Posts about the Cruel Act of Shunning
For Jehovah’s Witnesses to swear in court that they don’t have a shunning policy for family members is a blatant lie. They have many policies and scriptures to enforce their shunning rules. For them to appear to be a benign religion, they hired a public relations firm to spin Jehovah’s Witnesses in a favorable light. Their official policy states that they do not shun and any decision to shun is left up to the family members. Again, Their spin is purely deception — fiction.
Jehovah’s Witnesses consider themselves a “moderate” religion. However, what this page presents are posts from my own life experiences which prove otherwise. The posts reveal a truth about them that they might not wish to discuss with you when they ring your doorbell.
Obviously, the laws of the land forbid murder. However, Jehovah’s Witnesses are still obligated to obey the policy to treat Apostates — ones who have left the religion — as dead. Yes, my children as well as my flesh-and-blood brother treat me as dead because I no longer wish to be a member of the family religion. How does one treat another as “dead”? By shunning — completely ignoring — such people. My daughter told me I was never to contact her again unless I “returned to god first”.
I speak from personal experience in saying it may be embarrassing for the Jehovah’s Witnesses to admit that they shun anyone. When I was a JW, I would avoid that conversation at all costs. I couldn’t admit to anyone outside the walls of the family’s religion that I was a shunner — before I got to where I am now — a shunned ex-member. Yes, the religion’s members are obliged to shun family and friends who their congregation elders judge and condemn as “wicked.” My wicked deed? — leaving the family religion.
Getting Out of Babylon: Posts on Shunning
Bittersweet Time
Winter is a notoriously bittersweet time for me to hibernate and contemplate my life. During this season, I meditate more than usual. As well, I often curl up on the couch with a blanket, and do a lot of reading. I’ve read two books since Christmas, and I’m in the process of reading two more. Plus I have two more books in cue. Next thing I know, it will be spring. While delving into The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller, I’m facing my own various heartaches. I especially resonated with several points in chapter eight of the book. Sorrow is described as having the potential to be a fearful thing to contemplate, but bear with me here, because it brought me to a new place in viewing my own lifetime of religiously-induced grief. Read more >>
Expectation Postponed
Getting Disfellowshipped
Sometimes when I climb into bed and turn out the lights I am flooded with memories of the tribunal of elders who disfellowshipped me. After one short announcement with my name in it, the process of getting disfellowshipping quite literally cut me off from my family. My kids were told they could no longer have association of any kind with me. My daughter called me long distance from Vancouver — I lived in Saskatoon at the time. She heard the news Read more >>
Kill the Apostates!
Jehovah’s Witnesses consider themselves a “moderate” religion. However, what follows is an excerpt from their Watchtower magazine, which reveals a truth about them that they might not wish to discuss when they ring your doorbell. They wish to literally kill the apostates: Read more >>
Gabi was Her Name
Through my transition into singleness, there was a big shift in my friendships at the Kingdom Hall. No one quite knew what to do with me anymore. I felt ungrounded. My usual married women friends avoided me, after my divorce. I felt like I had been dumped into a new congregation. Seriously. It was so strange to observe the changes in my relationships with the other sisters in the hall. Fortunately for me, a new sister moved into the congregation Read more >>
Kindness of Strangers
I was half a block away from the corner when the bus rolled up to the stop. “Oh, darn,” I thought, looking down dejectedly. “There goes my bus.” It was Monday morning and I was feeling sorry for myself. I looked up again noticing the bus was still sitting at the corner. That was unusual. Read more >>
Hearts of Stone
My Jehovah’s Witness elder/brother sent me a photo of my son and my granddaughter after twelve years of nothing. By any chance, does this look like shunning? Oh *sigh* I suppose this is what can happen when Mercury is in retrograde — it’s the only time I can despair so deeply — and come up with poetry titled “Hearts of Stone”: When I left religion, I sacrificed my beloved children on the altar of religion. I left and they stayed. Now I’m shunned. Abandoned by their love. Yet, I am free from religion. But religion turned our hearts to stone. Read more >>
Shun Don’t Shun
The Jehovah’s Witnesses do flip-flops on their theology. It is an “on-and-off” system of belief when it comes to the issue of disfellowshipping members they judge as “sinners.” In a span of five years, they went from “don’t shun it’s cruel” to “shun! It’s our tool of power and tyranny that finds no parallel!” The most revealing Read more >>
Shunning Mom
I never would have imagined that by the end of a week-long visit with my beloved mother that I would be shunning her. It was 1985. I lived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and my Mom lived in Selkirk, Manitoba. I had been asking — begging — Mom to come and visit us ever since we moved to Saskatoon from Selkirk, in 1978, a period of seven years. 1978, the year of my baptism as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, was also the same year that my husband was laid off. Our family was in transition on so many levels. Read more >>
Shunning Ex-Members a Religious Rule
Just when I thought all had been said that could be said about the subject of disfellowshipping and shunning — I’m wrong again! Indeed, shunning ex-members is a religious rule in the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ religion. An unbending edict! How do parents simply shut off their hearts one day when a child has made an independent decision that conflicts what the parents would choose for them? Where is a heart of compassion? Read more >>
Mind Control of Religion
The act of shunning is a mind-control tool of religion to prevent members from listening to ex-members. Religious elders attempt to prevent members from finding out the truth about why some stop believing. Sometimes just the fear of being shunned prevents a person from making needed changes in their lives. Why? Read more >>
Religion is Manipulative
Secular authorities appear to know little about how religions operate, using manipulation. Aayan Hirsi Ali, political scientist and author, spoke a universal truth when she said “government seems to feel they must enshrine cultural religions and hold [them] as sacred, no matter how dysfunctional these people act.” (Source?) She has seen religious dysfunction in her life experiences as a Muslim in Africa, Saudi Arabia, Holland, and the United States; and I can testify about my experiences with the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Canada. Religious groups keep lobbying for more freedom. Read more >>
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