Customer Reviews

The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses

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Nothing is perfect and I'm not sure I'm in agreement with all the analogies drawn by the authors between 1984 and Jehovah's Witnesses, but that's certainly not a reason to give this book less than five stars. This could be a really important book for someone. At the very least it could be a helpful weapon against the, literally, mind numbing, insanity of Jehovah's Witnesses. Let me give just one quote from the book to illustrate what I mean.

"I had lived my life until the age of 25 or 26 believing that I was never going to die, or that if I did die in a car crash or something, God would resurrect me and I'd live forever in the New World. I can remember the exact moment when I realized I wan not going to live forever. The physical moment: I was working in my office at Bethel and I got up from my desk to go into the file cabinet; I was bending down to get a file, and - it came out of nowhere - I said, Hey, you're going to die one day. And in that one second the knot unraveled."

I suppose I'm aiming my thoughts at the probably hundreds of thousands of those like me who were confiscated and brain washed into the religion by being born into it, or conscripted at a very young and tender age. I was 35 years old before I could really breathe a little fresh air, and even now, nearing 60, it makes me shutter every once in awhile. I'm grateful to the authors for having the will, the courage, and the fortitude to write the book and then see it through the publishing process. I'm sure they realized that such a book could probably never be a best seller, or even a big seller, because though to injured parties like me the Watchtower Society looms large, it's a tiny blip to the billions who inhabit this planet at the beginning of the 21st century.

So, even though its not perfect, and is probably a little too intellectual for most folks, for anyone who is struggling to break free from the chains of JWs, it is a voice crying in the wilderness and a small lamp shining in a very dark place.

This is a good book and the illustrations in it are excellent. The book captures the totalitarian nature of the Watchtower movement as few books do because it is based on sound academic research and a background understanding of the movement. Both authors were raised Jehovah's Witnesses and are trained scholars. In fact, the book is based on a doctoral dissertaion by Heather Botting. My only complaint about it is that it places too much emphasis on the year 1984, which was not an important "end times" date for Jehovah's Witnesses.

This was the first "apostate" book I ever read and I was pioneering at the time. I was stunned when I read it and quickly realized why the Organization was so afraid of and of the Rank and File reading any literature written by ex-Witnesses.

The comparison of the Witness World and George Orwell's 1984 is eerily similiar. The "double think" process, the encouragment of turning in family and close friends who go agains what Big Brother is saying, is all too familiar to anyone raised in this religion.

As this book was written 20 years ago, it's interesting to see that, like Crisis of Conscience, they've made a pretty accurate prediction of which road the Governing Body had to take in order to cover up their false prophecies and keep the rank and file in line.

In 1987, this was the first book that I ever read that was critical of Jehovah's Witnesses. It struck a nerve with me and when I tried to explain it to my JW wife, it didn't go so over so well. She turned me in to the elders at the Kingdom Hall and I suppose I could have lied and said I didn't believe JWs were wrong, but I couldn't. A year later my JW wife divorced me. She had a letter from the Watchtower headquarters telling her it was OK to break up our home in order to get rid of me and my negative Watchtower ideas. I think JWs would still divorce a spouse who openly left the Kingdom Hall and "talked" about what they had found out. That's the whole point, it's Orwellian mind control in operation and JWs actually seem to want their minds to be brainwashed.

The authors should not have pursued the peculiar coincidentalism between JW's and Orwell's book 1984 to the belabored excess that they do. Despite this, the book is a facinating autopsy of the mass psychology of religion (in this case, Jehovah's Witnesses) and the deceptions and nonsense that adherents will endlessly accept. Written prior to the year 1984, the book accurately foretells the more recent doctrinal changes within the "Organization" as once again Jehovah's Witnesses reinvent their theology when even they can no longer stand the weight of its absurdity. The publication is refreshingly funny and easy to read, especially if, like me, you were raised in the bizzare siege mentality culture of Jehovah's Witnesses with its oddball idiomatic peculiarities and Armageddon hysteria. The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses ends on a profoundly accurate prediction, noting that no matter which prophesies fail to materialise or which marked dates pass without event, JW's will continue to grow in number while members eagerly anticipate the day their god Jehovah starts a war on humanity destroying "this system of things" and all the evil people within it (though not his faithful flock of witnesses of course). A great book to grab off of the shelf the next time a pair of Watchtower Society pamphleteers intrude upon your property peddling their superstitions.