ex-l wrote:Wasn't she Canadian, albeit some spending time in London?
I think, don’t quote me on this, she had parents of two nationalities. Probably a dual citizen. I do remember another Canadian young woman in London in the late 70s who was very dedicated/devout BK and then had a severe mental breakdown, probably bipolar. She had been in London as a BK against her parents' wishes (as I was!) but with her becoming a nuisance because of her condition, her parents were contacted. They came over from Canada and took her home. Never heard anything about her again.
It says she was employed to write a few diploma or, in fact, "degree courses" in BKism that I was going to critique at some point. There are a handful of colleges in Indian that are offering 'distance learning' degrees in elements of BKism that are very much taken directly from orthodox BKism. I don't know what their purpose is, perhaps to give BKs a title like BA that they can use to impress,
One of the criticisms that can be levelled at some University degrees is that you can present a thesis on a subject you know more about than the course lecturer and as long as you present it plausibly, seemingly objectively, they don't know whether what you have written is completely true or not.
So a BK wanting a degree might do a general course then go on to specialise in, say, comparative religion or anthropology, can do paper on BKs, based on what they know and use the course note ”talking points’ supplied by prepared materials as mentioned.
That is, and I am sure this is part of their cunning plan for world domination (in their own minds at least) that their aim is for their PR guff to become the academic literature on the subject. Unlike the sciences where there has to be peer review and verification, presentations like these can become the orthodoxy, at least until one day another more critical study actually does serious objective research and hopefully replaces it. (I mean, how many of those who’d use such course notes in a degree course would state clearly that their sources were official BK study material prepared by the BKs themselves).
I would have to ask how many of the early Western BKs are now financially benefitting from the deaths of their parents (as they have reached the kind of age when they will be dying off) and whether this influx of finances is benefitting them and the BKWSU allowing them to further indulge in the lifestyle.
Many. Many. Almost all of that generation would be by now, or will soon be.
That's why, as per this forum's revelations a few years ago that the BKs' formalised forms and advisories on how to construct Wills.