I found the remarks by scotoma and minimus to be especially interesting because they touch directly on the decline and fall of the WTS. I was never considered or appointed to any office in the congregations I was a part of except as a regular pioneer. I always thought it strange that the Watchtower Study conductor and the Theocratic Ministry School overseer regularly talked to me about public speaking and reading. I was always considered to be the best speaker, reader and teacher in any congregation I found myself in. Despite that, I was consistently passed over and never encouraged to reach out.
Looking back on all of that now I can only say that it was a blessing in disguise. Had I been made a part of the servant body in a congregation, I shudder to think what I would have been exposed to. The accounts I have read on this board as well as the talks I have had with individuals has convinced me that I was much better off being excluded. After I left the pioneer ranks--some thirty years ago--I remained a regular publisher who never served but was always consulted when the elders or ministerial servants were stumped for answers to questions they had no idea how to research. Envy, racism and fear were strong factors in my not being used, but I have also believed there were other reasons I was not aware of.
I also have to agree with the belief that it is the modern world that is the biggest source of fear for the WTS. That world has made information available at an unprecedented scale. It has also exposed people to thinking and made available choices they never dreamed existed. As long as the prime source for view-shaping information was the WTS through its speakers and publications, the rank-and-file Witness was content to go along with the WTS program. But when people began to learn that the world wasn't some Satan-haunted environment, that other views, cultures and ways of life were valid in their own right, and that true human love could be expressed in various and different ways, they were forced to change their own thinking and to painfully shed long-cherished attitudes. The WTS has reacted with repression and backlash in the hopes it can root out these elements among its adherents. They may find success in the underdeveloped world, but it is clear that elsewhere, their religion is seen as the retrograde and tyrannical system it really is.
Quendi