Reminiscing About Watch Tower’s Writing Department 2013/06/19 By Archivist My experiences at Bethel are in line with what Ray Franz explained in his book Crisis of Conscience that it was the “other sheep” who, over the years, did the bulk of the writing for Watch Tower literature. Of course, when Ray was in the Writing Department there were men who professed to be of the “anointed” who were doing writing. He was one of them along with Karl Klein, Lloyd Barry and Fred Franz. I don’t know if Dunlap or Reinhart Lingstat, both who collaborated on the Aid book, also claimed to be anointed. However, when I was in the Writing Department some ten years later, there was not one writer who professed being of the anointed. I can add some information to Ray’s that might broaden the discussion although I was not privy to inside information on how the Writing Dept. operated except what I was personally involved with or what Harry Peloyan told me about. Evidence of How the “Other Sheep” Provided Spiritual Food Senior writer, John Wischuk (primarily a writer for the Watchtower), kept a file for outside letters which came to Writing or Service that might lead to an article. There had to be five letters on the same subject to make it into his file. During the Thursday morning weekly writer’s meeting that subject would be brought to everybody’s attention and after comments, a decision along with an assignment would be made, that is, if the subject was approved for an article. I believe that John would talk to Lloyd Barry before the meeting and Lloyd would introduce the subject. There were four senior writers who were Awake! compilers. And the same goes for the Watchtower. The job was on a rotation basis. I’m more familiar with Awake! procedure than I am with Watchtower’s. I think it was every fourth issue that one of these writers had to oversee from start to finish a particular assigned Awake!. Compilers were Harry Peloyan, Sam Buck, Colin Quackenbush and Eric Beveridge. When they weren’t compiling, they wrote main articles for magazines and wrote books, booklets and talks. Names of writers back then: George Aljian, Eric Beveridge, Sam Buck, Steve Johnson, Syril Chan, David Iannelli, Dan Black, Eugene Smalley, Bob Pevy, Colin Quackenbush, Harry Peloyan, John Wischuck, Lee Waters, Manfred Vencebi, Circo Aulicino (infrequently wrote except for the UN articles). I probably left out somebody, but these are the men I remember. I heard that Colin and Lee Watters are deceased. I have names of other people who are in the Writing Department since I left, but I don’t know which are support people or writers. GB member, David Splane is in Writing as part of the Writing Committee, but I don’t know if he does any writing. He had been in the Service Department when I was at Bethel. A recent count indicated that there were about sixty people connected with the Writing Department. And the support people way outnumber the writers. There was an Awake! team and a Watchtower team which operated basically the same way. All these men including junior writers were of the “other sheep” group. Junior writers wrote secondary articles, or maybe a cover series of articles, and if any were especially good writers and part of the department for a long time, he could be assigned to work on major projects. There were a number of ways that magazine subjects could be chosen. For instance, I can tell you about my personal experience in this regard and I wasn’t of the anointed. One time I made a suggestion to Awake! editor, Harry Peloyan, about a subject for an article; told him I had all the research material which one of his writers could use for the article since I had accumulated it while researching a subject for Proclaimers. Harry said the men were busy and told me to write the article, which I did. It was my first. But he knew I could do it because one day when I was making some copies at the copy machine he walked by and then turned around and came back and asked me to read copy from a branch writer and see if I would replace a few paragraphs being that the article was about women’s health issues. I was working for Karl Adams at the time so I did the work for Harry in the evening. My re-write made it into the article and into the magazine. One time, I heard that quite a number of phone calls came into Writing after one particular district convention talk on Matthew 22:25-30 concerning the woman who married seven brothers, one at a time, after each husband died. The question was, “Consequently, in the resurrection, to which of the seven will she be wife?” Jesus replied: “…for in the resurrection neither do men marry nor are women given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven.” There were many questions about the Society’s interpretation of this point. At that time I was doing research for the Proclaimer’s book but I had the idea to see just how often the literature addressed these scriptures from 1879 onward. I proposed the idea to Harry Peloyan and he thought it was a great idea. When I finished I had a stack of loose pages that totaled up to about two inches in height. I also summarized what I found and gave everything to him. Harry and Colin Quackenbush discussed it and sent a letter to the GB with their input. It was about six months later when they received a letter from the GB stating that due to the ambiguous nature of Jesus words, they were going to stop discussing these scriptures henceforth. How about that for reverse “new light”? Another time when I was talking to Colin Quackenbush, I told him about the problems with ADHD and ADD kids. He listened and a few months later asked me to write a cover series of articles on the subject, which I did. The Governing Body’s Connection to Providing Spiritual Food The Teaching Committee, with much input from Service and Writing, plays an important part in GB decisions as to what topics should become books, booklets or convention talks. Different people in these departments are part of the process to make known to the GB organizational problems, etc. One time a manuscript about Jesus life was given to the Society written by a JW outside of Bethel. I was told that out of that came Jesus Life and Ministry book. To my knowledge the original author was not one of the anointed. Senior writers read major NY newspapers every morning and put a check mark next to articles to be kept for future use. Barbara Adams and another woman cut out the checked articles and they were filed in a big cabinet named the “Source File.” The writers kept a look-out for secular subjects that grew bigger in importance as the days passed, and eventually that subject made its way to the Awake! written from the Bible’s viewpoint, of course. I often heard JWs comment as I toured them in the Writing Department that Jehovah’s Holy Spirit was the reason that the magazines were right up to date all the time. They would say, “Even before a subject is big, the magazines are addressing the issue.” “No,” I’d tell them, “informed WT writers are responsible.” Branch writers were assigned to look for things to write about as they had to regularly submit articles. These articles, if not assigned for a specific issue, were filed in a special cabinet. Most of this work became secondary articles in the Awake!. However, branch writers also wrote assigned cover series magazine articles. And nearly 80% of some of the latest books, I learned recently, were written by Watch Tower branch writers. Perhaps a branch writer was of the anointed, but I was not privy to that information. Nonetheless, all material, even material written by one of the anointed is edited and rewritten if necessary by people in Brooklyn who are of the “other sheep” class. I never heard of anyone at Brooklyn that stepped into Freddie’s shoes as “oracle.” Although I’ve read recent Watch Tower articles and books, they don’t even slightly resemble Freddie’s writing mode. Most likely the GB doesn’t want any writer to have that kind of power anymore. To my way of thinking, they probably want writers to do what they do best, continue to write articles that are not sensational and out of this world like Freddie’s were, but just the same ole’ humdrum material that the Witnesses are accustomed to receive all the while thinking it’s directly from their “Faithful and Discreet Slave Class.” “New Light” From the Top? “New light” has to work its way through channels. This is some of what I observed: Junior writers learn the channels, one of which is to go to a senior writer with an idea. Always, certain members like Henschel and Jaracz had to give the okay for “new light” to go forward or for a “new light” item to go into a specific magazine. Certain senior writers had close friendships with GB members and discussed their ideas, feelings or research on a subject. A GB member can come up with an idea and introduce it to the other GB for approval, and if agreed upon, a senior writer is assigned to write an article or write or compile a book. Schroeder came up with the “Nethinim” or “Given Ones” idea and assigned Gene Smalley to write an article (April 15, 1992) which information proved to be fallacious. There are numerous ways “new light” ideas get to the GB, but basically the brainchild has to be approved by them before it goes anywhere. One time at morning worship, Karl Klein talked to the Bethel family about an idea he came up with before he even told the other Governing Body members. He explained to us how we shouldn’t speak of Jehovah’s name being vindicated, but that Jehovah’s name will be sanctified. I remember Karl was so excited about his brainchild that when he arrived at work that morning it was as if he had been given his youth back. He was kind of hopping and jumping around and running his idea by anybody who would listen, including me. And, what do you know, but, lickity-split, that idea became “new light.” There were many non-Witness commentaries in the library of the Writing Dept. I even bought some for myself when I was there. A commentary was very useful to someone trying to understand a Bible verse and see if he could figure out something that would agree with WT’s thoughts on the matter. If we were studying a particular doctrine as I was at one time, we looked at commentaries to see what they said. If the problem seemed to be that WT’s stance was under a microscope by outside JWs and the evidence was in a worldly scholar’s ballpark, then out came the commentaries. If WT was thought to be wrong then it might develop into “new light.” Researching Information I was in Writing’s library constantly and hardly ever saw a writer looking through the old literature on the shelves. Of course, most of the senior writers had been there for forty years or more and were probably very tired of it all. The apostate material was available in a closet. Who read those books and booklets is something I don’t know about. I would expect the staff was curious about what Ray wrote, and read his books. I never heard any comments one way or the other. I know I was so busy that I never bothered to read them. WT Indexes were definitely in use then but now the WT Library on CD-ROM makes everything so much easier for the writers and also for researchers. I really can’t offer any information about the Society publishing any future commentaries on Bible books except to say the best one for that job would have been Karl Adams but he’s dead. I guess it would go to a team of researchers, men and women, under the control of one writer who excelled at that kind of endeavor, but who it would be nowadays, I have no idea. A few people in Writing knew quite a bit about the past history of the WT, but from a revisionist point of view. Richard Abrahamson, then overseer of the Art Dept. (a dept. that fell under the control of Writing) and who was originally assigned to oversee the writing of the Proclaimer’s book, was very interested in the old history. Richard had no time for the book though, so Karl Adams was assigned. Of course, Karl learned a lot on the job while he worked on Proclaimers, but prided himself as being sort of a historian of WT past before he started on the new history book. Also, Iannelli, Black, and Potter (in research) could articulately discuss some parts of the history. I have no idea if any of them read Studies in the Scriptures. All the old literature was in the Library, but I don’t know if any of the staff had done an in-depth personal study of the books. Richard Potter was very interested in the history of George Stetson, George Storrs, Henry Grew, William Miller, J. H. Paton, Nelson Barbour and the early Bible study groups that Russell gathered together. I know, like me, others used the old literature to find a good Russell quote to be used in something we were working on. Repetition for Emphasis Some readers of WT literature have suggested that WT recycles old articles for new. From what I read in the literature, I don’t think they have any innovative thinkers; consequently, they are stuck in a rut. The boundaries imposed by the GB on topics are narrow and to stay within these boundaries is challenging. Hence, repetition for emphasis. They will repeat some subjects again and again because they really have nothing else to say. When was the last time there were any deeper doctrinal articles discussing hell, Trinity, and immortality of the soul? Maybe they’ve published such articles in the magazines and I just missed them. But from what I have read, it’s all about “Soon this world will end.”
Posted on: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 20:07:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015