Posted by Aussiejoe [aussiejoe] on November 09, 1999 at 02:46:34 {4Hfg918T5geyTkGBtHIU58ugy3hcmw}:
In Reply to: Did WTS quote Penton? posted by Pronger on November 08, 1999 at 22:55:28:
No, The Society did not quote Penton in this instance. The original quote came from an Awake article 8th March 1980.
A SOCIOLOGICAL study on the matrilineal (a form of matriarchal) society in the Luapula Province of Zambia appears in the American Ethnologist. Researcher Karla O. Poewe of the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, considers the effect that religious denominations have on the traditional ways of Luapulans. After her 18 months spent with these people, Poewe concludes that only "Jehovah's Witnesses succeed" in achieving "change in behavior among their members vis-à-vis kinship, family, and economic activities," whereas others have "an indifferent record of success in giving direction to practical conduct and holding the individual to such conduct." Her study includes the following observations:
"In the villages the activities of the [Jehovah's Witnesses] approximate what one would expect of the best redemptive, nonrevolutionary movements. Members almost imperceptibly restructure their lives and thus, indirectly, their communities for the purpose of becoming full participants in the coming kingdom of God. . . .
They did however mention Penton in the Jan 1 issue of the Watchtower 1977.
"A Debt of Gratitude"
"Writing in the Toronto "Star" of October 4, 1976, Stuart Shaw mentions the book "Jehovah's Witnesses in Canada: Champions of Freedom of Speech and Worship," by James Penton, associate professor of history at the University of Lethbridge. Shaw explains that it discusses the intense persecution of the Witnesses in that country from 1939 to 1956, "first at the instance of the federal government and then at that of the government of Quebec." When Jehovah's Witnesses were banned in Canada on July 4, 1940, he says: "Prime Minister Mackenzie King's official explanation was a typical piece of gobbledygook, from which emerged only a suggestion that the sect was somehow impeding the war effort."
"Referring to the recent book, however, and shedding some light on the underlying cause, Shaw comments: "Penton argues convincingly, citing official correspondence and documents of the period, that the real reason was entirely different. The King government was under heavy clerical pressure-from the Roman Catholic Church in particular, but also from some Protestant clergymen-to suppress these 'heretics.'"
and again in the 1979 Yearbook
...What really happened is clear from the official record (Police Court of the City of Hamilton, Ontario, March 17, 1913). It shows that C. T. Russell did not commit perjury. The cross-examination (by George Lynch-Staunton, K. C.) went as follows, according to the book Jehovah's Witnesses in Canada, by M. James Penton:
"
Hope that answers the question