Leaving Jehovah's Witnesses: New in the world

A year after he left, Karl Deuber has the feeling that he has to go there again, to the meeting in the Kingdom Hall. To be able to complete. Once there, he notices how the other community members are happy to see him again - they are not allowed to talk to him. He takes part in the church service, but no longer feels any closeness to Jehovah. On the contrary: “It was,” he says, “like in a zombie film, that fake smile, getting up and praying together, as if remotely controlled.”

Karl Deuber was with Jehovah's Witnesses for over 40 years, half of them as an elder in a responsible position. Elders are the volunteer leaders of a community. Among other things, they are responsible for leading so-called legal committees in the event of rule violations and, if necessary, issuing penalties.

Karl Deuber is a tall man with striking blue eyes. Actually his name is different. Because his daughter is still a member of the community today, he doesn't want to use his real name in the newspaper.

Nevertheless, he wants to tell his story to warn others about a community that seems so harmless at first contact, but hides deep structures of dependency. The taz meets Deuber personally twice. The first time, the café chosen as the meeting point is already closing, but the conversation is far from over. Deuber documented and stored everything meticulously and presents correspondence with the organization. Contact came through the dropout organization JZ Help e. V. came about.

So what led to him, of all people, who had been involved in the highest committees of the community for years, leaving his entire social environment behind and starting over again in his early fifties? And: How could this new beginning succeed?

The story begins in a small Franconian town in the 1970s. Deuber describes his parents as simple, hard-working people with no school qualifications; his father is a master locksmith. At Christmas you attend the Protestant church service. In 1972 the father hired a young man as a journeyman. Both families become friends over the years, and at some point the journeyman tries to “get his master to the truth”.

While vacationing together, the couple discuss so many religious questions that the husband offers to host a Bible study together. Deuber's parents are skeptical, but the friendship, the trust, is stronger. A crucial point for his parents was the blood doctrine: The friend had had a copy of Luther's manuscripts handed over to him in the library, in which the reformer argued that Christians were forbidden, according to the Bible, from consuming other people's blood. A rejection of blood transfusion, as it is practiced by Jehovah's Witnesses - but not by the Lutherans. “For my parents, this was conclusive proof: the Witnesses are the only ones who dare to teach what is written in the Bible.”

From now on, the families meet weekly for a Bible course together. Karl Deuber is nine, his brother and sister a little older. The family friend leads them through the Bible, following instructions from the Jehovah's Witnesses textbook: It was a mixture of beautiful hope for paradise and useful advice for life in the world. The studies cause the Deubers to become more convinced: This is the truth - and we can be part of it. At the age of eleven he appeared as an “unbaptized herald” for the first time on the doorsteps of strangers to convince them of his faith. Absolutely voluntary, as he emphasizes.

Jehovah's Witnesses call this missionary work preaching. Until you get past the first two bells, says Karl Deuber, it's a struggle. Sometimes he hopes no one is there. "But I actually loved the preaching service as a teenager. I was convinced that it was the only right thing: to try to win the people of the world. So that they don't have to die on God's judgment day."

When people in the world greet them with rejection, it only confirms him: We have arrived at the time of selection. Week after week, Deuber learns which Bible passages speak against dogmas of the official churches that the witnesses do not believe in: the immortality of the soul, for example, or the Trinity of God. The ban on donating or receiving blood makes sense to him, as well as why birthdays and Christmas are pagan. And, where exactly which catastrophe in human history was predicted in Scripture. They were all really amazed that this course of study enabled them to discover what was apparently hidden from the scholars of the great religion. The Witnesses use the so-called New World Translation of the Bible, which experts consider to be biased because it supports the Witnesses' views, but also very accurate.

Karl Deuber confronts the religious teacher and the local priest: “To our understanding, they didn’t know anything about the Bible.” In 1981 the family left the Protestant church. Eleven-year-old Karl is also convinced. Only one thing causes him a slight doubt: the flood report in the Bible, which is to be understood literally. “I never believed that the marsupials of Australia and the sloths of South America made it to the ark and back again.” But he trusted that he would get an answer at some point.

A story like this quickly makes the rounds in the small town: the locksmith Deuber is now among the witnesses. When the priest and the cult representative show up at the door with information material to win the Deubers back, the family is already far too stable.

"This system of a sheltering community offers protection to people who are looking for security. This security is bought through isolation," says Matthias Pöhlmann, regional church representative for sects and ideological issues of the Protestant Church in Bavaria. Whether the religious community should be called a sect has been discussed again and again. The isolation of its members from the world, the strong internal hierarchies, the absolute claim to truth and the treatment of dropouts speak for this. All things that Karl Deuber would experience in the decades that followed, sometimes in an executive role.

At the center of the teaching is the constantly approaching Armageddon (formerly Armageddon), the decisive battle in which only the members of God are saved and all other people are destroyed. Fireballs fall from the sky, the birds eat the flesh of the fallen. “Though a thousand fall at your side and ten thousand at your left, it will not overtake you (Psalm 91:7).” Deuber is not afraid of it, he is looking forward to it. After Armageddon, people would live together peacefully with animals, as it is said: “The lion will eat straw” (Isaiah 65:25). Adults look forward to playing with lions and pandas, says Deuber. Looking back, he finds it incredible.

Before Deuber's time in the community, the Witnesses had already made up their minds: the world would end in 1975. Some had bought a house because they assumed they would never have to repay the debt. After 1975 passed without an apocalypse, Jehovah's Witnesses experienced a wave of departures of an estimated one million publishers. There were around two million at the end of the 70s - today, according to the organization, there are around nine million if you only count those who regularly do missionary work. In Germany there are stagnating around 180,000, while the community says it has double-digit growth rates in some African countries such as Mozambique and Congo.

The failed prophecy does not change the basic assumption: It is not worth striving for a successful career on earth. It is better to get involved in the church and the preaching service. The straight-A student Karl doesn't go to high school, but to secondary school. Secondary schools, he learns, are already breeding grounds for drug use and sexual excesses. Better than pursuing a career is to get involved in the work. He was baptized at the age of fifteen, began an apprenticeship as an electronics technician, and later worked part-time so that he could devote 90 hours a month to missionary work. In his early twenties, he rose in the church from pioneer to ministerial servant, a role designed to relieve the burden on the elders. The ministry assistants take care of organizational tasks in the background, such as the technology in the Kingdom Hall or stocking the book tables.

He wants to take a Witness as his wife and start a family. The Kingdom Hall, where the services called “meetings” also take place, is the marriage market. The halls, there are around 850 in Germany, are functionally built and can hardly be identified as “holy” places from the outside. Inside, they also resemble conference rooms in hotels more than magnificent churches. The meetings usually take place twice a week. Fixed components include a Bible lecture and the joint, interactive discussion of an article from the current issue of the Watchtower magazine.

At twenty-one, Karl married Silvia, whom he repeatedly uses as a counter-example to his own experience: born into the community, suffering in his youth, not being allowed to celebrate birthdays or Christmas and not having any friends “in the world,” in panic fear of Armageddon, and hating the preaching service. But she believes. He resolves to make her service enjoyable.

Around the time that Deuber becomes a father for the first time, the elders of the community come to him: They want to make him one of their own. The elders lead the meetings, organize the Bible study and field service, and run the dreaded legal committees. Members who are suspected of sin must answer to this body of at least three elders. The sinner is invited to an interview in the Kingdom Hall and questioned in detail. The committee can decide to exclude you from the community. When Deuber is told that he will be recommended as the new elder to the circuit overseer, the next highest role in the internal hierarchy, he does not feel ready. Too young, too inexperienced. And he carries a secret within himself that, in his worldview, means sin.

"I masturbated for the first time when I was twelve. I didn't know what it was, what it was called, just that it felt great." Because he doesn't dare confide in an adult, the boy researches the literature of Jehovah's Witnesses. The book “Make your youth a success” was published by Watchtower Publishing in 1976. In it he reads that sexual satisfaction outside of marriage weakens a good conscience and love for what is right. He learns from the Bible that anyone who looks at a woman with lustful eyes has already committed adultery (Matthew 5:28). "When I was twelve or thirteen, I thought I had committed adultery, fornication. That means death in Armageddon. And I can be excluded."

For Karl Deuber, a years-long struggle begins with a bad conscience and the fear of death and damnation. “It’s actually the best thing to discover your own sexuality,” he says today. “And I felt so bad about it.” In the years that followed, he would confide in people several times, including his father, one of the elders. They reassure him: No reason for a judicial committee; He should pray and continue to work on himself.

Despite his bad conscience before God and with a huge sense of reverence, Deuber took up the office of elder in the mid-90s when he was in his mid-twenties. He now belongs to the inner circle and is allowed to take the secret book, which is reserved for the elders, but not show it to anyone, not even his wife. Essentially, he says, it's a hundreds-of-page set of rules that dictates what to do with those who smoke, drink too much alcohol, are homosexual or masturbate. How to tell if someone on the Judiciary Committee is truly remorseful or just pretending. What questions do you have to ask your victim? “I took it very seriously.”

It is this task of the elder that he now says has put a psychological strain on him. Other than that, he loved being an elder. The group of nine to eleven men determines the structure and content of the meetings. Visiting shepherds is also part of his job. The elders are actually required to visit each community member once a year. In fact, according to Deuber, no one was able to implement it that way. The elders announce themselves when there is a need to speak. As a rule, those who have not behaved compliantly are visited. This applied, for example, to people who spent less than ten hours per month in the field service, and in the past also to women who wore trousers. “We were encouraged to make these conversations encouraging and always start with praise.”

In twenty years he has been involved in around ten legal committees as an elder, sometimes as chairman. The meticulous instructions from the Book of Elders help him prepare for this task. It is said that one should never draw on experience, but rather stick slavishly to the same list of questions. The committee always consists of at least three elders. It comes together when a brother or sister is suspected of serious sin: adultery, drug use, political involvement. The member is subsequently interrogated meticulously in the Kingdom Hall, not only to find out whether he has actually sinned, but also whether he has credibly repented. This is the only way to have a chance of being acquitted. The hearings usually last several hours. Deuber describes the sessions as mechanical repetition of the same questions: How often have you smoked? Who were you with? Is that really all, or do you need to tell us more?

There are individual committees that are particularly memorable for Deuber. Once it was about an older sister. Deuber, as a young elder, was given the task of stalking this woman to find out whether the allegations were true: When does she leave the house, which bar, when does she come out again? An alcoholic in our own ranks. “We spoke to them on the street: Open your bag!” Deuber has tears in his eyes: “I’m still ashamed to this day.”

The woman, he says, was traumatized in the post-war period and had no family, only the community. Everyone knew it and no one helped her. When the woman appeared drunk at the service, they wanted to protect the congregation's reputation. She was excluded, left to fend for herself and died of addiction years later. “People who show weakness in the eyes of the organization are spit out.” There is even a Bible passage for this: “You judge those who are inside, God judges those who are outside” (1 Corinthians 5:12-13). “That’s how I glossed over how we have sinned against this poor woman.”

But Karl Deuber makes it a point to paint a differentiated picture. He doesn't want to conform to the stereotype that the renegade organization spreads. He says his former brothers and sisters did not act with bad intentions, but out of honest conviction. For love, if you will. For the longest time he felt safe in this group. In 2018, Deuber became so disappointed with this community for the first time that he says today: “And this is where my farewell began.”

Shingles causes him pain like he's never known before. He is without sleep for three days and nights. “Throwing myself in front of the train,” he thinks desperately, “is more pleasant than enduring it.” He stays away from the community for six weeks and cannot complete his tasks. And no one asked about him. Is the Spirit of God really at work here, he asks himself? His doubts about the church lead him to also examine the teachings. He reads books such as the biography of Hape Kerkeling, a man believed to be living in sin, and watches secular documentaries, particularly about archaeological research. The world of Jehovah's Witnesses is around 6,000 years old, which does not match the rock carvings left by people in Indonesia up to 50,000 years ago.

His doubt does not concern a single aspect, but rather a whole bunch: Why do we have to turn away from those who are excluded? Why is blood donation banned even though it can save lives? Why are homosexuals condemned? "I couldn't do that. I believe every person has an emotional conscience that tells us what is right and wrong. My emotional conscience was in conflict with the teaching." Deuber describes a cognitive dissonance, an internal contradiction between dogma and personal moral values. A so-called identity and autonomy conflict, says Michael Utsch, psychotherapist and speaker at the Evangelical Central Office for World View Questions. He defines three such interpersonal conflicts that can cause massive psychological stress. Jehovah's Witnesses had to suppress independent thoughts, suffered from chronic fear of the end of the world and social ostracism, and lived in constant distrust of the outside world. A representative study by the University of Zurich with former members supports the connection between cult membership and psychological stress.

For Deuber, the cognitive dissonance initially only leads to one consequence regarding his role. He no longer wants to preach from the stage the rejection of blood donation, homosexuality and apostates. And resigns from his position as elder. The reason he gives to his colleagues is his bad conscience towards God and masturbation. He would rather point to himself than to the organization.

"I finally had time to think. And my thoughts plunged me into a deep crisis of faith." As an elder, Deuber was constantly on the job: giving lectures, pastoral visits, Bible study, and constantly adjusting internal policies when the governing body in New York, the highest level of the Witness hierarchy, changed the rules. Today, for example, as the eldest he is even allowed to wear his well-groomed, gray beard. However, the governing body did not lift the “beard ban” until 2023. He does all of these tasks in parallel with his full-time work as an electronics designer. When dealing with colleagues, says Deuber, he always liked to “give witness,” i.e. promote his faith. He is open-minded and communicative - but ultimately remains at a distance from people from the world. “I was too involved in the community that I had no interest in further contact, especially not with people from outside.” The man who has dedicated his life to this construct and this community must accept the idea that he has been living in a toxic lie. He loses his footing, becomes listless, neglects his work and becomes depressed.

What does Jehovah's Witnesses' literature recommend to those at risk of losing their faith? Return to the roots, to where the enthusiasm was sparked. Deuber is afraid, he reads the Bible, and he reads again the books that had so completely convinced him in his youth. With the passing of 40 years, he no longer finds the arguments convincing. He researches the quotes from secular scientists that the texts use to suggest seriousness and finds that they actually say the opposite. He reads and reads and distances himself further and further from this God, whom he no longer finds to be kind, but rather cruel and bloodthirsty.

Silvia had “woken up” earlier, about a year before him. First she hides her research. When she realizes what's bothering her husband, she draws his attention to an investigative commission that uncovered 1,000 cases of child abuse among Jehovah's Witnesses in Australia a few years ago. The hearings in the matter are available on YouTube. He looks at them all, reads the transcripts. It's about internal structures that helped keep the cases of abuse secret, but also about fundamental issues of Jehovah's Witnesses such as dealing with those who are excluded. During his vacation in Italy in 2022, Deuber read nothing other than these notes for two weeks. "They lied and lulled the judges. I was ashamed of myself."

After returning from vacation, Deuber becomes a passive brother. But he still sits in the meetings - and reads three or four translations of the Bible at the same time to see where the witness doctrine deviates from the original text. Is there still hope for God in his life?

He reads documents from the Federal Constitutional Court in which, as Deuber finds, the German board speaks euphemistically about the treatment of former employees. "They claim that the Witnesses don't tear families apart. For 30 years I avoided my own sister and was blamed for hugging her at her father-in-law's funeral." When his sister left, it was a bitter blow, especially for his mother. Only after his own exit did Deuber learn that the two women had repeatedly met secretly. He himself disconnected himself emotionally, out of self-protection: Jehovah would judge fairly in the end, even against his apostate sister.

This text first appeared in wochentaz, our weekly newspaper from the left!

Every week, wochentaz is about the world as it is – and as it could be. A left-wing weekly newspaper with a voice, attitude and the special taz view of the world. New every Saturday at the kiosk and of course by subscription.

There is another obstacle that prevents Deuber from leaving immediately in the fall of 2022: he has an adult daughter in the community. Only when she promises him that his departure would not change their relationship does he write his resignation letter. On January 22, 2023, he will attend the meeting again and then hand over the letter personally. “I sat in the car afterwards and thought it would lift me out of the seat, the relief was so great.” He has a long conversation with his brother, who stays inside, and he writes a letter of apology to his sister. It will take the two of them three tearful evenings to talk things out.

Silvia, who had distanced herself much earlier, remains. Because she doesn't want to leave her underage son alone, who is supposed to make decisions for himself. The elders are trying to get him to join a Bible study behind their backs. A good six months later, the two of them will also leave Jehovah's Witnesses.

Even during his illness, during his depressive phases, they realized that there were no unconditional friendships among Jehovah's Witnesses, he says. Everything is linked to the common faith. That's why they got used to loneliness before they left. “And yet it still hurts so much to see how your former best friends turn their backs on you in the city when they see you.” There are individuals with whom Deuber could exchange a few words today; he talks to his brother over the garden fence while walking the dog. The new social life in the world still has to be carefully built. He can see his daughter regularly because she has no role in the community. He suspects she's staying in to avoid risking her friendships, but he's afraid to have that conversation.

All of this makes leaving the cult an enormous psychological burden. Deuber, now networked in the organization JZ Help e. V., I don't know anyone who has managed this without professional help. In consultation with his family doctor, he began a five-week psychosomatic rehabilitation for depression; at times he felt like he was in free fall.

The local psychologist helps him channel his anger into constructive channels and deconstruct his old worldview bit by bit. A person who believed that God and the devil were holding all the strings should become a responsible citizen. But Deuber also says that he was stable enough to be able to cope on his own afterwards. Many others need longer psychotherapeutic treatment or support in the various counseling centers.

In this worldview, God was the center of support for Karl Deuber. He doesn't want to give it up completely, even though it has become so foreign to him.

One day during rehab he is alone in nature for four hours. With tears he turns to God and Jesus: Give me a sign, anything! He used to feel like he was really talking to a friend when he was praying, but now there is nothing, a dead line. “I was really devoted to God,” says Karl Deuber. "The relationship was good for me, but it was imaginary. I no longer believe in a higher being." Although he sometimes felt like an alien in the world after leaving, he was relieved by the fact that he no longer had to worry about his organization not being up to the mark. “I just find it exciting right now, this coming of age in your mid-fifties.”

The world out there, says Klaus Deuber, is always painted in dark colors for Jehovah's Witnesses: sex-obsessed, drug-infested, mendacious. The people of the world cannot be trusted because they are all influenced by Satan. After three years in the world, he says: "My wife and I experience so often how kind people are. And they are so unconditionally, they help each other without looking at each other's religion or sexual orientation." He smiles. “When we experience this in everyday life, we look at each other and say: Bad, bad world.”