Freedom of (Supportive) Speech

As citizens of our respective countries, we have come to rely on leaders waffling on positions. What rhetoric they shout in one moment can leave them silent in another. Usually because that position no longer serves a purpose. As Witnesses, we've become all too familiar with "new light" changing policies and practices with each convention season. There's no real end in sight.

As an avowed apostate, I often enough engage in conversations with people about Witnesses. One of those recent discussions was actually rather complimentary toward the Society at first. While recounting a recent news story in which a young boy who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance had his chair kicked out from under him by a classmate, some commenters said that he had it coming; that being dumped on his ass was his classmate's 'freedom of speech'.

To the person relating this story, I pointed out that forced patriotism is an issue that Witnesses helped to resolve in West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnett 319 U.S. 624 (1943). Pulling the wiki for reference, I pointed out that the US Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 majority that it was unconstitutional for a school to compel students to salute the flag. Justice Robert Jackson went so far as to say that "compulsory unification of opinion [achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard]" and was antithetical to the principles of the 1st Amendment.

And then I stopped.

I noticed who was serving as Plaintiff's Counsel; Hayden Covington, who was also Vice President of the Society, having been appointed in 1942.

I grinned an apostate's grin.

Later, in 1954, Covington would appear before a judge in Scotland, this time to provide testimony in the case Walsh vs. Clyde. During his testimony, the following exchange occurred:

Q: [Court] It was promulgated as a matter which must [have been] believed by all members of Jehovah’s Witnesses that the Lord’s Second Coming took place in 1874…?

A: [Covington] It was a false statement or an erroneous statement in fulfillment of a prophecy that was false or erroneous.

Q: And that had to be believed by the whole of Jehovah’s Witnesses?

A: Yes, because you must understand we must have unity …

Q: Back to the point now. A false prophecy was promulgated? 

A: I agree to that.

Q: It had to be accepted by Jehovah’s Witnesses?

A: That is correct.

Q: If a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses took the view himself that that prophecy was wrong and said so, he would be disfellowshipped?

A: Yes … Our purpose is to have unity.

Q: Unity at all costs?

A: Unity at all costs…

Q: A unity based upon an enforced acceptance of false prophecy?

A: That is conceded to be true.

Now, you can go to the dictionary, thesaurus, or Google if you wish, but the phrase to which Covington concedes ("enforced acceptance of false prophecy") is only a gently massaged paraphrasing of Justice Jackson's majority opinion just ten years earlier.

Bringing this full circle, Witnesses have successfully and correctly argued that dissent is a guaranteed right in support of one's conscience. To be forced to support a paradigm, they felt, was unfair. To be discriminated against, punished, or otherwise maligned for dissenting was also unfair. But compulsory unification of opinion is something that the Society was evidently reliant upon, so long as it applied to their shared faith. That continues to be true to this day.

I have to admit my own frustration when exploring this topic. Speaking out against an injustice, but then embracing the same kind of injustice as a matter of institutional policy, is absurd. It is the most blatantly dishonest and manipulative behavior I can imagine. It irreversibly mortgages the integrity of an organization, or person; disenfranchises the people whose dissent they once fought to protect.

Now, if this causes you some degree of discomfort, take heart. It only means that you are still sane. It is one of the hallmarks of a cult (and I am hesitant to use that word) to say "no one treats our members like that except US!"

They divide you from society through the promise of the truth. Then they divide you from your fellows when you catch them in their lies.

Which part of that is supposed to make sense?

A Ruse by any Other Name

I remember a young brother in my home congregation once giving an Instruction Talk during the old Theocratic Ministry School format. Dan was a relatively new Ministerial Servant and, to the best of my recollection, this was his first talk of this type.

He used an effective illustration of a bag of candy that one may think was empty, but actually contained a lone treat if one was willing to check thoroughly. With his illustration, he was drawing a correlation to theocratic knowledge. When we think we've taken every last bit of understanding from a topic, looking once more could yield a small morsel of enlightenment.

And then I remember that this blog is about Jehovah's Witnesses...

C.T. Russel had embarked on his mission to expose bible truth through exhaustive scriptural examination. His fledgling Society had the admirable mission of making Christianity purely Christian. That meant excising pagan practices, false teachings, misunderstandings, and baseless tradition. Almost brilliant in its simplicity. But nearly one-hundred years later, young Ministerial Servant Dan stood on the dais and expounded on the virtues of exhaustive examination, while disturbingly ignorant of his religious foundations.

As Witnesses, we once proudly claimed to have stripped away all the practices that were not biblical in nature. We, almost haughtily, professed that we were the only true Christians left in the world. But we had actually returned to the evolving roots of all religions. What Pastor Russel had set out to do in the late 1800's had been forgotten. Replaced with new understandings, the current beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses are ones that Russel would not recognize.

Over the decades, Witnesses have modified their beliefs to include practices once thought to be unscriptural. Blood transfusions are an easy example. Taking literally the admonitions not to consume blood as a biblical prohibition of medical blood transfusions, hundreds or thousands of Witnesses have denied this proven medical treatment for the fear of eternal destruction. The policy was to disfellowship anyone who accepted this proven medical procedure. The new stance is that it wont get you disfellowshipped. It would seem that the Governing Body no longer feels it will cost a person eternal paradise. Whether they erred in issuing the old policy or the new, and one of them is certainly wrong, the bible has rules about accidental blood-guilt.

That's not really the point here. Blood transfusion, along with every other baseless stance, are tangents of a much bigger problem. Watchtower belief systems have expanded over time. They are tweaked to close gaps, explain inconsistencies, and make exceptions... Just like every other religion.

While at one time Witnesses may have moved in the right philosophical direction in removing those Old World, non-Christian practices, new ones are now just as tightly woven into their beliefs as those they sought to remove. So what progress has actually been made?

To be frank, none. It's the same old song-and-dance. Indecision about blood transfusions, the repeated revision of the 1914 Generation doctrine, financial consolidation, child abuse scandals, power struggles, organizational splits, government collusion, scientific suppression... the list goes on for quite a while. And it all points to the same thing - Jehovah's Witnesses, as an organization, are as likely to veer off course as any other mainstream religion.

Religious organizations peddle fairy tales as fact that no one really wants to dispute, and being a system of cognitive stasis at their core, they are dependent on followers who don't ask questions. It's the ultimate long con. One would think we'd have looked behind that particular curtain by now, so why does it persist?

Conformity with social groups, even in the face of empirical falsehood, is usually the safer bet for the individual. It doesn't accomplish much to be an outlier because of an inconsequential point of contention, and psychological experiments have demonstrated that even clearly false information is readily assimilated by people to avoid becoming an outcast. This acceptance of group paradigms is known as conforming behavior.

Harvard's Herbert Kellman has identified a number of these behaviors, of which Internalization is the most common. Internalization is analogous to "making the truth your own". It is the practice of making beliefs integral to one's thought processes. Other conforming behaviors may only be an external display, but Internalized beliefs have the deepest and longest lasting hold. Also called Informational Social Influence, subjects turn to peers for accepted truth by which to guide their own thinking. Our experience among Witnesses is hard to characterize any other way. The Society is very clear that Witnesses must be unified in their thinking, and seeking outside validation is reason enough to be shunned.

We sometimes refer to this dedication to the charade as "drinking the kool-aid". It's most predictable in groups that also restrict your socialization outside the group. The aforementioned conforming behaviors become requisite in the face of banishment. Time and again, we encounter former Witnesses who have struggled to cope with living in a new and strange social environment. Hardly a one of us will claim that it was easy to make that transition. Sadly, far too many of us have fallen to destructive coping mechanisms like drugs or alcohol, or even suicide.

It's humbling to admit that we were duped for as long as we were. But the comforting thing is that its in the past. No one there can impede our progress forward into an enlightened and fulfilling life.

What else could smell as sweetly?