WHERE HAVE THEY ALL GONE, AND WHY?
In the 1990s the Internet rose to prominence which opened the door for active Jehovah’s Witnesses to have discussion with former members in the closet of anonymity. In the early Internet days, there were topical “Usenet” forums that were the forerunners of hosted e-mail “List” groups, followed by open discussion forums like H2O that could be viewed by the whole world. As most here probably know, H2O, the Grand Daddy of all exJW Websites, was the parent of this JWD/JWN forum.
Back then, several notorious exJW Websites drew on the new “Information Highway”, such as Watchtower Observer (Kent Steinhaug); All Along the Watchtower (Jan Haugland); Beyond Jehovah’s Witnesses (Timothy Campbell); Comments From the Friends (David Reed); Beacon Light for Former Jehovah’s Witnesses (xjw.com, Ros).
Scholarly posters became common names in the forums who relentlessly kept tabs on the Watchtower and exposed its teachings (AlanF, Kent, JanH, Norm, .Doug, DocBob, to name only a few). Authors like Jim Penton and Carl Olof Jonsson were known posters. Website hosters eventually published the secret “Elders Manual” on the WorldWideWeb, for which the Watchtower tried to sue.
Where have they gone, those exJW Internet “pioneers” who blazed the new frontier of exposing the Watchtower after the books of Ray Franz and Carl Olof Jonsson had been published in the 1980s? The storm of WT revelation sent such shockwaves to the Watchtower Society that even some of their leadership came onto H2O anonymously in an effort to defend the indefensible. They closely monitored the forum and the slightest leak of inside information could result in immediate internal action.
Why have they gone?
I think it’s because their work is done. The Watchtower religion is—imo—a different religion now than it was then, thanks in part to the efforts of these people. (Naturally, the fact that the generation is long past had something to do with it too.) Unlike the days when all JWs knew that Nathan Knorr and Fredrick Franz were the Society’s leaders and attended almost every district assembly, today most JWs do not know the names of those on their Governing Body, the F&DS. Back then the district and international assemblies were deliberately held in large stadiums to draw world media attention upon Jehovah’s Witnesses and “the good news”—and it succeeded very well. When Nathan Knorr died, it was national news. When Ray Franz was disfellowshipped, it made the news in Time Magazine. Nothing like that can come close to being said of the religion now.
People leaving the religion now are leaving for entirely different reasons than in those days only a few short years ago. The present generation of JWs have little concept of the faith and diligence of JW servants who would live in tiny travel trailers and go to remote areas on an allowance of $14 a month to warn the people of the coming doom and the “good news” that they could survive it. If you ask a JW today what the “good news” is, they grapple with trying to define it. Back then it was quite simple: The “good news of the Kingdom” was that Christ had come in 1914, set up His kingdom, and that generation beginning in 1914 would witness the end of the world (Armageddon). Those who preached that message had the hope of never dying by surviving Armageddon into the “New World” when death would be no more. They were in the “last generation.” THAT was the “good news” then. And Jehovah’s Witnesses were chosen as the “faithful and discreet” slave because they “witnessed” that Christ came and set up the long-awaited kingdom in 1914-1919 and began preaching “the good news of the Kingdom”--that it had finally been established.
(Actually few JWs realize that until the late 1930s the teaching was that the Kingdom parousia had occurred in 1874, so it’s a problem for the Society to explain their F&DS appointment in 1914-1919 to people who know).
Those Internet pioneers may be gone from here not so long ago, but their trail-blazing labors are not forgotten.
~Binadub