Crisis of Conscience Read online

  I can empathize with his feelings and reaction, having served for many years as a Branch Overseer in both Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic where I was to be, according to the prevailing organizational viewpoint, the “top man” in the country, the president’s personal representative. My efforts to act in accord with this viewpoint made me constantly aware of “position” and the need to uphold that “position.” I found by hard experience, however, that trying to live up to that organizational concept did not contribute to pleasant relations with others and that it made my own life unpleasant; the confrontations it produced were not something I felt at all suited for by nature and, after a while, I simply gave up trying to emulate what I had seen at headquarters. My life became much more enjoyable as a result and I found the overall effect far more productive and beneficial.

  The president’s last-mentioned words (“over my dead body”) nearly proved prophetic. At the time of saying them he evidently had already developed a malignant tumor on his brain, though this did not become known until after the reorganization was definitely a fait accompli, its completion taking place officially on January 1, 1976, and Knorr’s death occurring a year and a half later, on June 8, 1977.

  The president’s quite vocal opposition was matched, perhaps even surpassed, by that of the vice president. At the September 7, 1975, graduation program for the missionary school of Gilead, attended by the Bethel Family members and invited guests (largely relatives and friends of the graduating class), the vice president gave a talk, a customary feature of each graduation program.

  Fred Franz had an inimitable, often dramatic (even melodramatic) speaking style. What follows is from an exact copy of his talk, but the written words cannot convey the inflections, the spirit, the “flavor,” even the occasional sarcasm, that came through in the talk itself.8

  F. W. Franz

  His opening words gave a clear indication as to where the talk was headed. Having in mind that a committee duly appointed by the Governing Body was at that very time making a proposal that the training, assignment and supervision of missionaries be directed by the Governing Body rather than by the corporations, we may note his opening expression. He began saying:

  This class is being sent forth in collaboration with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Incorporated, by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Now the question is raised today, What right does the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society have to send missionaries out into the field? . . . Who authorized the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania to send missionaries all around the globe?

  Now, such a challenging question may be raised with an earlier circumstance. And that is based on the fact that the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society was founded by a man who became an evangelizer of world note, one of the most eminent evangelizers of this twentieth century and who especially attained global fame when he made his trip around the world in the year 1912. That man was Charles Taze Russell of Allegheny, Pennsylvania.

  The focus was clearly on the corporation; the Governing Body was not mentioned. Of course no one had raised the “challenging question” he was here describing; the real issue in the Governing Body was whether the talk he had given four years before about the relationship between the Body and the corporation was to be taken seriously. However, he went on to say in his distinctive manner:

  Now I’ve wondered about this matter. Maybe you have too. Just how did Russell become an evangelizer? Who made him an evangelizer? . . . the various religious establishments of Christendom were in operation. For instance, there was the Anglican Church with its ruling body, and the Protestant Episcopal Church with its ruling body. There was the Methodist Church with its Conference; there was also the Presbyterian Church, to which Russell used to belong, with its Synod. There was also the Congregational Church, which Russell joined, with its Central Congregation.

  But by none of these controlling organizations . . . was Russell made an evangelizer or missionary.

  Without directly or openly referring to the Governing Body he had managed to introduce it into the discussion indirectly by referring to these “ruling bodies,” under their various names. (He could also have mentioned the Jesuits, who have an administration bearing this name: Governing Body.) But the point made was that no such a Governing Body had anything to do with or exercised any authority toward this founder of the Watch Tower corporation. Russell was an “independent,” not subject to any of them.

  The Governing Body had appointed the “Committee of Five” and that committee was recommending that permanent committees be formed to care for the direction of the work worldwide. Thus these following words of the vice president’s talk take on added significance as, after speaking of the seventy disciples Jesus sent out, he told the graduating class:

  Now we’re not to imagine that by sending the seventy evangelizers . . . by sending them forth by twos, the Lord Jesus Christ was not making each two a committee, so that for the seventy evangelizers there were thirty-five committees of two. . . . You’re being sent forth today after your graduation as missionaries . . . two being sent to Bolivia, and then there are others who are being sent, maybe four or six or eight, to a different country as assignment for work. Now, don’t you missionaries think because you are being sent forth two together, or maybe four or six or maybe eight, that you are being sent forth as a committee to take over the work for the land to which you are assigned. No such thing! You are being sent forth as individual missionaries to cooperate together and to cooperate with the Branch of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society which is operating and directing the work in the land to which you are assigned to act as an evangelizer. So don’t get this committee idea into your head.

  In all this, the Governing Body remained “conspicuous by its absence,” eclipsed by the corporation. Not a single person had suggested that the missionaries be sent out as “committees” or that they “take over the work” in their assigned lands, and the idea of their doing so had undoubtedly never entered their minds, but this served as a means for introducing the idea of committees and discrediting the concept.

  The talk then went on to discuss Philip “the evangelizer,” raising once more the question as to “who made him an evangelizer or missionary?”9 The vice president referred to the account in Acts, chapter six, where the apostles as a body found it necessary to appoint seven men, including Philip, to care for food distribution so as to end complaints being made of discrimination against certain widows. He then said:

  Well, now, if you look up the McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia of Religious Knowledge you’ll find that the work that the apostles assigned to these seven men is called a “semi-secular work.” But the apostles didn’t want that semi-secular work; they unloaded it onto these seven men and said “you take care of that. Well, we’re going to specialize on prayers and teaching.” Now were these twelve apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ, by unloading this responsibility for taking care of tables, were they making of themselves mere figureheads in the congregation of God and of Jesus Christ? They certainly were not making themselves figureheads because they specialized on spiritual things.

  To those Governing Body members who had heard the president emphasize that the Governing Body should care for the “strictly spiritual things” and leave the rest to the corporation, the vice president’s words had a familiar ring. Strangely, however, about half of the men on the Body were spending their eight hours and forty minutes of each day in just such “semi-secular work.” Dan Sydlik and Charles Fekel worked in the factory; Leo Greenlees handled insurance and related matters for the Secretary-Treasurer’s office; John Booth had oversight of the Bethel kitchen; Bill Jackson handled legal matters and documents; Grant Suiter was daily occupied in financial matters, investments, stocks, wills; and Milton Henschel and the president himself (who controlled all these assignments of work) spent considerable time in the kind of “semi-secular” work that the vice president said should be “unloaded�
� for others to care for.

  The vice president’s exposition now took a strange turn, one that actually contradicted the official teaching as to the divine authority for a governing body from the first century onward. The history of Paul, the converted Saul, was first related; that, after his conversion, when he went to Jerusalem he saw only two of the apostles, not the whole body of them; how he eventually came to Antioch in Syria. Having remarked that, in selecting and appointing Saul of Tarsus, Christ “took direct action without consulting any man or body of men on earth,” the vice president now presented a sort of “Tale of Two Cities,” in which the role of Antioch was set over against that of Jerusalem as regards the missionary activity of Paul and Barnabas. In what follows, keep in mind the existing official Watch Tower teaching that there was a governing body based in Jerusalem that exercised supervisory direction over all congregations of Christians in all places and that in this it was the model for the present-day governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  In relating the holy Spirit’s calling of Paul and Barnabas to missionary activity, the vice president continually emphasized that all this was done through the Antioch congregation (hence not through Jerusalem where the apostolic body was located).10 He said:

  And then, all of a sudden as he [Paul] was serving in Antioch, in Syria, not in Israel but in Syria, why God’s spirit spoke to that congregation there in Antioch and said, “Now of all things, you set aside, YOU, this congregation in Antioch, you set aside these two men, namely Barnabas and Saul for the work for which I have commissioned them.” And so the Antioch congregation did that and they laid their hands upon Paul (or Saul) and Barnabas and sent them forth . . . and they went forth by the holy spirit operating through the Antioch congregation and they went out on their first missionary assignment.

  So, you see the Lord Jesus Christ was acting as the Head of the congregation and taking action directly, without consulting anybody here on earth what he could do and what he could not do. And he acted in that way in regard to Saul and Barnabas and they were both apostles of the Antioch congregation.

  At this point of the talk I recall sitting there and saying to myself, “Does the man realize what he is saying? I know what his goal is, to de-emphasize the Governing Body so as to maintain the authority of the corporation and its president, but does he realize the implication of what he is saying? In the process of attaining his goal he is undermining the whole teaching and claim about the existence of a centralized, first-century governing body operating out of Jerusalem with earthwide authority to supervise and direct all congregations of true Christians everywhere in all matters, a concept that the Society’s publications have built up in the minds of all of Jehovah’s Witnesses and to which the vast majority hold today.”

  But the vice president had by no means finished and he drove the idea home with even greater force. Describing the completion of Paul and Barnabas’ first missionary tour, he continued with growing intensity and dramatization:

  . . . and where did they go, where did they report? There’s the record, you read it for yourself in the closing verses of the fourteenth chapter of Acts. They went back to Antioch, to the congregation there, and the account says that they related things in detail to them; to this congregation that had committed them to the undeserved kindness of God for the work they had performed. So there’s where they reported.

  So the record also says they stayed in Antioch not a little time. Now, what happened? All of a sudden something occurred and Paul and Barnabas, they go up to Jerusalem. Well, what’s the matter? What brings them up to Jerusalem?

  Well, is it the body of apostles and of other elders of the Jerusalem congregation that summoned them up there and say, “Look here! We have heard that you two men have gone out on a missionary tour and finished it and you haven’t come up here to Jerusalem to report to us. DO YOU KNOW WHO WE ARE? We are the council of Jerusalem. DON’T YOU RECOGNIZE THE HEADSHIP OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST? If you don’t come up here in a hurry, we’re going to take disciplinary action against you!”

  Is that what the account says? Well, if they had acted that way toward Paul and Barnabas because they reported to the congregation by means of which the holy spirit had sent them out, then this council of apostles at Jerusalem and other elders of the Jewish congregation would have put themselves above the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

  His points were completely valid. They were also completely contrary to the view presented in the Society’s publications, which present a picture of Jerusalem as the seat of a governing body exercising full authority and direction over all Christians as Christ’s agency, acting with divine authority. That is doubtless why, unlike other talks the vice president had given, this one was never used as the basis for articles in the Watchtower magazine.

  For any individual Witness to present such an argument today would be counted as heretical, rebellious speech. If actually applied as stated, his words would mean that any congregation on earth could send out its own missionaries if they believed Christ Jesus and holy Spirit so directed, doing so without consulting anyone else, whether in Brooklyn or in a Branch Office. There was no question in my mind as to the quick and adverse reaction this would provoke from the Society’s headquarters and its offices. It would be viewed as a threat to their centralized authority and any congregation doing this would in so many words be asked, “Do you know who we are? Don’t you recognize the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ operating through us?” All that he said in this area was true, perfectly true. But it was evidently no more meant to be applied in full force than the points that he made about four years earlier in the “tail wagging the dog” talk, except that, by the references to Antioch, he was clearly endeavoring to establish a parallel with the corporation as operating apart from the Governing Body.

  The talk went on to show that the real reason Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem, as recorded in Acts, chapter fifteen, was because Jerusalem itself had been the source of a serious problem for the Antioch congregation, men coming down from Jerusalem and stirring up trouble over the issue of law keeping and circumcision. Hence the trip to Jerusalem was, not an evidence of submission to a governing body, but for the purpose of overturning the effect of the teaching of these Jerusalem troublemakers.

  Continuing the argument, he dealt with the second missionary tour of Paul and his new partner Silas and emphasized again that it was from the Antioch congregation that they went forth, so that “again, the Antioch congregation was being used to send out missionaries of great eminence in Bible history.” That they returned to Antioch and that from Antioch Paul embarked on his third tour. Winding up the account from the book of Acts, the vice president said:

  And so as we examine this account of these two most outstanding among the missionaries recorded in Bible history, we find that they were sent out especially by the Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the church, a fact which the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society has upheld and accepted ever since the Society was formed. So, we see how the Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church and has a right to act direct, without whatever other organizations in view, no matter who they are. He is the Head of the church. We can’t challenge what HE DOES.

  Those last three sentences spoken by the vice president represent the position that had been taken in recent times by a number of Witnesses. For taking that identical position, they were and are now labeled “apostates.”

  Again, however, those statements, seemingly expressing deep respect for the superior authority of Christ, actually conveyed a different concept, one placing emphasis on a different source of authority. For the vice president was at the very same time saying that to challenge the authority of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and the authority of its president was to challenge the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not believe the thinking or action of the Governing Body-appointed “Committee of Five” could in any way be representative of the direction of the Head of the church, for the simple reason that He, Jesus Christ, had ca
used the corporation to be formed and was dealing through it. This seemed to me to be a case of mixed-up reasoning.

  That this was the whole thrust of his talk could be seen in that, coming to the crux of the matter, he now applied all these points to modern times. He spoke of the raising up of Charles Taze Russell, his starting a new religious magazine, the Watch Tower, and, “Who authorized this man to do that?” Then, on to Russell’s incorporating Zion’s Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, and here he added:

  And mind you, friends, when he founded that Society, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, he was not founding a DO-NOTHING society or organization.

  The Lord Jesus Christ and God’s spirit had raised Russell up, he said, and also backed the formation of the corporation, “this active, do-something Society.” The vice president then described the origin of the Gilead School; that it had been the corporation president’s idea; that, when informed, the Board of Directors had given its backing and that the president was to have supervision of the School. Nathan Knorr was sitting on the platform while the vice president gave his talk and Fred Franz gestured toward him in the course of these following remarks: