Very interesting article- Jehovah's Witnesses among the lowest earners.

by JWinprotest 18 Replies latest social current

  • Velour
    Velour

    If JW's get the money to ''create their paradise now'' then they won't be wanting something better. So keep them uneducated and struggling with a low wage job and they'll always cling to any promise of something better to come.

  • sizemik
    sizemik
    We contacted the local kingdom hall of Jehovah's Witnesses for comment but received no response.

    Try using smaller words.

  • Lunatic Faith
    Lunatic Faith
    We contacted the local kingdom hall of Jehovah's Witnesses for comment but received no response.

    This made me LOL. Well, no duh.

  • FollowedMyHeart
    FollowedMyHeart

    The sad thing is that JWs would more than likely be proud of those stats.

    At least the members of the Black churches have an excuse: racism. JW's are there by choice!

  • satinka
    satinka
    9 percent of its members have a college or post graduate degree.

    Not surprising, since "higher ed" is frowned upon by the jws.

    satinka

  • ShawnS
    ShawnS

    My husband was raised as a JW & still holds many of their beliefs. I have attended the occasional public talk on Sunday & find it unbearable the brainwashing that goes on with children. I listened to a talk one day that was about how a young adult should spend their time after highschool preaching the word of the bible rather than attend college. I also heard a talk one day about how young adults should forgo things such as prom, sports etc and only associate themselves with other JW's to avoid temptation of the typical behaviors of young adults. I have seen a "recommended" schedule of how many hours a JW should put in of "service". It is literally around 35 hours a week between reading their publications (watchtower, awake and the bible) plus being out in service (door to door). Let's do some quick math here...if you spend 9 hours a day at a job (8-5), for most people probably an hour commute each way (another 2 hours), 8 hours sleeping per night, that leaves you with 5 hours in a 24 hour period to cook, eat breakfast & dinner, shower, do normal daily functions like wash dishes, do your laundry, grocery shop and how about the most important SPEND TIME WITH YOUR CHILDREN. Yet the "recommended" hours of service per week are 35?? I don't care for my children to grow up spending the limited time we have together sitting in a kingdom hall for 2.5 hours every Sunday listen to rather boring, monotone speakers. I am certain I can teach them moral's & values from the bible without those 35 hours a week.

  • Dune
    Dune

    @FollowedByHeart.

    I would say there isn't much of a socio-economic difference between black churches & the JW's in urban areas. JW's & Baptists have the highest percentage of Blacks who are members ( I think it was 37%). It's something I started to notice when our field service territory was gentrifying, but the congregation demographics weren't.

    I was wondering why in a territory of 20% whites to 80% blacks, our congregation didn't have ONE white family and I wasn't buying the BS excuse that the people in our territory weren't "Honest, Humble & Hungry" and the "camel through a needle" & rich man analogy. My problem was that I was only looking at race and not looking at socio-economic factors like class, salary & education. The 20% in our territory were lawyers, doctors, diplomats & engineers. The 80% were in retail & service industries and considered $30K a year to be a lot.

    The 20% were college educated and have already excelled secularly, they were already set in their religious views and saw no need to entertain our beliefs, i remember one woman telling me that her crackhead neighbors across the street needed to find god, not her.

    I'm not sure what the explanation for the number of Blacks in Baptists churches, but as far as with JW's I can only say that the religion appeals to, on average, poorer, working class people, so if our territory was still 20% white, but 100% of the whites were making less than $30K a year and didn't have secular upward mobility, i'm pretty sure that the number of whites in our congregation would have been higher.

    Just a thought.

  • No Room For George
    No Room For George

    Welcome to the forum, ShawnS!

  • james_woods
    james_woods
    9% sounds a little high to me. I think it is closer to 2or 3%

    If it is indeed 9%, most of that 9% would be people who got the degree before they became JWs.

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