Is Watchtower Going To Get Rid of Shunning?

Someone recently posted on the ExJW subreddit about "beautiful new light" from Watchtower's official website for Japan. The page, titled "decision on religious standing," says adherents will "decide based on their individual conscience and circumstances whether to stop or limit contact." It sounds like the end of mandated shunning. It isn't. Read closely, the page changes nothing about how Jehovah's Witnesses are expected to treat a removed family member.

Still, the question behind the post is the right one. Watchtower has softened its shunning policy before, put the softer version in writing, and taken it back seven years later. What it takes to soften or drop the policy depends on what the rule was built to do and what has moved it in the past. The history runs from Charles Russell's congregations, through a Brooklyn courtroom in the 1940s, to the man who wrote Watchtower's gentlest shunning article and was later shunned himself. It ends with a Supreme Court that cleared Watchtower this year, partly by reading wording Watchtower had already revised.

Why the Japanese Website Doesn't Say What Reddit Thinks It Says

If you aren't familiar with the term, weasel words are wording vague enough that Jehovah's Witnesses know what it means in their culture, but that sounds perfectly fine when presented to a court or a government. With that in mind, read the line again. The choices your conscience is given are whether to stop or limit contact. It doesn't say you can have a normal relationship with your mother who was removed.

A few lines down, the same page says that within the immediate family there is no change in the social relationship. It backs that up by quoting jw.org, which says family dealings continue because the family lives in the same house. So as of now, the shunning policy hasn't changed. That sentence has been on the page since at least December of last year, and in my read it was written for the government, not for Jehovah's Witnesses. The official answer on JW.org still says we do not socialize with someone who has been removed.

Governing Body member Jeffrey Winder said at this year's annual meeting that each Christian must decide. What he was describing was whether to invite a removed person to the Kingdom Hall or say hello, not whether normal association should return.

None of that means it won't change. Watchtower just made a massive change to its blood doctrine by allowing the major blood components as a matter of conscience. That effectively opens up most blood transfusions for Jehovah's Witnesses, after telling them for decades that it violated God's law and allowing an estimated tens of thousands of Witnesses to die rather than take blood. You no longer have to report your time in the ministry. The dress code has changed dramatically. Things that were untouchable five years ago are falling apart.

What Charles Russell Taught About Disfellowshipping

Charles T. Russell began publishing Zion's Watch Tower in 1879. If you only know the religion with its current policy, the way he handled discipline will surprise you. In 1880 he published:

We dysfellowship no man for opinion's sake.

So disagreeing didn't get you kicked out. In 1895, answering readers who asked how to run their meetings, the magazine said:

Beware of organization. It is wholly unnecessary. The Bible rules will be the only rules you will need. Do not seek to bind others' consciences and do not permit others to bind yours.

The word "disfellowshipping" meant something very different then. In his 1904 book The New Creation, Russell laid out a system built on Matthew chapter 18. If somebody wrongs you, you go to them privately. If that fails, you bring two or three brothers. If that fails, the matter goes before the whole congregation, not to a group of elders. Russell wrote that the elders were in no sense to be judges of the members. The congregation itself was the courtroom, and he wanted the decision to be unanimous or nearly so.

He also set limits. No punishment was to be inflicted or even attempted. The congregation would withdraw its fellowship and treat the person as a heathen man and a publican, but the person's faults were never to be public property. It was not to be esteemed a perpetual separation either. And here is the part that matters most for everything that follows:

In carrying out the findings of the church court, the matter rests with each individual. Hence, each must discern the justice of the decision for himself.

Each individual had to decide whether they thought the decision was just. A 1916 Watchtower went as far as saying the congregation might vote to withdraw fellowship and include a refusal to visit at their home. But there was no rule about shunning your family, no committee of elders, no closed-door hearing. There was no announcement telling everyone to stop talking to the person. And there was no rule that someone who simply decided to leave and withdraw their membership should be cut off.

How Rutherford Replaced Russell's Congregations With Top-Down Control

Russell died in 1916 and Joseph F. Rutherford took over, and he ran things very differently. Within a year, four of the seven directors of the Watch Tower Society objected to the way he was acting on his own. Raymond Franz, who served on the Governing Body decades later, wrote that their objection led to their swift elimination. Rutherford had them removed on a legal technicality, the kind an attorney could find.

In 1923 an article called "Loyalty the Test" said that if this was the Lord's way of doing the work, then fighting against or repudiating it was fighting against or repudiating the Lord. Disagreement now meant disloyalty to God. In 1932 Rutherford had congregations vote away their elected elders. For the next 40 years there were no bodies of elders at all, only servants appointed by the Society.

Even so, the formal process for putting someone out still rested with the congregation. Historian James Penton, himself a Witness for decades, wrote that offenders were still tried before the whole congregation, at least when Rutherford did not excommunicate by fiat.

The Olin Moyle Case and the First "Avoid" Order

Olin Moyle was the Society's own lawyer. He spent four years as legal counsel at the Brooklyn headquarters. In July 1939 he resigned and wrote a letter laying out serious charges against Rutherford and what was going on in the headquarters family. Rutherford's answer was to bring Moyle before the board of directors and the whole Bethel family and have everyone condemn him to his face. Moyle, his wife and his son moved out that same day.

Watchtower then published an article comparing him to Judas:

Judas was entrusted by Christ Jesus with confidential matters and Judas proved his unfaithfulness by furnishing to the enemy that which they could use and did use against the Lord.

Moyle sued the Society for libel in October 1940, in two suits of $50,000 each. At the 1941 convention in St. Louis, Watchtower put a resolution before the Witnesses condemning him by name. It said he had sued for "filthy lucre's sake," and:

We therefore admonish and advise all persons who are devoted to the theocratic government by Christ Jesus that they should avoid said Moyle and the literature and publications which he circulates.

As far as I could find, that was the first time Watchtower formally told Jehovah's Witnesses to avoid a specific person. He wasn't a fornicator, a thief or a murderer. He was a man who dared to criticize the leadership and take them to court over libel. The organization didn't answer the disagreement. It shunned the man.

By the time Rutherford died in 1942, one man ran everything. The elected elders were gone, disagreement was defined as disloyalty to God, and dissenters were denounced by name in print. But there was still no rule saying a mother had to stop speaking to her child.

That history bears on our question. If Watchtower removed family shunning, it wouldn't be giving up anything its founders taught. It would be going back to Russell's era and "the matter rests with each individual." Whatever shunning is, it wasn't foundational to the religion. It was added later.

The Verdict That Preceded the 1944 Changes

Moyle didn't just move out. He sued, and on May 27, 1943, a Brooklyn jury found for him and awarded $30,000. On appeal that was cut in half to $15,000, but New York's highest court let the judgment stand in November 1944. Watchtower reported the verdict in its magazine Consolation, saying lovers of truth were greatly shocked by it. The magazine called it a real test case with a great bearing on the right of an organization to privileged communication and its duty to rebuke and discipline its ministers. The organization understood what the case was about. Its right to denounce people it had disciplined had been put in front of a jury, and it lost.

Rutherford was dead by then, and the president was Nathan Knorr. In 1944 Watchtower announced that disfellowshipping would no longer be a congregational decision:

The old democratic way of judging cases has served to cause more controversy and disruption among congregations in times past than almost any other thing.

It added that God's organization of his people is theocratic, not democratic. Cases would now be tried before a few representative men. To introduce the new system, the article pointed to Deuteronomy 21 and the rebellious son whose parents bring him to the elders of the city, where all the men of his city shall stone him with stones that he die.

Russell's congregational courts were gone. In their place came small committees of three appointed men. Penton wrote that these became church courts, first called disfellowshipping committees, later judicial committees, and more recently committees of elders. He draws a direct line back to the Moyle case, saying it was central to the establishment of Watchtower's disfellowshipping or judicial committees. He also wrote that after the case, the Society, probably as advised by Hayden Covington, its new lead lawyer, made lawsuits over disfellowshipping nearly impossible to win.

That's Penton's take as a historian, and he isn't a mind reader. Watchtower's stated reason was controversy and disruption, and it never mentioned Moyle. But look at the sequence. A man was denounced, he sued, and he won. The very next year the congregation no longer had a say, and judgment moved into a back room run by a few men appointed by headquarters.

The 1952 Rule Book for Shunning

In 1952 that back room got a rule book. The March 1, 1952 Watchtower ran two long articles on keeping the organization clean. Norway's Supreme Court, in a ruling I'll discuss below, identified this as where the doctrine of shunning disfellowshipped people was first explicitly addressed.

The decision was no longer for the company to vote on. The company servant and two others appointed by headquarters decided, then notified the Society. The article also covered what happens to the person. If a disfellowshipped person comes to a meeting and sits quietly, "we have nothing to say to him." Those acquainted with the situation should never say hello or goodbye to him:

He is not welcome in our midst. We avoid him.

If he keeps preaching and turns in a report of his time, "we tear it up and throw it away." And if you warn others in the congregation about him, you're told to keep it brief, because otherwise "in this day you would be accused of libel or slander and you might get yourself into difficulty."

That's why Penton saw a direct connection to Moyle. Nine years after a libel verdict, the shunning rule book arrived with a libel warning built into it.

How the 1952 Watchtower Handled Family

That same year, someone wrote in with the question on the mind of every Witness with a removed relative. What if it's your own father, mother, son or daughter? The Watchtower of November 15, 1952 began its answer:

We are not living today among theocratic nations where such members of our fleshly family relationship could be exterminated for apostasy from God and his theocratic organization as was possible and was ordered in the nation of Israel.

It then quoted the law in Deuteronomy about stoning your own relative to death, and continued:

Being limited by the laws of the worldly nation in which we live and also by the laws of God through Jesus Christ, we can take action against apostates only to a certain extent.

It went on to say that the law of the land and God's law through Christ forbid us to kill apostates even if they are members of our own flesh-and-blood family. The article then explained how far Witnesses could still go. For family still under your roof, "the law of the land requires us under some natural obligation to live with and have dealings with such apostates under the same roof." A husband couldn't throw his wife out, and a parent couldn't put a minor child on the street. But if the children were of age, there could be a departing and breaking of family ties in a physical way.

So the exception for people living in your own house, the one on the Japanese website, was born largely for legal reasons. Per the Watchtower itself in 1952, the reason you could keep speaking to a disfellowshipped person at home was "laws of God and of man." Once a child came of age, you could break the family ties and kick them out.

Why 1952? What the Record Shows

Beyond Penton pointing toward Moyle, I couldn't find any specific trigger, scandal or split that explains 1952. Neither Watchtower nor any historian I found names one. What the documents show is a sequence: a libel verdict in 1943, congregation voting abolished in 1944, appointed committees from the top down, and a rule book in 1952 with a libel warning in it.

My read is simple. This was the Knorr era tightening control from the top down. Russell's "each individual" was replaced by Rutherford's heavy-handedness, which was replaced by three appointed men and instructions that could only come from Brooklyn.

How Shunning Became the Enforcement Tool for Every Rule

Once the Society built that machine, it ran constantly. Raymond Franz, on the Governing Body from 1971, wrote that Knorr would bring in what he called problem correspondence, letters about some Witness's conduct, and the body would decide whether it called for disfellowshipping, some lesser discipline, or no action. Going back through the minutes, Franz said the single most constant feature of those meetings was one question: Is it a disfellowshipping matter?

He gives an example that shows how these rules were made. In 1972 a letter came in about a married couple in California and what they did in the privacy of their own bedroom. Franz said none of the members except the president had even thought about the subject until that very morning, yet within a couple of hours the decision was reached that the couple was subject to disfellowshipping. That became policy around the globe. Spouses turned each other in to the elders, there were judicial hearings, and some marriages broke up. About five years later the policy was reversed. Franz's verdict: a decision made in a few hours by men almost all of whom were approaching the matter cold was put in force globally for five years and affected many people for a lifetime.

Shunning was no longer limited to what they call sinful conduct. It became the way headquarters enforced all its rules. Beginning in 1961, by Watchtower's own account, anyone who accepted a blood transfusion and was unrepentant was disfellowshipped. On alternative civilian service, a position Franz traced to the early 1940s, a young Witness who accepted it instead of prison was, in Franz's words, viewed automatically as disassociated and treated the same as if disfellowshipped. He hadn't harmed anyone or sinned in any way that can be pointed to in scripture. He followed his conscience on a rule the Governing Body itself would later be unable to agree on and eventually reverse.

By the early 1970s, discipline had moved from the whole congregation to three appointed men, then to a rule book written in Brooklyn. Shunning had become the thing every rule was enforced by. Don't follow the rule on blood, military service, or even what happens in your bedroom, and your family and friends will be told to treat you as if you were dead.

That means that if Watchtower ever removes the shunning policy, it won't be because it sees that shunning is cruel. Shunning was built as a tool to enforce every other rule. It's what makes their system work. They'd only give it up if keeping it cost more than it buys.

The 1974 Watchtower That Let Families Decide

Watchtower has known for a long time what shunning does to people. In 1974 the Governing Body did something it had never done before: it softened the policy and told families in writing that their decision about how to treat their own relatives was their own.

On August 1, 1974, The Watchtower published "Maintaining a Balanced Viewpoint Toward Disfellowshipped Ones." If you were ever a Witness, its opening may surprise you. It says there's a danger in being too lax with wrongdoers, but there is a parallel danger: going too far in the other direction, from laxity to rigidity and hardness.

The article then gave examples. If a Witness out on a lake sees a boat capsize and the person struggling in the water is disfellowshipped, can the brother or sister row away? Certainly not. That would be cruel and inhumane. What about a disfellowshipped woman who comes out of a meeting and finds a flat tire? Refusing to help would be needlessly unkind and inhumane. "Yet," the article admits, "situations just like this have developed." Watchtower was acknowledging that its own people had refused to help disfellowshipped persons in ways that would show basic humanity. I'd say it was twenty years of the 1952 rules, put in place by Knorr, that taught them to be that heartless.

On families, the article said parents still raise disfellowshipped minor children, and children of any age are still obligated to honor their father and mother even if that parent is disfellowshipped. A father with a disfellowshipped teenager who wants to come home could take him back without automatically losing his position as an elder. And on relatives outside the home:

Each family must decide to what extent they will have association with such ones. This is not something that the congregation elders can decide for them.

If a disfellowshipped grandparent wanted to visit the grandchildren, "this is not the concern of the elders. Such a one has a natural right to visit his blood relatives and his offspring." That is as close as Watchtower ever came to Russell's "the matter rests with each individual."

It even gave a number. In the United States from 1963 to 1973, it said, 36,671 people had been disfellowshipped and 14,58x of them had returned, nearly 40%. The gentler approach was meant to bring more of them back.

The author of that article was Raymond Franz. The Governing Body had just made the decision that allowed Witnesses to give disfellowshipped people a ride to the Kingdom Hall, and assigned Franz to write the articles on how they should be treated. He says they greatly moderated the attitude that had prevailed up to that time.

The Governing Body Vote That Lasted Less Than an Hour

How the Governing Body worked back then explains what happened next. According to Franz, until 1975 every decision was expected to be unanimous. In spring 1975 President Nathan Knorr moved that decisions would be made by a two-thirds vote of the whole body, then 17 men. That was a high bar. Franz walks through how it worked: if nine of fourteen members present wanted to stop treating some action as a disfellowshipping offense, it would fail because twelve votes were needed. Milton Henschel's rule of thumb was that without a two-thirds majority, the status quo prevails. In Franz's words, a witness would continue to be subject to disfellowshipping even though a majority of the body had made clear their feeling that he or she should not be.

The clearest example is alternative civilian service. In 1977 a letter from a Witness in Belgium raised the issue again, and the Governing Body discussed it through 1978 and surveyed its branches worldwide. That October, nine of thirteen members present voted to make it a matter of conscience, but nine wasn't two-thirds of the whole body, so nothing changed. On November 15, 1978, all sixteen members were present and eleven voted for the change. That was two-thirds, so it passed. After a brief intermission, Lloyd Barry, who had voted for the change, announced he had changed his mind. They voted again with fifteen present: nine for, five against, one abstention. The policy stayed, because that wasn't two-thirds.

Franz writes that the one vote with a two-thirds majority lasted less than an hour. The policy stayed in force almost eighteen more years, until Watchtower reversed it in 1996 without apology to the men who had gone to prison. His conclusion: if that one Governing Body member had not changed his vote in 1978, virtually none of these men would have gone to prison.

That's how the shunning rules survived. It wasn't necessarily that most men in the room believed in them. A minority could keep the rules in effect regardless.

The 1980 Bethel Purge

According to Franz, around the time of that vote the mood of the Governing Body was changing. After a couple of years of what felt like a thaw came a very clear swing back to earlier approaches. In November 1979, Grant Suiter raised reports of considerable gossip that some people at headquarters were saying things that didn't match what the Society was teaching. Franz writes that for the first time, the term apostasy surfaced in a Governing Body session.

What came next is the darkest chapter in the history of the Brooklyn headquarters. In April 1980 a Witness phoned the service department about something a co-worker had told him regarding a dinner conversation with a member of the Bethel family. The member had expressed views that didn't line up with Watchtower teaching, and some names came up, including Raymond Franz. Nobody went and talked to the people named. Instead, a Governing Body committee brought in the couple who hosted the dinner, recorded a two-hour interview with them, and played the tape for the Governing Body.

Investigating committees were formed. Nestor Kuilan, a translator who refused to describe his private conversations with Franz and with Ed Dunlap, also a longtime Gilead instructor, was told he had to cooperate or be subject to possible disfellowshipping. He asked: disfellowshipping for what? Where was the apostasy being claimed, and who were the apostates? They told him that was still being determined. In another recording, a man who had come in to give information said in his own words, "I'm sneaky," and a member of the service department told him, "Yes, brother. You're giving us just what we need. Go on."

Over six days, April 21 to 26, 1980, longtime headquarters staff were disfellowshipped. Franz was told on May 8 that he was implicated and went before the full Governing Body on May 21. Some wanted him disfellowshipped, but as far as he understood it, they couldn't get the two-thirds vote. Instead they asked him to resign, which he did, and he and his wife moved to Alabama. Ed Dunlap, with some 40 years in full-time service and a Gilead instructor, was judged by a committee of five younger men in a single day, disfellowshipped, and sent out to start over hanging wallpaper in Oklahoma City.

That September the service department sent a letter to all traveling overseers:

Keep in mind that to be dysfellowshipped, an apostate does not have to be a promoter of apostate views. If a baptized witness persists in believing other doctrine despite scriptural reproof, then he is apostatizing.

As Franz pointed out in Crisis of Conscience, that means not promoting. They weren't teaching anybody. All they had to do was believe something that disagreed with the Watchtower and they would be kicked out and shunned.

Peter Gregerson and the Escape Hatch Watchtower Closed

Then there was Peter Gregerson of Gadsden, Alabama. A Witness since childhood, he had been a pioneer and an elder and ran a chain of grocery stores. He gave Raymond Franz and his wife a place to live and a job doing yard work after they left Brooklyn. By early 1981 Gregerson had doubts of his own, and he could see where things were heading. A circuit overseer had already visited and wanted to come back.

His decision, and why he made it, is at the heart of the story. Of his seven children, three were married and he had grandchildren. He also had three brothers, two sisters, nephews and nieces, all Jehovah's Witnesses. If he let himself be disfellowshipped, every one of them would face the choice of whether to shun him. So rather than be disfellowshipped, he chose to disassociate, to resign quietly. As Franz explains, disassociating simply meant he was no longer a member of the congregation, but it did not call for the rigid cutting off of relations that organizational policy required for disfellowshipping. Gregerson submitted his resignation on March 18, 1981 to protect his family.

Six months later, the Watchtower of September 15, 1981 shut that door. Early on, it brings up Korah, the rebel against Moses. Would Korah's family put loyalty to family ahead of loyalty to God?

Most of those closely related to the rebels put family before God. Jehovah executed these relatives along with the rebels.

It then brings up the law's command about an Israelite who becomes an apostate:

In the Christian arrangement today, a sinner is not cut off by execution, but Christians may face tests because of a relative being disciplined.

That's the same frame as 1952: apostates used to be executed, we can't do that anymore, so we'll do everything else.

The article also explains why things needed to be tightened. It quotes a "highly respected Christian elder" complaining that in his area, disfellowshipped ones with large families "have been met as they enter the lobby of the Kingdom Hall with a fanfare of back-slapping and handshaking," even when the family knew the person was still living immorally. The elder asks what will help these disfellowshipped ones to change when they are continually greeted by all in their large families who know of their practices.

My read is that after the 1974 softening, some families decided to keep their disfellowshipped sons, daughters and relatives close, and this article set out to fix that. Without the family's pain, the policy loses its leverage over the family members who are still active Witnesses.

The rules changed again. Now someone who disassociates is to be viewed and treated like someone disfellowshipped for wrongdoing. That cut off Gregerson's way out. For relatives outside the home, the 1974 "each family must decide" language was gone. Instead, Witnesses should strive to avoid needless association, even keeping business dealings to a minimum. You shouldn't even say hello:

A simple hello to someone can be the first step that develops into a conversation and maybe even a friendship. Would we want to take that first step with a disfellowshipped person?

And a Witness who keeps company with a disfellowshipped person and doesn't stop must be removed from the congregation.

How Raymond Franz Was Disfellowshipped Over a Meal

At that time Raymond Franz was living on Gregerson's land and working for him. In August, just weeks before the article came out, Franz and his wife had eaten a meal with Gregerson and his wife at a restaurant, the Western Steakhouse. A local elder, Gregerson's own youngest brother Dan, saw them there. Within days of the September 15 Watchtower arriving, the elders came to see Franz. In November a judicial committee wrote to him. The purpose of the meeting, the letter said, was to discuss "your continued association with a person disassociated from the congregation." That was the only charge.

At the hearing, one witness testified about the steakhouse meal, which happened before the new rule was even published. Another testified about a meal after it was published. Franz asked why they wouldn't wait for the Governing Body to answer his letter about the new policy before acting. The chairman, Theotis French, brought his hand down on the Watchtower and said, "This is all the authority we need." They had already called Brooklyn, he said, and the service department told them nothing had changed and to go ahead.

Raymond Franz was baptized on January 1, 1939. He was disfellowshipped on December 31, 1981, 43 years later almost to the day. The man who wrote the article saying "each family must decide" was expelled under the rule that replaced it, on the charge of sharing a meal with someone who no longer believed.

Was the 1981 rule written strictly because of Franz? Here is what he himself said:

I do not believe the situation in Gadsden was solely responsible for the articles. I do believe, however, that it did have some effect on the ones motivated to prepare these.

Penton puts the 1981 hardening in the middle of his account of the 1980 crackdown and describes it as stricter than anything before 1974.

As for me, I'm about as sure of this as I am of anything. A former Governing Body member had just been forced out, high-ranking Bethel staff were expelled, and people were asking questions inside headquarters for the first time in decades. The leaders needed to make sure nobody else could get away with what Peter Gregerson had done: stepping out quietly, keeping his family, and still being able to talk with them about his doubts. Franz's word for why they expelled him on a technicality was insecurity. Mine for the rule itself is control. They locked that exit because people had figured it out and were starting to use it.

The new rule had wide repercussions beyond Bethel. Franz reprints a letter from a mother in Pennsylvania who disassociated. At first her married children invited her to stay with them for a rest, and she said their opinion of her as a person hadn't changed. But when the information came through later, she wrote, "I've been shunned by them ever since." She was eventually hospitalized for emotional exhaustion. "The loss," she wrote, "is monumental."

I understand that loss because I have a stake in this too. I spent 40 years inside this religion, born and raised in it. When I left I was not disfellowshipped. I disassociated, and every one of my Witness friends stopped speaking to me. My wife Beth hasn't had a conversation with any of her Jehovah's Witness family in the nine years since we've been out. We didn't do anything to them or anything wrong, and we weren't living in sin. It's simply because of a policy that treats people who leave as harshly as people who were kicked out.

So when someone asks whether Watchtower is about to let this go, I want the real answer, not just the hopeful one. Over seven years it went from "each family must decide" to "avoid needless association with disfellowshipped ones," and the person who wrote the first line was kicked out and shunned under the second. Keep that in mind the next time Watchtower announces a gentler policy. Any softening might be taken back later, just as it was the moment the organization felt threatened.

Three Versions of Shunning for Three Audiences

From this point on, the threat isn't coming from inside Bethel. It's coming from outside: courts, governments, and commissions with the power to put Watchtower's leaders under oath. Watchtower has learned to describe shunning differently depending on who it's talking to.

What Members Are Told

In 2008 Watchtower published Keep Yourselves in God's Love, with an appendix titled "How to Treat a Disfellowshipped Person." It quotes the 1981 line about not saying a simple hello, then asks whether strict avoidance is really necessary, and answers yes, for several reasons. The rules apply equally to people who disassociate. For relatives outside the home, although there might be a need for limited contact on some rare occasion to care for a necessary family matter, any such contact should be kept to a minimum. And it gives the purpose:

Losing precious fellowship with loved ones may help him to come to his senses.

The pain is the point. The family's silence is supposed to hurt the one who left enough to make them want to come back.

In 2013 Watchtower got specific about technology: do not look for excuses to associate with a disfellowshipped family member, for example through email. In 2016 it held up parents as a model because they kept contact with their son to absolutely necessary family business, and quoted the son as saying he knew his family didn't hate him, but they were obeying Jehovah and his organization.

At the 2022 summer convention, Governing Body member David Splane said:

Have you ever heard someone say, "That doesn't bother my conscience"? We might ask, how did he come to that conclusion? Did he follow the four steps we just mentioned? Did he do research to learn what makes Jehovah happy? Did he think about how others might be affected? Did he ask for counsel? And did he meditate prayerfully on his decision? Or is he just following his feelings? Following your feelings isn't the same as following a Bible-trained conscience.

He went on to cite Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is more treacherous than anything else and is desperate. Who can know it?" and applied it directly:

We might allow our emotions to get the better of us. For example, when a family member is disfellowshipped. If the person is living outside the home, we know that we should limit our association to necessary family business. Now, if the family was never very close, that might not be a problem. But suppose family ties are really strong, that can be a challenge. If we allow ourselves to be ruled by emotion rather than by scriptural principles, we could stretch the meaning of necessary family business to include almost any activity.

Remember the phrase "Bible-trained conscience." Whenever Watchtower tells governments that shunning is a matter of conscience, a trained conscience is one that learns to override your feelings for your own child. Love for your own child gets called treacherous if it pulls you toward more than necessary family business.

What Elders Are Told

That was the doctrine I grew up with: strict avoidance is absolutely necessary, and your heart will try to trick you. But look at what the elders' books say, going back to 1991, the books rank-and-file Witnesses, especially women, aren't allowed to read. The 1991 manual says:

Normally, a close relative would not be disfellowshipped for associating with a disfellowshipped person unless there is spiritual association or an effort made to justify or excuse the wrongful course.

The 2010 manual, Shepherd the Flock of God, lists as possible grounds for a judicial committee "willful continued unnecessary association with disfellowshipped non-relatives despite repeated counsel." Non-relatives is the important word. For relatives outside the home, later editions say the elders should use the scriptures to counsel and reason with him, and if he doesn't respond he would not qualify for congregation privileges, but no judicial committee is formed. A 2010 letter to all bodies of elders says an appointed man who lets a disfellowshipped relative live in his home should be reviewed, and if the elders decide he's lost the congregation's respect, then as long as the unfavorable situation in the home exists he would no longer be used in any exemplary capacity.

Members are told strict avoidance of family is a test of loyalty to God, with only a narrow set of circumstances allowing limited contact. Meanwhile the elders' book says you won't be kicked out and shunned for talking to relatives unless there's spiritual association. You might lose congregation privileges, or your position if you're an elder. Members were never told that this is where the enforcement line actually is. They were told the rule was strict avoidance or else.

What Judges Are Told

There is a third version, written for judges. In 1987 a U.S. federal appeals court decided the case of Janice Paul. She stopped being a Witness in 1975, when people who left on their own weren't shunned. Then the 1981 rule applied to her retroactively, her old friends stopped speaking to her, and she sued. The court described the practice plainly: Witnesses are prohibited, under threat of their own disfellowshipping, from having any contact with disfellowshipped persons and may not even greet them. But it ruled for Watchtower anyway, holding that they are free to make that choice and that the practice of shunning is protected under the First Amendment. That ruling still stands.

Outside the United States, judges kept asking whether this was really personal choice, and Watchtower developed a way of describing itself to them. When JW.org launched in 2012, its FAQ on the subject said that a baptized Witness who keeps breaking the Bible's moral code and doesn't repent "will be shunned or disfellowshipped." Yes, it used the word shunned. Asked about a disfellowshipped man whose wife and children are still Witnesses, it answered:

The religious ties he had with his family change, but blood ties remain. The marriage relationship and normal family affections and dealings continue.

It doesn't mention the household or young children. Pay attention to that sentence, because it comes back twice.

In 2017 Jehovah's Witness lawyer David Gnam stood before the Supreme Court of Canada in a case about a man who was disfellowshipped and whose Witness real estate client stopped working with him as a result. Gnam said:

They, Jehovah's Witnesses, don't use the word shun or shunning. They refer to it as disfellowship... Disfellowship literally means no further spiritual fellowship with the individual... the nature of the relationship then of a disfellowshipped person is not completely shunned. The disfellowshipped person is able to come into the congregation, to the congregation meetings... As far as their family members are concerned, normal family relations continue with the exception of spiritual fellowship.

"Jehovah's Witnesses don't use the word shun" wasn't true, because Watchtower's own website had used it for five years. "Normal family relations continue" is only technically true if the person still lives in the house with you. Compare that to "any such contact should be kept to a minimum," which is what Witnesses are actually taught in their publications. The Canadian court ruled that religious groups are free to determine their own membership and rules, and while acknowledging that disfellowshipping clearly had a negative impact on the man, held it does not give rise to an actionable claim. In 2018 another Watchtower lawyer wrote to a federal judge in New York and quoted that same JW.org sentence word for word as proof that disfellowshipping does not cause family relationships to be permanently lost.

So Watchtower speaks out of three sides of its mouth to three audiences. Members are told strict avoidance is absolutely necessary and that anything less proves your heart is treacherous. Elders are given the real enforcement lines. Judges are told normal family relations continue.

Bulgaria: The Template for Writing Soft Words for Governments

Watchtower did the same thing with a government 25 years earlier. In 1994 Bulgaria refused to re-register Jehovah's Witnesses, making all their activity illegal there. When the case went to Europe's human rights commission, the record laid out the government's objections: the Witnesses wouldn't honor the flag, wouldn't serve in the army, and refused blood transfusions, which the government said was against the law and deprived members of their right to choose their own medical care.

Now look at what happened to each. In May 1996, Watchtower suddenly made accepting alternative civilian service a matter of personal conscience, the same change the Governing Body blocked in 1978 by one flipped vote. Penton writes that the change removed one stumbling block to registration in Bulgaria. In 1997, the commission's decision recorded the position of Watchtower's Bulgarian association on blood:

There are no religious sanctions for a Jehovah's Witness who chooses to accept blood transfusion.

In February 1998 Watchtower signed a settlement. Half was about the military, with Bulgaria putting a civilian alternative service law before parliament. The other half was about blood. Watchtower's association agreed to a declaration attached to its statutes saying every Witness patient decides with free will, "without any control or sanction from the organization," if they choose blood. It agreed not to hand out advance blood refusal documents for minors. In return, Bulgaria registered Jehovah's Witnesses.

Now look at the blood half. In June 2000, just two years after that promise, Watchtower sent hospital liaison committees a statement:

If a baptized Witness willfully and without regret accepts a blood transfusion, he indicates by his own actions that he no longer wishes to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

And "this position has not changed." Notice the trick. They weren't being disfellowshipped for taking blood anymore. They were simply indicating by their own actions that they no longer wished to be Witnesses. In other words, they disassociated themselves, and since 1981 a disassociated person is shunned exactly like someone disfellowshipped. "No sanction from the organization" in 1997 and "this position has not changed" in 2000 describe the exact same sanctions under a different label.

That is Watchtower's MO. It puts soft words in writing for judges and governments, keeps the hard rules for members, and tells members nothing has changed, which is true, because all it did was relabel.

Franz saw it too. In 2004, the year of the final edition of Crisis of Conscience, he wrote in a footnote about Watchtower's trouble in Germany, France, Russia and other countries over its status. He said the alternative service change may relate to this, and that disfellowshipping policies and policies prohibiting blood transfusions were subject to criticism. He also wrote that real change in the organization comes only when the previous position has become precarious or when interests in avoiding taxation or other restrictions are at stake. And he predicted how the next changes would be presented to Jehovah's Witnesses: not as a correction of error but as the product of progressive revelation.

Asked Under Oath: Could the Shunning Policy Ever Change?

There was one time the Watchtower's leadership was asked directly, under oath, whether the shunning policy could ever change. In 2015 the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse put Governing Body member Jeffrey Jackson on the stand. Counsel put it to him that Witnesses can't associate with people who've been disfellowshipped or who have left, even family members who don't live in the house. Jackson said that was correct. He agreed that someone who wants out from under the rules has to formally leave, which results in shunning, and that a person can lose their whole social network and family that way. When counsel called it a very cruel choice, Jackson would only say, "I agree. It's a difficult choice."

Counsel then asked the question this whole article is about: is there a basis on which you foresee that your organization might be able to change that policy? Jackson answered with one word: no.

The commission's report found that abuse survivors who want to leave face the impossible choice between staying in an organization protective of their abuser to keep their family and friends, and leaving and losing that entire network. Watchtower argued shunning was outside the commission's business. The commission said shunning is an inextricable component of the institutional response to child sexual abuse. At a follow-up hearing in 2017, counsel assisting read out the Australian branch's formal written response: shunning a disfellowshipped child molester is and will continue to be its Bible-based response. When the chairman pressed whether shunning a survivor who leaves isn't a pretty cruel way of dealing with someone, the branch coordinator answered, "I agree. It puts them in a difficult situation, but it is a choice."

The commission's final recommendation on shunning was narrow. It didn't call for the end of shunning completely, only that Watchtower stop requiring members to shun people who leave because they were victims of child sexual abuse. In 2020, in its submission to the Australian Parliament, Watchtower quoted that recommendation and two others and said all three had been criticized by a former solicitor general as factually wrong and unlawful. Five years after Jackson said no, the answer was still no.

That's the record through 2023: one rule, spoken about three ways. Members are told avoiding family is a test of loyalty to God. Elders are given the real lines. Courts are told it's a personal choice and the family carries on as before. When a government pushes back with real leverage, Watchtower puts the soft version in writing but keeps the hard rule for the rank and file. So the version that would go first is the one courts can see. The version members actually live by hasn't been written down for a long time, certainly not anywhere a court could look. It lives in the Watchtower study, in a convention talk, and in the elder who stops by to speak with you after you've been seen at a relative's barbecue.

Belgium: A Conviction, Then an Acquittal on the Paper

For 40 years that worked. Then a criminal case began in 2015, when someone who left the Witnesses filed a complaint in Belgium over shunning. In March 2021 a court in Ghent found Watchtower's Belgian organization guilty of inciting discrimination and hatred against people who choose to leave, and fined it. The court looked at what Witnesses actually do to those who leave, regardless of the rule book, and called it a crime.

Watchtower appealed, and look at how it described shunning to the appeals court. In its own written brief it said individual believers follow their personal religious conscience. It did not present shunning as a hard rule. The appeals court leaned on Watchtower's own text saying that family contact continues. In June 2022 it acquitted, calling the practice "passive social avoidance." It added that a harsher practice could not be ruled out but could not be proven from the file in front of it. Belgium's highest court confirmed the acquittal in December 2023.

Watchtower called it personal religious conscience and the court called it passive. Remember those words, because they show up again on the Japanese website.

Brazil: The Elder Who Gave Both Versions

Belgium wasn't a one-off. Over the next few years the same question kept coming up in country after country: is shunning something members choose, or something they're told they must do? The answer kept depending on what the court actually looked at.

A case in Brazil is a good study. In February 2023 a man who had been a Witness for 40 years decided to leave and notified the coordinator of the body of elders in writing not to announce it, citing data protection laws. The elders announced it anyway to about 86 people. The man's wife had left two years earlier and asked that her information not be disclosed. According to the couple's complaint, which the elders never contested, two elders visited her, asked if she was going to the Catholic Church, and told her that was fine. The next day an elder read her name from the platform.

The couple sued the three elders and Watchtower's Brazilian association. The first thing they asked for wasn't money. It was that their relatives and friends be allowed to talk to them without risk of reprisal. Watchtower's Brazilian association told the court why the announcement exists: if members didn't hear it from the platform, they might keep going to the former member for spiritual counsel and could be corrupted by the way he thinks.

One of the elders testified, and he gave the court both versions of shunning. First he said he doesn't tell anybody whether to associate with a disfellowshipped person. Then he said the church's directive clearly and objectively says a member must not socialize with someone disfellowshipped. I don't tell anybody what to do, but the directive is that we should not socialize with someone who is disfellowshipped. That's the whole history of this policy in one man's testimony.

The trial judge wrote that the announcement is purely and simply a summons for the congregation to stop socializing with somebody, and that the reason for cutting off someone who leaves is to make them come back. The judge ordered the elders to read a statement from the platform that every Jehovah's Witness is free to decide whether to have social contact with the couple and that no one, "I repeat, no one," would be punished for it. That is the freedom the Japanese website stopped short of offering. Normal contact with no punishment was supposed to be announced out loud at the Kingdom Hall by court order, but that announcement never got read.

Watchtower and the three elders appealed, arguing courts can't interfere in a strictly religious matter. This April a three-judge panel unanimously reversed everything. They called the announcement factual, non-defamatory and a regular exercise of religious freedom, and said reviewing the practice behind it was off-limits. On shunning itself, the court said any social distancing, if it happens, comes not from any legally binding order by Watchtower or the elders but from the individual conscience of the other members. The ruling never mentions the elder's testimony. A few paragraphs later, the same ruling describes the announcement as a way to guide the conduct of the loyal faithful. It ordered the couple to pay all court costs, including Watchtower's legal fees and the elders'.

The court that heard the elders saw what the announcement really does. The court that read the paperwork, the briefs, what Watchtower has in writing, saw only a factual announcement.

The Czech Republic, Spain, and France

In the Czech Republic, the government looked at the practice and called it what it is. In 2024 the Ministry of Culture formally warned Watchtower's Czech organization to stop restricting members' freedom to leave and to stop using psychological pressure that damages people's social ties. Watchtower responded with foreign court rulings and more than 6,000 letters from Witnesses. A year later the ministry said that thousands of letters arriving with the leadership's talking points testified to the great discipline of rank-and-file members, that personal statements Watchtower itself submitted confirmed the practice of cutting off contact, and that the 2024 changes were only a partial softening with the substance of the teaching and practice unchanged. Then it closed the file, because the only tool the law gave it was to liquidate the organization, and it judged that disproportionate.

So seeing the practice isn't enough for Watchtower to change it. It also has to cost them something.

In Spain, Watchtower sued a victims' association for calling it a destructive religion, and lost twice. An elder told the court that greeting a disfellowshipped person was according to each person's conscience, but the judge wrote that Watchtower's own evasive witnesses showed most of them understand that contact has to be broken.

In France, the prefect for the department where the two national Witness associations are registered opened a procedure in late 2025 after receiving reports of ostracism. It could withdraw their tax-favored status for receiving gifts. According to the French press, Watchtower's leaders thanked members for writing letters to the prefect to preserve the approval that allows them to receive gifts and bequests. A Paris court had already refused to delete the government's description of their excommunication procedures, which it found can lead to humiliation, isolation and loss of bearings. No error of fact was found.

Norway: From Deregistration to the Supreme Court

Norway is the case that went furthest. In 2021 a disfellowshipped former member, a retired professor at the University of Oslo, wrote to Norway's Ministry of Children and Families about how Jehovah's Witnesses treat people who leave. The government investigated and in 2022 refused Watchtower state grants. Then it did something it hadn't done to any other community under its new law: it deregistered Jehovah's Witnesses. They were the only religion that was. The state said shunning infringed on members' freedom to leave and on the rights of children.

Watchtower sued and on March 4, 2024, lost in the Oslo District Court. Eleven days later, on March 15, 2024, the Governing Body released an update announcing changes to how removed people would be treated:

In keeping with the scriptural admonition at 1 Corinthians 5:11, when a person has been removed from the congregation, we stop keeping company with that person, not even eating with such a man. That means we don't socialize with those who are removed from the congregation. However, that does not mean that a Christian could not invite a disfellowshipped person to attend a congregation meeting.

On greetings:

Under our current arrangement, we don't say a greeting to individuals who've been removed from the congregation. However, the governing body has decided that publishers can use their Bible-trained conscience to decide whether to give a simple greeting and welcome a disfellowshipped individual who attends a congregation meeting.

The update added that while Witnesses wouldn't have an extended conversation or socialize with such a person, they "do not need to ignore him completely." So now a greeting at the Kingdom Hall is a matter of conscience. The same update changed how baptized minors are handled. Instead of a committee of elders meeting with a baptized minor and his parents, two elders will meet with them first, find out what steps the parents have already taken, and might decide it isn't necessary to take the matter further. A committee would meet with the minor only if he unrepentantly persists in a wrong course. The August 2024 Watchtower that explained the changes still said of a removed person, "certainly we would not socialize with him."

Can I say for a fact that the Oslo loss caused that update? No. But you can see the order of events and that Watchtower needed only 11 days.

Watchtower appealed and on March 14, 2025, won. The Court of Appeal threw out every one of the government's decisions. Over the next several months, three things quietly changed.

First, sometime between late April and late May 2025, Watchtower rewrote the JW.org page on shunning. The word shunned disappeared and the page got a new address. The family sentence that Watchtower's lawyer had quoted to a federal judge, "the marriage relationship and normal family affections and dealings continue," was narrowed. It now covers only a removed person whose spouse and young children are still Witnesses, and says those dealings continue since they live in the same house.

Second, in September 2025 Watchtower issued a new edition of the elders' manual. The paragraph telling elders to counsel members who spent too much time with removed relatives outside the home, and to pull their privileges if they don't listen, is gone. The rule making it a committee matter to associate with a removed non-relative is still there. The written rule for counseling ordinary contact with family and removing privileges is gone.

Third, the Japanese site, sometime between September and December 2025, is the one from the Reddit post: adherents "decide based on their individual conscience and circumstances whether to stop or limit contact." It described shunning the way a court once had, as something passive.

On April 29, 2026, Norway's Supreme Court ruled for Watchtower, three to two. The majority, explaining why shunning didn't violate a person's right to leave the religion, pointed out that family ties aren't severed, and quoted Watchtower's own website as proof: "The marriage relationship and normal family affections and dealings continue." It quoted the old version, a sentence already narrowed a year earlier. The majority then quoted the elders' manual to show that associating with relatives gets you counseled, not disfellowshipped. It quoted the 2019 edition, including the paragraph about counseling members with removed relatives, the one Watchtower had deleted the previous September. Were the updated versions of both documents in the court's file? I don't know. I'm only telling you what the judgment says. The Supreme Court that cleared Watchtower read the words Watchtower wrote about itself, even though some had been revised or removed.

The majority also said:

Although I assume that members normally follow the religious community's doctrine on shunning former members, Jehovah's Witnesses accept that members make decisions in accordance with their conscience.

The trick worked. But if you read the rest of the ruling, the court doesn't say shunning is harmless. The majority said Watchtower's texts had been somewhat toned down in recent years, but the practice may entail clear psychological pressure not to withdraw. Two justices dissented and went further. One wrote that the practice is not merely advisory but appears to be the result of rule-based obligation, because unnecessary contact with former members may lead to reactions from the religious community and in the extreme may result in disfellowshipping, and that the practice involves the use of close personal relationships as a means of pressure to deter withdrawal.

The majority also left the door open. On the question of children, it said the answer could change if a disfellowshipping practice of a certain scope were demonstrated, and "no such documentation is present in the present case." In other words, the court ruled on the paperwork because nobody documented exactly how far the practice goes.

What Cleared Watchtower and What Didn't

Lay it all side by side and look at how the rulings lean. The decisions that cleared Watchtower looked at what Watchtower wrote about itself: the Ghent appeal on text saying family contact continues, the Brazilian appeal on the wording of the announcement, the Norway majority on a JW.org sentence and a manual paragraph Watchtower had already revised. The decisions that leaned against Watchtower heard from people who lived through it: the Ghent trial court, the Spanish trial judge, the Brazilian trial judge, and two Norwegian justices who read the same file as the majority but saw a rule-based obligation. It wasn't a clean win in Norway. The Czech Ministry saw the practice for what it was too, but found it had no proportionate tool to act. American courts are the exception. In Paul they looked straight at the practice and protected it anyway under the First Amendment.

The Blood Policy as a Preview

Now put the blood policy next to all this, because I think it gives the clearest preview of what's happening with shunning. This is my inference, drawn from the timeline.

Japan has been pressuring Watchtower over children and the blood policy since late 2022, in a crackdown on religious child abuse that followed scrutiny of the Unification Church. Watchtower sued the government over the guidance in March 2025. The Unification Church was dissolved, with the dissolution taking effect March 4 of this year. On March 20 the Governing Body made procedures using your own blood, such as autologous blood storage, a matter of conscience. Japan's Supreme Court upheld the Unification Church's dissolution in June. And in September, the four primary blood components followed, putting most blood transfusions on the table for Jehovah's Witnesses.

Watchtower will never say any of this had to do with Japan. But a doctrine it called God's law for a quarter century moved within months, right as another religion lost its legal status in Japan.

At this year's annual meeting, Governing Body member Jeffrey Winder put these changes in one frame. He used an illustration of a manager who hires a new employee and, not knowing him well, gives detailed written procedures for every task. After a few years, the employee proves reliable, so pages of instructions are no longer necessary. "Well, Jehovah has done a similar thing with his people. He has confidence in each one of us." As examples of recent adjustments, he named the field ministry, where publishers no longer report their activity, and:

How we deal with ones who have been removed from the congregation. Might we call one and invite them to the meeting? If they come, will we say a greeting? Well, each Christian must decide.

He then listed the March update on one's own blood and the update from just two weeks earlier on the four main components of blood, adding, "Jehovah wouldn't give us such latitude if he didn't have the confidence that we have the spiritual discernment to make good decisions in these areas."

"Each Christian must decide" is exactly the framing Raymond Franz predicted 22 years ago: change presented not as correction of error but as the product of progressive revelation. Here it's even better, presented as trust. Jehovah has confidence in you now, and you don't need pages of instructions. Just two weeks before that talk, when the Governing Body made blood components a matter of personal conscience, it quoted 2 Corinthians: "Not that we are the masters over your faith, but we are fellow workers for your joy." On blood, the congregation will not get involved in the decision.

But pay attention to what Winder actually put in Christians' hands regarding removed people: whether to invite them to the meeting and whether to say hello if they're at the Kingdom Hall. That's it. Not whether you can have your son over for dinner after he's been kicked out. Not whether you can attend your daughter's wedding after she was removed. The JW.org page still says, "Today, we do not socialize with someone who has been removed."

Every softening, whether on blood, alternative civilian service, or shunning, has come while a court or government was pressing on something Watchtower values: its registration, its grants, its tax-free status. Every one changed what's written down while leaving the hard rule in place in Witness culture.

So Will Watchtower Remove the Shunning Policy?

My answer to whether Watchtower is willing to remove the shunning policy is yes, absolutely, but not because of the people hurt by it. It's because of what the record shows it's willing to trade. In Bulgaria it put a promise of no control or sanction over blood transfusions in writing to get its registration back, then told hospital committees the position hadn't changed. In Norway, while the courts weighed its practices, the written family rules were rewritten, and the Supreme Court that cleared it read the old wording that Watchtower had narrowed or deleted. When a government holds something Watchtower wants, whether its registration, its legal status, or, as in France, the right to collect gifts and bequests, that's when the paperwork bends.

So if a court or government ever makes the written shunning policy cost more than it buys, the written policy will go. I bet on that. But would that actually end shunning? No, not as long as courts keep reading the rule book instead of looking at the actual culture of Jehovah's Witnesses. The culture hasn't been in the rule book for a very long time. It's in "is strict avoidance really necessary? Yes." It's in "your heart is treacherous" if you don't follow the rule. It's in the married children who invited their disassociated mother over for a rest, then stopped taking her calls when the organization decided it was time. That doesn't need a paragraph in an elders' manual to survive.

Where the law even lets the question be asked, it only changes if Watchtower starts losing cases on what Witnesses actually do. Norway's majority told everyone how that could happen: show the practice, not just the paperwork.

Harm alone hasn't done it. Australia's Royal Commission put the harm on the record, with survivors of abuse facing an impossible choice. In one survey of more than 400 former Witnesses in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, a third reported suicidal thoughts. Decades of mothers, sons and grandparents have told their stories. None of that moved Watchtower's policy an inch. Harm got a response exactly one time, in 1974, thanks to Raymond Franz, and it lasted only seven years.

Watchtower does not care about the harm to Jehovah's Witnesses. I cannot say that enough. If it did, it would have changed the blood policy decades ago, and the policy on alternative civilian service back in the 1970s. It did not. Only when it stood to lose something it values, its money, its standing, its tax-free status, did it change any of those rules.

If change comes, the first thing it will look like is a sentence written out for a judge, while Beth's family keeps doing exactly what they've been told and shunning her. The only thing that will force Watchtower's hand to truly remove shunning is getting hit where it hurts, and the only way that happens is if courts start looking not at what Watchtower says about itself but at the actual culture and practice among Jehovah's Witnesses. That is finally starting to happen in some countries.

The Pattern in One Timeline

In 1904, Charles Russell wrote that when a congregation puts somebody out, the matter rests with each individual. It was their choice whether to abide and whether they thought it was just. In 1974, the Watchtower said each family must decide, and that it was not something the congregation elders could decide for them. In 1981 it took that back, and shunned the man who wrote it. In 2026 it told Witnesses, "Each Christian must decide," but only whether to say hello to someone who comes to the Kingdom Hall.

In 2015, Governing Body member Jeffrey Jackson was asked under oath whether there was any basis for the shunning policy to change, and he said no. Since then the paperwork has changed over and over, but the practice hasn't, not really. So far, Jackson's answer still holds, and it will keep holding until governments or courts put real pressure on Watchtower by examining its actual culture rather than the weasel words it writes about itself.