Jehovah's Witnesses - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses are established by the Governing Body, without consultation with other members.[6] The religion does not tolerate dissidence about doctrines and practices;[143][311][312][313] members who openly disagree with the religion's teachings are shunned.[230]
Watch Tower Society publications strongly discourage followers from
questioning its doctrines and counsel, reasoning that the Society is to
be trusted as "God's organization".[313][314][315][316] It also warns members to "avoid independent thinking", claiming such thinking "was introduced by Satan the Devil"[317][318] and would "cause division".[319] Those who openly disagree with official teachings are condemned as "apostates" and "mentally diseased".[320][321][322]
Former members Heather and Gary Botting compare the cultural paradigms of the religion to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four,[323] and Alan Rogerson describes the religion's leadership as totalitarian.[324]
Other critics charge that by disparaging individual decision-making,
the Watch Tower Society cultivates a system of unquestioning obedience[149][325] in which Witnesses abrogate all responsibility and rights over their personal lives.[326][327] Critics also accuse the Watch Tower Society of exercising "intellectual dominance" over Witnesses,[328] controlling information[230][329][330] and creating "mental isolation",[331] which former Governing Body member Raymond Franz argued were all elements of mind control.[331]
Watch Tower Society publications state that consensus of faith aids unity,[332] and deny that unity restricts individuality or imagination.[332] Historian James Irvin Lichti has rejected the description of the religion as "totalitarian".[333]
Sociologist Rodney Stark
states that while Jehovah's Witness leaders are "not always very
democratic" and members are expected to conform to "rather strict
standards," enforcement tends to be informal, sustained by close bonds
of friendship and that Jehovah's Witnesses see themselves as "part of
the power structure rather than subject to it."[93]
Sociologist Andrew Holden states that most members who join millenarian
movements such as Jehovah's Witnesses have made an informed choice.[334] However, he also states that defectors "are seldom allowed a dignified exit",[320] and describes the administration as autocratic.[6]
