Bethel: Pathway to Apostasy

by Black Man 72 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  swiftbreeze

  A friend of mine came home from bethel (don't know the reason why) but he stated that there was alot racial stuff going on there as well. I just dismissed it and changed the conversation being that i was still loyal to the whole "Bethel Ideal" i also know of brothers who got kicked out for having hip hop music.

  another friend was asked to change her hair color (it was light brown) so she had to dye it black. I thought that was so crazy because she had worn that hair color pretty much her whole adult life and it matched her complexion

  when i visited Bethel i wasnt as impressed as i thought i would be. The people werent friendly as i thought they would be. I asked a brother if i could take his picture while he was working packing books and he said "no" he seemed like he was real irritated with the people coming through touring. maybe he felt like a zoo animal.
• 

  researcher

  Just curious Jez....you mention you were at Georgetown bethel? thats the Canada one right? The Canada Bethel does not have any resident Governing Body members............. you probably met one of the ones on the Canada Bethel Branch Comittee. All GB's are in the USA......
• 

  myself

  BTW, "G-Job" refers to doing work outside of Bethel for money. It went against the whole vow of poverty thing.

  That is just another form of control. They want you to be dependent on them so they will have you under their thumb.
• 

  jschwehm

  Bethel was the beginning of the end for me too. I can remember having serious doubts about the organization within about four months of being there. I started reading the older literature while I was there. I also started wondering about how things worked there. I realized that things and buildings were more important than people. I also started wondering about things like CoHi Associates and other things.

  In addition, the power and infighting among people wanting more power was a real turnoff.

  I do believe that it would have taken me much longer to leave the JWs if I had not gone to Bethel. Bethel jumped started my trek out of the Borg...I should send the personnel committee a thank you letter for that. :)

  Jeff S.

  www.catholicxjw.com
• 

  Cygnus

  When I was 14 I visited NYC Bethel on a bus group of congregation folk (still have a funny picture of me in front of the WATCHTOWER sign in downtown Brooklyn). I thought it was so stupid I had to wear a tie. Every worker I saw there had a scowl on his face. It convinced me I'd never work in a place where everybody obviously hated it. High point of my visit was walking the streets of NY and seeing drug deals go down right in front of me, and going to the top of the Empire State Building and puking over the side.
• 

  zugzwang

  Black Man wrote: "The whole g-jobbing thing was a trip, because at the time that I was there, Bethelites only got $90-95 a month."

  That's what we received when I was there as well. '98 and '99. Perhaps we were there at the same time. I actually was one of those brothers in the electrical maintenance department who did the g-jobbing thing. I didn't do it a lot and I didn't start doing it until I knew I was going to leave. Then the morning worship dropped off and the Monday night Watchtower study was replaced with TV and pizza and beer. (Who knew there were shows on TV on Monday night.) As far as the music thing was concerned I never had any trouble with anything I listen to. And I listened to it all. Not only that, but I lived on the 5th floor of 124 Columbia Hts just 3 doors down from George Couch, who was a huge Bethel heavy and if I'm not mistaken he was also the Home Overseer. But especially on the weekends we would play our music loud and have lots of people over but we never got any static over the music. That's rather surprising but true. As far as racism at Bethel is concerned it was about the same as the rest of JW-dom. It wasn't as outright obvious as it is in most of daily living in this world, but that same general unstated assumption that blacks and hispanics were less capable than their white counterparts existed. On a lighter note, it was awesome living in NYC. I loved rollerblading across the Brooklyn bridge in to Manhattan. What an incredible city. I sometimes almost wish I could go back there for a month or so (like on the temp. construction) just to hang out in the city again without having to pay a bunch of money for lodging. It's funny, I go to Bethel, but the thing I end up missing the most is the city that I was supposed to take delight in watching God destroy at Armageddon. How ironic!
• 

  XBEHERE

  I think its really just a matter of the preception of things once you are there. Of course many factors contribute to this preception and its different from person to person.

  I liked it at Bethel and left voluntarily even more brainwashed and spiritually "enlightened!" I was even totally oblivious to the generation change and defended it to some who had doubts. Finally the child molestation thing got me questioning things. Still completely disgusts me when I think about it!
• 

  pratt1

  I didn't go to Bethel but I attended a congo about a mile away from the "Holy of Holies". I had many bethelites as friends and many would stay over my house on the weekends. I was also the keeper of many restricted contraban like video tapes, CDs, questionable clothing.

  My folks were also pretty generous with the bethelites finacially and most of them ate at least one dinner a week at my house.

  I also became the chauffeur for many bethelites, driving them back to the home after the late night meetings.

  Many of these guys were away from home for the first time and were probably clincally depressed because of the stress they got at bethel and the fear letting their congo down if they returned home in disgrace (asked to leave).

  I did enjoy most of these guys and I would take them out to bars and clubs in manhattan on the weekends.

  The interesting thing about that is that they hooked up with "worldly" girls more often then I did and most could drink me under the table.
• 

  sweet tee

  LHG - I had a couple of bro's come back to the cong. after Bethel who seemed jaded by it all too. When I asked one young bro. what it was like he was evasive ... which seemed kinda creepy to me. We had gone to school together and he watched me come into the cong. I considered him a friend and that fact that he wouldn't tell me the truth about Bethel let me know that something was wrong.

  Another young bro. went in and came back the same way. His family and I were real close and I could really see the change in him. But his lights were sealed on the whole Bethel deal ... but the 'zeal' he had before he left was gone, gone, gone! The third that I knew of got married before going .. his wife was from a well-to-do, multi-generational jdub family (mother pio. dad elder). He got kicked out & dfd. (must of been reading those dusty old JW pubs, he was very intelligent!) she left and Bethel wanted her to come back - don't know if she did or not. EVERYBODY seemed to come back depressed, maybe disillusioned is more like it.

  I never visited ... and it doesn't sound like I missed out on anything. Crazy jdub ex-monster-in-law LOVES Bethel tours. Go figure
• 

  doogie

  when i was out there i read Dante's Inferno for the first time. they had it in the library (i've been told they've removed it since then). i would've been scolded for reading something like that back home, so the fact that bethel (apparently) encouraged reading it was cool for me. to me, it seemed like i was freer to expand my horizons and look into things that i hadn't been allowed to before. that was what started the whole process for me.

  oh, and i never had any problem with music or homeoverseers. i got to the point where i was probably too brazen with my stuff (listening to sublime and bad religion while at the gym or leaving open bottles in the closet [i was underage]) but i still was never talked to. i just figured it was the law of averages. there were way too many people for them to investigate properly (i was at the farm and it was mostly young guys that needed policing rather than actual police), so i just kept my mouth shut and did my job, not giving them any reason to look my way.

  i got away with a LOT. i had a buddy that got kicked out after a particularly interesting trip to brazil. my equally interesting trip to cancun went unnoticed.