Secretive Correspondence Guidelines used by Jehovah’s Witnesses leaked
October 25, 2015 4:01 AM   Subscribe

This post was deleted for the following reason: Very interesting news item, but the issue with the source using a very distracting, very possibly anti-semitic comparison for the document here is a problem. Maybe think about reposting with a different link, or contact us to edit for same. Thanks. -- taz



 
What an amazing find, in anthropological terms. I'd love to have some time to delve into it.
posted by ambrosen at 4:21 AM on October 25, 2015


The authors' pejorative use of the word "Talmudic" to describe a document they don't like is very offensive.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:44 AM on October 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


I don't think they're using Talmudic as a blanket negative, JiA. It looks more like they're saying that it gets into Talmudic levels of specificity about many theoretical instances or types of conduct and how they should be handled.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 4:49 AM on October 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


And they describe (Christian) child abusers as “pharasaical”. The Pharisees were the forerunners of rabbinic Judaism; in Jewish scholarly circles to be described as a a porush (Pharisee) is quite a compliment. Does the author have any insults that do not amount to calling something "Jewish "?
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:55 AM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's a really interesting document and I hope the airing of this helps people who are trying to find their own way apart from the Jehovah's Witnesses (not to mention finding legal remedies), but the tabloidy framing of this is weird.

That the specifics of the JW doctrines are pretty questionable on many points is one thing. That people responsible for handling questions about doctrine are given documents of standard interpretations seems pretty prosaic -- that's the whole point, ensuring people don't get conflicting messages or provide them the ability to shop around for an authority that'll back them up.
posted by at by at 4:59 AM on October 25, 2015


That people responsible for handling questions about doctrine are given documents of standard interpretations seems pretty prosaic.

To this level of specificity? I'm no specialist theologian, but I can't think of anything similar in Christian circles, and it doesn't correspond with my understanding of any other religion either. The Talmud definitely seems the most similar in how comprehensive it is, but it's the opposite of didactic.
posted by ambrosen at 5:17 AM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


"...that's the whole point, ensuring people don't get conflicting messages or provide them the ability to shop around for an authority that'll back them up."
What struck me in the reddit thread, was that is seems like one of the things that makes the document such a powerful instrument of social control is how secret it is. Instead of distributing what should in almost any context be, with apologies to the small number of other mefites who might be inclined to read church position statements, a mind-numbingly boring document - its held carefully in the hands of a select few. This allows congregants to fear being disfellowshipped for celebrating their own birthday without having to go through the trauma of ever actually having to do it (apparently only being evangelical about birthdays would actually be worth it).

I've been disfellowshipped from a church that bordered on cult after attending for two years, and I was really impressed by how the culture of secrecy surrounding leadership. Just how tightly controlled and documented, yet secret, decisions were allowed this kind of consistency while also allowing the whole process to be theatrically orchestrated to cause minimum tension.
posted by Blasdelb at 5:25 AM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


And they describe (Christian) child abusers as “pharasaical”. The Pharisees were the forerunners of rabbinic Judaism; in Jewish scholarly circles to be described as a a porush (Pharisee) is quite a compliment.

We can talk about the broader implications of 'Pharisee' having a negative connotation in Christian contexts, but it's rather off-topic here. It's a reference to this bit of the New Testament.
posted by hoyland at 5:48 AM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


"To this level of specificity? I'm no specialist theologian, but I can't think of anything similar in Christian circles, and it doesn't correspond with my understanding of any other religion either. The Talmud definitely seems the most similar in how comprehensive it is, but it's the opposite of didactic."
You won't really find it in Christianity as this level of specificity in religious prescription is explicitly and repeatedly attacked in the gospels. Pharisees repeatedly become Jesus' Simplicio in illustrative dialogues in the gospels, most of those dialogues are concerned with re-framing and critiquing Jewish law, and many of them attack religious prescriptions as overly specific. There is an awkward way in which Christianity, fundamentally, is descended from historical Judaism with a lot of pointed critiques of what came before, which in a lot of ways define what it became. Its a baked in invitation to anti-semitism that is part of the background radiation of (little o) orthodox Christianity.

So when this guy calls the document Talmudic, he is indeed both simultaneously making a Christian critique of people professing Christianity referencing Christian concepts that are only distantly related to modern Judaism through a common ancestor thousands of years ago and directly insulting the modern Talmud in a super tone-deaf privileged way. I had conflicted feelings about using this article, but in the end thought I'd likely be alone in caring and figured it gave a lot of knowledgeable context on Jehova's Witnesses that would otherwise be missing.

Joe in Australia, the point is indeed pretty off-topic here and particularly at the top of the thread, but maybe it'd make a good MeTa? I'd be curious how everyone feels about FPPs with sources that are a bit tone-deaf about things not related to the actual topic.
posted by Blasdelb at 6:01 AM on October 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


This is a really interesting document, and I find I'm having to remind myself to be careful about reading too much into some things. For example, far more ink is spent on the severity of the sin of giving, receiving, or facilitating blood transfusions than is spent on, say, murder. My immediate reaction was "wow, I knew blood transfusions were a whole thing for JWs, but I'd have thought murder would be more serious." Then I remembered that this is a guide for how to respond to questions in certain areas of JW teaching, and the 'fixation' on blood transfusions in this document is probably due to the volume of hyper-specific questions about blood transfusions. (After all, murder is considered immoral by pretty much everyone, religious or not.)
posted by duffell at 6:27 AM on October 25, 2015


Joe in Australia, the point is indeed pretty off-topic here and particularly at the top of the thread,

I disagree. It's part of the linked articles, and the word "Talmud" uniquely refers to Jewish holy texts. I also read the 'Talmudic' references as surprisingly antisemitic, as I don't normally think of Jehovah's Witnesses as one of "those" groups.

with sources that are a bit tone-deaf about things

Yeah, please don't do this. Please don't tell people who have been subjected to actual antisemitism that it's not a big deal, or slightly tone deaf. That's pretty fucking offensive.
posted by zarq at 6:35 AM on October 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


To this level of specificity? I'm no specialist theologian, but I can't think of anything similar in Christian circles, and it doesn't correspond with my understanding of any other religion either. The Talmud definitely seems the most similar in how comprehensive it is, but it's the opposite of didactic.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Large Catechism of the Lutheran Church are the closest things in Christianity I can think of, but I also see a counterpart in the massive "Christian advice" book genre, with which a very small subset of (Mostly evangelical) fundamentalists really do try to "micromanage" or "rules lawyer" personal and institutional conduct.

Groups like the Promise Keepers and Focus on the Family often seem to have pretty formulaic answers as well. I think this is a very formalized example of something f pretty much any cultural group that deliberately wishes to be "closed" to the rest of society does; there's something cultic about it, to be sure.

Personally, I find the JWs and LDS fascinating because of the sheer visibility of their roots in the American 19th century. A lot of their ideas are very wrapped up with both the specific ways religious awakening and new religious movements existed in those periods and with a particular set of nationalist and political ideologies fromt hose periods. Yes, their belief statements and practices have changed since then, but much of the core dogma still reflects concepts of individualism, expansionism, and exceptionalism specific to those periods.

These concepts exist in other times, but they are formulated differently; the current evangelical fundamentalist movement, for example, still reads very much as a late 1960s and 1970s phenomenon that it is. Even their use of earlier stuff like Scofield's Study Bible occurs almost entirely through the lens of anti-Communism and reactions to the counterculture.
posted by kewb at 6:45 AM on October 25, 2015


NB: My interest is likewise purely anthropological. In private life, I much prefer Cole Porter to a colporteur.
posted by kewb at 6:49 AM on October 25, 2015


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