A brave Jehovah’s Witness has engaged with me in the comments of the Following the Christ post. Snowhoney expresses the usual views in the usual ways, so it’s a good example of the trained mindflow of a practicing Jehovah’s Witness. Sometimes JW comments are so emotive or hateful that I hesitate to claim that they really represent the views or practices of JWs in general, but this is good example of someone who is devout in the JW way. I…
“On Faith” (an online joint venture by the Washington Post and Newsweek magazine) published an essay called “Witness to Separation of Church and State,” by Joel P. Engardiom, on June 5, 2007. Joel was the director, writer and narrator of “Knocking,” the documentary about Jehovah’s Witnesses that ran on the PBS series Independent Lens. Yet as otherwise law-abiding, taxpaying citizens, they remind us that the America worth fighting for is an America that does not force people to follow a…
Two pleasantly plump Jehovah’s Witness women have just departed, their undelivered invitation to the upcoming District Convention in hand. They were still huffing and puffing a bit from the exertion required to climb the driveway when they rang the bell. For a moment, I was tempted to pretend not to be home. Sigh. Nah. I instructed Ben to go play elsewhere in the house so that I could talk to them. Follow the Christ. Sigh. I let them go through…
This is disgusting. 50,000 Years of Resilience May Not Save Tribe – Tanzania Safari Deal Lets Arab Royalty Use Lands (Washington Post, Stephanie McCrummen, Sunday, June 10, 2007; Page A01 One of the last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers on the planet is on the verge of vanishing into the modern world. The transition has been long underway, but members of the dwindling Hadzabe tribe, who now number fewer than 1,500, say it is being unduly hastened by a United Arab…
Richard Rorty has died. Rorty had an uncanny ability to stare into the post-modern abyss, in which nothing is grounded in the divine or universal, and yet somehow, some way, find a kind of practical empathy that could serve as a beacon in the face of nihilism, authoritarianism and cruelty. Yes. Richard Rorty helped me to understand that an ethics based on universals might be neither kind nor accurate to human experience. He offered some possible alternative methods. I had…
According to an article in the Cherry Hill N.J. Courier-Post, Jehovah’s Witnesses aim to “debunk myths” about their faith by adopting the topic “Follow the Christ!” at the District Conventions. The article mentions only the one convention being held in Reading, Pa., but of course the program is an identical thing everywhere, and it’s not as though it’s an actual “conference” type of convention at which one might expect discussions, debates, new scholarship, pastoral support, and the like. It’s reinforcement…