After being nourished to our present spiritual strength and maturity, do we suddenly become smarter than our former provider and forsake the enlightening guidance of the organization that mothered us?4
There are constant admonitions to be humble, which translates into accepting whatever the organization provides as coming from a source of superior wisdom. The fact that the average Witness has only a misty idea of the way that the leadership arrives at its conclusions adds to the aura of esoteric wisdom. It is, they are told, “the only organization on earth that understands the ‘deep things of God.’”5
Few of these Witnesses have ever confronted the issues dealt with in this book, the challenge to conscience they raise. I incline to believe that many, perhaps most, would prefer not to face those issues. Some have personally expressed their feeling to me that they enjoy their friendships within the organization and would not want to see these disturbed. I also enjoyed mine and had no desire to see them disturbed; I felt, and still feel, affection for the people with whom I spent most of my life. But I also felt that there were issues of truth and honesty, of fairness and justice, of love and mercy, that were bigger than those friendships and my enjoyment of them.
By this I am not saying that I think anyone should precipitate difficulty, seek or force a confrontation that is unnecessary. I can sympathize wholeheartedly with those who are of families composed of Jehovah’s Witnesses and who know full well the wrenching effect it could have on family relationships if the members were called upon to treat a son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother, as an “apostate,” a God-rejected, spiritually unclean person. I have never encouraged anyone to precipitate such a situation; I tried to avoid precipitating it in my own case.
But given the existing climate in the organization, it has become increasingly difficult to avoid this without compromising conscience, without ‘acting a part,’ pretending to believe what one may not believe, what one may actually be convinced is a perversion of the Word of God, producing unchristian fruitage, hurtful results.
I know a number of persons who have tried to withdraw quietly and some who have been, in a sense, “in hiding,” persons who actually went to the extent of moving to another area and who sought to keep their whereabouts unknown (organizationally) so as to avoid harassment. I could cite case after case where, despite all efforts at avoiding confrontation, elders have sought the persons out, their only concern apparently being to extract from them some statement of their position—not toward God, Christ or the Bible—but toward “the organization.” If the persons fail in this “loyalty test,” presented as a clear ultimatum, they are almost always disfellowshipped, cut off from friends and family if these are members of the organization.
Typical is the experience of one young woman, a wife and mother, in southern Michigan. She had been interrogated by the elders because of her doubts about certain teachings and had been so emotionally affected by the experience that she had withdrawn from attending meetings. After some months, a phone call came from the elders requesting that she meet with them again. She said she did not want to undergo that experience again. They urged her to do it, saying that they wanted to ‘help her with her doubts’ and that this would be the last time they would ask her to meet with them. Her husband, not a Witness, recommended that she go and “have it over with.” She went.
As she said, “Within the first ten minutes I could see the direction they were taking.” Half an hour from the start of their questioning they had disfellowshipped her. She says the time factor alone stunned her. As she put it, “I couldn’t believe they were doing this. I sat there the whole time sobbing and within thirty minutes they had ‘kicked me out of the Kingdom.’ I would have thought they would have got down on the floor with tears in their eyes, pleading with me for hours, to prevent that from happening.” One of the five elders, a man who dozed off during the discussion, later said in her hearing, “The nerve of that woman to say that she wasn’t sure if this was God’s organization or not.”
If efforts to avoid the unwanted confrontation fail, I think there is then consolation in knowing that the reason for any family distress and heartache rests on one side only. It is fully and entirely the fruitage of an organizational policy that calls upon members to report to the elders any expression of dissent, even if by family members, and a policy backed by the threat of expulsion for anyone who fails to treat disassociated or disfellowshipped persons as though they were rejected by God, no matter how sincere and devoted one may know them to be. The religious intolerance that acts as the divisive force, destructive of family oneness and affection, is not mutual therefore. Jesus said that it would be his disciples who would be handed over to religious judicial bodies for trial, not that they would be the ones handing others over to such bodies. He warned that those who held true to his teachings would be “betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends,” not that they would be the ones doing the betraying.6 As in Jesus’ day, so today, the divisive force comes from one side, one source, a source that equates conscientious disagreement with disloyalty. There is where the real responsibility for the broken family relationships, ruined friendships and the accompanying emotional hurt and distress ultimately rests.
Many Witnesses, though deeply concerned over what they see, find it difficult to adjust to the thought of serving God without being connected to some powerful organization, having the benefit of its largeness, its strength of numbers. True, Jehovah’s Witnesses are a small organization compared to many, but they are widespread. Their visible structures are not as impressive as those of the Vatican or of some other major religions; nonetheless, the expanding international headquarters, which now owns a sizeable chunk of Brooklyn, the many Branch facilities, some with large printing establishments, all built or bought at the cost of millions of dollars and staffed by hundreds of workers (in Brooklyn, by around three thousand), the large Assembly Halls and the many thousands of Kingdom Halls (not a few costing more than a quarter million dollars to build), are sufficient to impress the average person. Every new acquisition or expansion of material properties is hailed as indicative of divine blessing and evidence of the organization’s spiritual prosperity and success. Above all, the teaching that they are, exclusively, the one people on earth with whom God has dealings, and that the direction they receive from the Governing Body is from a divinely appointed “channel,” helps produce a sense of cohesion, of specialness. The view of all other persons as “worldlings” contributes to this feeling of a close-knit relationship.
Because of this, I think it is equally as difficult for the average Witness to contemplate serving God without these things as it was for Jewish persons in the first century to contemplate such service apart from the religious arrangements they were accustomed to. The impressive temple buildings and courtyards at Jerusalem, with temple service carried out by a large staff of hundreds and thousands of dedicated workers, Levites and priests, their claim to be exclusively the chosen people of God, with all others viewed as unclean, stood in tremendous contrast to the Christians of that time, who had no large buildings, who met in simple homes, who had no separate priestly or Levite class, and who humbly acknowledged that ‘in every nation the man that fears God and works righteousness is acceptable to him.’7
Quite a number, particularly among elders of Jehovah’s Witnesses, express the sincere hope that some kind of “reform” will take place to correct the wrongs they are conscious of, both doctrinally and organizationally. Some have looked for this to come about by a change of personnel in the leadership. Even before I went on my leave of absence from the headquarters in early 1980, a member of a Branch Committee of a major country, a discerning person who realized the distress I felt over the existing attitudes and situation, said to me, “Ray, don’t give up! These are old men, they will not live forever.” This expression was not reflective of a hard, unfeeling, cynical personality, for the person who spoke it is just the opposite of that; he is a very kind,
warmhearted man. Such expressions are often born of a belief that some change must come, that the trend toward an ever harder line and an increasingly dogmatic stance must give way to a more Christian approach, a more humble presentation of beliefs.
Personally, I do not believe that fundamental change is to be expected simply as a result of men in authority dying. I say fundamental change, for there have been changes in varying degrees throughout the history of the movement, some as a result of the deaths of Russell and Rutherford. During Russell’s life a considerable measure of autonomy existed, and though disagreement with his views may have been deprecated, it was not crushed by his exercise of authority. Russell’s death and the issue of control his successor faced led to the extreme focus on “organization” and organizational authority and control that has ever since characterized the Witness community. Whatever moderating changes that have followed Rutherford’s death, the basic foundation has remained the same. The change in the authority structure in 1975-76 was as major an adjustment as has taken place in the whole history of the organization. Authority was spread out to a body of men, with many new faces coming to the fore. Yet the power of traditional beliefs and traditional policies has overcome any effort to bring about a genuine change from speculative interpretations, dogmatism, Talmudic legalism, control by an elite group, repressive measures, replacing these with a simple brotherhood, united in essentials, tolerant and yielding in nonessentials, both in belief and practice.
In questioning the validity of points made in this chapter with regard to prospects of reform, the book Apocalypse Delayed by M. James Penton (2nd edition, on pages 333, 334) refers to major changes in other organizations brought about by change in leadership. The book then states: “It is therefore wrong to discount the possibility of change from the top within Jehovah’s Witnesses.” As a review of the material found in this and previous editions of Crisis of Conscience shows, there is no denial of the possibility of change from that source but rather the point is made that the evidence points to an obstacle greater than the personnel of the leadership.
Of the eleven men who were on the Governing Body when I entered it in 1971, I am the only one yet alive. Of the seventeen members shown in the photo at the beginning of Chapter 4, of this edition, 2008, fifteen have died. The corporation presidency has passed from Nathan Knorr to Fred Franz, then to Milton Henschel and most recently to Don Adams. Seven new members have been added to the Governing Body. But despite all the changes in personnel the course of the organization has continued essentially the same, its essential character seems unaltered. As stated in this book, it is the concept that controls the men, the concept that the Watch Tower organization was divinely chosen by Christ Jesus and constitutes God’s “channel of communication” for all his servants on earth, and that their functioning as a governing body is a divine arrangement. As evidence indicates, the changes in teaching or policy that have occurred, some discussed in this book, have resulted from force of circumstance rather than personnel changes.
From the other direction, those who feel that some kind of “grass roots” expression will bring about change are quite unaware of the spirit that characterizes Governing Body meetings. Having attended many hundreds of these, I know the disregard, often approaching disdain, with which questioning and objections from the “rank and file” are considered.
Concern about the benefits of preserving or attaining certain relationships with governments does manifest itself and so, too, does concern over numbers. The annual reports for the years since the year 2000 have revealed a notable decrease in growth in all of western Europe and in the United States. Japan, which for years was seen as a shining example of expansion, had zero growth in the year 2000 report and minus growth the following year. A continuance of this trend may produce additional changes. But as has been the case till now, the root cause of problems is rarely addressed and the changes often are designed to perpetuate a traditional stance.
Recently, in a seminar for elders called the Kingdom Ministry School, the organization altered its policy on “reporting” as a “publisher.” Formerly the minimum amount of time for qualifying as an active “publisher” during a given month was one hour. For elderly and infirm Witnesses this has now been reduced to fifteen minutes. Presented as evidence of compassionate concern for such ones, it seems more likely that it is a measure taken to bolster the declining annual reports.
After all is said and done, it needs to be recognized that separating from the Watch Tower Society and its control—or any other flawed system—is of itself no solution, no guarantee of improvement. Some who separate are essentially no better off than before, have no idea how to use Christian freedom in a good and beneficial, God-honoring way; some exchange one set of combined true and false beliefs for another combined set of true and false beliefs. The purity of one’s motivation is crucial. So, my interest is not in “getting people out of an organization” but in enhancing and deepening their appreciation of a genuine personal relationship with God and Christ.
The death of Fred Franz in 1992, at the age of 99, in a sense did indeed mark the end of an era—he was the only Governing Body member baptized as of 1914, the year so crucial to Witness beliefs. And he likely was the only member who had personally met the founder of the organization, Charles Taze Russell. He was the architect of by far the major part of the post-Rutherford doctrinal structure as well as the formulator of much of the policy relating to disfellowshipping matters. The divine “mantle” supposedly passed on by Rutherford (see pages 117 to 119 of this book) disappeared with him.
I had written to my uncle a few times since my resignation from the Governing Body, never with the thought of receiving a reply (and none ever came), nor as to an authority figure, but solely because of my feeling for him as a family member and as a person. I wrote to express interest in his health, and to assure him that my concern for him was not governed by policies of any human system. My main wish is that it might have been possible to sit down and talk with him person to person, for I am fully convinced in my own mind that he realized the fragility of the Scriptural foundation for many of the organization’s teachings. He was a man of intellectual power and of mental discipline, and he was capable of writing sound Biblical exposition. But his unremitting devotion to a humanly-founded organization apparently allowed him to act as its prime apologist whenever its distinctive teachings were subjected to questioning or when its organizational interests appeared to be threatened, even when this meant “accommodating” the Scriptures in such a way that they appeared to support the organization’s position. In such cases his intelligence was diverted into what ultimately was only imaginative inventiveness, an ability to lead readers’ minds to desired conclusions by mere rhetoric and plausibility.
I find a definite sadness in all this. Although he witnessed the increase of organizational membership from a few thousands into several million, saw its headquarters property grow from a handful of buildings into entire city blocks of multi-storied structures, saw its publishing operations expand from a relatively modest status to that of an international printing empire, none of this goes with him to the grave—and none of these numerical and material factors surely has any bearing whatsoever on the way God will express either his commendation or his reproof. Already years before his death all the books written by him had been allowed to go out of print (though some are available on CD-ROM disks), essentially relegated to the status of mere memorabilia which the writings of Rutherford and Russell occupy. His very creative interpretations of prophecies, such as that of Daniel, in many cases are being replaced by other interpretations, made necessary by force of circumstance. (The dissolution of the Soviet Union, as one example, critically undermined his interpretation of the “king of the north” and the “king of the south” of Daniel 11:29-45.)
In 1988, after learning of his health problems, including the implantation of a heart pacemaker, I felt moved to write again to my uncle. I reviewed with him a few of what I co
nsidered his finest writings and talks, statements presenting valid principles which, if genuinely held to, would call for a reassessing of many of the organization’s present positions and claims. Among other things, my letter said:
For both of us life is in its final stages. I am very conscious of the certainty declared by the apostle that “we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God” where “each one of us will render an account of himself to God.” His Son, as judge, will then “both bring the secret things of darkness to light and make the counsels of the heart manifest, and then each one will have his praise come to him from God.” (Romans 14:10-12; 1 Corinthians 4:5) Convinced of your knowledge of Scripture, I am unable to think that you believe organizational affiliation or loyalty to the interests of an organization will be a determining factor in that personal judgment, or that in most cases it will have any relevancy whatsoever. The more I advance into older age and the more imminent the end of life becomes, the more convinced I am that the most valuable thing any of us can leave behind is a moral legacy, and that the worth of that moral legacy will be determined by the principles for which we have stood, principles that can never be sacrificed or rationalized away in the interests of expediency. Those principles are primarily complete, unalloyed devotion to God, unqualified submission to his Son as our sole Head, integrity to truth, and compassionate concern for others, not as part of a favored system, but as individuals.
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