Posted by Jeffery M. Schwehm [JefferyMSchwehm] on April 07, 1999 at 08:48:05 {HTWDI6pmYg7mGcjg8rgIMdud7girzQ}:
In Reply to: ******Thoughts on reform posted by Rational on April 07, 1999 at 05:32:44:
Hi Rational and l-
I was not there when Knorr ran the show. My year at Bethel was from 1987 to 1988.
But there is a brother there by the name of Harold Corkern. He was overseer of the bindery for years. When I was there he was a go-between for the Factory committee and all of the factory departments if I remember correctly.
He used to tell me stories about Knorr. I also used to speak with some of the old timers. It amazed me at the control Knorr had over these folks. I talked to one married couple who told me about their 20 year engagement. You see, they were both single at Bethel and had met there and wanted to get married. They knew, however, that Knorr would not allow them to stay at Bethel if they were married so they waited. They said that they were finally married shortly after Knorr himself married. This was not an isolated incident however. Many older couples at Bethel tell this story.
Then after I was there a few months I tried to ask discreet questions about what happened in the late seventies early eighties. You see, I had heard rumors about the uproar at Bethel while I was in my local congregation but had never heard the stories from people who were at Bethel when it happened. Most people said it was very depressing because so many brothers and sisters were DFed. I was very surprised at some of the comments from some of the older ones there who blamed Knorr for the apostasy. They said that Knorr caused the apostasy by allowing the GB arrangement to occur.
I used to tell Harold Corkern about some of these comments. He became very upset when I told them that certain individuals that I had talked to blamed Knorr for the upheaval in the early eighties.
I remember one time Karl Klein was doing morning worship and he told us a story. Actually, it was more like a service talk since they were about ready to announce the DFing of a friend of mine for fornication. He talked about this JW couple who had recently had a baby who was born with a birth defect or as Klein affectionately said 'the child was a mongoloid'. Evidently the parents of this child had been previously married to other individuals and had committed adultery on their previous mates. They were divorced from their previous mates and married each other and then worked toward reinstatement and were reinstated. Kleins comments were that this "mongoloid" child was God's punishment because of their previous sin of adultery.
These comments shocked the Bethel family to put it mildly. Many people were critical of Klein's comments. In fact, Klein apologized for his comments the next day.
A fellow Bethel grunt and good friend of mine was quite outspoken in his criticism of Klein's comments. Unfortunately, he was involved in a political battle with his overseer during this time. News of his critical comments about Klein came to the attention of his overseer. His overseer used this opportunity to make a case against my friend for apostasy because afterall my friend was criticizing a member of the FDS and GB. The results of the case were that my friend agreed to leave Bethel. He was not DFed however. A few months after leaving Bethel, the committee that investigated the charges against him, wrote his local body instructing them to form a judicial committee to investigate my friend. The P.O. who happened to like my friend showed him the letter that he received from headquarters. My friend was devastated. It seemed that the Bethel guys would stop at nothing to DF him. Fortunately, the P.O. of my friend's congregation is the caretaker of a large assembly hall and is really more of a C.O. and than a P.O. He had a little bit of pull at Bethel and got them to call off the dogs.
As for me, I had a pretty interesting disagreement with a jerk of an overseer. One day after work, the overseer showed up in the locker room and told me that he wanted to see me in his office after I got dressed. All of the other brothers in the locker room asked me what kind of trouble I was in. Well, I walked into his office and he told me to take a seat. For the next 30 minutes, I was counseled about the fact that I smile too much while I am working. My overseer wanted to know why I smiled so much. I told him that I did not realize that was a problem. (Of course, I smiled when I said that.) After his talk about smiling, I guess he finally realized how ridiculous it sounded and he told me that I was not to repeat our discussion to anyone else.
When I returned to my workmates they wanted to know what I had gotten in trouble for. I told them I got in trouble for smiling too much. They all laughed so hard I thought that what had happened must have been a joke. Unfortunately it was not this guy was serious. Some of my friends told me not to worry about it and that all this overseer was doing was fishing for something that he could use later to manipulate me and that if this was all he could use then I was in good shape politically.
I will never forget the reaction I got from my parents when I told them that I got in trouble with my overseer for smiling too much while I was working. They got pretty upset about that and talked to a close friend of their's who does some financial work for the Society.
So, anyway, these are the types of things that go on up there.
I will never forget what happened a couple of days before I left Bethel. I got a call from my good friend Harold Corkern and he asked me to come see him in his office. He asked me to sit down and he closed the door. He said 'Jeff, you have been here at Bethel for a year. You have seen the good side of Bethel and the bad side of Bethel. When you leave here, you need not tell the friends back home about the bad side of Bethel. They have no need to know anything about that and it is none of there business. Tell them only about the good things of Bethel and keep it encouraging.' I guess he felt the need to debrief me for some reason. I also think he forgot that it is the money from the friends back home that keep Bethel running. I saw no reason why I should contribute to the fantasy world that the Society wants to exist.
So, there are some of my stories about the house.
Jeff S.