Talk:History of Jehovah's Witnesses/Archive 2

Merge from List of Jehovah's Witnesses conventions
Note that the discussion of this merger proposal is at Talk:Jehovah's Witnesses. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  21:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Recent reorder
LTSally, I would like to change the order back from the separation into Organisational and Doctrinal changes. 1) Some issues are both organisational and doctrinal. 2) The continuity of doctrinal changes that affect organisational changes is lost. 3) Some issues relate to opposition rather than either organisational or doctrinal changes, and separating out a third section for opposition would result in further continuity problems.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 14:31, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * At a quick glance, that seems fine. I was thinking later there needed to be a separate subhead for the persecution, which would include Germany as well as the US, in both world wars. What you've done looks good. I'll move on to the Knorr/Franz era soon, which requires less work and can probably be contained in one section without subheads. LTSally (talk) 20:20, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Cool. I thought about doing the Knorr/Franz stuff, but like you say, there's less there so it didn't as much of a priority. I'm thinking of reviewing the Russell section too.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 20:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Additional material?
There may be additional material that can be written to cover the more recent history: several books, including the Bottings, Penton and of course Raymond Franz include in their histories the purge at Brooklyn in 1979-80 that resulted in the expulsion of Franz and others, and there was severe persecution of Witnesses in Africa in the 1970s and '80s. I'll work towards a brief reference to these in the last section, unless someone else is inclined to write something on this and any other points that have been overlooked. Several of those books have also remarked on how much the Watchtower Society has distanced itself from many of Russell's doctrines, despite still championing him as the founding father of the religion. None of his books are still in print and it's been claimed -- reasonably enough, I think, having read some of the material -- that most of what he wrote would be viewed today as either an embarrassment or apostasy. Those comments may be more appropriate in Russell's own article, but I'll leave the thought out there for comment. LTSally (talk) 12:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It would be more appropriate to indicate current JW views about Russell's writings in articles about JWs. It would be POV to call Russell's writings 'apostasy' in the Russell article itself.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 13:10, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Phases of history paralleling presidents
The changes being made to this phrase in the article intro about "phases paralleling the tenure of the presidents" suggest my point is not being made clear. In their book The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses (published 1984, during Franz's presidency), Heather & Gary Bottings introduce their discussion of the history of Jehovah's Witnesses by saying: "The history of the Witnesses consists of four distinct phases paralleling the tenures of the four presidents who have controlled the organization from its inception in 1874 to the present." The phases as they explain are (1) Russell starting the religion and formulating its doctrines; (2) Rutherford centralizing the organization, changing many of the doctrines and dates and introducing a new hard line. (3) Knorr, who was an expert administrator and promoter, expanding the system of "theocratic law", multiplying the laws controlling the lives of Witnesses and in whose time the membership expanded by a massive degree; and (4) Franz, who launched a purge of "apostates" and set up a new system of rigid standards.

I'd argue that the subsequent leadership of Henschel and Adams has continued the "phase" that began with Franz; in other words, the tenure of those later two presidents hasn't been marked by any significant alteration in the makeup or practices of the religion. Therefore, there were distinct phases in the religion's history parallelling the presidence of Russell, Rutherford and Knorr, until Knorr's death, and another phase that began with Franz's presidency. Therefore, I'd argue for a return to my wording of: "The religion's history has consisted of distinct phases paralleling the tenures of the presidents who have controlled it from its inception – Charles Taze Russell, Joseph Rutherford and Nathan Knorr from 1884 until 1977, and Frederick Franz, Milton Henschel and Don A. Adams to the present day.". The present wording suggests that each president (including Henschel & Adams) has marked a new phase in the JW history, which is wrong. LTSally (talk) 08:09, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Your wording arbitrarily groups 3 of the 4 phases together ("1884 until 1977"). Perhaps: "The religion's history has consisted of four distinct phases that began with the successive presidencies of Charles Taze Russell, Joseph Rutherford, Nathan Knorr, and Frederick Franz."-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 11:58, 4 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, maybe. Would it make it clearer to say: "The religion's history has consisted of four distinct phases linked with the successive presidencies of Charles Taze Russell, Joseph Rutherford, Nathan Knorr, and Frederick Franz." LTSally (talk) 05:17, 7 November 2008 (UTC)