The Watchtower organization is well known for pressuring Jehovah’s Witnesses to engage and perform more work organized by the religion, and then to do more on top of that. Ostensibly this level of activity is presented as how the early Christians went about living their lives.
However, in 1943 the then Watchtower president, Nathan Knorr gave away the underlying agenda of why the organization’s constant push for more activity. His admission came in response to a woman who strenuously objected to Jehovah’s Witnesses who thought it okay to “go to movies,” which she considered to be “the Devil’s organization.”[1]
The agenda expressed by Knorr is known as paternalism. According to Knorr, it was Watchtower’s responsibility to:
- Keep Jehovah’s Witnesses out of mischief.
- Help Jesus look after His own business, as though He needs help.
- Leave Jehovah’s Witnesses with “no time” for “pleasures of this world,” such as going to movies.
By its action (and Knorr’s admission) Watchtower was imposing its perceived values onto individual Jehovah’s Witnesses rather than leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses to assert their individual values based on biblical tenets.
Watchtower has long objected to Jehovah’s Witnesses being treated paternalistically by having individual values disregarded and leaders’ values imposed.[2] But this is precisely what Watchtower does, even to the point of orchestrating its tsunami of organized religious activity and castigating those who do not kowtow to the schedule.
The Watchtower organization acts and wants to be looked to as father by Jehovah's Witnesses.
Marvin Shilmer
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References
1 The Watchtower, April 1, 1944, p. 112.
2 See for example Ridley, Donald T, Informed Consent, Medicine Law, (2001) 20:205-214. Donald T. Ridley is in-house legal counsel for the Watchtower organization.
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