What made for a Jehovah's Witness elder?

 Back in the day I had a couple of interviews with congregation overseers (the equivalent of pastors, but lay individuals, as everyone was classed as clergy). I asked, and it was confirmed they had a private manual on how to do their job.  What made for a Jehovah's Witness elder? Well, the obvious things, but one thing that I noted, is that they both specifically mentioned the absence of any sign of racial prejudice.

That is actually a rather revealing criterion, especially because it was apparently explicitly called out to you rather than merely implied by the general injunction to be a good Christian.

And it fits something distinctive about the Jehovah's Witness organizational structure. The congregation overseer (elder) wasn't a priest with sacramental authority; he was a member of the congregation who had been appointed to a position of responsibility. Yet the organization had quite a detailed conception of what sort of man was suitable for that responsibility, including traits that might not appear in the biblical qualifications at first glance.

The racial-prejudice criterion is particularly interesting because it is an observable character test rather than a doctrinal test. An elder might be perfectly orthodox on every point of Witness teaching and still be regarded as unsuitable if his behavior toward people of another race suggested prejudice. That tells you something about the organization's conception of what leadership was supposed to accomplish: an elder was not merely someone who could explain doctrine and enforce rules, but someone whose personal conduct was supposed to provide a model for the congregation.

And, of course, the private manual is significant. It meant there was a layer of organizational knowledge that ordinary congregants didn't have. The public-facing description might be "the elders follow the Bible," while in practice there was a fairly elaborate administrative machinery telling elders how to apply the Bible, how to handle particular situations, and what characteristics to look for in one another.

I suspect your interviews also gave you an unusual glimpse of the distinction between the official simplicity of the Witness system—no paid clergy, no priesthood, just congregations and elders—and the rather sophisticated bureaucracy operating underneath it.

Too bad they didn't have a similar view of sex discrimination. Women were respected and treated well, but not allowed to be anything, and even in home "Bible study" (really no such thing but study of one of their books) they had to wear something on their head if a qualified male was not present when they lead.

Yes. And that contrast is hard to miss.

The Witness position could accommodate a fairly strong principle of racial impartiality while retaining a very explicit hierarchy between men and women. Women could be respected, competent, conscientious members of the congregation—and yet their competence didn't translate into authority.

The head-covering rule is a particularly good illustration because it wasn't merely about who was actually in charge. A woman conducting a Bible study in the absence of a qualified male was, functionally, doing exactly what a man might do, but the head covering symbolized that she was doing it under a male authority she was temporarily representing. The little piece of cloth was therefore an organizational statement about hierarchy.

And there is an interesting psychological distinction in "women were respected and treated well." Those aren't necessarily contradictory propositions. A system can sincerely teach that women are valuable, deserving of kindness, morally equal before God, and worthy of considerable respect while simultaneously declaring that certain forms of authority belong exclusively to men. From inside the system, that doesn't necessarily feel discriminatory; it feels like different divinely assigned roles.

From the outside, of course, the distinction is much harder to sustain: if racial prejudice is disqualifying because someone's inherited characteristic shouldn't determine his suitability for spiritual responsibility, why should sex determine it?

The Witness answer was essentially that race was an irrelevant human distinction, whereas sex was a divinely mandated distinction. Once that premise is accepted, the two cases look completely different. Without that premise, the inconsistency becomes rather conspicuous.

Well of course the practice derived from Hebrew attitudes and some marked female antipathy from the authors of some of the Epistles. We see no such thing in Jesus himself.

Quite. And that is one of the more striking tensions in the New Testament.

Jesus' interactions with women are, by the standards of his society, remarkably unrestrictive. He speaks with the Samaritan woman at the well, accepts women among his followers, allows Mary to sit listening to him in the posture of a disciple, and women are the first witnesses to the empty tomb in the Gospel accounts. There is little in the sayings attributed to Jesus that suggests an elaborate doctrine of female subordination.

The much more restrictive material comes principally from the later apostolic tradition. The passages in 1 Corinthians 14 concerning women being silent in the congregation and 1 Timothy 2 concerning women teaching or exercising authority over men are the obvious examples. They are also among the passages that have generated enormous scholarly argument about authorship, context, and interpretation.

And there is a delicious irony here for someone who has spent time around Jehovah's Witnesses: their organization was extremely concerned with following the Bible literally, but deciding which biblical voice gets normative authority is itself an interpretive decision. If one gives greatest weight to the recorded behavior and teaching of Jesus, the case for the elaborate male hierarchy becomes considerably less obvious.

Even Paul is more complicated than the handful of restrictive passages suggest. He mentions women such as Phoebe, whom he calls a diakonos (servant/deacon) of the church at Cenchreae, and Junia, whom he describes in terms that have been debated for centuries. So "Paul was simply anti-woman" is probably too crude; but some of the texts attributed to the Pauline tradition certainly express attitudes toward women's authority that are very difficult to reconcile with the much more open picture we get from Jesus.

And I think your phrase "marked female antipathy" is getting at something real, while also needing that qualification: some of the New Testament writers appear considerably more anxious about female autonomy and authority than Jesus himself does.

That was one thing I noticed: women were not discouraged from speaking up in the congregation. In fact, the opposite.

Yes—and that makes the distinction even more interesting. The Witness congregation could be quite participatory for women within the boundaries it had established.

Women could comment from their seats, answer questions, read material, participate in discussions, and otherwise be conspicuous contributors to the congregation's collective life. They weren't expected to sit silently and merely listen. In fact, a woman who was knowledgeable and articulate could be a very prominent participant.

But there was a sharp line between participation and authority. She could contribute to the discussion, but she could not preside over the congregation, serve as an elder, or occupy the teaching/administrative role that carried formal authority over men. Hence the rather peculiar head-covering arrangement you mentioned: the organization could permit the woman to perform the function temporarily while simultaneously marking that she did not possess the authority associated with the function.

That is quite different from the old-fashioned notion of women simply being seen and not heard. The Witness system seems to have been saying, in effect, "Please speak up—just don't become the person in charge."

And I imagine that, in an actual congregation, the distinction could sometimes become rather academic. A woman who was articulate, knowledgeable, persuasive, and socially influential could have considerably more practical influence than the formal structure acknowledged. Organizations are wonderfully good at creating rules about authority and then discovering that human beings exercise influence anyway.