Spanish JW’s Upset Over Bethel Move

On April 1, 2009 a let­ter was sent from the Gov­ern­ing Body of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses to con­gre­ga­tions in Spain inform­ing them that the print­ing, ship­ping, and stor­age of Watch­tower pub­li­ca­tions would be dis­con­tin­ued at the Madrid (Ajalvir) Branch office. The let­ter expressed con­fi­dence that the Span­ish Wit­nesses would, despite the move, continue to gen­er­ously sup­port the world wide work and ends with an appeal to remain united under the direc­tion of the Wit­ness leadership.

At a glance, this story may seem like a non-issue, perhaps, just another exam­ple of reor­ga­ni­za­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion within a multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tion; how­ever, the dis­so­lu­tion of the print­ing branch has caused con­sid­er­able hard feel­ings among some of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses in Spain. To under­stand the rea­son we must first look at the his­tory behind the branch office and exter­nal fac­tors that some feel prompted this abrupt move.

Early in their history, Jehovah’s Wit­nesses began print­ing their trade­mark Watch­tower mag­a­zines and asso­ci­ated books and tracts in-house at their “Bethel” head­quar­ters in Brook­lyn, New York.  As the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion grew and expanded over­seas, “branch offices” and print­ing facil­i­ties were estab­lished  in dif­fer­ent loca­tions across the globe to sup­port the preach­ing work in those ter­ri­to­ries.   Such was the case in Spain in 1980, where the need for a local print­ing facil­ity was explained at Span­ish dis­trict con­ven­tions of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

At the time, expansion at the head­quar­ters in New York left the Watch Tower cor­po­ra­tion with­out the finances to build offices and a print­ing facil­ity in Spain and so the Span­ish Wit­nesses were solicited to fol­low the exam­ple of the Israelites in bring­ing their gold, sil­ver, and valu­able items to Moses in order to build the Taber­na­cle. (Exo­dus 35:5–9) The 1983 Year­book of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses, reports the gen­er­ous way that the Span­ish Wit­nesses responded to this appeal.:

At the close of the con­ven­tions, peo­ple were lin­ing up to con­tribute their jew­els, gold and sil­ver rings and bracelets, so that these could be turned into cash to finance the new project. At the con­ven­tion in San Sebastián in the Basque coun­try, an elderly sis­ter handed over a heavy gold bracelet. When asked if she was sure that she wanted to donate such a valu­able item, she answered: “Brother, it is going to do far more good pay­ing for a new Bethel than it will on my wrist!”

With the unspar­ing finan­cial sup­port of the Span­ish Wit­nesses a new branch office and print­ing facil­ity was later con­structed in Madrid.   Being financed within the coun­try, this new Bethel was a source of pride for the Span­ish Wit­nesses.  Many would make spe­cial trips just to tour the facil­ity.  Now some are hurt to watch as the print­ing presses that they gave their pre­cious heir­looms to buy are shipped to Ger­many and the Bethel that they sac­ri­ficed their sav­ings to build is antic­i­pated to be sold, with the pro­ceeds of the sale return­ing back to the US Watch Tower cor­po­ra­tion that was orig­i­nally unable to finance its con­struc­tion.   This sit­u­a­tion might not be near as bit­ter if it were not for the events that tran­spired in Spain that some feel to be the impe­tus behind this relocation.

In Decem­ber 2007, after an inves­ti­ga­tion, the Social Secu­rity office of Spain issued a rul­ing that the Madrid Bethel was required to pro­vide a pen­sion for those who worked in its print­ing facil­i­ties.   His­tor­i­cally, Bethel work­ers receive no such ben­e­fits.   Upon join­ing the Bethel “fam­ily” they take a vow of poverty and are inducted into a reli­gious order, not unlike a Catholic monastery.  While at Bethel they  receive a small monthly stipend for per­sonal items in addi­tion to room and board.   Though they are work­ing in a mod­ern print­ing oper­a­tion, they are viewed as reli­gious vol­un­teers and have no work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion ben­e­fits or pen­sion to sup­port them, if injury, health, age, or other cir­cum­stances should force them out of their Bethel “home”.

In recent years, the Watch Tower has seen a fair share of cor­po­rate down­siz­ing.   This has been par­tic­u­larly felt in the United States headquarters, which has expe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant cut­backs within the New York Bethel fam­ily.  Many men and women in their youth were encour­aged to make ser­vice at Bethel a “life career”, at the expense of fam­ily, edu­ca­tion, and a sec­u­lar career.  They entered Bethel with the idea that they would stay there for the rest of their life, mak­ing it their “home”.  Now as older adults they are  feel­ing the sting of cut­backs as they are asked to leave their Bethel home, start­ing all over again in the sec­u­lar world with­out pen­sions or with­out hav­ing con­tributed toward retire­ment or Social Secu­rity.   This is the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Madrid, where it is esti­mated that up to 200 Bethel work­ers are being asked to leave with­out reassignment.

The Span­ish Social Secu­rity office’s deci­sion to hold the Madrid Bethel respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing ben­e­fits for print­ing fac­tory work­ers and other mem­bers of the order presents a con­sid­er­able finan­cial hit in a reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion that has already expe­ri­enced hard­ships in tough eco­nomic times. This has caused some Span­ish Wit­nesses to believe that the deci­sion to relo­cate print­ing oper­a­tions to another coun­try is specif­i­cally moti­vated by the fis­cal impli­ca­tions of the Social Secu­rity office’s deci­sion, despite what the Branch Office claims about the reor­ga­ni­za­tion being moti­vated by other fac­tors such as simplification.

The Span­ish Wit­nesses who might nor­mally com­pletely trust the deci­sions made by the organization’s lead­er­ship have rea­son to be suspicious.  After los­ing their peti­tion against pro­vid­ing Social Secu­rity ben­e­fits to Bethel work­ers, the Span­ish Branch Office of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses sent a let­ter to the local con­gre­ga­tions announc­ing the new pro­vi­sion.  In the let­ter, Wit­ness lead­er­ship implies that it was they who peti­tioned Social Secu­rity for entry into the sys­tem in order to pro­vide ben­e­fits.  The con­gre­ga­tions were kept in the dark about the real rea­son that these con­tested ben­e­fits were being pro­vided to those in the reli­gious order.

A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion occurred in the United States in 1990.  At the time, Jimmy Swag­gart Min­istries was in the US Supreme Court, chal­leng­ing taxes assessed on pub­li­ca­tions sold by the pop­u­lar tel­e­van­ge­list.   Unknown to US Wit­nesses, the Watch Tower, filed a “friend of the court” brief (ami­cus curiae) in the Swag­gart Tax­a­tion case, because the rul­ing would open the door for tax­ing the Watch Tower, as Jehovah’s Wit­nesses went door to door sell­ing their Watch­tower mag­a­zine and asso­ci­ated lit­er­a­ture.   When Swag­gart lost the case, the Watch Tower, quickly adopted a new “dona­tion arrange­ment”, where the magzines and lit­er­a­ture were offered with­out a spec­i­fied cost, and a dona­tion request was made.

In a let­ter sent to all US con­gre­ga­tions the Watch Tower explained the new arrange­ment saying,

“By adopt­ing a method of lit­er­a­ture dis­tri­b­u­tion based com­pletely on dona­tion, Jehovah’s peo­ple are able to greatly sim­plify our Bible edu­ca­tion work and sep­a­rate our­selves from those who com­mer­cial­ize religion.”

No men­tion was made of the con­nec­tion between the new “dona­tion arrange­ment” and the Jimmy Swag­gart case, and to this day, this is rel­a­tively unknown among Jehovah’s Wit­nesses.  Sim­i­lar to the way the Span­ish branch han­dled the Social Secu­rity rul­ing, the US branch office spun the “dona­tion arrange­ment” as a way of sim­pli­fi­ca­tion with­out reveal­ing the real reasons.

The Span­ish Wit­nesses feel slighted that the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion they gave their life and finances to is now treat­ing them so carelessly. Equally they are  hurt by the lack of can­dor and hon­esty com­ing from head­quar­ters about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.  Cur­rently the dis­con­tent among the reli­gion are orga­niz­ing and mak­ing their case that any funds com­ing from the sale of the Bethel facil­ity should be go back to the ones that financed it the first place.   They sug­gest that such money could be used in a char­i­ta­ble way, such as pro­vid­ing a retire­ment facil­ity for those in their ranks that  are now aging, with­out pro­vi­sion, hav­ing giv­ing their life in ser­vice of the reli­gion.     Iron­i­cally, they are vying to pro­vide the very care that Wit­ness lead­er­ship itself is reluc­tant to give.

—

Source Doc­u­men­ta­tion

Min­istry of Labor and Social Affairs (Spain), Octo­ber 2, 2007 Inves­ti­ga­tion Report
Min­istry of Labor and Social Affairs (Spain), Decem­ber 22, 2007 Rul­ing
Chris­t­ian Jehovah’s Wit­nesses, Sep­tem­ber 7, 2008 Let­ter to Con­gre­ga­tions
Chris­t­ian Jehovah’s Wit­nesses, April 1, 2009 Let­ter to Congregations

May 17, 2009 – 8:21 pm | By Anthony | Posted in Jehovah's Witnesses | Tagged , , , , | Comments (27)

27 Comments

  • Sharon wrote:
    May 20, 2009 at 1:55 am

    Thanks for keep­ing the wider JW and exJW com­mu­mity abreast of what is hap­pen­ing in Spain. This is just another exam­ple of the duplic­i­tous nature of the Orga­ni­za­tion and the devi­ous spin it puts on its activ­i­ties to por­tray them­selves as godly. My heart goes out to the dis­missed bethe­lites and those that donated so much hard earned cash to this facil­ity, only to see the Cor­po­ra­tion attempt to swipe the liq­ui­dated funds back to Brook­lyn with very lit­tle regard for their respon­si­bil­i­ties to the broth­ers in Spain.
    Lets hope that the voices protest­ing this move will be heard across the globe, espe­cially by the information-starved congregations.

  • Brice R. wrote:
    May 20, 2009 at 8:29 pm

    Also lit­tle known to JW’s is the fact that when­ever a local Con­gre­ga­tion wishes to build a new King­dom Hall, and bor­rows the money from the Watch­tower, the Soci­ety retains own­er­ship of the prop­erty, in per­pe­tu­ity, even after the loan has been repaid “in full”.

    Imag­ine buy­ing a home or a car, faith­fully mak­ing the pay­ments over many years, and when finally the loan is “paid in full”, the bank or dealer which pro­vided the orig­i­nal loan, retains own­er­ship of the home or car. In other words, upon fully meet­ing the oblig­a­tions under the terms of the loan, own­er­ship of the prop­erty is not con­veyed to the “buyer”.

    This is pre­cisely the same sit­u­a­tion with the Span­ish Branch’s prop­er­ties though, in this par­tic­u­lar case, financ­ing was not pro­vided by the Soci­ety, but was wholly paid for by the Span­ish broth­ers & sis­ters. Nev­er­the­less, it remains prop­erty of the WTBTS.

    I would hope that the Span­ish broth­ers and sis­ters vig­or­ously com­plain but, that is not likely given the “herd men­tal­ity” preva­lent amongst JW’s. Sad indeed!

  • Anthony wrote:
    May 20, 2009 at 9:11 pm

    Sharon & Brice,

    Thank you for vis­it­ing my blog and sub­mit­ting your thoughts.

  • JHK wrote:
    May 22, 2009 at 1:14 am

    Thank you very much for your infor­ma­tion! It’s very exactly and well doc­u­mented. In Spain, to sell Bethel facil­i­ties will be a tragedy, not only bethe­lites, too: Dis­trict and Cir­cuit Over­seers and Spe­cial Pio­neers will be affected.

    We are mak­ing an spe­cial cam­paign sign­ing of peti­tions, to tray to stop the Gov­ern­ing Body objec­tive. Any­one is invited!

    http://www.efirmas.com/846244/index.html

  • betelitas ajalvir wrote:
    May 22, 2009 at 5:28 am

    Hi Friend.
    I write from Spain.

    Your infor­ma­tion is very good. It is really so.

    Thanks.

  • sajithra wrote:
    May 25, 2009 at 4:36 am

    WOW It’s great to see a reader from Spain com­ment­ing on this great write-up about Spain. the world is def­i­nitely get­ting smaller and closer!

  • Grateful wrote:
    May 27, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    Thank you Anthony for that infor­ma­tion, I wouldn’t have known about it oth­er­wise. They have gone in the way of all other reli­gions. They have become greedy, self serv­ing Phar­isees, and have for­got­ten the wight­ier mat­ters of the law. Woe to them when Christ arrives. I’m enjoy­ing your site very much, and can see you have been blessed.
    Agape to you and your fam­ily,
    Grateful

  • torre wrote:
    May 31, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    Hi all

    I,m as well from Spain. I’d like to add to all the above info which is very accu­rate, that two for­mer Bethe­lite were to the local author­i­ties. As a result, they imposed the tax­a­tion over social security.

  • Peter wrote:
    Jun 24, 2009 at 2:41 am

    Thank you for this use­ful arti­cle.
    More peo­ple need to see the deceit and lack of can­dor of the WTBTS and it’s sharp prac­tices. The holier than thou rea­sons given for var­i­ous WT actions are quite nau­si­at­ing when the real motives become appar­ent.
    Please post a link to this arti­cle on any pop­u­lar JW or ex JW forums that you might post to.

    From a soft pedel­ing JW in Greece

  • Jaun Millalonco wrote:
    Jul 1, 2009 at 2:20 pm

    My first visit here, found the blog acci­den­tally really, and I just wanted to say I’ve enjoyed my visit and had some good reads while here :)
    Juan

  • John wrote:
    Aug 9, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    There is a Bible Prin­ci­ple that states if one does not look after mem­bers of ones house­hold then they are worse than those with­out faith. When those of the house­hold have con­tibuted to the estab­lish­ment and run­ning costs of the household,they need to be con­sid­ered. Their per­sonal well being is important,be it a pen­sion or work­ers com­pen­sa­tion. A worker is wor­thy of his or her wages. If an orga­ni­za­tion is avoid­ing these prin­ci­ples then they may find they them­selves are pulling out an impor­tant foun­da­tion stone of their struc­ture and could con­tr­bute to its col­lapse find­ing it very dif­fi­cult to reestab­lish again.

  • Maggie wrote:
    Sep 23, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    Well researched and infor­ma­tive.
    Still cant fig­ure out how to get the tun­nel visioned JWs to read it though…as to them it is of course satanic and apos­tate mate­r­ial.
    But I guess if just one would take the blink­ers off it’s worth it.

  • Ed wrote:
    Oct 12, 2009 at 8:32 am

    A very infor­ma­tive arti­cle. thank you. Not enough fol­low the money inves­ti­ga­tion is done on the wit­nesses. Shame on them for the spin they try and put on everything!

  • stunned wrote:
    Nov 28, 2009 at 9:30 pm

    This brought tears to my eyes.
    I would love to share this with a few friends but the ques­tion always remain ( Can you prove it?)
    Oth­er­wise it’s just dis­missed as wicked spec­u­la­tion.
    Any sug­ges­tions for ver­i­fy­ing the arti­cle would be a great help.
    Any ideas on how to find the info?
    Anyone.…

  • Anthony wrote:
    Dec 7, 2009 at 8:31 am

    Stunned,

    I tried to doc­u­ment this to the best of my abil­ity which was lim­ited by the fact that I don’t under­stand Span­ish. Where pos­si­ble I included links to the actual doc­u­ments for review below the arti­cle. The com­men­tary is of course my own. I’m sorry that I can’t offer more.

    –Anthony

  • Heidi wrote:
    Feb 4, 2010 at 7:48 am

    This is so very sad and heartwrench­ingly typ­i­cal. The lead­er­ship doesn’t serve.

  • Trudy wrote:
    Feb 4, 2010 at 7:37 pm

    I teared up when I heard how many who had ded­i­cated their lives to work at Bethal for lit­tle if any wage, who were sent away to live with JW publishers.(strangers) No pen­sion, no money, no health insur­ance. Who is expected to pay their doc­tor bills? Those accept­ing the respon­si­bil­ity? It should be the respon­si­bil­ity of the WT orga­niz­ers!
    They were shipped away after see­ing that the ‘new Order’ has not arrived as proph­e­sied by the Gov. body. So sad, yes…so very sad.
    Thank you for the infor­ma­tion affect­ing Spain. It hurts me to hear of their dis­ap­point­ment. But, per­haps all this will help them see the impor­tance of not putting too much trust in men.
    God bless all believ­ers in Christ!

  • Edmund DeSoto wrote:
    Feb 5, 2010 at 7:44 am

    Thank you Tony for all the work you are doing. It is truly a plea­sure read­ing your information.

  • Victor Benitez wrote:
    Feb 5, 2010 at 12:35 pm

    Thank you, Anthony, for the infor­ma­tion doc­u­mented. A call for trans­parency is essen­tial to put Watch­tower GB oper­a­tives to shame, that is, if they have a con­science, on this, and other matters.

    From Los Ange­les, CA.

  • Helen L. Gauthier wrote:
    Feb 7, 2010 at 6:15 pm

    I finally received insight from all of these com­ments, in all mat­ters that have con­cerned me for years, those that were asked to leave their liv­ing and work­ing assign­ments at the WTS. That does not give a good witi­ness for them, because they shut the door on them and turned their backs on them. Judg­men­tal and self serv­ing orga­ni­za­tion. They also do that at local king­dom halls. Who then is the real beast?

  • David wrote:
    Feb 7, 2010 at 6:33 pm

    I don’t see why any­one should be sur­prised or shocked. The WBTS has been doing this sort of thing for decades. They are a par­a­site. They will suck all they can get out of you and then dis­card the car­cus. If you object or tell oth­ers of their abuse of you, you are threat­ened with or actu­ally dis­fel­low­shiped. There is no won­der, like the rest of Baby­lon the Great the waters are dry­ing up and there is so many “merg­ers” between con­gre­ga­tions. The truth is this evil is now suf­fer­ing from a lack of sup­port from those who have walked away from the abuse. The prob­lem is not we all just walked away. We took our wallets/purses/checkbooks/insurance policies/donations with us. So the soci­ety sim­ply can’t afford busi­ness as usual. I am sad this hap­pened. I had bethel aspi­ra­tions and worked for years to qual­ify and was denied because the Soci­ety had a ban on NYC broth­ers at the time and didn’t tell any­one. That was over 20 years ago. Why should they change their ways when their ways are prof­itable and work for them? What did Jesus say “you will know them by their works”. So I guess we all know the WTBS now.

  • Fred Hall wrote:
    Feb 12, 2010 at 2:26 pm

    Spain econ­omy has col­lapsed and most of Europe too. Maybe it was the right time for the branch to move somwhere else. Now they talk­ing about an upri­sisng in that region.

  • Hill Jab wrote:
    Feb 15, 2010 at 2:05 am

    Hey you for­got to men­tion who exactly is ben­e­fit­ting from what­ever you claim the Wit­nesses are doing. And make sure you pro­vide proof of your answer. Peo­ple will always look for flaws. The same thing was done in the first cen­tury. A spir­i­tual per­son who loves Jeho­vah can eas­ily see through this accu­sa­tion and slan­der. Now pay atten­tion and see Jah’s hand in matters.

  • Anthony wrote:
    Feb 15, 2010 at 9:17 am

    Hill,

    There is a 2003 doc­u­men­tary called “The Cor­po­ra­tion” which I found inter­est­ing. I can’t go in depth about the doc­u­men­tary but it showed how Cor­po­ra­tions by their nature seek to sur­vive and will take what­ever steps nec­es­sary to ensure sur­vival, often with human “casu­al­ties” along the way. You asked who exactly is ben­ef­fit­ing from the changes in Spain. I would answer the Cor­po­ra­tion com­monly known as the Watch­tower along with all her sis­ter cor­po­ra­tions. From a busi­ness stand­point the Watch­tower is doing what any num­ber of large multi-national enti­ties are doing in times of reces­sion to ensure sur­vival. One way this is done is by trim­ming their labor force and mov­ing oper­a­tions to other coun­tries where labor and other costs are lighter. Spain is not the only branch to see this. In the USA many long time Beth­lites have been down-sized and asked to leave Bethel. Sim­i­lar trends are hap­pen­ing in Mex­ico and Japan. So directly the Cor­po­ra­tion ben­e­fits as it is able to weather the finan­cial down­turn and con­tinue to survive.

    I can also say who is not ben­e­fit­ting — those indi­vid­u­als who gave their youth to King­dom Ser­vice by serv­ing at Bethel believ­ing they would live out their days there, only to be turned out when they are a finan­cial bur­den. How often were these young men told at Con­ven­tions or in the lit­er­a­ture to make bethel ser­vice their career. Did they expect to be cast off when they were no longer use­ful? Yes this is how worldy Cor­po­ra­tions rou­tinely treat their work­ers but it is not wrong to expect more from an orga­ni­za­tion that claims Jesus as their leader. Some of the broth­ers in Spain want noth­ing more than for the Span­ish money that was used to build the Bethel be used to pro­vide a retire­ment home to care for the needs of aging Span­ish former-bethelites and cir­cuit over­seers. Ask your­self why no such pro­vi­sion is in place to care for the needs of such ones are unable to con­tinue in the work.

    As for look­ing for flaws — there are going to be flaws in any orga­ni­za­tion. There were flaws in the first cen­tury as the Greek wid­ows were being neglected in the food dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Jerusalem con­gre­ga­tion. Adjust­ments were made and these wid­ows received their daily bread. I think the broth­ers in Spain would ask Watch­tower lead­er­ship sim­ply not to deny the needs of those who they have acted against and make a pro­vi­sion for them in a sim­i­lar fashion.

    You said that a “spir­i­tual per­son who loves Jeho­vah can eas­ily see through this accu­sa­tion and slan­der”. If any­one is slan­der­ing, it is those who would look at this sit­u­a­tion and claim that Almighty God is behind the cal­lous, wordly busi­ness deci­sions of Cor­po­rate man­age­ment. I researched and pre­pared this infor­ma­tion in sin­cer­ity. If it turns out to be slan­der then I would much rather be in a posi­tion of slan­der­ing a human orga­ni­za­tion than God him­self. Please give con­sid­er­a­tion to this yourself.

  • Rowland Nelken wrote:
    Feb 20, 2010 at 11:23 am

    I wel­come each and every attempt to expose the sin­gu­lar evils, finan­cial, per­sonal, fam­ily, doc­tri­nal and polit­i­cal of this fouls organ­i­sa­tion, whose ridicu­lous and cru­ell doc­trines over­shad­owed my child­hood and have wrecked thou­sands of lives. The Madrid Bethe­lites are just some of count­less vic­tims. Let us hope it opens their eyes to the fact that the WBTS is a foul and fraud­u­lent cult.

    The only heart­en­ing aspect of this tale is that it shows the WBTS is hav­ing severe finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. May it swiftly go the way of Lehman Bros.

  • ogaga wrote:
    Feb 22, 2010 at 4:49 am

    Thanks for throw­ing more light on the truth.I am an ex-jehovah’s wit­ness. The reli­gion is one of mis­ery and deceit. The WBTS uses the tech­nique of mind-control on the wit­nesses and this is why the aver­age wit­ness can­not find out for them­selves and see the truth about their religion.I hon­estly advice that peo­ple beware of the JWs.

  • Robert N wrote:
    Feb 27, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    Another day in paradise?

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