Watchtower related - Franz - Crisis of Conscience Ex Jehovah\'s Witness
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Watchtower related - Franz - Crisis of Conscience Ex Jehovah\'s Witness:
$36.00
This 396 page paperback bookby Raymond Franz is titled Crisis ofConscience: The Struggle Between Loyalty to God and Loyalty to One\'sReligion. It was published byCommentary Press in May 1992. It is thefirst printing of the second edition.This is an ex-church library copy with the usual markings. The text appears to be unmarked. There is slight creasing to the cover. Overall condition is good.
Here is an extract from theWikipedia article on Crisis ofConscience:
Crisis of Conscienceis a biographical bookbyRaymond Franz, a former member of theGoverning Body of Jehovah\'sWitnesses, written in 1983, three years after his expulsion from theJehovah\'s Witnessesreligion. The book isa major study and exposé of the internal workings of theWatch Tower Bibleand Tract Societyduring the 1960s and 1970s. The book wasupdated and revised four times, with the final revisions made in 2004. Itwas translated into Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek,Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish andSwedish.
Franz spent 43 years as a Jehovah\'s Witness, servingas a full-time preacher in the United States and a missionary inPuertoRicoand theDominican Republic. In 1965 he became a memberof the religion\'s headquarters staff inBrooklyn, New York, where he was assigned tohelp research and write the Bible encyclopediaAid to Bible Understanding andin 1971 appointed as a member of the religion\'s Governing Body. He left theGoverning Body in 1980 after a high-level inquiry was launched into allegationsthat several headquarters staff including Franz were spreading \"wrongteachings\". He moved toAlabamawherehe took up farm laboring work and was expelled from the religion in November1981 for breaching an edict that Witnesses shun individuals who have formallyresigned from the religion.
His expulsion was reported byTimemagazineinFebruary 1982. Franz claimed he declined repeated requests over the next twoyears for further media interviews about the workings of the Watch TowerSociety, but in 1983 decided to end his silence after a number ofWatchtowerarticlescriticised the motives, character and conduct of former Witnesses whoconscientiously disagreed with the organization. One article describeddissidents as being \"like ... Satan,\" \"independent,faultfinding,\" \"stubborn,\" \"reviling,\"\"haughty,\" \"apostate\" and \"lawless\".
Franz claimed that many Jehovah\'s Witnesses who chooseto leave because they cannot \"honestly agree with all the organization\'steachings or policies\" are subsequentlydisfellowshipped,or formally expelled, and shunned as \"apostates\". He wrote that hehoped his book might prompt Witnesses to consider the conscientious stand ofdefectors with a more open mind. He hoped that a discussion of deliberationsand decisions of the Governing Body during his term would illustratefundamental problems and serious issues within the organization: \"Theydemonstrate the extremes to which \'loyalty to an organization\' can lead, how itis that basically kind, well-intentioned persons can be led to make decisionsand take actions that are both unkind and unjust, even cruel.\"
The book provided a critical view of Watch TowerSociety leadership and its requirements of members, gave Franz\'s perspective onfailed expectations among the Witness community thatArmageddonwouldtake place in 1975 and his views on fundamental Witness teachings on thesignificance of 1914 and continued expectations of Armageddon. It also gave hisaccount of the events surrounding his expulsion from the religion. FormerWitnessJames Penton, who included the book in thebibliography of his 1985 history of the Witness movement, described the book as\"remarkably informative\" and \"thoroughly documented\" andnoted it was \"written more in a tone of sadness than of anger\". Englishsociologist Andrew Holden described the book as one of the most compellingbiographical works on defection from Jehovah\'s Witnesses.
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Watchtower related - Franz - Crisis of Conscience Ex Jehovah\'s Witness:
$36.00