Crisis of Conscience

by Raymond Franz

  René told me he would try to remain in New York, not because he liked the city, but with the thought that, should his circumstances allow, he could be of some service to the headquarters organization. It turned out that way, and in a few years he was donating his time two days a week to help out, doing Spanish translation, directing the taping of Spanish-language dramas for conventions, as well as doing part-time Circuit and District Overseer work among the scores of Spanish congregations in the New York area. He had spent some time in Portugal and when Portuguese congregations developed, he brushed up on the language and served them also.

  In his thirty some years of association with the organization, I seriously doubt that anyone in Puerto Rico, Spain or the United States ever found cause for complaint about René’s service. Of a quite gentle nature, he was at the same time a person of principle; he had learned the art, however, of being firm without being hard or harsh. Even given his later situation, which will be presented farther along, I doubt that any of those persons who worked with René Vázquez in any of the places he served would deny that the above is an honest assessment of him as a person. If he had a notable fault, it was, as he himself acknowledges, that he was perhaps too compliant when asked to do something for others, particularly by the Society. He feels today that his family life suffered unnecessarily because of this.

  As one example, he and his wife had gone for some years without a true vacation and he had lined up a trip that would take them back to Spain for a visit. Shortly before the time arrived, Harley Miller, then the head of the Service Department, called and asked René to do some Circuit work at that particular time. René felt that the right thing to do was to accept, for he had never turned down an assignment from “the Lord’s organization.” His wife made the trip to Spain, accompanied by her mother.

  René lived near La Guardia airport and members of the Service Department, Harley Miller among them, when traveling by plane on weekend speaking engagements, regularly arranged for René to meet them and transport them to Bethel on their return. Some of the flights arrived near midnight, others even later. René had insisted on providing such service for me and I had accepted on the basis of our long friendship, until I learned to what extent others were making use of his willingness to be helpful. To my mind, his good nature was imposed upon and with rare exceptions; I sought other means of transportation thereafter.

  I would think that if the view of the Governing Body were obtainable as to whom they would list as the principal figures in the “conspiracy against the organization” that they took such radical action to wipe out, they would point to us three—Ed, René and myself. Yet there was never an occasion when the three of us spent any time together. During the period involved I had extended conversations with René on perhaps two occasions; the same was true of Ed and René.

  What were the supposedly sinister activities we engaged in? Simply this, we discussed the Bible as friends and with friends of long standing.

  The night René came by our room, he had been attending a seminar for elders arranged by the Society. We discussed his impressions, which were basically favorable. At one point in the conversation, however, he said, “It seems to me as if we almost worship figures. Sometimes I wish we would do away completely with reports.” By reports he was referring to the system of having each Witness turn in report slips each month listing what “witnessing” activity was done, including hours spent, literature distributed, and so forth.21

  I recalled some points made in the previous District Assembly program about “faith and works” and we talked about this and the apostle’s statements in Romans on the subject. As I saw it, the apostle’s teaching called first of all for building people up in faith; when that was done the works would follow—for genuine faith is productive and active in the same way that genuine love is. One can keep constantly at people to perform certain works and they may do this as a result of pressure. But where is the evidence that the works are generated by faith and love? And if not so motivated, how pleasing would they be to God anyway?

  It seemed evident that deeds of faith had to be spontaneous, not systematized or made to conform to a certain mold, just as acts of love should be spontaneous, not something performed out of mere compliance with some scheduled activity programmed by others. Orderly arrangements are fine, but they should be for the purpose of convenience, not as a means of subtle compulsion, used to create a guilt complex in any not ‘fitting into the mold.’ The more closely men try to supervise the lives and activity of fellow Christians, the more they actually squeeze out the opportunity for faith and love to motivate and control. I acknowledged that it is more difficult and far harder work to build up people’s faith and appreciation through Scripture than simply to give “pep talks” or make people feel guilty, but, from what the apostle wrote, that harder way seemed to me to be the only Scripturally right and wise way.

  That was the essence of the conversation. The subject of report slips sparked the conversation but thereafter did not figure therein. On meeting up with René in the lobby of one of the buildings sometime later, he said he found that approaching matters in the light of Paul’s writings in Romans made his Circuit and District Overseer work far more enjoyable, his discussion with elders more meaningful.

  Some weeks later my wife and I went to his home for a meal. Though we two couples had been together in the same Spanish-speaking congregation in Queens, New York, during our first years in the city, since then our getting together had been quite sporadic. Both before and after the meal, René wanted to discuss the message of Romans. Though to a lesser degree than with my wife, I felt an obligation to respond to his questions rather than evade issues. I had known him for thirty years; I knew him to be a serious student of the Scriptures. I spoke to him as a friend, not as an organizational official, and in discussing the Word of God with him I felt my prime responsibility was to God, not to men, not to an organization. If I held back from speaking to persons like this on what I saw to be clear-cut teachings of Scripture, how could I say as Paul did in his words to the Ephesian elders, recorded at Acts, chapter twenty, verses 26 and 27:

  I call you to witness this very day that I am clean from the blood of all men, for I have not held back from telling you all the counsel of God.

  Paul knew that it was doing this that had resulted in his being spoken of injuriously within the synagogue of Ephesus.22 I knew, as well, that my speech could produce similar results.

  Among other sections, we discussed the first portion of the eighth chapter of Romans (considered earlier in this chapter of this book). I was interested to know how he viewed verse 14, as to the sonship relation to God, when considered in the light of the context. He had never examined it contextually (as is probably true of practically all of Jehovah’s Witnesses). When he did, his reaction was both spontaneous and stirring. What to others might seem obvious, can strike one of Jehovah’s Witnesses as if it were a revelation. René’s comment was, “For years I have had the feeling that I was resisting holy Spirit when reading the Christian Scriptures. I would be reading along and applying to myself everything I read, then suddenly I would stop and say, ‘But these things do not apply to me, they apply only to the anointed.’”

  I know, he knows and God knows that I used no persuasion to cause him to see matters differently. It was the apostle’s own words in the Bible, read contextually, that did the persuading. His expression on a later incidental contact was that the Scriptures as a whole came alive with far greater meaning to him from that point forward.

  Though it may seem strange, for one of Jehovah’s Witnesses (not of the about 9,100 “anointed”) to come to the conclusion that the words found from Matthew to Revelation are directed to him and do apply, not merely “by extension,” but actually and directly, causes a door to open to a whole host of questions, questions that have often been longing for an answer but which did not dare to be asked.

  When I review what has been done in recent times in an effort to uphold
the organization’s interpretations, the manipulation of Scripture and fact, I can only feel grateful that I did not let concern for an organization’s favor hold me back from pointing at least some persons to the Scriptures on these points.

  On March 4, 1980, I submitted a request to the Personnel Committee of the Governing Body for a leave of absence to extend from March 24 to July 24. My wife and I both felt that our health demanded an extended change. During that period I also hoped to investigate what possibility there was of finding employment and somewhere to live if we were to terminate our headquarters service. We had about $600 in a savings account and a seven-year-old car as our major assets.

  When attending District Assemblies in Alabama, we had previously met and become acquainted with a Witness named Peter Gregerson. Later he had invited us to visit Gadsden, Alabama, on a couple of occasions so that I could speak to the local congregations. Peter had developed a small chain of supermarkets in the Alabama-Georgia area. In 1978, when a “zone trip” took my wife and me as far as Israel, Peter and his wife joined us there and we spent parts of two weeks touring that Bible land.

  At that time Peter expressed serious concern about the effects the 1975 predictions had had. He said he thought it would be a grave error if the Society pushed strongly on their 1914 date; that the disillusionment resulting from 1975 would be nothing compared with what would come if the Society was forced to move away from that 1914 chronology. I acknowledged his assessment as undoubtedly correct but we went no further into the matter.

  When Peter learned of our proposed leave of absence, he urged us to spend some time with them and fixed up a mobile home belonging to one of his sons for us to stay in. He offered to let me do yard work on his property to help cover some of our expenses and at the same time get some of the vigorous exercise that had been medically recommended for me at a recent physical exam.23

  Peter’s father had become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses when Peter was a small child, and from about the age of four he had been taken by his parents to meetings. As a young man he had become a full-time “pioneer” and even after marriage and the arrival of his first child he had struggled to keep on in that full-time activity, doing janitorial work for income.24 He had been sent by the Society into “problem” areas in Illinois and Iowa to help solve difficulties and build up certain congregations. In 1976 he was one of a representative group of elders invited to Brooklyn for discussions with the Governing Body.

  A year or so after this seminar, however, he decided to relinquish his eldership. He had recently turned over the presidency of the grocery company to one of his brothers and had made use of his increased free time to do more Bible study. He was troubled by some of the organization’s teachings and wanted to reaffirm his convictions as to their rightness, reestablish his confidence in his lifelong religion. (He was then in his early fifties.)

  The result was exactly the opposite. The more he studied the Scriptures, the more convinced he became that there were serious errors in the organization’s theology. This led to his decision as to ceasing his eldership. As he put it in talking with me about it, “I just can’t bring myself to stand before people and conduct studies on things that I cannot see have a Scriptural backing. I would feel like a hypocrite doing that and my conscience won’t let me do it.” Although when first hearing his decision, I had encouraged him to reconsider it, I could not deny the validity of his serious questions, and I had to respect his conscientiousness and his distaste for hypocrisy. He had reached his personal crossroads before I reached mine.

  This was the man that organizational policy later categorized as a “wicked man” with whom one should not even eat and my having a meal with him in a restaurant in 1981 resulted in my trial and banishment from the organization.

  It was in April, 1980, while we were in Gadsden on leave of absence that I first began to hear of what seemed to me to be strange occurrences back in Brooklyn. The expected storm had begun to break upon us.

  INQUISITION

  When he left the house, the scribes and the Pharisees began a furious attack on him and tried to force answers from him on innumerable questions, setting traps to catch him out in something he might say.

  — Luke 11:53, 54, Jerusalem Bible.

  An inquisition, in the religious sense, is an inquiry into individuals’ personal convictions and beliefs.

  Historically, its aim has been—not to aid the individual, or to provide basis for reasoning with him—but to incriminate, to convict as heretical.

  The initiating cause for the inquiry often has nothing to do with the individual’s being disruptive, malicious or even being particularly vocal about his beliefs. Mere suspicion is sufficient cause to set in motion the inquisitory action. The suspect is viewed as, in effect, having no rights: even his personal conversations with intimate friends are treated as something the inquisitors have full right to delve into.

  It was not solely the atrocious acts of punishment meted out in the Spanish Inquisition that earned it such a despised name in history. It was also the authoritarian approach and arrogant methods of interrogation employed to gain the incrimination so often zealously pursued by the religious judicial court. The torture and the violent punishment meted out then are outlawed today. But the authoritarian approach and arrogant methods of interrogation can still be practiced with apparent impunity.

  I am reminded here of an article in the January 22. 1981, issue of the Awake! magazine, titled “Searching Out Legal Roots.” It emphasized the superb legal precedents found in the Mosaic Law and, among other things, said:

  This principle was praised in the Society’s publication. In actual practice it was totally rejected. As Jesus said, “They say one thing and do another.”25 The “secret star-chamber hearings” were preferred, as the evidence clearly shows. Only fear of the power of truth prompts that kind of proceedings. Those methods serve, not the interests of justice or mercy, but the cause of those who seek to incriminate.

  The Awake! magazine of April 22, 1986 also relates:

  Anyone—man, woman, child or slave—could accuse a person of heresy, without fear of being confronted with the accused or of the latter even knowing who had denounced him. The accused rarely had someone to defend him, since any lawyer or witness in his behalf would himself have been accused of aiding and abetting a heretic. So the accused generally stood alone before the inquisitors, who were at the same time prosecutors and judges.

  Four weeks after starting my leave of absence, while in Alabama, a phone call came from Ed Dunlap. After some general conversation, he told me that two members of the Governing Body, Lloyd Barry and Jack Barr, had come into his office and had interrogated him about his personal beliefs for about three hours. At one point Ed asked, “What’s the purpose of this ‘third degree’?” They assured him that it was not a “third degree” but that they simply wanted to hear how he felt about some matters.

  They gave him no explanation as to what motivated their interrogation. Despite their claim that the discussion was simply informative, Ed’s distinct impression was that it was the start of an organizational action that would prove both inquisitorial and punitive. Their questions inquired into his view of the organization, the teachings about 1914, the two classes of Christians and the heavenly hope, and similar points.

  As regards the organization, he told his interrogators that his major concern was the obvious lack of Bible study on the part of the members of the Governing Body, that he felt that they had an obligation to the brothers to make such study and research of the Scriptures a primary concern, instead of allowing themselves to become so preoccupied with paper work and other affairs that Bible study got crowded out. As to 1914, he frankly acknowledged that he felt it was something that one should not be dogmatic about, and he asked them if the Governing Body itself believed this was something completely solid, certain. The reply from the two men was that ‘while there were one or two who had doubts, the Body as a whole supported the date fully.’ He told them
that if others in the Writing Department expressed themselves it would be evident that almost all had different views on certain points.

  On another day, Albert Schroeder and Jack Barr began a person-by-person interrogation of each member of the Writing Department. None of these acknowledged the uncertainty they felt about specific teachings, though in personal conversation virtually every one had some point that he had expressed a different view on.

  The ironical feature of this was the diversity of viewpoint existing within the Governing Body itself, something that the interrogators themselves personally knew but never mentioned or acknowledged to those they questioned.

  I knew that Lyman Swingle, the coordinator of the Writing Committee of the Governing Body and the coordinator of the Writing Department, was away on a zone trip. I found it puzzling that such an intensive investigation should be initiated in his absence. Yet the Governing Body members doing the investigating had given no indication that anything out of the ordinary had arisen that should call for such a full-scale inquiry. From experience with the organization, I felt that this absence of any explanation for their action was indicative, not of something innocuous or benign, but of something that, when it came into the open, could prove quite devastating to those affected by it. For that reason, on Monday, April 21, 1980, I phoned the Brooklyn headquarters from Alabama and asked to speak to Governing Body member Dan Sydlik. He was not available, the Society’s telephone operator informed me. I then asked to speak to Governing Body member Albert Schroeder, who was acting Chairman of the Body that year. He likewise was not available. I left a message with the operator that I would appreciate it if one or the other would phone me.