Wandering Down Watchtower Way
by Edwin A. Schwisow
By Edwin A. “Ed” Schwisow, Guest Blogger
AT Secretary of Development
Submitted August 15, 2013
Dense doom swirled through the billows of rancid smoke that engulfed the frontier boom-city of Battle Creek, Michigan. It was the final day of 1902, and one of the mightiest religious publishing houses in the western US was burning to the ground.
The Review & Herald Publishing Association (R&H) had been following the trends of the American Gilded Age, compensating its executives luxuriantly and placing great emphasis on growing R&H to a point where it would be too large to fail. But the fire that consumed it showed no regard for either executive compensation or sales output, and grew so intense the Battle Creek fire department could do nothing to save either structure or content.
Chastened by this catastrophe, the small Adventist community in Battle Creek determined to decentralize and rebuild the R&H on a new foundation on the East Coast, and in the East it remains today; a second publishing house in North America stands today near Boise Idaho, and is now far larger than the venerable R&H. Both Pacific Press and Review & Herald are solvent, but pressures are being exerted from the very highest levels to combine North American publishing work into a single enterprise. Will the denomination follow the lead of its distant cousin, the Jehovah’s Witnesses? Will it create a central enterprise to try to produce intellectual material broad enough and deep enough to represent the complexity of thought of one of the most diverse, highly educated, and intellectually far-ranging denominations on the North American continent?
Warnings from the Watchtower
One look at the effect of the billion-dollar Watchtower Corporation in Brooklyn should raise serious flags of caution. The content of its two primary magazines is planned by a single board of nine males (women are apparently not deemed spiritually capable of contributing centrally to the editorial enterprise).
A prevailing style of unsigned articles created under the heavy editorial supervision of elderly males gives the product a generic tone and appearance, like a timepiece from 1965. In fact Watchtower executives require this level of uniformity. All publications are printed on similar paper, an oddball stock that sets the publication apart as assertively impersonal. So, though The Watchtower prints 40 million copies of its main magazine each month, the accession rate of those who receive the publication is exceedingly low, and readership is a negligible percentage of its circulation.
The Watchtower was founded in the early 1930s, at the same time strong-fisted central control over all congregations was established from the East Coast under the new name “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” with imposition of strict standards of living and a requirement that all able members knock on doors and give out copies of The Watchtower’s output.
This protocol continues yet today among members, though door-to-door literature work has reportedly become increasingly non-productive among Anglo-Americans. Clearly the act of consolidating has inhibited rather than expanded its long-term versatility and effectiveness (though other factors contribute to this decline, not least of which is a continual dabbling with time-setting prophecies of Christ’s super-imminent return).
We can see this to a lesser degree in the Adventist Church, when the thriving Southern Publishing Association in Nashville was closed in 1980, on the reported assumption that preserving the Review & Herald was more important than safeguarding one of the more influential and creatively sophisticated ones, in the South.
Moving Toward the Watchtower?
Proposals were recently made by the General Conference to merge and consolidate Adventist publishing houses in North America, and though public outcry has led to the disbanding of the task force empowered to accomplish this work, the goal appears essentially the same. Yes, the publishing world has changed immensely, and is changing still, and the two publishing houses in North America are vastly oversupplied with printing capacity at this time (as has indeed been the case for a long time). But the apparent preference by Church leaders to merge and consolidate, rather than employ tactics gentler to the creative soul, that preserve creative competition between the two houses—this continuing penchant sends out alarming signals. There seems to be a Watchtower mentality in play, in the face of clear evidences that of the three main denominations created in 19th-century US, the Adventist Church (the least centralized of the three) has fared best in growth, in dispersion, in intellectual development, and in ability to integrate itself into local communities. We have thrived best by offering a home to a wide variety of members—scientists, intellectuals, and other professionals, as well as newcomers to Christianity from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
What if This Trend Continues?
Insistence on uniformity and centralization in the discredited mode of the late 19th and early 20th centuries could produce an Adventist Church that reverts to days when even relatively small matters nearly tore the denomination apart, as happens quite regularly today among Jehovah’s Witnesses. We know reliably that their attrition rate is extremely high, much greater than ours,
What We Must Do
We must recognize that under the current Adventist Church administration, consolidation and corporate standardization are highly favored. And we must further recognize that this tendency will place heavier and heavier responsibilities on the independent Adventist press to share needed information and analysis, to maintain the vibrancy of a Church long on record as opposed to creedal dryness. This is already happening, and Adventist Today is “reading the signs of the times,” as it were, and adding staff and writers to meet the task ahead. As it is today, most of the content of corporate communication is public relations in form and tone, and either is highly commending of traditional ways, or ignores controversial or negative information almost entirely. A Church built on a thirst for knowledge and understanding like ours cannot stand, or long endure, while paternally sheltered from reality.
Adventist Today receives absolutely no funding from tithe dollars or donations to local Adventist congregations. Our income sources come about evenly from subscriptions and donations, which means those who believe in us and our mission contribute up to $100,000 a year. Now, at midyear is a great time to help Adventist Today replenish its resources. Our vital signs are good, our subscribership is moving upward, and our focus on reaching the younger and young-in-mind, inquiring Christian is undiminished.
“Remember the Watchtower” and consider what you can do to help guarantee that you, your children and grandchildren will have access to the kind of open and free reporting and opinions represented by Adventist Today, now one of the most versatile and credible sources of information for thinking Church members in North America and around the English-speaking world.
Remember the Watchtower, yes. But even more apropos, remember Adventist Today this summer, while expenses may be lower for you, and as AT recharges its financial and intellectual batteries for the challenges ahead. Click here to remember Adventist Today!
Ed,
While I sympathize with your concern, I think there are a few other factors to consider in the mix that may temper and redirect your concerns in other ways.
While the Watchtower example you used could be the potential outcome from the church's viewpoint, there are some significant differences between the publishing operations of the Adventist Church and the Jehovah's Witnesses. The biggest difference is that the mission of the Adventist church is complimented by a significant number of independent publishers/printers where the JWs have discouraged such independent work to the point where they do not have much alternative.
It has been my observation over the past several decades that church administrators tend to make poor business decisions because they are overwhelmingly pastors and not professionally-trained business managers. As a result they fail to consider alternatives and often make decisions after considering limited options that often are yes/no in nature. As I understand it, the big issue driving the decision to merge R&H and PPPA has been rising costs that drove layoffs at R&H and significant personnel changes. Operational return on investment has been dropping due to declining demand among Adventists for printed items, which is being accelerated by the growing popularity of electronic publishing. As a result operating margins have been squeezed to the point of causing considerable fiscal pain and a dire financial future is written on the wall.
To solve the matter I would suggest that church leadership needs to differentiate between a publisher and a printer. Both R&H and PPPA are full-service operations with everything from editorial through design and printing to circulation. A publisher is the editorial/design operation while the printer produces the actual product. Circulation may be handled by either or a third party. The trend in commercial publishing over the past several decades has been to use contract printers because this sharply reduces their operating costs while allowing them to maintain their brand identity. Where 40 years ago most publishers also did their own printing as R&H and PPPA do, today they are few and becoming rare. The New York Times is one such example. The paper used to be printed at a plant in Edison, NJ on some two dozen high-speed continuous web presses. Today that site is a vacant lot and even the building is gone. The paper is printed by a contract printing company. According to Publisher's Weekly, today there is not a single commercial magazine in circulation in the US with a circulation over 200,000 a month that is not printed by a contract printer. What if the church did the same thing? Pacific Press and Review & Herald could still maintain their own editorial and design staffs that would operate independently of each other and maintain their identities exactly as they do today. They would each have all their products printed on-time, in the quantities desired and delivered to their distribution centers. Best of all, they could enjoy the same reduced operating costs that have driven other publishers to make the same changes. What if one or more of the independent Adventist printing companies was contracted to do the work for them?
Fear not, Ed! Good, workable solutions are available when you think outside the box where you find most church administrators.
Ironically, there's little doubt that the free Adventist press actually thrives better as the denomination itself faces crises and credibility questions, and were I sociopathic I would pray that the denomination would double down on its uniformitarian impulses, the better to serve the peculiar interests of Adventist Today! But as an active Adventist going back generationally to the very beginnings of our Church, I cannot wish my Church ill, though I do have a burning professional interest in the advancement of Adventist Today—frankly because there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that it's needed now more than ever, and will be needed more in the future than it even is today.
What I cannot and will not forget is that denominational misadventures are only one among a quiver of reasons Adventist Today is succeeding (though the going is at times quite rough, financially). During 27 years of full-time service to the Church, I repeatedly urged the denomination to open up its publications to include the kinds of material we now see in Adventist Today. In fact, in an early presentation I made to the AT executive committee, I told them that I had more than once challenged my local union to "Allow me to put magazines like Adventist Today out of business by opening up our publication in a transparent and investigative way. We have nothing to lose, our readership will rise, and we will be known for publishing the best union paper on the North American continent." (There is a town named “Damascus” a few miles from my home, but I am not claiming to be Saul of Tarsus here, and I haven't changed my name, but I did indeed battle from within the Church at least for a decade for the kind of Adventist journalism we now find primarily in publications like Adventist Today.)
I am not sanguine about the prospects for creative, probing, cutting-edge products in Adventist corporate publishing, these days. I do believe that at the General Conference level, at least, there are strong impulses to more decisively narrow the range of material allowed to be published, and this could tend to be done (as in the case of The Watchtower) more effectively through one super publishing house. I believe that despite the recent task force's failure to find a pathway to merger, the administrative goal of combining these publishing houses will be allowed to continue, but through evolutionary means rather than by fiat.
'During 27 years of full-time service to the Church, I repeatedly urged the denomination to open up its publications to include the kinds of material we now see in Adventist Today.'
Totally agree. I find the new editor of the Australian/SPD Record, James Standish, is trying to do just that. There have recently been a range of more biting opinions. With the WO, the Record has encouraged both sides to present articles for and against, as that is after all the best way to inform readers.
The 4th Estate is only thing that keeps the politicians honest. The same is true in the kingdom not of this world – the Church's high political leaders. It is a shame there isn't an official Church publication that isn't completely separate from the GC leadership, which obtains its mandate from the GC in full session itself. Most very well-run democracies have a free press, and the Church should be no different.
Hear! Hear!, Ed. I fervently second your call for the need to financially support the efforts of Adventist Today to provide a free and open forum for the full spectrum of Adventist thought and experience.
But I'm not sure that the number of publishing houses, or the variety of publications offered by officialdom, has any bearing upon that need. I am not aware that multiple SDA publishing houses have produced a broader spectrum of opinion or news than would likely be produced in a single center. Are you? Has one publishing house been considered more progressive or independent than another? I don't know. I'm just asking. It has always seemed to me that they are pretty much ideological carbon copies of one another. I do not say that to denigrate the fine work that they do. I merely mean to offer my perspective that what they have offered has not to my knowledge raised consternation or concern that some of our publications were venturing too far from the reservation. I'd appreciate your enlightment.
In the meantime, I'm renewing my systematic financial support for AToday, and hope many others who value our dialogues join me. Thanks for the gentle reminder.
The most recent precedent for constriction of theological bandwidth in the Adventist Church in the wake of merging publishing houses took place in 1980, with the closure of Southern Publishing Association, the smallest of the three North American houses but one of its more economically and philosophically viable. With its closure one of the more daring and most highly awarded publications in denominational history (These Times) was merged into the Signs of the Times, and Southern Publishing's program of releasing omnibus books on a range of viewpoints went by the wayside. That the editors from the closed-and-shuttered Southern Publishing amazingly seemed to rather rapidly disappear off the Adventist hemisphere of thought leadership did not go unnoticed.
The reason given for Southern Publishing's demise was that the presumably more vital, better equipped (and too-large-to-fail) Review & Herald and Pacific Press publishing houses were hurting for trade (“to keep those fine, expensive new presses running”). Without a doubt this was true in a narrow sense, but also true was the reality that Southern Publishing was being run efficiently and its products were often more cutting-edge than its older sisters'.
I consider myself a friend of Adventist publishing wherever my colleagues may be found, in whatever institutional environment, but the closure of Southern Publishing clearly sent a cold wind drafting through the ranks of Adventist writers and readers. That the Desmond Ford drama unfolded concurrently with that closure drew attention away from the significance of the loss of "Southern Pub." But few honest analysts of that period of time will gainsay the notion that the closure of Southern Publishing had a profound chilling effect on the inventiveness and all-around bandwidth of coverage of Adventist thought as we knew it at that time. That more than 30 years have passed since then gives us no license to forget its lessons or acquiesce to a repetition of its consequences…. Let's all do the right thing and support the Adventist publishing work, including its vital, independent links such as Adventist Today. And let me mention that I, too, have renewed my monthly commitment of support for AT. May the tribe increase….
'There seems to be a Watchtower mentality in play, in the face of clear evidences that of the three main denominations created in 19th-century US, the Adventist Church (the least centralized of the three) has fared best in growth, in dispersion, in intellectual development, and in ability to integrate itself into local communities. We have thrived best by offering a home to a wide variety of members—scientists, intellectuals, and other professionals, as well as newcomers to Christianity from lower socio-economic backgrounds.'
Does anyone know if JWs have 'independent ministries' like AToday? Are they tolerated?
I agree with the sentiments of the article and note that the success of Adventism is independent voices – both conservative and liberal. There was for a long while a perception that the liberals had control of 'the establishment' and now it has swung to the conservatives. To me, I think if 'the establishment' is seen as belong to any particular 'wing' it is not good.
Voices like AToday are exceptionally important. I remember when the Unions in the US first voted to allow WO, the matter wasn't reported in the official Church media in Australia for months-and-months. When I told people at Church about it, having read AToday, they simply didn't believe me. Whether you agree or disagree on WO, the decision of the Unions to vote was no doubt an important issue. The same with a range of other 'unsavory' issues that the official Church media doesn't report.
Fascinating, Stephen. Hopefully, some of those whom you told about the AToday reporting of the votes in the NAD to ordain women will recognize just how important AToday might be to them becoming informed church members, and choose to subscribe to and support AToday.
There are very few places where liberals and conservatives both go to joust and test their ideas. We tend to seek out fare that fuels our ideological and religious predilections, leading to even greater polarization in society and the church. Even if we don't frequently persuade each other or change each other's opinions on this website, we are forced, if we choose to be part of the dialogue, to read different perspectives from our own and to think more deeply and clearly about our own beliefs and values. And that, as I see it, is a very worthwhile process.
My observations have been that the JWs are extremely intolerant of anything more than slightly different from their officially-sanctioned views. They are one of the few denominations practicing "shunning" and anything printed by any source other than their own publishing house is considered at least potentially suspect. Though, curiously, it wasn't that many years ago a similar attitude about independent publishers was common in the Adventist church because of the number that were critical of the church.
I interviewed a long-time JW school teacher back in 1988, extensively and over a period of months, and she made it very clear to me that (at least as of that period of time) rapid ostracizing and/or disfellowshipping is/was the norm toward those deemed to be insufficiently supportive of the JW creed and lifestyle. I do know independently that the attrition rate among JW members is extremely high, and it appears at times that JW leadership is actually trying to whittle its 7.5 million membership back down to 144,000, where traditionally they have preached that it belongs. "Church discipline" is stringent. Apparently the JW motif is to keep strong control of current membership, and to make examples of those who seem to test the boundaries.
I have not heard of any splinter groups of the JW that have survived over the years. Perhaps this is because JWs are very protective of their flock and work to uproot dissident voices rapidly and completely from free access to their members, through shunning. It is a fascinating study, and I am reminded that for many, many decades, Adventism and the Watchtower were sociologically very close cousins. I do believe (based on this and other evidence I have seen) that the influence of Ellen White had a great deal to do with the comparative openness of Adventism as we know it today and wish it to remain. To those who inveigh too adamantly against EG White, I caution, "Be careful what you wish for….." The Watchtower retrogressed to a brutally centralized, fundamentalist program in about 1930. During that same period, Adventism moved somewhat that direction, but never succumbed to the ironclad hierarchical dominance that JWs did and apparently continue to do. There is no doubt that in the JW tradition, new light and practice is entirely top-down…..Will it become so in our Church? The initiative to merge the presses in effect reflects the overall hypothesis that the preferred way to adjust to modern times and technological advantages is to consolidate, to merge, to favor a more centralized program.
My observations of the JWs are very similar to what you described.
While I share your fear that merging the publishing houses could become a tool for expanding the dominance of limited viewpoints, I am also reminded of the number of times I have seen God do great things to advance the spread of the Gospel using methods and means from outside the official church structure. Should your worst-case scenario happen, I am confident that God would reduce it to impotence by raising-up other channels for the Gospel to be disseminated. Today people get their information from multiple sources, so why should we fear that the church having a lone publishing source expressing a limited point of view would not be offset by the variety of other information sources available to people?
While I disagree with much of what appears on Atoday (its a lot!), I value freedom of expression. Even though I believe that Atoday is detrimental to the church, transperacy is better than no transperancy.
Would you agree Tapiwa that it is a shame that the is not a media outlet that is neutral (as much as possible) and independent (such as being appointed by the GC is full session rather than the GC Executive)?
For example, in Australia and Britain, there is the ABC and BBC respectively. These are government-funded, but 'independent' organisations. Whilst they can be accused of not being entirely independent, they are not afraid of challenging the government of the day with dissenting opinions, something I doubt most Developing-World Governments would allow.
As for AToday, one has to admit they officially endorse conservative-voices such as Stephen and Preston Foster. I applaud them for doing so and hope they continue that practice. Apart from anything else, it makes AToday so much more interesting, when the reader is given too sides of the story – even if we think one side totally rubbish. I can't think of many other independent Adventist ministries that allow as such.
My only suggestion to AToday is that there perhaps is not enough conservative voices. About 1 more (to make 3 by my count) would make it almost perfect. Happy to be corrected.