A Jubilee Year When Everyone Will Be Free

Even the greatest intentions sometimes fail. Sometimes a plan or purpose may start out as a good idea but in the end may spell disaster. Similarly, the practice of disfellowshipping, a form of shunning by Jehovah’s Witnesses, was intended to be a loving form of discipline that yields peaceable fruit, yet, has resulted in a great disarray of its members. This practice is based on a scripture found in the bible at 1 Corinthians 15:11-13 where the apostle Paul wrote to the Christian congregation of Corinth to “Quit mixing in company with anyone called a brother that is a fornicator or a greedy person or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even eating with such a man…Remove the wicked [man] from among yourselves.” This practice of shunning by Jehovah’s Witnesses in the form of disfellowshipping is unjust and punitive. It divides its members and their families instead of unifying them.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. believed in his dream, so much so, that he felt that he was on the “warm threshold which leads to the palace of justice” (King 6). I am only about six years older than Martin Luther King, Jr. was when he was assassinated. For forty some years now I have believed in a similar dream: that we were on the “threshold” of the “paradise.” I was taught that soon God’s Kingdom would usher in the Millennial reign of the Messiah, that an innumerable great crowd would never have to die and billions more would be resurrected. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., I believed that a person, regardless of the color of his or her skin, was welcome to accept the ransom sacrifice of Christ. When I was five months old my mother started studying the bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses, a Christian organization that was formed in the 1870’s by Charles Taze Russell. During the past century or more of worldwide educational work and evangelism, many teachings and principles have been formed, reformed and revised. One particular teaching, which was developed in the early 20^th Century, was the form of shunning called disfellowshipping. A member could be disfellowshipped for a number of reasons such as adultery, homosexuality, and fornication. Later, as new teachings were understood further a member could be disfellowshipped for such matters as smoking, accepting a blood transfusion or joining the army.

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My mother and stepfather were disfellowshipped when I was about four years old. It wasn’t really clear at the time why they were disfellowshipped, but this exacerbated their marriage problems instead of helping them and they eventually divorced for the final time. They had remarried, which was a requirement in order to be baptized as Jehovah’s Witnesses. My mother, now on her own to raise five children, didn’t receive any form of help from the congregation because she was disfellowshipped. My two older brothers who were baptized at very early ages were also disfellowshipped. My twin sister was disfellowshipped three different times throughout her life for personal reasons that should have been left up to her to deal with. The ironic fact is at the early age of seventeen after finding out she had an irreparable congenital heart defect she bravely stood up and told the team of doctors at the Cleveland Clinic that she could not receive a heart and lung transplant if it involved receiving a blood transfusion, based on scriptural reasons she had been taught as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. She made this strong stand before she was even baptized. This detail was seriously overlooked when the decisions were made to disfellowship her, which proves a major problem with disfellowshipping: that the practice is like “straining out the gnat, but swallowing the camel.” My twin sister and I met a young woman while we were on a freelance assignment in Tulsa, Oklahoma who had been given a blood transfusion as a child after a serious auto accident. Her mother was ostracized and disfellowshipped for allowing the doctors to perform this life-saving blood transfusion. Another problem with disfellowshipping is that the practice sometimes seems very arbitrary. Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that only a person with an unrepentant heart is disfellowshipped, but how can they determine what is in a person’s heart? For example, I’ve never been disfellowshipped, but I know that I haven’t lived a more discreet or more moral life than my sisters or my brothers or my mother or my stepfather.
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Me, my mother, and my twin sister at a
convention of Jehovah's Witnesses in 1974

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This form of shunning by disfellowshipping has a lifelong damaging effect on anyone who has been disfellowshipped. When a person is disfellowshipped his or her name is read aloud at the kingdom hall—our place of worship—to the congregation intended to be announced while the member being disfellowshipped is in attendance. Afterward, from that moment on, no one in the congregation, except for the elders overseeing the congregation, is to speak to this individual, if so, they, too, could be disfellowshipped. If an individual who is disfellowshipped does decide to meet for worship and is greeted by a stranger who is unaware of this individual’s status, the disfellowshipped person must identify himself or herself as such. The disfellowshipped person is thus cut off from his or her friends in the congregation. The disfellowshipped person never really loses the stigma attached with having been disfellowshipped, no matter how good the intentions of Jehovah's Witnesses may be, thus, it follows him or her throughout his or her life, whatever congregation he or she may attend, or wherever he or she may move. Disfellowshipping not only isolates members from others in the congregation, but the majority who have been disfellowshipped are also isolated from friends at work, schoolmates, or others in their community, because for so long they were taught to keep separate from the “world.” Such individuals feel they don’t belong anywhere.

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In addition, this type of punishment creates a sense of fear in worship, because the principle taught is that anyone who is disfellowshipped at the time of Armageddon or destruction of the wicked will also be destroyed. I remember when I was only six years old and I would watch the evening news with Peter Jennings while my mother would be getting ready to go work at a night club. I used to cry because I thought that she would be destroyed if Armageddon came. I also cried when I saw the cigarette commercials, not because I thought she would die of cancer, but because I thought she would be destroyed at Armageddon for smoking.

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Disfellowshipping is supposed to unify the congregation, making the “wrong doer” come to his or her senses and ask for repentance and humbly be welcomed back into the Christian congregation. On the contrary, it divides the congregation and family members. I am aware of some members who attempted or succeeded in committing suicide after being disfellowshipped. My mother was reinstated—a term used to welcome back a member who has been disfellowshipped—when I was about nine years old. She then married a member of the congregation who later became unstable and tried to commit suicide. He was disfellowshipped. She was, again, disfellowshipped, this time for calling an ambulance and making it public knowledge of his attempt to take his life. This particular disfellowshipping seemed to have broken her spirit. She has been disfellowshipped for over 35 years now. My mother was not allowed to visit her grandchildren due to this harsh punishment for a very long time. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. mentions in his strategy for achieving racial justice, “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred” (King 6), so is the case of my mother. She has not allowed bitterness and hatred to set in her heart. She still believes in the bible and has never spoken harshly about Jehovah’s Witnesses and, although, she is now addicted to cigarettes and has had a difficult time quitting in order to get reinstated, she still has hopes of one day returning. The procedure, alone, involved in getting reinstated, once a person has been disfellowshipped, is a daunting task and can exhaust a person making him or her feel like giving up before he or she even tries to get reinstated. It can take up to a year or more to get reinstated, where in, the individual suffers the shame of going to the kingdom hall, sitting in the back row of seats, and speaking to no one.

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Disfellowshipping has resulted in a slow increase in members of Jehovah’s Witnesses over the years. In 2004 there were about six and a half million active Jehovah’s Witnesses sharing in the preaching work worldwide. As of 2011 there were only about seven and a half million active Jehovah’s Witnesses sharing in the preaching work worldwide. Although, there are an average of over 200,000 baptized every year there are also 40,000 to 60,000 disfellowshipped every year. Therefore, it can be likened to a person taking one step forward and then taking two steps backward. Even though there is a great emphasis placed on the worldwide teaching work and evangelizing work, Jehovah’s Witnesses have failed to retain members. It is important to note that, currently, Jehovah’s Witnesses, when announcing that a person has been disfellowshipped, announce that a person is no longer one of Jehovah’s Witnesses instead of using the actual word, disfellowshipped. However, in all my years of active worship and all my travels to different cities and meeting many Jehovah’s Witnesses I don’t know of one person who, because of a mistake or imperfect misjudgment, would voluntarily wish to no longer be considered one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, unless a person is so very angry and has staunchly abandoned the Christian congregation altogether.

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I believe that if Jehovah’s Witnesses did away with this practice of disfellowshipping and openly embraced others through a higher tolerance and greater forgiveness that its members would be happier, others would embrace them, and a person would have a more realistic view of himself or herself and Jehovah’s Witnesses. A religion based on love allows for members to rely on a higher power and their own trained conscience in making personal decisions. Most Jehovah’s Witnesses have good intentions in their faith and beliefs, but do tend to be judgmental.

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I propose adopting a “jubilee year” like the Israelites held every fifty years where they were forgiven of their debts, they rested from harvesting, and slaves were freed. This institution described in the book of Leviticus (25:8-24) explains that in the fiftieth year, the Israelites were to “proclaim liberty throughout all the land” (Leviticus 25:10) and “not…oppress one another” (Leviticus 25:17). In following through with this proclamation figuratively, I additionally propose that the practice of shunning in this form of disfellowshipping would be done away with, that those who are already disfellowshipped would be “freed” or “forgiven” in the form of a formal letter of acknowledgement of their forgiveness by the headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses, operating officially as The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Inc. All disfellowshipped members would also be sent a letter in order to make a reply, stating whether they would forgive the organization for its misjudgment, thereby, giving each individual an opportunity to reciprocate this forgiveness lending a spirit of equality and justice on their behalf.

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Finally, I propose that more efforts would be made by Jehovah’s Witnesses to embrace those of different backgrounds, which would achieve the kind of justice of equality Martin Luther King, Jr. believed could exist when he said, regarding the struggle of his time between the black community and white community, “that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom” (King 6). We are all interconnected to one another. As long as one person is enslaved to this practice of shunning in the form of disfellowshipping no one is really free. Our differences are what make us human. Jehovah’s Witnesses should refrain from the practice of shunning in the form of disfellowshipping and leave the judging up to God. The life of Martin Luther King, Jr. was taken before he was able to see the results of his plan of action fully carried through, but he laid out the groundwork that has given “hope to the oppressed” and has “opened the eyes of many oppressors” (King, Introduction). Similarly, I may not live to see the time when Jehovah’s Witnesses discontinue disfellowshipping, but I believe that there will be a time when religious intolerance as well as racial intolerance will be a thing of the past. And that, truly, will be a Jubilee Year.
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Bibliography
King, Jr., Martin Luther. "I Have a Dream." 40 Model Essays—A Portable Anthology. Jane E. Aaron. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005, 341-345
New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. The Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, USA, 1961, 1981, 1984
The Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version. Collins' Clear-Type Press, Great Britain