![]() Time, of course, will tell whether the fellowship of former Witnesses drawn to Raymond Franz will develop into a new denomination or will remain on the unorthodox fringe of the broader home-church movement.Īlthough important from the standpoint of revealing where he is leading, it should be noted that Franz confines his repudiation of orthodoxy and the established churches to some 20 pages at the end of this 732-page volume. Unlike Russell, though, Franz denies having any “special ‘line of communication’ with God and his Son that is not available to every other member of the body” (680). ![]() Yet, persons familiar with Watchtower history cannot help also recalling that the sect’s founder, Charles Taze Russell, similarly started out rejecting the religious establishment while providing spiritual leadership to a loose association of independent home Bible study groups. And this is the course he recommends, by implication, for others.īut is Raymond Franz really outside the “camp”? Or is he in fact the founder of a fledgling “camp” of his own, a new Watchtower splinter group? He doesn’t seem to think so - and the reader cannot help but be impressed with the sincerity of this man. Thus, he concludes, “I believe it is possible to be of greater service, better service, to God, to Christ, and to my fellow man by not linking myself to some system, whether a single denomination or the multi-denominational religious ‘establishment’ as a whole” (700). And he indicates that church membership tends to interfere with “the exercise of personal conscience” and often “robs one of one’s freedom and personal integrity” (700). ![]() He explains that the various Christian denominations are “individual ‘camps'” together forming “a very large ‘camp’ constituting a city-like corporate religious establishment” (698). So, then, where should former Witnesses look for fellowship? The answer Franz offers is “for us to ‘go to him outside the camp,'” quoting from Hebrews 13:13 (NRSV). ![]() Thus he estimates that “about the same percentage among Jehovah’s Witnesses are true Christians as in any other church” (703). In fact, although acknowledging that “many religious organizations are less authoritarian than the one I left” (695), Franz seems to view the Christian community as a whole in much the same light as he now views Jehovah’s Witnesses. But he also feels no obligation to adopt doctrinal “orthodoxy,” viewing it as merely the majority opinion of “men who constituted what may properly be called ‘governing bodies’ of the past” (705). He confesses that “a considerable portion of what I formerly believed had no sound foundation in Scripture” (p. While his first book, Crisis of Conscience (Commentary Press, 1983), focused almost entirely on the Witnesses, their history, and the events leading up to his formal break with the sect, this sequel attempts to put all of that into a broader religious perspective and to answer, for other ex-Witnesses, the all-important question: Where do we go from here?ĭoctrinally, Franz has come a long way since leaving the Watchtower organization. 700), fellowshipping primarily with other ex-JWs at religious gatherings in private homes. Since that time, Raymond Franz reveals in his book In Search of Christian Freedom, he has remained “free from denominational ties” (p. The nephew of recently deceased Watchtower president Frederick Franz left the Jehovah’s Witness organization - and his own position on its Governing Body - over a decade ago. This review first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume 15, number 4 (Spring 1993).Ī book review of In Search of Christian Freedom by Raymond Franz
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