Posted on 12/02/2024 12:29:08 PM PST by Cronos
Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide have eased the discipline for youth members after “serious wrongdoing”. The new guideline came within two weeks after the decision of the Oslo District Court in Norway to strip the Jehovahs of their official status as a registered faith community.
The faith community seems to be trying to get a better position in the appeal case in Norway. The community came under attack for its rigid rules regarding discipline to “baptised minors”. Among Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is usual that children choose for baptism between 12 and 16 years. Religiously, they are seen as responsible members than, who can be disciplined. There have been cases of “disfellowship” after “serious wrongdoing”, resulting in “shunning”, isolation and contact bans. For individuals and families, this can be rigid and feel like psychological violence.
For the Norwegian state, this practice is controversial because those “baptised minors” are legally still kids. The state feels responsible for protecting the minors. After complaints of psychological violence, the authorities decided in 2021 to rip the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Norway from the legal status, which they had since 1985. According to experts, this is the first time a faith community lost its legal position in Norway.
This registration in Norway gives access to huge amounts of state subsidies. The monetary support is about NOK 16 million (1.3 million euros) every year. Over three years, together with interest, the JW demanded NOK 50 million (4.3 million euros).
With the de-registration, the Jehovah’s Witnesses also lost the right to perform civil marriages. Traditionally, marriages were performed by the Lutheran state church. Nowadays, all recognised faith communities (including the Humanist Society) can perform civil marriage.
The JW community in Norway –which consists of 12,000 members in 700 local congregations– went to court about the decision. The public sessions in court took two weeks in January.
Dozens of people involved came to testify how significant the damage of exclusion had been for them. Others came to tell of the fear of being excluded from the community in which they had lived and, therefore, remained within the community anyway. Some people told of years of pressure that led to lifelong emotional impact.
The conclusion was clear: disfellowship and shunning exist. However, legally, the central question was whether this is part of the community’s freedom of belief or whether it restricts the freedom of those (minors) involved. And could it be a ground for de-registration? This is a new field since this is the first group that has been ripped off registration.
On March 4th, the judges confirmed the state’s position. On March 28th, the Jehovah’s announced the appeal.
“Simple greeting”
Before the appeal was made known, another announcement came from JW: “Adjustments to handling serious wrongdoing in the congregation”.
The new rules published in a video mid-March include a softening of the contact ban. Members may use their “Bible-trained conscience” to decide on a “simple greeting” to a person removed from the congregation. It is no longer expected “to ignore him completely”.
According to a confidential document that leaked to the critical platform Jehovahs-Witness.com, the discipline of baptised minors has been liberalised even further. From now on, only two elders meet with the person and his parents or guardians. Before, this was a committee. The elders “will exercise patience as they work with the parents to understand the minor’s attitude”. After this, they cooperate with the parents “to assist their child”.
Before, there was just one meeting, after which the committee decided within two hours whether to take steps to “disfellowship” or not.
Haste The new measures have been introduced with unusual haste. Usually, there is more time and rest in the procedure. That is remarkable because the organisation defended the then-current practice of disfellowship as Biblical last December. A German lawyer who himself is part of the Jehovah’s Witnesses thinks it difficult not to see the connection with the Oslo court decision.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses claim to have been active in Norway since the 1890s. In the early 1980s, they applied for registration. In those days, this was controversial within the community, since by doing that the Jehovahs would accept to be placed on the same level with other churches. However, the advantage was clear: the group would receive the same money as the state church and other groups.
Also, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have an official registration in other countries, like Germany and Italy. However, the conditions and profits differ from country to country.
Disinformation In Norway, the court case has been characterised as the most important judicial procedure about religious freedom in decades. Spokesman Jørgen Pederson of the Jehovah’s Witnesses does not speak to the press but distributes a written statement after the decision. The decision by the judges about the “State’s offensive allegation” is “deeply disappointing”, Pederson writes. The state could “not provide a single verified example of a victimised child”. For him, this judgement confirms that Jehovah’s Witnesses are “often victims of disinformation”.
The case will continue in the appeal stages. Experts find it likely that the case might end in Strasbourg at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
Reactions to the court’s decision were of two types. First, some welcomed the verdict. Freedom of religion can never be absolute, and the state must curtail long-term wrongdoings. They were not impressed by Pederson’s comment that there was “no single verified example” of abuse.
Several academics stated that the freedom of religion is not at stake here since the Witnesses can still hold fast to their interpretation of the Scriptures and teach this in their gatherings. The scope of disciplinary action is limited, but that is because the rights of others are at stake.
A second group of reactions is much more critical. They do not defend the practice of shunning but still think that this should be protected legally. The Baptist Standard, for instance, guessed that Norway might lose its reputation for human rights because of this intervention in the religious liberty.
Also, Willy Fautré, director of the Brussels-based organisation Human Rights Without Frontiers, is concerned. “We see that there are more and more attempts in Europe by state institutions to interfere and intrude into the teachings and practices of religious groups, which is forbidden by the European Convention.”
The editor of the Christian daily Dagen, Vebjørn Selbekk, wrote in January that this case does intervene in the free interpretation of Scripture, since the understanding of discipline is a theological issue.
He finds it cowardly to take on the Witnesses now. They have no friends or allies in the Norwegian society. And since they are not voting, there is no political risk in doing this either. “But precisely in such cases, when the great majority applauds and rejoices that a religious community loses its rights, there is a special reason to be vigilant”, Selbekk wrote. “That’s how they do it in countries we don’t usually like to be compared to.”
Norwegian Jehovah's Witnesses demand subsidy despite their loss of religious status
If only the JW’s would simply murder their apostates like the Muzzies, the Norwegians would have no problem with them and they could keep their status.
Euronazis at it again.
what a black eye for our Lord Jesus. unless there is great awakening and repentance, i’m afraid there will be no lampstand for you Norwegian JWs.
The Great Tribulation Jesus predicted to His listeners has already come to pass (which is what John refers to in 1 Rev 1:9 I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation
And there is no mention of a separate millennial reign of Jesus as Messiah after the judgement - nor of 2 or 3 judgements as different rapturist hold
The beliefs integral to the rapturist belief system are completely absent from the teachings of Jesus
Note 2 Thessalosians 2:6 6 And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. - the Church REIGNS with Christ a thousand years Rev 20:4 or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
Nowhere in the passages does it say "Christ will be physically present on earth, reigning from teh throne of David in Israel"
Nowhere does the passage in Rev 20 even IMPLY a physical, earthly kingdom in Jerusalem
If families support the manner of shunning that their JW org requires, then it become similar to them withholding food to the real determent of the child's health, and thus can warrant action of the state (though that is much a one-way- street when the latter fosters transgendering, which itself is based upon feelings and practice, as is religion).. Plus, "he that pays the piper, calls the tune" applies here.
However, the real issue here is the faith/dependence on the cult religious system which prevents the families and individuals from leaving.
Read some of the JWs past teaching relative to this.
The shunning is brutal. They encourage (force) children to get baptized in the sect from age 8 to 12. Once baptized, there is no way to exit the sect gracefully. If you decide in adulthood that JW is not for you, you will lose all your friends and family as an outcast.
My own devout JW elderly dad (now 90) and mother (passed two months ago at 89) had shunned me for 20 years because I wrote a letter stating that JW was not for me (I was 43 when I made this decision). I happened to have been baptized just after age 18 in order to marry which lead to “scriptural” divorce anyway.
I believe the shunning accelerated my mother’s depression and caused her to give up hope.
Correction I was baptized at age 17 so that I could marry at age 18.
The lesson is government money corrupts. Be it universities, corporations, churches, and even individuals. Just another reason, in a long line, why government needs to be smaller.
However you want to read this or whatever you believe about JW’s what should be obvious is how fortunate we are in the US not to be able to have our religious status removed by the government because they don’t like it.
Our various religious denominations do not go looking to the state for subsidies either....
I believe the shunning accelerated my mother’s depression and caused her to give up hope.
—
I recently watched an episode of “Deadly Women” on the ID Channel. A family was shunned for the parents wanting their children to go to college. The husband took the isolation well but not the wife. She became depressed and began obsessing about JW end-times prophesy. She believed that those living during the Tribulation could not be saved. Thinking that the end was near she decided to shoot and kill her two children while they slept and wait for her husband to come home from work. She shot and killed him, then she turned the gun on herself.
“Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God ...” I John 4:2,3
That sounds brutal.
it must have really played a large factor in any hesitation you might have had about leaving
Believe me it causes hundreds of thousands to give pause. My son’s boyhood friend who was baptized at age 12 is totally messed up since age 4 (his parents, in particular his dad, were zealot converts) and were as strict with he and his older sister as my parents were. The older daughter was in mental institutions until she finally broke free by marrying a “worldly” man. She wasn’t baptized so they still associate with her whereas the son was highly scrutinized and has made several “returns” to JW. He’s currently homeless and really doesn’t have a life skill other than culinary.
The JW org encourges lowly occupations that keep one in poverty such as window washing/office cleaning/cook. Not that there’s anything wrong with those occupations, but similar to the occupations that vast majority of minorities were constrained to pre civil rights, the self imposed restrictions basically doom their members to financially struggling.
They don’t have any problem, however with CONVERTS who have already gone through higher education and are now doctors, lawyers, etc.
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