nicanica123 Wrote:I go back to my Starbucks illustration... a board member could love Starbucks. Love everything about it but still think that they should change some things concerning their business. That member could be forced to leave if they put more energy in changing the company rather than helping it.I think it's a good idea to clarify what happened to Franz. Franz was not removed as part of the purge that occurred in 1980 as part of the fallout from the 1975 mess. Although some accused him of apostasy, he was not disfellowshipped: after a three-hour inquiry he was allowed to resign from the governing body (for "health reasons") and allowed to serve as an elder or ministerial servant in a congregation in Alabama.
In the fall of 1980 the society sent a letter to overseers telling them that apostates did not need to be discussing their beleifs with others in order to be removed. Just believing 'false doctrines' was sufficient to warrant removal. Even so, Franz was not disfellowshipped as a result, which means that he was not sharing his views with anyone.
In the spring of 1981 a member of Franz' Alabama congregation (and a personal friend of his) disassociated himself from the WT organization. Franz did not end his association with this man (who was his employer at his secular job) and in the fall of 1981 the WT organization changed the policy on associating with people who had voluntarily left the organization. Two months later, Franz was disfellowshipped for maintaining a freindship with this man.
Imagine a board member at Starbucks who holds differing views on how to run the company, but does not make waves and continues to serve the company faithfully. Under pressure, he is forced to step down but retains voting rights as a stockholder. Now the board conspires to change the company rules and regulations in order to find a loophole that they can use to force him to surrender his stock and finally be rid of him completely. Eventually they do just that, and he is no longer a part of the company in any way.
Perhaps this doesn't seem so bad, that a group that wields absolute authority over its membership can change policy time and again in order to deal with someone they can't seem to pin anything on. I think it's pretty scary and not the sort of thing that I'd expect out of a religious group that I might want to be associated with.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
