It is said, “He who knows only one religion, knows none.” In other words, there are things about your own religion you will learn and understand only by studying someone else’s religion. Exit narratives throw an extra twist into the mix. There are things about leaving your own religion that you will learn only by studying how people leave someone else’s religion. This week’s offering is Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life (Viking, 2019) by Amber Scorah. This is the gripping account of a fully active Jehovah’s Witness who grows up in Vancouver, BC, goes to China as a JW missionary (under the radar, of course), gets a job, recruits “Bible students,” then exits her church, exits her marriage, and moves to New York. Highly recommended for Mormon readers.
What do Mormons think of JWs or TJs? (If you went on a foreign mission, you probably still think of them as “TJs” or Temoins de Jehovah.) Mainstream Christians kind of lump Mormons, TJs, Christian Scientists, and Seventh-Day Adventists into the category “strangely appealing American-born churches” or simply “cults.” Mormons see TJs as direct competitors (who else goes door to door looking for converts?). Mormons also see TJs as rather quaint and strange, with bizarre beliefs and practices, whereas Mormons are a lot more normal. Really?
Who Is Stranger, Mormons or TJs?
You probably think refusing blood transfusions is a strange belief. Stranger than thinking God doesn’t want you to drink coffee? But declining blood transfusions means some TJs, even some TJ children whose parents refuse to allow a blood transfusion for their child, will die as a consequence. That seems needlessly harsh compared to passing on a morning cup of brew. But the ongoing hardline position and rhetoric that Mormons deploy against gays leads to depression, ostracism, and suicide for a small number of gay LDS youth. Leaders and mainstream Mormons say that’s just the price we pay for following God’s truth, and in the end we will be blessed, etc. Guess what? TJs say the same thing about the collateral damage from abstaining from blood transfusions. We’re both in denial. We’re both about equally strange.
How about spirits and resurrection? TJs believe and teach that at death there is no continuous spirit existence. Instead, your spirit goes dormant or sleeps until the resurrection, when good TJs get reformed and reanimated bodies and go to paradise (the rest of us go somewhere else). Mormons are at the exact other end of the spectrum, not only asserting the continued existence of spirits after death in temporary spirit prison/paradise, but extending spirit life backwards into a spirit Pre-existence. Just like TJs, Mormons believe good Mormons eventually get reanimated physical bodies and go to paradise (everyone else goes somewhere else). Both TJ and Mormon spirit beliefs are seen as heresy by orthodox Christians. Both sets of beliefs appeal to a few obscure Bible passages. In the eyes of mainstream Christians, both sets of beliefs are equally strange.
Formal and Informal Shunning
If you read the book, you will see that exiting the Jehovah’s Witnesses is as difficult and traumatic for a TJ as leaving the LDS Church is for a Mormon. Just another disturbing parallel. They even use the term “disfellowshipping.” If you want all the details, you can read a good summary of the whole apparatus at the Wikipedia article “Jehovah’s Witnesses and congregational discipline.” Let’s just talk about shunning.
A TJ is supposed to have no contact with a disfellowshipped member. This includes family members, even when living in the same house. Reading the book shows there are exceptions to the practice, say to encourage the disfellowshipped member to see the light, repent, and return to the fold. And there is local variation in how that discipline is administered, just like what Mormons call bishop roulette. But, on the whole, TJs take very seriously their duty to shun a disfellowshipped member, many of whom do at some point return to the fold and are warmly welcomed when they do.
Do Mormons shun excommunicated members, even family members? Well it certainly happens, although it is an informal practice that varies by family and by particular location. Go and Google “mormon shunning” and you’ll get plenty of examples. The Church denies there is a formal shunning doctrine and denies encouraging the shunning of disfellowshipped or excommunicated members. Practically, it seems like every former Mormon feels shunned and can give a variety of examples. What is tougher to deal with, formal shunning where you can at least say “well, they’re just doing what they are told,” or informal shunning where you know they aren’t *required* to shun you, they just choose to do so nonetheless.
A Bit More About the Book
Of the various non-LDS book-length exit narratives I have read, this was the most engrossing account. I suspect any LDS reader will have the same reaction, no doubt because change a few terms here and there and it could easily be “Leaving the Mormons: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life.” You, a Mormon, can at least read and identify with this exit narrative without the knee-jerk emotional response of either defending or criticizing the Church that accompanies reading an LDS exit narrative.
At one point in the book, the author makes a list of everything she lost: family members, all of her friends, her faith, her certainty, her purpose in life, and so forth. The list of things she still had was pitifully short: personal possessions, the people at work who would at least still talk to her, people who listened to her podcast, and an online friend in California. And her marriage ended. That was just a foregone conclusion. It’s like marriage was just another Church (I mean TJ) program that should be jettisoned along with other practices and programs upon exit. My impression is a mixed-faith TJ marriage is tougher than a mixed-faith Mormon marriage. I’m not speaking from experience, just comparing the accounts I read by Mormons in that situation with what I read in the book.
I’ve had the same contact you have had with TJs knocking at your door. For me, these have been brief but pleasant exchanges, but I don’t really encourage a long conversation. I’m always nice to them, having knocked on a few thousand doors myself as an LDS missionary. I did visit and speak with a couple of elders (local leadership) at my local TJ congregation in connection with a case a few years ago. Nice parking lot. Nice people. We have more windows and better music. They do more bible study and fewer travelogues and thankimonies. I have a couple of books they gave me still on my shelf, two volumes of “Questions that Young People Ask: Answers that Work.” Frankly, they are about five times better than LDS material directed to the youth.
Have you read the book? Have you had TJ friends or neighbors? What do you think of formal versus informal shunning? Does it bother you to think that Mormons are, objectively, just as strange or normal as TJs?
There are two things that really puzzle me about this write up. First, why refer to Jehovah’s Witnesses as “TJs” in an English blog? The French term is used as though that is synonymous with foreign. Undoubtedly, many missionaries who served “foreign” missions think of “ZJ” or “JS” or “TG”. Besides being needlessly disrespectful, I don’t quite follow the logic. Maybe I’m missing something.
Second, “Frankly, they are about five times better than LDS material directed to the youth.” Really?
It was on my mission in South Korea that I first recognized the striking–and at the time unsettling–similarities between JWs and Mormonism. The size of their flock (roughly the same as Mormonism) and level of devotion of their members (arguably higher than Mormons) call into question some of our favorite talking points, e.g., “the Church is true because of high growth rates and sacrifices willingly born by the membership.” I recall defending JWs in a college study group when a group of LDS classmates starting talking about how “weird” they are. My specific response: “Hey guys, have you ever heard about that crazy church where the founder married like 30 women?” My statement was met with uncomfortable silence. Everyone understood my point.
If we want to rank “weirdness,” however, JWs being discouraged from going to college (as Scorah stated in her interview with Dehlin) is significant. College, and subsequent career opportunities made possible by college, are prime places to learn to carry out your “weird” practices and beliefs in a non-LDS environment.
Re shunning: In my personal experience, Mormons don’t deliberately exclude (e.g., shun) disfellowshipped or excommunicated folks. Maybe that happens in practice, but I think the intentions are typically benign. I don’t think any member would endorse formal or informal shunning.
I like birthdays and blood transfusions. And I don’t like the fact that JWs don’t respect governmental authorities and laws (admittedly, Mormons have a complicated history with this, but at least we have it codified in an Article of Faith). There are things I don’t agree with in the Church right now, but most of those are impermanent social issues. The doctrine and practices of JWs are pretty messed up by comparison. Doesn’t pass the scientology test.
I haven’t read the book but heard an interview with the author recently. Seems very interesting. Also, I heartily agree with the need to seriously study other religions to truly understand your own.
Like you, Dave, I’ve had courteous encounters with JWs on my doorstep. Past experience going door to door creates some real empathy. I’ve been to a worship service, and it was a generally positive if intellectually stagnant experience. Very structured, lesson and discussion questions read verbatim from the Watchtower. What struck me was how quickly they spotted me as a visitor when I entered the building. Two of their leaders moved in from either side of the row ahead of the one I sat down in, shaking my hand, and querying what had brought me there that day. The exchange was courteous, and they checked in with me after the service again in a warm manner I appreciated. Very courteous and practiced at dealing with visitors. Then again, I didn’t ask them any tough questions. I’ve had visits from Mormon missionaries that were excruciatingly scripted in a similar way. I’ve also had other encounters with our missionaries which were comfortable and friendly.
As for shunning, formal religious shunning strikes me as sinister. Informal shunning strikes me as quite human and thus sadly inevitable. In fact, I may have preemptively shunned myself on more than one occasion, rather than risk giving devout members the chance to informally shun me. It’s so hard when people have deeply cherished but incompatible beliefs.
It’s hard for me to see any similarities between the shunning the JWs do and the shunning Mormons are reported to do. Whatever shunning I’ve seen in the church hasn’t been punitive, but self-protective. A lot of the bond between church members comes from a presumption of common faith, and when that presumption is shaken because someone expresses attitudes or beliefs that are incompatible, that creates distance. The distance is even greater if the views are not just incompatible, but antagonistic.
There is no question which of the two religions is stranger, not in the sense of odd or peculiar, but in the sense of separate and keeping its distance. When Harold Bloom wrote his The American Religion he could reasonably put the Mormon religion at its center as “The American Original.” For the section of the book on “Rival American Originals,” such as Christian Science, Seventh-Day Adventism, and Pentecostalism, the Jehovah’s Witnesses had a special role as the American religion that doesn’t believe in “the American Religion.” The difference between a dozen Mormons in Congress on the one hand and a group that pointedly doesn’t participate in democracy would be a more interesting difference than coffee vs. transfusions as related to leaving the religion. Does that come out in this book on Leaving the Witness?
“Mormon or JW, Which Is Stranger?”
All things are stranger than the thing I am most familiar with.
JW’s were quite active in Hawaii. I spent half an hour or so with JW missionaries discussing the 144,000 in particular. they, like many Mormons, can be True Believers which means relax, have conversation, you are not going to convert this one and he is not going to convert you and you both know it.
Also for a while in Hawaii my ward shared a building with Seventh Day Adventists. They used it on Saturdays and Mormons used it on Sundays. It was remarkably efficient.
The documentary “Knocking” offers a great insight into the role of faith in Jehovah’s Witnesses and on their role in American jurisprudence.
As for shunning, in my own family I have had cousins complained they were shunned when they left the church, but they often forgot that they demanded no talk of faith, religion or God whenever they were present, yet they were able to gripe all they wanted about their enlightened understanding now that they left the church. Ultimately, it just became easier to not invite them. Not because they were not loved, but they had become true a-holes toward faithful members of the church.
Hi Dave B,
Thanks for your post. You provide some interesting points to consider.
I think your comparison between blood transfusion refusals and suicide is tenuous, at best. Church leaders have never indicated that suicide is the “price we pay” to preach God’s truth. That statement directly contradicts the numerous suicide prevention materials and efforts the Church has been putting out lately. While there absolutely should be improvement on how the Church and mainstream members discuss and handle these issues, nobody is fine with it as “collateral damage.”
Second, death by suicide has a much more complex etiology than blood transfusion refusal. With a transfusion refusal, if you don’t get enough blood, you die. It’s very simple. On the other hand, there are a number of factors that contribute to suicide, including previous mental health issues, family crises, legal problems, technology restrictions, etc. [1] Even then, it is difficult to say which factor(s) “caused” the suicide.
While there is no denying the harmful impact that rhetoric has happened on suicide, it is ultimately unhelpful, spurious and inappropriate to compare the two.
[1] https://ibis.health.utah.gov/ibisph-view/pdf/opha/publication/hsu/SE04_SuicideEpiAid.pdf
Most all religions are strange to about the same degree. Circumcision and special diets for Fridays are no weirder than garments. The only difference is degree of familiarity.
I remember a story in the LA Times more than 20 years ago. It was about Scientology and they quoted several members extensively. One was a young man who was active in sports. He said that Scientology and its precepts gave him the stamina and strength that others didn’t have. He also said that people noticed that he was different, there was just something about him and other Scientologists that gave them an extra spark, a light in their eyes that people could see…
The scales suddenly fell from my own eyes as I saw for the first time, the exact same thoughts and expressions coming from that young man that I had heard growing up in church about the word of wisdom and mormons in general. It was one of the few epiphanies I’ve had in my life.
I completely agree with Left Field weirdness directly coordinates with lack of familiarity.
Some good points. A couple things I want to mention. First, comparing JW blood transfusions to the “hardline position and rhetoric that Mormons deploy against gays” doesn’t really work, since JWs also hold that same hardline position against gays. In fact, she gave a great example of this in the book where a homosexual in her congregation was disfellowshipped, and I think he eventually committed suicide (I could be remembering this wrong).
Secondly, though both JWs and Mormons have arbitrary rules that impact them socially, the JW rules have a much broader and EARLIER impact. For example, Mormon kids really don’t encounter much social inhibition, since coffee and alcohol don’t usually enter the social picture until adulthood. But JW kids can’t celebrate holidays and birthdays, and they aren’t allowed to participate in any fantasy (magical) books, movies, games, or toys. This, in addition to the edict to avoid “bad association”, isolates them socially from other kids at school from a very young age. This isolation continues into adulthood as JWs are discouraged from entering college or engaging in politics–they basically exit informed society completely.
Finally, the issue of actively encouraging shunning I think is bigger than you implied. Though it’s true that some Ex-Mormons do experience some shunning, I think it is very uncommon and much less severe. I think when it does happen it’s usually more a consequence of people naturally drifting apart because they’ve lost a common interest, or are uncomfortable around each other, rather than it being on purpose to punish or hurt. I think it’s safe to say Mormons are discouraged from shunning those who have left. That’s not to discount the hurt that is caused when people are actively shunned or are hurt as ExMormons, but I do think it’s much less severe than JWs.
Mormons are among the worst in a quiz on world religions recently conducted by PEW (https://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/u-s-religious-knowledge-quiz/). Mormons, who study religion more than most religions seem to know relatively little about other faiths.
That is curious since in their survey nine years ago, Pew found “Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.”
https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/
It gives me a strangle feeling to be associated with JW’s, Adventist’s, Pentecostals, and the like. I thought they were kooks. But I guess we are kooks also. Polygamy, homophobia, black discrimination, temple, garments, etc. I need to be less judgmental.
Strange is a relative term. However, the JWs are more further removed from common cultural norms than Mormons. Mormons blend, JWs do not. As for beliefs and common practices, however, Mormons would be considered fairly kooky. Garments, patriarchal blessings, missions, no coffee and tea, no taking of God’s name in vain, strictness on modesty, constantly turning non-member friends into projects, and quite a few other peculiar practices. Yes, the JWs have crazy interpretations of the Bible and take it to a level of literalness that surpasses even Pentecostals. But the common Mormon belief is that a whole civilization of ancient Jews inhabited the Americas and witnessed Jesus Christ. Plus, while mainstream Mormons don’t appear to be Young Earth Creationists (and accept the 6,000 years as metaphorical), a good number seem to believe that human history does not predate 6,000 years and get defensive if anyone talks about life before 6,000 years. The idea of dinosaur bones coming from other planets (while not preached from the pulpit) is a rather commonly accepted idea in the pews.
I think the origins of the LDS faith seems far more “odd” than the origins of the JW faith to the average person. Seer stones, golden plates, angelic visitations, polygamy, etc. all strike most people as somewhat of an unbelievable tale. The JW origin story is quite tame in comparison.
Today, I think mormonism has done a much better job of adapting to modern society even if sometimes lamentably late. I think this makes current mormonism somewhat more palatable to outsiders than current JW practices, even if both seem odd and out of touch with current societal norms.
Thanks for the review and discussion, Dave. This sounds like a fascinating book. Like others have said, as a fellow door-knocker, I always felt a kind of kinship with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, particularly when I was a missionary. And I always felt like they were weirder than we were. I’m not sure how much of that has any basis in reality, and how much is just my familiarity with Mormon weirdness. I’m sure a lot of it is the latter, but I also think there might be something to John W’s point that “Mormons blend, JWs do not.”
This is a little bit of a tangent to the weirdness question, but I wonder whether there’s a difference in how much members of the two churches *want* to be seen as weird. Certainly both of us revel in our peculiarity to some degree. There’s a lot of Mormon rhetoric about standing out and being different in a good way from those around you. I would be surprised if the JWs don’t have similar rhetoric. But in Mormonism, there’s also tons of interest and pride in people who assimilate well and become well-known in broader culture. By and large, I think we Mormons love people like Steve Young and Mitt Romney who might be a little peculiar, but knew how to play the world’s game well enough to become public figures in their fields. My guess is that JWs would eschew this type of status-seeking in the broader world, what with their discouraging of their members from going to college and their refusal to participate in government. I would be surprised if there were JW parallels to Young or Romney. I guess my point is that I think the JWs are more serious about being peculiar than we Mormons are, and as a result, they probably succeed at it better than we do.
I’ve always been baffled by people who make fun of our weirdness in believing things like the Garden of Eden in Missouri.
We have a scriptural story about a talking snake, and what’s weird is the geographic setting!?
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
John W., seconded by Ziff, said “Mormons blend, JWs do not.” In the author’s Mormon Stories interview, she talked about being JW as a student in school. You can’t stand up to salute the flag or say the pledge. If there’s a class birthday party, you have to go somewhere else. Sounds much tougher on JW students than on LDS students, whose only handicap is getting up at 5 am for early morning seminary in high school.
John W writes “a good number seem to believe that human history does not predate 6,000 years and get defensive if anyone talks about life before 6,000 years.”
Count me in that lot if by human history one means written history. https://www.archaeology.org/issues/213-1605/features/4326-cuneiform-the-world-s-oldest-writing
If by “human” one means bipedal hominids, they seem to go back pretty far. Somewhere along the way God intervened and that’s where religious history starts in the Judeo-Christian heritage.
I do not get defensive if you talk about bipedal hominids as they existed more than 6000 years ago. I may wonder why you consider it important.
I sort of assumed the use of the French-derived TJs in lieu of English-based JWs was intentional so as to lessen any negative connotation of the common abbreviation (along the lines of J-dubs, etc.).
I see TJs/JWs pretty much twice a day, every weekday morning and evening (I commute by train to work and they are always there). But as far as actual interactions, I’ve probably had no more than a dozen, 20 at the most. Those interactions have always been perfectly pleasant. I’ve always assumed that I cannot convert them, so I don’t bother even trying, and it doesn’t take a very long conversation for them to figure out they in turn can’t convert me, either. As long as we can manage to not discuss religion, it is always perfectly pleasant.
I see the distinction between Witnesses and Mormons becoming greater and greater over the coming decades.
In fifty years I think the Mormon Church won’t look that much different than many other mainstream Christian groups. Especially the non-denominational/Evangelical groups.
The Jehovah Witnesses will continue to be the “weird” ones at the doorstep.
Scott writes “https://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/u-s-religious-knowledge-quiz/). Mormons, who study religion more than most religions seem to know relatively little about other faiths.”
For what its worth (not much), I scored 12 out of 15 on that quiz.
Atheist will score high, in my opinion, because they are at least somewhat obsessed with religion. Those that are not obsessed with religion will not identify themselves with a religious label. Some atheists, Michael Shermer comes to mind, study religions carefully so as to be more effective in attacking them. https://michaelshermer.com/2005/06/why-i-am-an-atheist/ Other atheists started out as devout theists (including Michael Shermer) and fall off the wagon at which point they turn around and bite the hand that fed them, figuratively speaking, angry at having been misled all those many years.
Mormons score high or low depending on the nature of the test. In my opinion, Mormons are not required to learn any religion other than the true religion; it is pointless to do so and incredibly time consuming to study some 7,000 religions including variants. On the other hand, relating to other people is enhanced by at least some understanding of other people’s beliefs and systems of morality. It is also useful, probably essential, to know local customs which are often religiously motivated. In my Navy career I paid careful attention to host nation customs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_toilet_etiquette
I have heard a few interviews of her and I also listened to the podcast “shunned”. If you want to get a wider view of how serious the shunning is in the JW’s I would suggest listening to “shunned”.