Leaving the ‘cult’ of the Jehovah’s Witnesses behind
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The world was supposed to end in 1975. Shayne Mechen was 7 years old and living in Hawke’s Bay when he waited for it to happen. He remembers a sense of dread, but perhaps there was some expectation too. As Jehovah’s Witnesses, he and his family would be among the saved.
Of course Armageddon never happened. We’re all still here.
Mechen was born into the faith, and was 4 days old at his first Jehovah’s Witnesses meeting. It was his entire life. He remembers weekends spent on faith activities, with no time for sports, no associating with people outside the faith, not even visits to the homes of school friends who were not also Jehovah’s Witnesses.
A complete world was created from rules and beliefs set by a governing body of men in upstate New York, but there were occasional glimmers of a life outside. Mechen remembered when he was 15, a man stormed into the Kingdom Hall and threw his copies of the Watchtower publication among the fellowship. The man and his wife were quickly identified as people who challenged the teachings and were “disfellowshipped”.
Mechen grew up hearing “the world” and “the worldly” were to be avoided.
“You’ve always been told that if you go out into the world, you’re going to turn into a drunkard, get drugged up and sleep around,” Mechen says. “The world is such a horrible place and you’re going to be sad.”
Higher education was also discouraged. After Mechen left school at 15, he became an auxiliary pioneer, which meant 60 hours of knocking on doors every month. He soon graduated to regular pioneer, which upped the rate to 90 hours per month, or roughly three hours a day. That was on top of a day job.
He moved around in the faith, wherever pioneers were needed. Waiheke Island, Dargaville, Wellington, Pahiatua. He was promoted to ministerial servant and by the age of 28, he was an elder. He had a job and a young family, and there were meetings, shepherding calls and visits almost every night.
Above him, there was a circuit overseer and if there were morality cases, involving issues like sex or drinking, he might be asked to sit on a judicial committee. The committee would send its review to headquarters in a blue envelope. Personal notes were destroyed and some details went unrecorded. The faith kept its problems strictly in-house.
Content retrieved from: https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/350446426/leaving-cult-jehovahs-witnesses-behind.
