Good points Gill.
What strikes me is:
"It is precisely because of this close adherence to Bible teachings that the veneration and idolization of human leaders so characteristic of cults today is not to be found among Jehovah’s Witnesses. They reject the concept of a clergy-laity distinction. The Encyclopedia of Religion aptly states about Jehovah’s Witnesses: "A clergy class and distinctive titles are prohibited."
From my view it doesn't take very long being a JW to see that there is quite a hierarchy. Everyone knows their place in a KH and the org. You know better than to question those who rank above you. As a publisher I knew my place. As a MS I knew my place. Those comments on the literature shipments about my orders really put me in my place a few times (and pissed me off).
JW's are they really a cult?
by Evanescence 46 Replies latest jw friends
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thom
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DannyHaszard
Eight Marks of a deadly Mind Control Cult applied to Jehovah's Witnesses Eight Marks of a Mind-Control Cult
by Randall Watters
Brainwashing has become almost a household word in the last two decades or so. In 1961, Robert J. Lifton wrote the definitive book on the subject, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, after studying the effects of mind control on American prisoners of war under the Communist Chinese. Lifton outlines eight major factors that can be used to identify whether a group is a destructive cult or not. Any authoritarian religion should be held up to the light in order to determine just how destructive their influence is on their members. Judge for yourselves.
Milieu Control
"Milieu" is a French word meaning "surroundings; environment." Cults are able to control the environment around their recruits in a number of ways, but almost always using a form of isolation. Recruits can be physically separated from society, or they can be warned under threat of punishment to stay away from the world's educational media, especially when it might provoke critical thinking. Any books, movies or testimonies of ex-members of the group, or even anyone critical of the group in any way are to be avoided.
Information is carefully kept on each recruit by the mother organization. All are watched, lest they fall behind or get too far ahead of the thinking of the organization. Because it appears that the organization knows so much about everything and everyone, they appear omniscient in the eyes of the recruits.
Mystical Manipulation
In religious cults, God is ever-present in the workings of the organization. If a person leaves for any reason, accidents or ill-will that may befall them are always attributed to God's punishment on them. For the faithful, the angels are always said to be working, and stories circulate about how God is truly doing marvelous things among them, because they are "the truth." The organization is therefore given a certain "mystique" that is quite alluring to the new recruit.
Demand for Purity
The world is depicted as black and white, with little room for making personal decisions based on a trained conscience. One's conduct is modeled after the ideology of the group, as taught in its literature. People and organizations are pictured as either good or evil, depending on their relationship to the cult.
Universal tendencies of guilt and shame are used to control individuals, even after they leave. There is great difficulty in understanding the complexities of human morality, since everything is polarized and oversimplified. All things classified as evil are to be avoided, and purity is attainable through immersion into the cult's ideology.
The Cult of Confession
Serious sins (as defined by the organization) are to be confessed immediately. The members are to be reported if found walking contrary to the rules.
There is often a tendency to derive pleasure from self-degradation through confession. This occurs when all must confess their sins before each other regularly, creating an intense kind of "oneness" within the group. It also allows leaders from within to exercise authority over the weaker ones, using their "sins" as a whip to lead them on.
The "Sacred Science"
The cult's ideology becomes the ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. The ideology is too "sacred" to call into question, and a reverence is demanded for the leadership. The cult's ideology makes an exaggerated claim for possessing airtight logic, making it appear as absolute truth with no contradictions. Such an attractive system offers security.
Loading the Language
Lifton explains the prolific use of "thought-terminating cliches," expressions or words that are designed to end the conversation or controversy. We are all familiar with the use of the cliches "capitalist" and "imperialist," as used by antiwar demonstrators in the 60's. Such cliches are easily memorized and readily expressed. They are called the "language of non-thought," since the discussion is terminated, not allowing further consideration.
In the Watchtower, for instance, expressions such as "the truth", the "mother organization", the "new system", "apostates" and "worldly" carry with them a judgment on outsiders, leaving them unworthy of further consideration.
Doctrine Over Person
Human experience is subordinated to doctrine, no matter how profound or contradictory such experiences seem. The history of the cult is altered to fit their doctrinal logic. The person is only valuable insomuch as they conform to the role models of the cult. Commonsense perceptions are disregarded if they are hostile to the cult's ideology.
Dispensing of Existence
The cult decides who has the "right" to exist and who does not. They decide who will perish in the final battle of good over evil. The leaders decide which history books are accurate and which are biased. Families can be cut off and outsiders can be deceived, for they are not fit to exist!
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DannyHaszard
Is it a (harmless) culture or (harmful) cult?
Common Properties of Potentially Destructive and Dangerous Cults
-The cult is authoritarian in its power structure. The leader is regarded as the supreme authority. He or she may delegate certain power to a few subordinates for the purpose of seeing that members adhere to the leader's wishes and roles.
-The cult's leaders tend to be charismatic, determined, and domineering. They persuade followers to drop their families, jobs, careers, and friends to follow them. They (not the individual) then take over control of their followers' possessions, money, lives.
-The cult's leaders are self-appointed, messianic persons who claim to have a special mission in life.
-The cult's leaders center the veneration of members upon themselves.
-The cult tends to be totalitarian in its control of the behavior of its members.
-The cult tends to have a double set of ethics. Members are urged to be open and honest within the group, and confess all to the leaders. On the other hand, they are encouraged to deceive and manipulate outsiders or nonmembers.
-The cult has basically only two purposes, recruiting new members and fund-raising. Established religions and altruistic movements may also recruit and raise funds. The cults may claim to make social contributions, but in actuality these remain mere claims, or gestures. Their focus is always dominated by recruiting new members and fund-raising.
-The cult appears to be innovative and exclusive. The leader claims to be breaking with tradition, offering something novel, and instituting the only viable system for change that will solve life's problems or the world's ills. While claiming this, the cult then surreptitiously uses systems of psychological coercion on its members to inhibit their ability to examine the actual validity of the claims of the leader and the cult. ------------- Poet and writer Mark Twain sez: "if a million people believe in a stupid thing for a hundred years,it's STILL a stupid thing".
The stats out there suggest that your risk of being inducted into a destructive cult are TWICE the statistical risk of contracting chicken pox
Jehovah's Witnesses don't proselytize they metastasize. -
Gill
Yes! Sure sounds like JWs are a cult!
I thought the 'double standard' part was good. Though members are expected to be honest and confess all the leadership gets to cover over all the crap they're involved in and lie, twist, squirm and threaten with disfellowshiping anyone who notices.
I say CULT!
The 'Claim to make Social Contributions', I've been asking all week if anyone has any idea what the WTBTS actually spends on disaster relief as they claim to do this in their 'begging article' in the NOV 1st, I believe, Watchtower. But, there were no figures there and I for one, DO NOT BELIEVE that Brooklyn is involved in any meaning ful social relief or community care or relief for people in general, never mind JWs.
Come on Brooklyn, print your figures and proove you're not lying.
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DannyHaszard
Danny Haszard has 40,000 pages up so i have experience and 33 years 3rd generation exjw.This partial excerpt below is from yesterdays news forum regarding "Prince" and his needed hip replacement surgery with/without a blood transfusion.
It is uncanny that this person Maurice sounds exactly like my deceased JW maternal grandmother or my own JW father, the infective arrogance among them all is scary.
Danny Haszard Oct 13th, 2005 - 10:48:05 AM I hope all goes well with Prince he should reject the Jehovah's Witnesses bogus no blood transfusion ban,and have normal surgery.
Best wishes to you Prince get well soon-Danny Haszard Bangor Maine USA------------------------------------
Maurice [JW] Oct 13th, 2005 - 01:53:48 PM Hopefully every thing will be ok. It is a shame that idiots like the above so easily spit on another person's dearly cherished religious beliefs. In such a world of tension and stress, we need to keep our radical personal views about another person's choice of religion to ourselves! Why is there so much intolerance in the world? Why so much violence? Because people want to push their views on someone else.
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Gill
'Because people want to push their views on somebody else!' Heaven forbid!
Spoken like a true confused JW!
After all...at Armagedon, everyone not calling on the name of Jehovah, is going to die! If that's not pushing your views on somebody else...what is?
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TopHat
Yep! Gill, the brothers and sisters in the KHs do all the work and pay all the expense of helping out in times of trouble and need, and the WTS gets all the credit. Makes my stomach turn. I look at the WTS and GB as the Pharisees whom Jesus was so angry with in the temple courtyard.
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garybuss
The Watch Tower Publishing Corporation copyrights and mass produces literature that says the Jehovah's Witness group is not a cult. I have no problem with that.
The Watch Tower Publishing Corporation copyrights and mass produces literature that directs the Jehovah's Witness people to shun and snub designated people. I have no problem with that.
The Watch Tower Publishing Corporation sponsors meetings to verbalize the directions in the mass produced literature that directs the Jehovah's Witness people to shun and snub designated people. I have no problem with that.
The Jehovah's Witness people willingly follow suggestions and guidelines made by the The Watch Tower Publishing Corporation to shun and snub designated people. I have no problem with that. -
OldSoul
But, "elder" and "ministerial servant" aren't titles of superior positions in the congregation! These are merely servants, shepherds for the protection of the flock. And they will bash any sheep in the head that disagrees (figuratively, of course).
Because, after all, they are the shepherds, and everyone knows the shepherds get to decide when to cull the owner's flock. Oh, wait. The shepherds don't get to decide that. Especially not if they are sheep, too.
That there is a distinctly separate class of clergy among Jehovah's Witnesses is not even disputable. Can I, an inactive publisher, give a District Convention part? No. Can I speak for 45 minutes on a given Sunday? No. Can I even freely speak with others in the congregation about my views? No.
There is also magisterium vested in the Governing Body (operating under the name "Faithful and Discreet Slave").
Is there secrecy? You bet.
When was the last time anyone who was not an elder knew why someone from another state was disfellowshipped? Don't talk to them? Why? What did they do? Did they ask questions of the wrong elder body? Did they refuse to stop questioning the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses on some Scriptural point or other? Did they chop up their whole family?
How can anyone be expected to use their own judgment in whether or not to speak to someone if they have no idea what the person is accused of?
But there is secrecy in other ways:
How many Witnesses know what the Governing Body does? How many know how their "Government" makes doctrinal decisions?
How many know the policies that exist and will be used against them in Judicial Committees?
Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult, they are not merely cultish.
Respectfully,
OldSoul -
OldSoul
GaryBuss: The Jehovah's Witness people willingly follow suggestions and guidelines made by the The Watch Tower Publishing Corporation to shun and snub designated people. I have no problem with that.
I have to disagree with you here, GaryBuss. 1) The instructions given regarding shunning are not suggestions, they are orders. 2) Many Witnesses don't willingly follow these orders and risk being caught and similarly shunned by ignoring them. 3) Many of those who do follow the orders, don't do so willingly they do so under compulsion. 4) In the matter of shunning, and in many other respects, the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses uses fear of shunning to enforce its orders, thereby creating coersive force to impose its will and silence individual freedom of expression, and I have a serious problem with that.
Respectfully,
OldSoul