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Associated
Jehovah's Witnesses for Reform on Blood are announcing the beginning of the
end of the Jehovah's Witness Blood Doctrine.
Since 2000 the Watchtower
Society was forced to change their semantics on how they handle punishing its
members for taking blood transfusions to save their lives.The European Court of
Human Rights negotiated this change when the country of Bulgaria refused to
acknowledge the Watchtower Society as a religion, due to the fact that the
Watchtower punished its members for accepting needed medical procedures to save
their own, or their children's lives with blood transfusions.
But AJWRB has been tracking the
development of these changes, and we have searched for any actual occurrences
of a JW (who wants to stay a JW) getting disassociated for taking a blood
transfusion.We have not found a one. In the past we have not been able to get
Watchtower Service Dept. members to say that they would not disfellowship
someone for taking a blood transfusion, this being the case even long after the
2001 semantic change, let alone, getting them to say they won't disassociate
someone for such a sin,and we could never get them to state categorically that
they would not disfellowship for taking blood.
But now I have been told
personally by Watchtower Service Dept. personnel,that taking a blood
transfusion is *not a disfellowshipping offence*.
This is yet another subtle
semantic change for those not intimately familiar with Jehovah's Witnesses, but
to the trained, experienced Jehovah's Witnesses, this is a loud 3 alarm fire. They
are literally saying, *taking blood is not a serious enough sin to get one
disfellowshipped now.*
Getting disassociated,
carries with it exactly the same sentence as getting disfellowshipped.It causes
complete social death in an individuals life. All contact with family and
friends are severed under the threat of those family and friends also being
disfellowshipped or disassociated if they speak to you. Hence, if taking blood is no longer a
disfellowshipping offence,then it is no longer a disassociating offence.
http://www.ajwrb.org/
Jehovah's Witnesses blood policy reform site
