NO “FREE PARKING” FOR JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

A Jehovah’s Witness who questioned certain financial practices by the Watchtower at its conventions in Tacoma, Wash., has been disfellowshipped from the sect. Bruce Baker, 51, was a lifelong Jehovah’s Witness and for several years served on the local Watchtower Convention Committee. The Tacoma WCC oversees various functions of Watchtower conventions, which are held at the Tacoma Dome during the summer.

Baker’s dilemma began in January when he learned from a fellow member of the committee that the Watchtower’s contract with the Tacoma Dome explicitly prohibits fees from being charged for parking. Baker told the Tacoma Reporter that “Jehovah’s Witnesses are frequently told that to not pay the parking ‘contribution’ would be a sin.” According to the newspaper’s associate editor, Bryan Winchell, “With over 10,000 attendees at the three-day convention, the Watchtower Society collects over $120,000 from the parking ‘donations’ of one convention.”

The New York-based headquarters of the sect apparently sanctioned the “parking contribution.” A February letter to the Tacoma WCC stated, “Parking Department attendants should be on hand in full force when the lots open each morning. Otherwise delegates [Jehovah’s Witnesses] park and do not contribute, which is unfair to those who come later and make a contribution.”

Baker also suggested that Watchtower leadership is not beyond strong-arm tactics to keep its current policy enforced. In a letter to various city officials, he stated that the New York headquarters has “strongly intimated that if the Dome tries to flex with pricing at all they will pull out and go somewhere else.”

Baker, in his crisis of conscience, also has begun to question the Watchtower Society’s claim of being the only true channel of communication to God. His excommunication has led to being shunned by his oldest daughter and son-in-law and loss of contact with his 19-month-old granddaughter. Other friends who are still active Jehovah’s Witnesses also have ostracized him.

—MKG

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