Wednesday, April 8, 2009

1959 - The Year it Began for Me

Not my life, but my life as influenced by JW's began in 1959.

Nineteen-FiftyNine was a momentous year in many ways. It began with a bang as Castro overthrew the Cuban government and set up his own, Alaska became our 49th state, Charles de Gualle became president of France, and Bozo the Clown became a household word for millions of American kids. Transcontinental flight came to being when American Airlines flew from LA to NY, and the space age began in earnest as NASA selected the first 10 astronauts for the space program.

In that year too, there was much quieter activity going on by a religion that had not become too well known on the American scene. Up until just a few years earlier, they had been known as International Bible Students. Some called them 'Russellites', a reference to their founder. But in 1931, under the control of the second president of the group, they had adopted an odd name: "Jehovah's Witnesses". By 1959, the year first heard of them, they had grown from an upstart in the 1870's, to about 800,000 people proclaiming themselves part of the religion. It was one member of this small sect that introduced myself and my family to a new lifestyle, new doctrines, and decades of religious indoctrination.

The lady's name is not important. Let's call her Vivian, and she was about to change my life. I was but a four year old leader-adventurer in the lawn on a hot summer day when I spotted it: A big four door black sedan where it shouldn't be - sitting at the edge of our lawn, parked on the road. Sitting behind he wheel was a rather dapper looking man, fifty years old I suppose. My discovery of his car interloping into my world was startling. We didn't usually have many visitors, and none of them ever parked here. My poorly developed territorial instincts went to work to determine just what was happening here. Not long after my initial inspection of the front of the car, my ears caught the sound of voices coming from our porch. The lady, Vivian, was coming out of our house, and in what seemed to me to be a rather excited voice, was concluding a conversation with my mother. She was reading something from a book, and handing my mother some papers or perhaps a book.

In what was to become a tradition of sorts, she would often offer me some candy or gum from her bag, though on this first occasion I do not recall if she did so. Nonetheless, mom seemed to like her, and the visit ended with Vivian heading back to the big black car and leaving with her husband at the wheel. Little did I know that my entire world was about to change.

In 1959 Jehovah's Witnesses believed that the end of the world was very near. The escalation of the 'cold war' in the aftermath of World War II, and it's attendant fear, made many people receptive to the ideas they promoted. In some areas, the churches were loosing some influence, but these evangelical groups were picking up converts. They seemingly could answer any question posed, either scripturally, or with clever argumentation that was convincing to those who were looking for salvation from a freightening world around them. Jehovah's Witnesses believed that they alone were the vessels that bore the 'Truth', and that attachment to their organization was critical in escaping future calamity or destruction from the hand of God. Their arrogant position was evidenced often in their literature, like this quote from the January 1, 1959 official journal of the organization called The Watchtower:


"Jehovah in his wise and loving providence has provided us with new wineskins, a new channel or instrument especially adapted for our day, namely, the New World society of Jehovah’s witnesses. To all willing to taste of our refreshing new wine let us also by able speech, by continued zealous activity and by right conduct recommend the new world instead of the old world and the New World society instead of Christendom."

It was this primary doctrine, the idea that no other religion on the earth had God's blessing, that would override most of my thinking for the next 45 years of my life. This sort of scriptural gymnastics, as in this case, the application of Jesus' words at Luke 5:38 to themselves, though 19 centuries removed from the statement, would be something that I would observe as a regular part of my 'spiritual nourishment' for the next 45 years.

As Vivian and Raymond drove off that hot summer day in 1959, I had no idea that my entire life had just changed. Measuring in weeks and months, things would change drastically for our little family. And that change would affect us forever.

Tommorrow: What we began to 'Learn' from this new religion.

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