by XPeterX 29 Replies latest jw friends
"It varies by congregation, I know people that went on and off the unbaptized publishers list several times. They were treated simply as persons needing encouragement and that would one day get their act together."
My experience too.
"If it's children, they will hound the parents to make sure they get baptized or the hounding will not stop."
No-one has ever been hounded in any of the congregations I have been to.
So OH have you ever been in a congregation in the US, how many would that be in comparison to those in your Scandinavian area (?).
I was told that the farther you get from NY headquarters, the more liberal jws can be...and I have seen that. As soon as I hit 13, they started on me, trying to be mild but emphasizing the end was near (1965) and that I could not depend on my mother's status to live through Armageddon. I saw it among my contemporaries. I have lived in Europe and the US as well as being in Spanish congregations...only in the Spanish was there less pressure benigh or otherwise.
I had the privalage of being removed as an unbaptized publisher in Oct of 1990 :)
Well that's because you were a long haired pot smoking hippie............oh wait that was me
well, no that was me too LOL
At first no one knew how to treat me so shunned me the next meeting LOL LOL LOL
At one point an unbaptised publisher was called an "approved associate" and could be dealt with and disfellowshipped as per a baptised individual. Then the noolite arrived (probably by legal pressure) and it became that an approved associate was now an unbaptised publisher and couldn't be df'd but could be removed as a u/p. They are then viewed as of the world and thus bad association for social purposes, especially by the rightwingers.
But ... if the u/p is consider a danger then marking and words in ears goes on and they can virtually be ostracized depending upon who they have upset.
Now if you just don't get baptised and do nothing "wrong" you get to about 18 (in England) and people start to wonder why you've not jumped into Jah's ark and as you reach 20 the gossip machine goes postal and you are viewed as unworthy by the righteous overmuchies but still befriended by the rebels and the faders and the eccentrics and your family splits into two camps of "pharisees" and "weak ones" and they treat you accordingly.
If you are hardnosed about it you can tread the fine line and fade from this fence sitting position or stay in it unscathed but you only need a couple of nazi elders on the body to apply pressure and/or formally boot you into touch and make life difficult for your jw relatives.
freddo, I remember the days they treated "approved associates" as being df'd. That happened to one of my cousins, then they changed the policy and the family did not know how to treat him, df'd or not df'd. I just talked to him as I had been doing already and they all copied me...what a weird and unloving situation.
I was an 'approved associate', but soon therafter the WT changed the status to unbapt pub....I can not remember when exactly
What an isolationist bunch of loons......imagine, you have a group within a group of Cult Members.
Insane!!!
- Wing Commander
