Abstract
The conclusion identifies the major challenges for modern governments arising from the Watch Tower organisation’s unique doctrinal system. In doing so, it demonstrates that Witnesses have repeatedly challenged the traditional jurisdictions of the state. It is not the size or spread of the organisation that has encouraged opposition to Witnesses, both popular and political, but instead their departures from mainstream Christian beliefs and practices. These have resulted in challenges to understandings of religious freedom, civil liberties, and individual rights, from Russell’s day to the present. As this book has shown, this has led Witnesses to be viewed as subversive by governments of all ideological stripes.
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Notes
- 1.
The world headquarters occasionally reports the organisation’s assistance to non-Witnesses alongside Witnesses during disaster relief response, as in this report on floods in Nigeria in 2017: ‘Heavy Rainfall in Nigeria’, www.jw.org/en/news/releases/by-region/nigeria/floods-20170804/, accessed 21 August 2017.
- 2.
D. R. Migden and R. Braen, ‘The Jehovah’s Witnesses Blood Refusal Card: Ethical and Medicolegal Considerations for Emergency Physicians’, Academic Emergency Medicine 5, no. 8 (Aug., 1998), 817.
- 3.
As Chap. 1 established, we rely on a few high-profile ex-members, chief among them Raymond Franz, to provide us with insights into those discussions. R. Franz, Crisis of Conscience: The Struggle Between Loyalty to God and Loyalty to One’s Religion, Fourth Edition (Atlanta: Commentary Press, 2007).
- 4.
One video addresses changes in the Governing Body’s interpretations. See, for example, ‘2015 Annual Meeting Program: Part 3—Refinements in Scriptural Understanding’ at https://tv.jw.org/#en/mediaitems/VODPgmEvtAnnMtg/pub-jwbam_201510_3_VIDEO, accessed 25 August 2017.
- 5.
E. B. Baran, Dissent on the Margins: How Soviet Jehovah’s Witnesses Defied Communism and Lived to Preach About It (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 109–140.
- 6.
‘Country Reports: Part II’, 1970 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses (New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1969), 258.
- 7.
On the place of the Cold War in Watch Tower theology, see Z. Knox, ‘The Watch Tower Society and the End of the Cold War: Interpretations of the End-Times, Superpower Conflict, and the Changing Geo-Political Order’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79, no. 4 (Dec., 2011), 1018–1049.
- 8.
T. Richter, ‘International Bible Students and Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Australian Press (1896–1941)’ in the conference proceedings: The Jehovah’s Witnesses in Scholarly Perspective: What is New in the Scientific Study of the Movement?, Acta Comparanda: Subsidia III (Antwerp: Faculty for Comparative Study of Religion and Humanism, 2016), 168.
- 9.
‘Jehovah Rules—Through Theocracy’, The Watchtower, 15 January 1994, 10–15.
- 10.
As told by Lembit Toom, ‘Half a Century Under Totalitarian Tyranny’, Awake!, 22 February 1999, 10–16; ‘Police Protection: Hopes and Fears’, Awake!, 8 July 2002, 5–10; ‘Human Rule Weighed in the Balances: Part 5—Unlimited Power—A Blessing or a Curse?’, Awake!, 8 October 1990, 19–22.
- 11.
W. Kaplan, State and Salvation: The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Their Fight for Civil Rights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 233.
- 12.
J. Jacobs Henderson, Defending the Good News: The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Plan to Expand the First Amendment (Spokane, WA: Marquette Books, 2010); J. Jacobs Henderson, ‘The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Their Plan to Expand First Amendment Freedoms’, Journal of Church and State 46, no. 4 (2004), 811–832.
- 13.
‘Christians Must Expect Persecution’, The Watchtower, 1 October 1966, 593–600.
- 14.
Franz, Crisis of Conscience, 129. Penton attributes this concession to the headquarters’ concerns over the use of Mexican branch office property. M. J. Penton, Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses Third Edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 221–224.
- 15.
The shift was articulated in J. Rutherford, Religion; Origin, Influence Upon Men and Nations, and The Result (New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1940), 229.
- 16.
The new strategy of information stands garnered media attention, as evident by this (somewhat patronising) report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper: H. Sherwood, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses Take to the Streets as Busy Heathens are Rarely Home (14 July 2015)’, www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/14/jehovahs-witnesses-evangelism-church-god-armageddon, accessed 12 August 2017.
- 17.
National Archives Building, Washington, DC: RG 267 US Supreme Court, Appellate Case Files—57 O.T. 1953-60 O.T. 1953, Box no. 410, File: 57 O.T. 1953, p. 63.
- 18.
Cited in S. F. Peters, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 186.
- 19.
Knocking (Independent Lens, PBS, 2006). Directed by J. P. Engardio and T. Shepard. Featured in the documentary was Seth Thomas, a twenty-one-year-old who had a rare condition that meant his liver did not function properly. Seth could not go on a transplant list because most hospitals would not waste the organ. The documentary follows the Thomas family following the decision of the father to donate one of his livers. Many hospitals would not carry out the procedure: it was doubly risky given there were two patients undergoing major surgery without blood transfusions. The documentary shows the initiative being welcomed by those interested in experimenting with bloodless surgery.
- 20.
‘Application No. 28626/95: Khristiansko Sdruzhenie “Svideteli na Iehova” (9 March 1998)’, European Commission of Human Rights at http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-45968, accessed 12 August 2017.
- 21.
See the special issue ‘Freedom of Religion or Belief: Anti-Sect Movements and State Neutrality: A Case Study: FECRIS’, Religion—Staat—Gesellschaft 13, no. 2 (2012).
- 22.
B. Petukhov, ‘TsRU i svideteli iegovi’, Kazakhstanskaia Pravda, 9 August 1970, 3. Archive file <SU/Je Jehovah’s Witnesses, 3>, Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society, Baylor University.
- 23.
For Witnesses’ treatment in different post-Soviet contexts, see R. Ringvee, ‘From Controversial Bible Students to Respected Bible Translators? Some Reflections on the Reception of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Baltic States’ in the conference proceedings: The Jehovah’s Witnesses in Scholarly Perspective: What is New in the Scientific Study of the Movement?, Acta Comparanda: Subsidia III (Antwerp: Faculty for Comparative Study of Religion and Humanism, 2016), 151–163; M. Ochs, ‘Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Georgia Today’, Religion, State & Society 30, no. 3 (2002), 239–276; Baran, Dissent on the Margins, 222–243.
- 24.
E. B. Baran, ‘Contested Victims: Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Russian Orthodox Church, 1990–2004’, Religion, State & Society 35, no. 3 (2007), 261–278; Z. Knox, ‘Religious Freedom in Russia’ in M. D. Steinberg and C. Wanner (eds), Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Indiana University Press, 2008), 281–314.
- 25.
W. Fautré, ‘A History of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Belgium’ in G. Besier and K. Stokłosa (eds), Jehovah’s Witnesses in Europe: Past and Present Volume 1/1 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 44–45.
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Knox, Z. (2018). Conclusion. In: Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World. Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39605-1_8
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