It takes only a quick glance at the Free Minds website to see that it is everything its name implies — a venue for open thought and expression by people of all varieties of spirituality.
“We have bloggers who are Christians, we have bloggers who are atheists, we have a blogger who is gay and God knows what else we will have next,” says Freeminds.org founder Randall Watters. “All I care about is that they are truthful and that we can all get along in spite of our differences of viewpoint, in spite of different world views.”
The Free Minds website is now home to more than a dozen bloggers, links to media stories involving Jehovah’s Witnesses and articles about Jehovah’s Witness doctrine and history. It grew out of Bethel Ministries, which Watters began in 1982 in an attempt to expose the inaccuracies of Jehovah’s Witness teachings. He says that it was a logical progression to develop a website that would host a variety of voices.
“I knew that people searching the Internet wanted the most objective facts that they could find, and often without your opinion or your biases,” he says. “So the title for the website, Free Minds, was appropriate, because I did not want to be seen as some bigoted Christian who only showed one side of the picture. … With the recent reorganization of the site, and a variety of bloggers, this has come full circle to what I intended in the beginning. It was just time.”
Watters began studying The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life with Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1971, and although he appreciated the simple answers to complex questions, he found some teachings hard to reconcile, including thousand-year creative days and the existence of two classes, one with an earthly hope and one with a heavenly hope, with one class partaking of bread and wine, and one not. Prior to becoming a Jehovah’s Witness, he had partaken privately, although he felt no urge drawing him to heaven.
“Once a year I would get a little bread and wine and pray and have my own commune in silence. That’s how important it was to me and how much I realize this was a key part of a Christian’s life.”
Photo courtesy of Randall Watters
He adds that another teaching he found absurd was that of the 144,000 ruling from the heavens, and the glory given to them by the organization.
“This favoritism did not exist in the New Testament, but I let it go as something that would be worked out later inside the organization…
“I experienced a great deal of cognitive dissonance in trying to reconcile this new world view with what I had learned up to that point all my life, and so the dissonance had to be resolved. It was resolved in much the same way as other religious experiences that are subjective — the pressure had driven me to decide on the witnesses as the one true religion. And like many decisions that are life changing, once you make them you will promote them as the way to go, the truth, and do not want to listen to alternatives, as you do not want to experience any more dissonance. So I made it a point not to doubt the organization once I had established this matter, once I had ended the dissonance in my head.”
As with a number of people who have realized that Jehovah’s Witness teachings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, Watters spent time volunteering at the Watch Tower Society’s world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, during which he began to experience serious doubts. When other volunteers with 10 or 20 years of service began to be dismissed for simply questioning doctrinal interpretations of scriptures, Watters did some research of his own, poring over a century of Watchtower magazines to determine how a Witness knows that he or she is anointed, the validity of the Gentile Times and the issue of two classes of Christians, as well as the dates and false prophecies the Witnesses had made.
“About this time in late 1979 I realized that this not only was not God’s organization, it did not represent or even resemble the early Christian church at all. This was primarily due to their misunderstanding of the message of the New Testament of salvation by grace, which they called ‘undeserved kindness.’ ”
As time went by, Watters became tired of the Governing Body’s treatment of anyone who disagreed with them, and he left Bethel, becoming an elder in a congregation in El Segundo, Calif. Six months later, he began attending a local church called Hope Chapel.
“I loved it, and decided to be through with the witnesses since I no longer believed it anyway,” he says.
After breaking away, Watters wrote a tract, What Happened at the World Headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Spring of 1980?
“This was the year before Ray Franz wrote his book, Crisis of Conscience, so nobody really knew anything.”
When the pastor of his church found out about the tract, he volunteered to print 10,000 and send them around the world, which led to Watters’ creation of Bethel Ministries in 1982. Watters later became a pastor of the Hope Chapel, but separated Free Minds from that role in 1993, reorganizing it as a non-profit educational organization with no ties to any religious organization or church.
Photo courtesy of Randall Watters
“Basically, after all those years I still love Christ … but I no longer liked being in the limelight, and it does seem that most people were interested in doctrine and theology and so forth, which I’ve found rather useless in trying to help a person out of the Watchtower cult. What I wanted to do was to show people the real reason others joined these organizations and how to help them.”
After nearly 30 years of educating others about Jehovah’s Witnesses, Watters is pleased with the direction Free Minds has taken as it grew from a tract with a small circulation to a website accessible around the world.
“So far this is working very nicely, in spite of objections from the more fundamentalist side of Christianity,” says Watters. “We mean no harm to anyone, but our goal is to champion freedom of thought and to expose those who try to stifle thinking through religious, political or other types of oppression.”
Watters says that Free Minds has given his life a motivation, through which he has touched the lives of thousands of people.
“I have helped many of them to have their minds set free from the control of others, and to learn to think in new ways, and to open up new opportunities in their lives for a better future,” he says. “For several years I did interventions with Steven Hassan, so I learned a lot about how to specifically get people out of religious cults and that is one of the best things that has happened to me.”
Despite the millions of visitors to the Free Minds site, Watters says he has had very few negative responses.
“It’s probably because I am not a hateful person or bitter against the Watch Tower. They did not kick me out, I had no specific issues with any of the leadership or people in the organization — I simply knew it did not represent the Bible. I simply knew they were lying and what they wanted was power over other people. That I could not stomach and I will not stomach.”
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September 29th, 2009 at 1:49 am
Hi Randy
It is me again! I have just found the New JWRecovery E Magazine and found your story re your Freeminds Ministry. We go back a long, long way. I remember when I was a new born again Christian, wanting to DO something for God, and was told that “God does not need you!” That shocked me. First of all, I needed to know that what I had found, or Who I had found would not be lost, like I lost my trust in the Watchtower way back after being a member for ten years and then disfellowshipped for opposing the anti blood transfusion teaching. After searching for the “truth” I found “God” not in a church building, but in my room, when I was told to make a decision to follow Jesus. John 5:39 Jesus says to us, “you refuse to come to ME for life!” I do believe it was the work of the Holy Spirit talking to my mind and giving me the last chance to make that choice. So that is now a long time ago. It happened in July, 1975 the Year that the J.W.s thought would be the END. For me it was just the beginning! A new life at the age of 38 yrs.
Well, now Randy, I was asked to start a branch of the Help us Jesus Ministry to help Christians to speak to J.Ws instead of shutting the door in their faces! That was in Western Australia. That was when we worked with Ex Mormons for Jesus and we contacted those in the USA and Canada who were also working in counter cult Ministries as well as those in Australia.
Some of those have now died and some of us are still here many years later, still working where we can and sharing our stories.
One thing I did not realise, is that just like a marriage, there can be a separation between a follower of Jesus. Like Jonah, I ran away from my ministry and my marriage and got divorced and then started a another new life at the age of 48. I had a second chance to grow up, learned to drive a car and went to University and after six years of study, I obtained a degree B.A. in Religious Studies. I had to learn about other belief systems and it was a shock to find out that there was a world outside the fundamental Christianity that I had accepted. Many of the students could not cope with other belief systems, but I could, I had already had my belief system shattered when I left the J.W.s but now I had to challenge all my Christian beliefs too. You never know how little you know until you start doing research. I still do research on the Internet, I learn something new every day. I do not believe that when we have faith, that we cannot use our minds and our intelligence to question everything.
I do understand that year after year we change and grow in all ways. When young, we want pat answers, later on we learn that we need to open our minds and consider other world views. We cannot live in our little boxes and hide from the wicked world. We are to live in it but not be part of it. With T.V. and the Internet, we are now a Global Village. We are all mixed up together.
There is a problem that we can be like J.W.s and just live in a “paradise” of our own. Then as fundamental Christians, we can do the very same thing.
I am so grateful that I went on to study other belief systems, it did not change my faith, but it made me more understanding of the belief systems of others and their world views.
The trouble is that many Christians never move beyond their own fellowships.
They are afraid of any challenges from other belief systems. It takes some courage to face up to the real world and the differences and practises of other religious beliefs.
I read books of other belief systems. There are Universal wisdoms in many of the religions of the world. However, the one difference is that most if not all other faiths, depend on their own good works to “save” them. Grace is not understood. It was Grace that changed my life.” God’s riches at Christ’s Expense”
How sad to see so many millions trying to be good and do good in their own strength. Reading the story of Moxie and her struggle to be good and do good in her own strength and never feeling relief or comfort in her faith in Jehovah of the J.W.’s It can take many years to be free of that conditioning and taboos and paranoia that is dished out by the books and magazines of the Watchtower, only those of us who have recovered after many years can understand the terrible fears that keep members enslaved to the control and the power of the Cult.
Well Randy here we are in 2009. We have both had years of growing and learning and helping others. We all have our own stories to share. We are all different. We can decide that it is too difficult to cope with others and their beliefs, or we can be brave and deal with the world that we have now in this amazing time, of communication and Global interaction.
It is a challenge indeed.
Rhona.
September 29th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
A lot of people, including myself, owe a great amount of gratitude to Randy. It became apparent very early on to me, as I started reading his web-site 4-5 years ago, that Randy doesn’t have a hidden agenda. He, along with the other contributors, just want to expose real “truths” (that you won’t hear from the JW’s official channel) and allow you (the reader) to draw your own conclusions. The conclusion I have reached (30 years associated with this religion) is that JW do not (and never did) have the truth. What a shame that they try to control people’s minds into thinking they do. The change in the generation teaching in 1995, was the beginning of me thinking outside the “JW” box. I’ve learned, too, that JW’s can never really say they have “the Truth” as their ever-changing teachings (i.e. New Light) means that at any given moment the so-called Truth can change. Of course, REAL TRUTH doesn’t change.
October 9th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
On October 8th, the House passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act as part of the conference report on Defense Authorization for FY 2010 (HR 2647). In April, the House passed these provisions on a bipartisan basis by a vote of 249 to 175. This legislation will help protect Americans against violence based on sexual orientation, race, religion, gender, national origin, disability, or gender identity by extending the federal hate crimes statute.
All Americans have a fundamental right to feel safe in their communities. Passage of this conference report by the House and Senate sends the federal hate crimes legislation to the President’s desk to become the law of the land — affirming the ideals of our founding fathers extending the protection of its laws to all:
Can we sue Watchtower for promote discrmination againts gays?
October 28th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
i wann join
February 18th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Thank you for all the detail!! Still another first class blog post, this can be why I come for your webpage time and again…
July 1st, 2010 at 10:50 am
Thank you all for your comments, especially Rhona, a wonderful friend near Perth in Australia. She has been in helps for ex-JWs for many years, and we took similar pathways. 30 years later we have both grown much and recognize that life is more complex than we thought. It helps me to not focus on what is invisible or merely conjecture, but to focus on people and life and love and happiness. Also to believe people less and love them more.
February 22nd, 2011 at 2:33 am
As far as me being a member here, I didnt even know that I was a member here. When the article was published I received a username and password, so that I could participate in the discussion of the post, That would explain me stumbuling upon this post. But we’re certainly all members in the world of ideas.
April 18th, 2011 at 7:01 am
Some times its a pain in the ass to read what blog owners wrote but this web site is very user friendly ! .
August 20th, 2011 at 5:57 am
Debt Thank you all for your comments, especially Rhona, a wonderful friend near Perth in Australia.
August 24th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Szacun za artykuł – jest super.
September 13th, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Superb blog! Do you have any hints for aspiring writers? I’m planning to start my own site soon but I’m a little lost on everything. Would you suggest starting with a free platform like Wordpress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m totally overwhelmed .. Any suggestions? Thank you!
October 28th, 2011 at 8:49 pm
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October 29th, 2011 at 9:35 am
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