Dear Don,
First of all, I must address with you the most personal matter to me—the way you have written about my wife.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hope
Texas is a large area and had and still does have many different local churches with hundreds of many different brothers and sisters. I know personally the posters here who came from Texas. None of them was just your average bear. Jane Anderson is a very unique personality and one of the most intense persons I ever knew. She was not then and is not now just the average sister you might run into. Matt, Mike, Nell are all very strong personalities (a good thing). Jane and Nell were in Houston and OK City. Ray Graver and James Barber had a thing about subduing strong personalities. No doubt they were among their targets. I would suppose they received more than their fair share of abuse.
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You write as if you knew Jane personally in the past. You write that she was not “your average bear,” “a very unique personality," and “one of the most intense persons” you ever knew. With regard to the past, I believe that you did not know my wife well enough to make such statements.
I asked Jane how she felt about your statements, and she said that they bothered her. She remembers being around you a few times during the first year or two in the Church in Houston, but she does not remember speaking much when she was around you and other “spiritual” brothers because you were scary to her. I am not saying that you never spent any time around her or never spoke with her. What I’m saying is that I believe that you have overstepped your boundaries in characterizing her past personality. Therefore, please refrain from commenting about my wife’s personality.
In the Local Church, for the most part, I would say that we really didn’t know anyone personally since we were not allowed to have any friends in the Church. Add to that the divide between the brothers and the sisters, and between the leaders (which she considered you to be) and the non-leaders, and she does not feel like you knew her or vice versa. As regards most of the others you mentioned, I believe that, in the past, you knew Nell even less and Matt less still. By the way, Nell was not targeted by Ray or James, as you suggested. She was called on the carpet by other leaders in the region, but that is for her to share.
That being said, even if you do know some posters personally, I do not think that it is wise to write an assessment of any poster’s personality here, regardless how minor the assessment might be. If you find it necessary to think about the personalities of the ones you have mentioned, I suggest you distinguish for yourself between the distant past and the present.
Further, do not take what you know about Ray and James and assume you know something about what happened to Jane. If you want to know the truth, why not just read her book,
The Thread of Gold? Then you will have more accurate knowledge about her, what she was like, whether or not it was her personality that brought about her trouble, and how she became the person she is today.
Your brother,
John Anderson