey this up”...

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  that expression is a no-no now.

  it is racist and hateful.

  some people just need to get the monkey off their backs..

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  em1913

  Not at all. And other than perhaps the late Elijah Muhammad with his teaching of old Mr. Yakub and his grafted white devils, I don't think anybody teaches "black supremacy." I've been reading your stuff here for years, Minimus, and to be honest you've always struck me as too intelligent a guy for that kind of cheap strawman argument. I hate to see the Trumpies sucking you into the cult of identitarianism. That way lies madness.
  
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  85

  “Monkey this up”...

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  that expression is a no-no now.

  it is racist and hateful.

  some people just need to get the monkey off their backs..

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  em1913

  "Capitalist science" is a thing. If it's good for Exxon, it's good for the planet, and if it isn't good for Exxon, it's obviously MADE UP FAKE NEWS BY COMMIES. There are entire corporate-funded think tanks that do nothing all day long but pump out talking points to "prove" that this is the case.
  

  As far as the claim that "the left teaches that every white person is inherently prejudiced" goes, well, no. What it does teach is that capitalism uses and has always used the doctrine of "white supremacy," either overtly or coded, to keep the working class divided in America. The use of racism is structural, and is not dependent on the beliefs or actions of any particular individual. "Whiteness" in this sense has less to do with skin color than with a figurative carrot of privilege dangled before a certain segment of the working class to ensure that it does not cooperate and find common cause with other segments of that class. "We're like you and you're like us, we're really on the same side against Them, " say the capitalist class to these workers, even as that class continues to exploit them as severely as it exploits the "not white" segments of that class. But the "white workers," like faithful dogs groveling for table scraps from their masters, just wag their tails and bark on cue.
  

  This strategy has been very successful over the past two hundred years, whether pitting white against black or "white" against other ethnic groups -- Jews, Italians, Irish, Chinese, etc. -- who have been put in the position of "not white" by the social structures of a given period. We see it today in the way the immigration issue is presented -- the foreign "others" posing a threat to the way of life represented by Real 100 Percent Americans. That was the basic thesis offered by the KKK in the 1920s, by the Coughlinites, the Liberty Leaguers and the America Firsters in the 1930s and 1940s, the Christian Crusade against Communism (changing the initials doesn't change the pronunciation) and the Birchers in the 1950s and 60s, the Nixon Southern Strategy and the Willis Carto/Liberty Lobby crowd in the 1970s, the Reaganite Neocons in the 1980s, the Buchananites of the 1990s, and so on down to Brother Trump and his friends today. The honking and quacking from the right today is nothing but old wine in new bottles.
  

  Sociology is cool. Read some.
  
• 
  85

  “Monkey this up”...

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  that expression is a no-no now.

  it is racist and hateful.

  some people just need to get the monkey off their backs..

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  em1913

  I've never heard the phrase in the thread title until now. To think I've lived more than half a century without access to the rich colorful language of whiny old men. Where I come from we say "ball this up." Apologies if any of you old monorchoids find that offensive.
  
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  15

  Terry's Editorial on the Pledge of Allegiance

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  terry's editorial on the pledge of allegiance_____.

  can one child in a thousand actually define the word or give the meaning of "allegiance?

  " can you--without stumbling around about it?give me a moment of your time, will you?first, in medieval times, wealthy landowners allowed peasants to cultivate their property as long as these pitiful souls made a pledge of fealty or allegiance to become a soldier for that lord of the manor if he needed to go to war against some imagined enemy.

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  em1913

  There were plenty of neighborhoods in New York in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s that were strictly defined along ethnic lines -- if you were Irish you knew to stay out of the Italian neighborhoods if you knew what was good for you, if you were Polish you avoided the Hungarians, if you were Jewish you avoided the Irish, and so on and on. You could spin the radio dial in the years before WWII and hear a Tower of Babel's worth of different languages -- Yiddish, German, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, you name it. And meanwhile "race suicide" crackpots wrote long, hand-wringing articles in the Saturday Evening Post about how all these unassimilable immigrants were going to be the death, oh, the utter DEATH of God's Own Country.

  And yet somehow, the world spun on and the children of those immigrants grew up to become splenetic senior citizens -- whose own "whiteness" doesn't extend back more than a century as such things were once understood -- fulminating about what all these new Others will do to God's Own Country. It's an old song, just one with a new arrangement.
  
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  54

  What JW habits do you still have?

  by Exelder in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  since leaving the jw's after over 4 decades, i can see exactly what it is and hate everything it stands for.

  however, there are still some jw habits and traits that i can't get rid of:.

  1. i can't swear in general conversation (i'd have to be really angry).

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  em1913

  I still hang things on the "information board."
  
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  15

  Terry's Editorial on the Pledge of Allegiance

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  terry's editorial on the pledge of allegiance_____.

  can one child in a thousand actually define the word or give the meaning of "allegiance?

  " can you--without stumbling around about it?give me a moment of your time, will you?first, in medieval times, wealthy landowners allowed peasants to cultivate their property as long as these pitiful souls made a pledge of fealty or allegiance to become a soldier for that lord of the manor if he needed to go to war against some imagined enemy.

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  em1913

  The pledge issue was one thing the Judge got right. Swearing an oath of allegience under compulsion to the state, or any symbolic representation of the state, is pure, unalloyed Fascism.
  
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  17

  Did You Ever Think You Would Be A Member On A Site Like This?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  when i first started looking at “apostate” sites , i was always watching over my shoulder, hoping no one would catch me viewing “spiritual pornography”.

  i found these types of sites mesmerizing but i never thought i’d join one.... look at me now.😈.

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  em1913

  When I left, there were no sites like this, and there was no internet. So there's that. I did, however, used to sneak looks in unauthorized books about the Witnesses at the puiblic library, things like "Visions of Glory," which fueled my curiosity about the actual history of the movement since the "official" accounts in the Yearbook, and that dopey "Divine Purpose" book just didn't cut it for me.

  I'd long been out when the Internet came along, but "watchtower" was one of the first things I ever entered into a search engine just out of curiosity to see what would come up. I used to read the old H20 site in the 90s, and I've actually been reading this site on an off-again on-again basis since it began but only recently figured I'd throw in my two cents here and there. I used to really enjoy the serious pieces on WTBTS history such as the stuff Farkel came up with on the Judge, and I really really enjoyed JT's posts on the inside stuff at Bethel. Miss those guys a lot.
  
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  31

  Jehovah’s Witnesses Really Have No Power Over You Unless YOU Let It Happen!

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  should i go to a judicial committee and perhaps get disfellowshipped?

  should i talk to the elders just because they say they want to talk to me?

  should i simply disassociate myself and have nothing to do with the organization?.

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  em1913

  Walked away thirty years ago this March. An elder tracked me down by phone three years later -- I'd moved out of the congregation territory -- and said he'd heard I was celebrating holidays. I said "I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number" and I never heard from any of them again.

  I don't have any bitterness toward them -- some of the elders in my congregation were kind, decent men. One was a real dickhead, and he's the one who called, no doubt because the CO was breathing down his neck about loose ends in the file. No love lost there.

  I didn't leave because of him, though, I left because it was time to leave. Simple as that. I don't know what my current status in the Org is, nor do I care. That's a chapter of my life that came to a close in 1988, just like other chapters that have come and gone. I'm not the person I was in 1988, or that I was when I started studying in 1980, and the person I am know just looks back on that time of my life as something someone else did.
  
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  242

  Do You Think President Trump Will Be Impeached?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  whether you like him or not.... it doesn’t matter.

  do you think he will be impeached?

  ?.

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  em1913

  He's a man who's declared bankruptcy repeatedly. He'll resign when the heat gets too hot.