I've thought of this for quite some time but have never posted anything about it.
For many of us who bought into the Watchtowers ideals of a "restored christianity" the thought would never have crossed our mind that the movement was anything but nothing but just that. Even after a person leaves it still may be hard to get beyond these clouded ideas and see that many of the origins of the movement and essentially American in nature.
Of course, this is because it is an American religious movement. No matter how hard it tries to push past it's origins and proclaim it's global identity it can't be denied that the very American origins of the movement fully define what it is.
In the most earliest forms of American religion you can see the beginning of religious philosophy that would eventually make it's way into JW thinking. The early sermons and ideas of John Winthrop (Puritans) as well as George Fox (Quakers). I am always fascinated by similarities to early Quakerism and Watchtower thinking (meeting houses, rejection of clergy class, pacifism, use of the term "friends" to denote fellow believers). Eventually we move into the great awakening where the call for religious "revival" was extremely strong. Out of this eventually came people such as Joseph Smith (mormons) and eventually William Miller (Millarites). After "the great disappointment" (which bears extremely similar history to the Watchtower in the years following 1914 & 1925) we move onto the next movement which is Seventh Day Adventism. Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth century it was these forms of christian restoration theology mixed with prophetic speculation that would eventually push C.T. Russell to publish his Watchtower magazines in the latter portion of the nineteenth century.
But I do not believe the influence of American thinking and ideals on JWs ends there. Throughout the late 19th Century and early 20th the JW movement (and especially leadership) continued to be influenced by the country they we a part of and yet so despised. They would eventually fully adopt the ideals of the "cult of domesticity" in early american life (the place of the woman is the home), as well as borrow sales and business practices common throughout the country as a way to expand the movement.
When you take into consider the American religions produced at this time that would eventually be exported all over the world (mormonism, adventism, Jehovah's witnesses, christian science, ect) you see that there is a unique set circumstances that created this. It wasn't just by change. Whether they like it or not, JWs have a strong history in american ideals and philosophy stretching back to the earliest protestant settlers who came to this country because england "wasn't protestant enough".
This of course suggests that the Watchtower movement is something that simply has evolved over time according to the times in which it finds itself. While not something JWs are going to spring on as a solid truth (and most likely resist), I don't think you can really understand the JWs until you begin to see all of the many other American groups and people who in one way or another have shared in those ideals throughout the past few centuries.
Jehovah's Witnesses and their American roots
by drew sagan 7 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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drew sagan
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quietlyleaving
I agree. And religions in general are an aspect of culture rather than an aspect of divine intervention. One of the big differences between JWs and other religions is the absence and exclusion of private, individual, independent spirituality imo.
In a different vein did you know that science began life, at least in Britain, in private homes. Experiments were carried out and knowledge shared in small groups in individual homes. Itinerant lecturers travelled from town to town and village village to dissminate and advertise the benefits of science. this happened from about the mid point of the 18th century. I was very struck by the resemblance to the JW way of preaching and teaching. Did Jehovah send the early scientists and other christian groups out to preach too?
those groups were just as dedicated and zealous.
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Narkissos
Ideas, beliefs and religions don't fall from heaven. When they seem to, it's just that we are ignorant of the cultural context in which they took their shape (which may incidentally contribute to their attraction in different places or times).
Another important factor, I feel, is technology. Humanism and Reformation are directly related with the invention of the printing press which, among other things, made the "Bible" a distinct and more common object, separating it from church services and institutions. We can easily connect Adventism and Russellism with the development of journalism, Rutherford with radio broadcasting... The salesman in Chaplin's Modern Times, playing a record before his client (as the Watchtower colporteurs did in the Rutherford era) is quite exotic to the Europeans but I guess it may have been a common American method of advertising.
Btw, as has often been pointed out, the Watchtower technology dates it as much as its doctrines -- it practically didn't move into the TV era and since then uses new techniques (such as the Internet) late and reluctantly... otoh JWs are practically the only ones stuck in door-to-door activity these days which ironically now makes them look "original".
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willyloman
Groups can (and do) claim anything they want; it doesn't make it true. Dubs claim to trace their lineage back to biblical Abel.
The truth is, they can only go back about 140 years to CT Russell, an American haberdasher and would-be religious instructor.
No Russell, no JWs. It's as simple as that.
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moggy lover
The Watchtower's American roots are clearly stamped on their bearing, vocabulary, and theological conceptualizing. The expanding American frontier brought with it an unprecedented innovative spirit that revolutionized not just technology but social orientation as well. This led to a paradox. Where technological development expanded the human experience in America, it conversely brought about an increasing conservatism in sociological thinking. Thus we may say that America was more conservative in its thinking that Europe was at the same time.
Had the Watchtower been born in contemporaneous non-English speaking Europe, it would have been more sacerdotal, more introspective and certainly more concerned with the minutiae of theology, especially in Protestant Europe. As it was, the rapidly changing landscape both in the availability of material wealth and the can-do spirit that epitomized America of the mid 19th C led American theologians along different paths.
Here there was a growing concern, especially among the less structured groups, with apocalyptic-ism and its attendant idea, chronology. Ideas originally gestated in Britain by thinkers such as EB Elliot, Henry Drummond and John Aquila Brown, found a ready incubation in America, which then led directly to the Millerite movement which itself spawned, via the Second Advent movement, Watchtower ism.
Russell borrowed most of his ideas, and certainly all his more important ones, directly from the Second Adventists, as a glance at his magnum opus, the "Millennial Dawn" series of books can show. Devoted almost entirely to prophetic speculation with scant references to doctrinal questions such as the Trinity, or the soul, the books are predominantly of the American Apocalyptic tradition of the time. It is this American-leaning concept of Watchtower theology that first ventured overseas.
If Russell was mildly American Second Adventist in his orientation and teaching, his successor, JF Rutherford was even more so. His legalistic patois, which at times scarcely resembled intelligible English, was pure American pop culture of the 1930s. My sympathies lie with those translators of his books whose schooling was ultimately alien to Rutherford ism, who had the unenviable job of conferring his lingo into their own native tongues.
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quietlyleaving
In Britain, during the eighteenth century germanic seventeenth century pietism with its emphasis on a personal experience of God mirrored early British evangelicalism. Many British political and religious radicals also became more conservative because of fears generated by the revolution in France. Some radical dissenters fled to America while the British government clamped down on freedom of speech.
Ordinary people sought comfort and relief in hymn singing which tended towards deistic elements over time and towards inspiration from nature. Hymn singing eventually became acceptable to the Anglican church. Meanwhile the benefits of technology had been gaining ground. This tended to lead ordinary people away from puritanism and in some quarters towards it too. Add to this the new emphasis being given to the arts and literature in Britain Europe and America (not sure where Australia figured in this respect). Nationalism grew everywhere too as ordinary people began to express themselves. This is interesting, because to me it looks like Jehovahs Witnesses have taken a particularly radical stance against literature, the arts, nationalism, science and also towards Russell's more pietistic tendency to boot .
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streets76
I read a good book a number of years ago called (I think) The American Religion, by (I think) Harold Bloom. There was a great section about JWs (and a good one about Mormons, too). I would highly recommend it.
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kurtbethel
That is a keen observation about JW teachings being an American religion. America has two main exports, weapons and culture. The culture is in the forms of entertainment, pornography and religion.
JW teachings appear to have ossified in the corporate culture of the 1950s, as demonstrated by the fixation on grooming and business attire of the era.
One interesting thing about religions is that as they spread to other lands they morph and become a synthesis of what they were and what the native culture consists of. Given enough time, JW doctrine in non western and non English speaking lands will morph into something different, even to the point of splitting off from the main body.