Divide and conquer is the favored tactic of high-control religions determined to keep their members in line. A particularly cruel aspect of this obsessive control is to force members to disown friends and family members who disagree with or speak out against church doctrines and policies. This is often the case with controlling cults such as Jehovah’s Witnesses. The greatest sin a member of this organization could commit is apostasy: refusing to obey all the rules of a religion. This is the greatest fear of the JW parent organization known as the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society.
Whenever a member questions the teachings of this organization and openly rebels against them, even in a minor way, they quickly face threat of expulsion from the JW congregation that they have been a part of. This is known as disfellowshipping and the person is considered to be spiritually dead and are also considered to be barred from eternal life in the “new system” or utopia the Watchtower Society insists will take place after all “wicked” people and all entities which comprise this current world system are destroyed at Armageddon.
This brings us to the bleak story of Apostasy about a single mother with her two young adult daughters who are part of a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United Kingdom. All is not well with them as one daughter, Luisa, runs afoul of the congregation elders by having premarital sex and becoming pregnant with a non-believer. These actions already put her on thin ice as a member in good standing with “Jehovah’s Organization.”
Once Luisa starts expressing doubts and questioning Watchtower Society beliefs – (the parent organization over Jehovah’s Witnesses) then she is committing the greatest sin in their estimation – of apostasy. It cannot be underestimated that this is the greatest fear of the Society – that a member starts thinking that these teachings are suspect, if not outright false, not actually biblically based as the Society vehemently insists. Naturally, it never occurs to this “power-that-be” that maybe the Bible isn’t written in stone, for the convenience of the nine members of the Governing Body that oversees the Watchtower Society’s self-serving schemes.
Of course, this is precisely what the Society does NOT want happening among their “witnesses”. Anyone pushing forth that independent spirit by criticizing the prevailing doctrines could easily upset the apple cart and get other members to become rebellious as well. This puts the Watchtower Society’s hegemony over its minions in jeopardy. The Watchtower Society and it’s Governing Body cannot tolerate any such loss of power. There are other problematic issues among Jehovah’s Witnesses related to stigma which comes to the fore in Apostasy. Luisa’s younger sister Alex has lived her entire life feeling guilty and tainted because she was forced to undergo blood transfusions to treat her anemia condition as a child. This same medical condition is putting her life in danger again if further blood treatments are not pursued.
Accepting blood transfusions – even in the event of serious medical need are completely forbidden to Jehovah’s Witnesses and is another disfellowshipping offense. While Alex tries to maintain the faith and follow all JW teachings – which again puts her own life in jeopardy- she (and their devout mother Ivanna) are still required to shun contact with Luisa. Naturally, these traumatic situations are perplexing to Ivanna who believes in following her religious beliefs with all of its principles to the letter. However, she loves her daughters and wants what’s best them as well.
How all of this conflict plays out makes Apostasy absorbing and contemplating to view. This may especially be the case for those who were formerly Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, or were members of any other high-control, cult-type religions. Being slavishly devoted to any religion seems rather ridiculous and incomprehensible to secularists, but for those who are devout and caught up in the indoctrination and wiles of those peddling salvation, it’s like being consumed by some alternate reality. Still, even as things play out in Apostasy with its generic, dreary aesthetics, somehow becoming a part of the Jehovah’s Witness cult managed to initially provide a better, more hopeful life for Ivanna and her daughters. Evidently this is true of the other congregation members in the film as well.
The Variety review of Apostasy is correct in stating that the film’s “genuinely revelatory qualities could make it something of an arthouse conversation piece…” However, that does not go far enough. If anything, the conversation should be far broader. As a former Jehovah’s Witness myself, I’ve observed first-hand how cruel and sinister the Watchtower Society’s shunning policy has been to members who didn’t allow every single aspect of their lives to be dominated by a narrow religion which supposedly proclaims love and spiritual enlightenment.
Rather, it acts much more like a controlling, money-grubbing, monolithic, out-of-touch corporate oligarchy. It’s too bad that there are some eight and a half million people worldwide still caught under the spell of the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society – and for whatever psychological reasons haven’t broken free of it. Apostasy is a sad story illustrating one small corner of this rigid, ossified dystopia.
