Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Jehovah’s Witnesses Mystery Worship: Mind Control Warning–Visitors Beware

Jehovah’s Witnesses Mystery Worship: Mind Control Warning–Visitors Beware

Last updated on: December 23, 2016 at 3:08 pm by Christy Thomas

Jehovah’s Witnesses Mystery Worship: Mind Control Warning–Visitors Beware 2016-12-23T15:08:42-05:00 Christy Thomas

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

By The Voice of Hassocks (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I am reaching a point where I think Gutenberg did not do the world a favor. And for the second time in these months in the Mystery Worship mode, I walked about of a service and said, “I need a drink.”

Just walking to the door identified us as visitors with outsider status. I wore tailored dress slacks, boots and blazer and my companion was similarly clothed with a dress shirt, jacket and slacks. At the Jehovah’s Witness meeting hall on Windsor Drive in Denton, he should have had on a dark suit and tie and I should have been in a dress. Which I don’t own.

With that marking of “newbie” all over us, many greeted us enthusiastically. One ushered us to seats on one side of the meeting area, a low-ceilinged windowless room, lit by institutional fluorescent lighting. A small dais adorned with nothing but a wooden lectern and microphone, flanked by two small screens, identified where the speakers would stand. The temperature in the room ranged from too warm to too cold, never quite settling on comfortable.

We guessed the room would seat approximately 250 people. Perhaps 150 (more for the first part) gathered. Another identical room housed a different cohort of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Three other area groups share that same building.

There is no Sunday school or nursery available. Nursing mothers may feed their infants in the toilet area, awash with sprayed feces, equipped with chairs but no viewing screen. The mostly middle-aged or older and highly diverse ethnically adults were accompanied by a small number of children and teens. None will ever celebrate their birthdays, Christmas or Easter if they wish to remain faithful to the beliefs of the faith they are being reared in.

At 10 am, a man approached the lectern, offered a good morning, and told us to stand and sing hymn number 75. I saw no hymnbooks, but the person sitting next to my companion offered him one. There were no musical instruments visible. A computer-based electronic piano provided the tune, melody line only, to support the unenthusiastic singing.

At this point, a man identified as Brother Gay came to the lectern for a 30 minute exposition on “The Promise of the Perfect Family.”

During his exposition, Gay referenced multiple scriptures. All come from the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, a translation unique to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Again, our friendly row companions offered the use of one of their Bibles.

Later I learned about a smartphone app for the JW’s that made it easier to move from spot to spot. Before then, my companion frantically flipped from place to place in his borrowed Bible while I wrote non-stop. I counted 23 different Scriptures being used–about one per minute, each yanked from its historical/theological/contextual settings.

Message theme: God wants us to be happy in our families. The primary means of happiness: husbands in charge spiritually and materially, wives in subjection, and children whose training in obedience starts from birth.

The congregation applauded when the message was finished. I personally was exhausted from trying to keep up. Here is my summary of the sermon in 519 breathless words:

The message moved from a description of the creation of the family in Genesis 1:26 to the book of Ruth and Naomi’s determination to offer families to her widowed daughters-in-law to the promise of the blessing of children in Psalm 127 to movement in the heavenly realm where certain spirits chose to disrupt the family as seen in Genesis 3 to our inheritance of the problem in Romans 5:12 with a backspring to the curse of Genesis 3:15, followed by a flying leap to promise of John 3:16, accompanied by flyover to the son of God breaking up the worlds of the devil in 1 John 3:8, a mention of rebelling spirits in 1 Cor 15:24 with a brief landing on the wisdom expressed in Proverbs 3, settling for a few moments on the structure of the family as seen in Ephesians 5 and 6 with special emphasis on husbands being ordered to love their wives as their own bodies to a reminder that these husbands are to model the example of Jesus Christ as head of their households and the horror of disloyalty and divorce and how the subtle forces of entertainment, work and the Internet may break up God’s plan for a permanent union all yoked to a reminder from Malachi 2 of how much God hates divorce with then a big swing back to Ephesians 5:22 and the insistence that wives be in subjection to their husbands and what an immediate benefit this is to the household so the husbands can take the lead in providing both physically and spiritually for the household as commanded in 1 Tim 5:8, all this based on the words of Deuteronomy 6:5 where the man is told to love God with all his heart, soul and strength and to speak of these things to his sons so they might learn to read and study and meditate and be reminded of the truths in Genesis 2 of the helper, i.e., the woman, being provided so he will not be alone and that they will have obedient children as described in Ephesians 6 because this is God’s arrangement as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 11 all of this tied together with the theme that God wants us to be happy and to have happy families and we can start ensuring that in our children’s infancy as seen in 2 Tim 3 and eventually we will see the future as described in Psalm 37:10 because in just a little while this world will be no more as is clearly stated in v. 29 that the righteous will possess the earth and that we will be among the happy ones as seen in Ps 89:15-16 but we need to remember what Jesus said in John 17:3 that we must come to know God and that the formula for happiness can be found in Matthew 5 with the beatitudes and in praying like Jesus in Matthew 6:9-10 that the kingdom will come and all families on earth will be blessed when that happens.

After the lecture we stayed for the book study that takes place weekly over passages from The Watchtower, the official Jehovah’s Witness publication and from which they take their primary teachings. The sections for Sunday were slowly read, paragraph by paragraph, all 18 of them. After each paragraph, those in audience were given opportunities to comment on the writings with comments expected to be short and to the point.

Microphones were passed around by the well-dressed male ushers to those who carefully read written comments, evidence of much preparation beforehand. Most echoed statements in the paragraphs just read.

As we reached the section on Jesus having tender compassion, I did wonder if anyone would have tender compassion on my backside, sore from sitting so long. I also wondered if the woman in front of us who consistently raised her hand to contribute her thoughts would ever be called upon. Several others, including other women, had experienced multiple opportunities to speak, but her request to participate was not acknowledged by the facilitator. He did impressively possess knowledge of everyone’s name and was able to call out, “brother this” and “sister that” with astounding accuracy.

Because I found this part extremely hard to sit through, and because I had learned by then of the JW website, I spent some time looking at it. Unsurprisingly, I found the earlier lecture there in a somewhat different form, but with all the verses that the speaker had used. No original research here. Just parroting the official line.

The service ended at 11:45 after another unenthusiastic song and closing prayer. We were again deluged with many who greeted us, filled our hands with written materials, answered questions, and kindly offered to explain theological terms to me. I mentioned that I am a trained theologian and had no trouble understanding their terminology.

They also tried in vain to sort out the relationship that my worship companion and I share. I suspect they really needed me to be married because of the emphasis on family. I am not.

Upon leaving, my companion said, “Am I reading the same Bible they are reading?” I remarked that their translation differs significantly from ones used in churches that profess Trinitarian Christianity.

I also asked, “I wonder what would have happened if I had raised my hand and made a comment that did not fit with the program?”

It probably would not have gone over well. It is my understanding that independent thought is discouraged within this church culture. Anyone who knows me also knows that independent thought is my watchword.

I would never be a fit–but many clearly are happy, secure in their world and their understanding of the future they expect to have in the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever that world is, it is not Christian. They are certain that the Archangel Michael is Jesus in some spirit-pre-incarnate way. The Nicene Creed would be anathema to them.

I started this article by writing, “I’m reaching a point in this worship venture where I think that Gutenberg did not do the world a favor.” His invention, coupled with translations in the vernacular, made the Bible available to everyone–and made everyone an instant authority on what it says.

I’m not even going to begin to critique the JW theology–many others have done so far more competently than I can. But this sure looks like a mind-control cultish place to me–and one with 18,000,000 world-wide adherents. As with the Mormons, there are no paid (or trained or educated) clergy; all decisions are made by a small group of secretive men; all monies go to the central office and buildings are funded and built by that central organization. As far as I am able to see, there is also no real financial transparency or accountability.

It’s a slick machine, and if we want to define a church as “successful” by the numbers, then Jehovah’s Witnesses are unquestionably a successful church.

I ache for their members. It’s a cheerless place, full of “correct” answers, no creativity, no celebration, no joy. This is why I am an intentional United Methodist. It is also why the more progressive arm of UM’s may never make it–we do not create adequate insider/outsider markers to give comfort to people, the vast majority of whom do not want to think hard about such things.

I’ve noted before that the Bible, taken as a whole, does not promote inclusive religious stances. Jesus’ life and messages, standing alone, very much do. But we humans actually distrust inclusion. It’s built into us: it has kept us alive. Don’t trust the outsider–they may be trying to take over. The JW’s and the Mormons and any type of high-boundary religious group does a masterful job at tapping into those deep fears of annihilation by the outsider. The anti-LGBTQI lobby camps on that–if we open the doors to those who are sexually “outside,” they will take over and destroy us.

First century people did the same to the Samaritans and to the lepers. It’s human nature. But the church is supposed to be about God’s nature. We are supposed to be different. But we’re not.

[Note: portions of this blog will appear in the April 17, 2015 print and online editions of the Denton Record Chronicle.]

The United Methodist Church

UMC

Previous Post

April 10, 2015

Friday Morning Musings: What Constitutes Salvation for This Man?

Next Post

April 22, 2015 When We Hate One Another and Ignore the Real Issues of Justice and Mercy

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category " obedience abortion accommodation accountability administration adolescence Advent advice an ordinary death anxiety apology apportionments Ash Wednesday ask thoughtfulpastor baptism betrayal Bible bondage calling certainty change character charity children Christianity Christmas church church as garden clergy clergy credentials closure comfort compassion competition compromise Confirmation conservation conservative conspiracy theories consumer conversion coronavirua corruption courage covenant cultural context death Deconstruction discipleship discord divorce doctrine doing good drugs dysfunctional Easter Easter; Resurrection education election entertainment envy escape evaluation evil exclusive church exercise faith faithfulness family fasting fear feast featured film review finances first world problem food forgiveness fundamentalist garden gay marriage General Conference generosity giving thanks GLBT glory good government grace guilt habit happy harmony hateful acts healing health health care heaven hell hello/goodbye heresy hidden agenda holiness homelessness homosexuality humility hymn hypocrisy Imago Dei In training inclusive church indulgence injustice innocents insurance intolerance itinerancy joy Justice kindness Kingdom of Heave kingdom of heaven language laughter laundry lawsuit leadership Lent LGBTQ liberal life Little Things Matter longform meandering thoughts memories mercy metaphor metrics miracle misfortunes morality Mormon Muslim mystery worship natural disasters New Category Name nutrients older adults oppression pain Paleo paperwork partnered pastor peace pension pharmaceutical placebo politics poverty prayer privilege public schools questions quiet racism rain reason reconciliation religion repentance requirements rescue respect rest resurrection retirement Sabbath sacrament sacred salvation same-sex marriage sanctuary schism schooling science SCOTUS secrecy separation of church and state sexism sexuality short cuts silence sin sleep soil spiritual journey stillness suffering surgery sustainable church teacher technology thank you theology therapy thinking tolerance TOS trust truth Uncategorized welcome Why Easter? wisdom women worship

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 December 2025 October 2025 September 2025 July 2025 June 2025 March 2025 February 2025 December 2024 November 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 April 2024 March 2024 January 2024 December 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 October 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 January 2020 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 July 2007 March 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz