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HISTORIES OF THE SACRED AND SECULAR

Jehovah’s
Witnesses
and the
Secular World
From the 1870s to the Present

Zoe Knox
Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000

Series Editor
David Nash
Department of History
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford, UK
This series reflects the awakened and expanding profile of the history of
religion within the academy in recent years. It intends publishing exciting
new and high quality work on the history of religion and belief since 1700
and will encourage the production of interdisciplinary proposals and the
use of innovative methodologies. The series will also welcome book pro-
posals on the history of Atheism, Secularism, Humanism and unbelief/
secularity and to encourage research agendas in this area alongside those
in religious belief. The series will be happy to reflect the work of new
scholars entering the field as well as the work of established scholars. The
series welcomes proposals covering subjects in Britain, Europe, the United
States and Oceania.

Editorial board:
Professor Callum Brown (University of Glasgow, UK)
Professor William Gibson (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
Dr Carole Cusack (University of Sydney, Australia)
Professor Beverley Clack (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
Dr Bert Gasenbeek (Humanist University, Utrecht, Netherlands)
Professor Paul Harvey (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, USA)

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/series/14868
 Zoe Knox

Jehovah’s Witnesses
and the Secular World
From the 1870s to the Present
Zoe Knox
School of History, Politics & International Relations
University of Leicester
Leicester, UK

Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000

ISBN 978-1-137-39604-4    ISBN 978-1-137-39605-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39605-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955670

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
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tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © Granger Historical Picture Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
For ULEK & DLEK
 Preface

In summer 2015, my friend Mikey, whom I had not seen for almost a
decade, came to stay. There had been many changes in his life since we last
met. Most notable was his purchase of shares in a rainforest community in
the Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland, Australia. Since the early
1970s, the residents have sought to live off grid, creating a self-sufficient
eco-community that eschews the pressures of modern life and the subur-
ban sprawl that characterises coastal development. They aim to preserve
and protect the native flora and fauna of the regenerating rainforest in
which they live. Mikey had spent a year building a house from several trees
he had felled on his twenty-three-acre property. A small area was set aside
for this modest dwelling; the remainder of the land, he explained to me,
was for the creatures.
After discussion of his new lifestyle, the conversation turned to my
research. When I told Mikey I was writing a book on the history of the
Watch Tower Society, he said that in the four years since he had entered
the community, he had only had one visit from an uninvited party: two
Jehovah’s Witnesses. He was impressed by their commitment in negotiat-
ing the six kilometres of dirt track to his home and their determination to
reach him despite the isolated location, physical barriers, and commune
arrangement. Why had they gone to all that trouble, he asked me. What
had they expected would happen when they reached him?
Mikey received a long reply. The Witnesses’ visit was fascinating to me
because it was so typical and yet so remarkable. It was typical in the sense
that hundreds of thousands of Witnesses surprise households by knocking
on their door or ringing their bell every day, all over the world, sometimes

vii
viii PREFACE

after traversing more challenging terrain than the driveway to Mikey’s.

The visit was remarkable because this one experience encapsulates the
determination of ordinary, rank-and-file Witnesses to minister to non-­
Witnesses, the urgency they feel to share their beliefs, and the curiosity
(and occasionally, although not in this instance, animosity) of those they
seek to reach with their message of salvation.
The questions my friend asked are at the heart of this study. The rea-
sons for Jehovah’s Witnesses’ emphasis on ministry, and the issues it raises
in modern society, for both governments and the public, are explored
here. There are many tensions between their theological convictions and
the demands of the modern world and yet their spiritual mission has
remained largely unchanged since the late nineteenth century: to reach
every corner of the earth with the Kingdom Message. It was this impera-
tive that led them down the track into the deep, almost impassable, rain-
forest wilderness that is Mikey’s home.

Leicester, UK Zoe Knox

 Acknowledgments

This book took my research in a new and exciting direction. It started with
an interest in religious diversity and democracy in the former Soviet Union
and grew into a preoccupation with one particular religious group, which,
I discovered, had tested the boundaries of tolerance not just behind the
Iron Curtain but worldwide.
Many people helped me to complete this work. A great number of
archivists and librarians assisted in locating the primary source materials
underpinning this study. Most of them played brief (albeit important)
parts, but Jackie Hanes at the University of Leicester library has been con-
sistently helpful and resourceful. Chloe Renwick, a student intern, assisted
me for a few fruitful months. Various bodies awarded funding that enabled
archival research for other, smaller projects that have fed into this book,
among them the Nuffield Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Keston Institute
and the College of Arts, Humanities and Law Development Fund. A
period of Academic Study Leave from the University of Leicester helped
me to finalise it.
By far my greatest debt of gratitude is to George Chryssides. He was
very encouraging when I first contacted him with questions regarding
Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2007 and in the decade since has been hugely gen-
erous with his resources, time, and expertise. I am also very grateful to
Emily Baran, who provided valuable feedback on the final manuscript at
short notice. The various (and varied) contributors to the JW Scholars
listserv have offered keen insights into Witness history and theology, and
I am thankful to them. Any errors that appear are of course my own.
Portions of chapters 1, 4 and 7 appeared in a different form in Journal of

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Religious History 35, no. 2, (2011), Journal of American Studies 47, no. 4
(2013) and a chapter in M. D. Steinberg & C. Wanner (eds), Religion,
Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies (2012).
Colleagues at Leicester have been supportive of my endeavours, chief
among them Clare Anderson, James Campbell, Andrew Johnstone, and
George Lewis. I have benefited from discussions and email exchanges with
Miriam Dobson, Jayne Persian, and Tim Richter. Zoe Coulson, Stella
Rock, and Susan Venz were important in ways they will likely be unaware
of. Firm words from Robyn Woodrow helped during the final push.
Conversations with Mikey offered inspiration. I thought often of the late,
the great, Grant McLennan.
My family has played a vital part in pushing this project forward by
constantly asking when it would be finished. I am deeply saddened that
Granny Grey did not live to see its completion. I wish to thank my parents,
who read and commented on the manuscript at various stages, and my
husband, who accompanied me on fact-finding missions at home and
abroad. My sister provided a base in Geneva and was in other ways sup-
portive. This book is dedicated to my sons. It is my hope that one day they
will read it and perhaps even find something of interest in its pages.
 Contents

1 Introduction   1

2 Watch Tower, Witnesses, and the World  29

3 Politics  61

4 Ministry 107

5 Blood 149

6 Religion 203

7 Opposition 245

8 Conclusion 293

Index 307

xi
 List of Figures

Image 1.1 Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916), founder-leader of the

Bible Students, known from 1931 as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
© Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo 7
Image 2.1 A typical Kingdom Hall in Antrim, Northern Ireland in
2012. Congregational meetings are now less frequent than
this noticeboard indicates. © Stephen Barnes/Alamy Stock
Photo45
Image 3.1 Walter Gobitas with Lillian and William in 1940. The
children’s refusal to salute the American flag at school led to
important US Supreme Court cases. © Granger Historical
Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo 69
Image 4.1 A slide from Russell’s The Photo-Drama of Creation, first
screened in 1914. It was an innovative ministry tool and a
significant development in motion picture history. © Ryan
McGinnis/Alamy Stock Photo 117
Image 5.1 The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses determines
policy on all matters, including blood transfusion. It is based
at the world headquarters, which was located in Brooklyn
(the complex can be seen here to the right of Brooklyn
Bridge) until a recent move to Orange County, New York.
© Ryan McGinnis/Alamy Stock Photo 164
Image 6.1 Men awaiting baptism at a Jehovah’s Witness convention
at Twickenham Stadium, London in 2014. Temporary
pools were erected on the rugby pitch for the occasion.
© Matthew Chattle/Alamy Stock Photo 230

xiii
xiv List of Figures

Image 7.1 A Soviet anti-Witness poster produced in 1981. It is rich with

symbolism, aligning the organisation with interests allegedly
governing capitalist America, including American Jewry,
banking and finance, and war-mongering. Image courtesy of
The Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society, Baylor
University, Waco, Texas 260
Image 8.1 The Watch Tower stand at the Miami-Dade County Youth
Fair and Exposition in Florida, USA in 2017. Note the
prominence of the web site address. © RosaIreneBetancourt
3/Alamy Stock Photo 298
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Jehovah’s Witnesses have their origins in the tremendous religious fer-

ment of nineteenth-century America. The writer Ralph Waldo Emerson
captured the energy and fervour of the faithful and the intellectual and
spiritual mood of the times in his description of those assembled to discuss
the topic of priesthood at the Chardon Street Chapel in Boston,
Massachusetts in November 1841. ‘The composition of the assembly was
rich and various’, Emerson observed. It drew together,

…from all parts of New England, and also from the Middle States, men of
every shade of opinion from the straitest orthodoxy to the wildest heresy,
and many persons whose church was a church of one member only. A great
variety of dialect and of costume was noticed; a great deal of confusion,
eccentricity, and freak appeared, as well as of zeal and enthusiasm. If the
assembly was disorderly, it was picturesque. Madmen, madwomen, men
with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians,
Seventh-day-Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians and
Philosophers—all came successively to the top, and seized their moment, if
not their hour, wherein to chide, or pray, or preach, or protest.1

The early part of the century had seen a revival within Protestantism
and, alongside this, a rise in premillennialism, the belief that Jesus Christ
would return to the earth and take the righteous up to heaven, thus mark-
ing the start of the thousand-year epoch before the final judgment. A wide

© The Author(s) 2018 1

Z. Knox, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Secular World,
Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39605-1_1
2 Z. KNOX

interest in premillennialism was further fuelled by the prophecies of

William Miller, a Baptist preacher born in Massachusetts and raised in
upstate New York. Miller predicted that the second coming would occur
‘about the year 1843’.2 When the year passed uneventfully, the Millerites,
as his followers were known, were not discouraged. On the contrary, they
identified a precise date for the second coming: 22 October 1844. In
Miller’s own estimation, some 50,000 Millerites eagerly awaited the return
of Christ.3 The day elapsed without incident. Hiram Edson, a Methodist
preacher and dedicated Millerite, wrote vividly of their despair: ‘Our fond-
est hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came
over us as I never experienced before. It seemed that the loss of all earthly
friends could have been no comparison. We wept, and wept, until the day
dawn’.4
While the failure of Millerite prophecy gave many cause for disillu-
sionment, for others it served to reinvigorate their study of biblical chro-
nology. The major denominations that emerged under the broad
umbrella of the Adventist movement essentially arose from the varied
responses to what became known as the ‘Great Disappointment’. Edson
was a prominent figure in the early history of the Seventh-day Adventist
Church, for example, along with other former Millerites, among them
Ellen G. White. The search to identify the precise date of Christ’s return
also animated Charles Taze Russell, a haberdasher from Allegheny City,
now a part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is in his quest for clarity on
biblical chronology that the origins of the Watch Tower organisation can
be found. Small groups of men gathered in what they called ‘ecclesias’ to
discuss scripture, guided by Russell’s own tracts. These study circles
prompted the men, eventually known as Bible Students, to forge an
identity that marked them apart from the established Christian churches.
Russell’s differences from key Adventist figures amounted to no greater
a deviation than many of the Second Adventist (sometimes called First-
day Adventist) offshoots, but, in due course, the distinctiveness of their
interpretations became more apparent and they developed an indepen-
dent identity.
Thus, from their humble origins as small, loose-knit groups of Bible
Students, Russell and his followers laid the foundations of a highly visi-
ble, and frequently controversial, worldwide religious organisation,
known since 1931 as Jehovah’s Witnesses. The growth and spread of the
faith was remarkable, even by the standards of the day, when spiritual
ferment in fin de siècle United States, Great Britain, and Germany led to
 INTRODUCTION 3

the emergence of a great number of new religious communities. Since

the 1940s, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania,5
the corporate body of Witnesses, has become genuinely international,
using its distinctive doorstep ministry to spread its teachings (‘the
Truth’) around the world. There are congregations of Jehovah’s
Witnesses in 240 countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe. Most Witnesses
reside outside of the United States, giving the organisation a greater
global presence than any other ‘American original’, to use the American
historian Paul K. Conkin’s term for ‘homemade varieties of Christianity’.6
Of the 8,220,105 active Witnesses worldwide in 2015, only 1,231,867
were in the United States.7 For this reason, a study of the history of the
organisation must look beyond its birthplace and to its global commu-
nity (Image 1.1).
The number of Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide is small compared to
the major Christian churches. The Vatican counts 1.2 billion Catholics;
there are 105 million adherents of Baptist churches; and 125 million
Russian Orthodox believers. Despite its modest membership, the Watch
Tower Society has historically been at the forefront of debates about a
remarkably wide range of issues related to religious toleration.
Throughout their history, Witnesses’ unique interpretation of the Bible
has repeatedly brought them into conflict with state authorities, in both
democratic and authoritarian settings. This continues in the twenty-first
century. In 2015, for example, hundreds of Witnesses were imprisoned
around the world, the majority of them for refusing to perform military
service, organising Bible study sessions in private homes, or evangelising.
One Brussels-based human rights group documented 555 Witnesses
serving terms in South Korea for refusing to perform military service. It
also recorded cases of Witnesses imprisoned for their beliefs in Azerbaijan,
Eritrea, Singapore, and Turkmenistan.8 Historically, religious identities
have often been forged through shared persecution (the Protestant tradi-
tion in England is one such example). In the twentieth century, there
were few religious communities that so clearly forged collective identities
through oppression, and on such a large scale. This has strengthened
their group identity and cohesion. The persecution of ordinary Witnesses
around the world is a major theme in the Society’s literature to the pres-
ent day.
Far from being passive in the face of opposition, the Society has brought
cases before the highest courts and won landmark legal decisions. Mark
McGarvie, a historian of American law, argued that Witnesses were con-
4 Z. KNOX

temptuous of American values: ‘Professing their acceptance of God’s true

laws, they [Jehovah’s Witnesses] expressed disdain for many of the legal
and cultural values of the United States’.9 By casting Witnesses as
­opponents of American values we miss the extent to which they have
defined and upheld these values, particularly when it comes to legal cul-
ture. In addition to its many historic victories, the Society secured a major
win in the United States Supreme Court in 2002. The decision in
Watchtower Society v. Village of Stratton overturned an ordinance in
Stratton, Ohio which required would-be canvassers to obtain a permit
from the mayor’s office by completing a registration form. The decision
was important for the organisation because it allowed Witnesses to access
private residential property without first securing a permit. It benefited
other itinerant evangelists in the same way. More broadly, the decision
protected free speech, one of the bedrocks of the First Amendment. It
declared unlawful the requirement that anonymity be lifted through a reg-
istration process before canvassing, thus protecting the right of every
American to engage in anonymous speech.10 They have had a defining
influence on rights legislation beyond the American context, too: the
European Court of Human Rights has made multiple rulings in the
Society’s favour, overturning decisions by state authorities particularly in
Greece and the former Soviet Union.11 The impact of Witnesses on mod-
ern conceptions of religious freedom is far out of proportion to their num-
bers and cannot be dismissed as merely a product of their hostility towards
the secular world.
The determined effort to remain aloof from the world has, paradoxi-
cally, drawn the Watch Tower organisation into a remarkably wide range
of issues. Some of these are historically linked with religious minorities,
such as conscientious objection, and others not so obviously connected
with belief, such as medical treatment. M. James Penton, a historian, for-
mer Witness and fierce critic of the Society, has argued that Witnesses have
provoked a harsh response from governmental authorities because of their
interactions with the world and their persistent proselytism. He observed:
‘Most societies can and will tolerate a small, uncooperative religious
minority which submits to a ghetto-like existence. But when such a group
refuses to be isolated and attempts to make converts by the millions, then
in the eyes of many political leaders it becomes a socially disturbing force
which should be curbed or outlawed’.12
 INTRODUCTION 5

The Watch Tower Society’s interpretation of biblical verse has led to

fundamental challenges to the traditional jurisdictions of modern gov-
ernments, such as inculcating patriotism and conscripting armies, and
to more modern mandates, such as facilitating harmony in inter-­
denominational relations. Coupled with the intransigence of Jehovah’s
Witnesses in the face of obstacles to their meetings and ministry, this
has meant that Witnesses have suffered for their convictions and have
been subjected to both legal and extra-legal persecution in a wide range
of geographical contexts. These experiences have, in turn, shaped the
culture of this religious community.13 Sustained opposition can
entrench, rather than overturn, marginal positions. The persecution of
Witnesses has reinforced their conviction of the righteousness of their
cause. The Society frequently raises the Nazi Party’s repression of
Witnesses in Germany in articles on the challenges that Witnesses must
face as the only true Christians. It likens the persecution of the early
Christians for their message to the persecution of Witnesses in the mod-
ern world.14
This book examines how Jehovah’s Witnesses have challenged the
jurisdictions of modern states and influenced understandings of religious
tolerance and freedom of worship worldwide. Their influence is all the
more remarkable given that they aim to remain aloof from the world.
This detachment differs markedly from many other religious organisa-
tions, including those derived from Adventist roots. For example, the
Seventh-­day Adventist Church lobbies for religious freedom around the
world through its Department of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty
(PARL), which is based in the Church’s headquarters in the United
States. PARL reaches beyond the Seventh-day Adventist community to
lobby national governments and international organisations as well as to
cooperate with other faith communities on a range of policy issues, from
health care to prisoners’ rights. In contrast, the Watch Tower Society is
remarkably insular. Whilst it engages with the secular state through
courts of law, this is to a narrow end, namely opposing attempts to
inhibit the public ministry of Witnesses. They have unintentionally
championed the rights of a wide range of other religious minorities
around the world. The Society has long acknowledged the broader
impact of its legal advocacy but has never presented this as a motivation
for legal challenges.15
6 Z. KNOX

In addition to how and why Jehovah’s Witnesses have come into con-
flict with governmental authorities, this book also explores the ways in
which the secular world has shaped the organisation. Like other religious
groups, the Society has had to respond to new technologies, secular ide-
ologies, and geopolitical configurations to avoid obsolescence. Its inter-
pretation of scripture has altered along with worldly developments, which
has in turn led to new policies, some of which have posed novel chal-
lenges to governments. Since 1971, the Society’s doctrines have ema-
nated from the Governing Body, a group of men based at the world
headquarters. Between seven and eighteen men have served on the
Governing Body at any one time.16 The Body has determined policies and
procedures that shape the behaviour of Witnesses worldwide. This
includes public conduct, such as deportment when manning information
stalls, and intimate acts, such as the sexual positions permitted between
husband and wife.17 These behavioural guidelines sometimes shift: sexual
relations within marriage are now regarded as a matter of individual con-
science, for example. More generally, the rapid pace of the modern world
has challenged it to adapt to ever-changing conditions, just as it has the
leadership of other Christian churches. The theological foundations of
even the best known of the Society’s doctrines have not been investigated
by historians, nor has the evolving position of the Governing Body on
these issues.
It is a truism that all evangelical churches regard evangelism as a funda-
mental Christian calling. The emphasis on ministry is not unique to the
Watch Tower Society. It is the scale of this endeavour that marks Witnesses
apart from other Christian communities. The insistence on public ministry
coupled with their unusual beliefs and condemnation of other Christian
churches lends Witnesses a presence and a visibility that is far greater than
their numbers, from the densest of human societies to the most sparsely
populated. For the Mam people in Chiapas on the southern border of
Mexico, for example, Witnesses’ ‘presence in the Sierra [Madre de Chiapas]
and rain forest regions stands out more for the confrontational character
of their religious and antinationalist discourse than for their numerical
importance’.18 It is not only their approach to evangelism but also their
lifestyle that attracts attention to Witnesses and marks them apart from
other religious communities. The earliest analysts of Witnesses saw in their
day-to-day practices an entirely different way of living to that of other
faiths.19
 INTRODUCTION 7

Image 1.1 Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916), founder-leader of the Bible

Students, known from 1931 as Jehovah’s Witnesses. © Granger Historical Picture
Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

Making Witness History

In 1967, W. C. Stevenson, a sociologist (and ex-Witness), wrote:
‘Considering the size and influence of Jehovah’s Witnesses as a move-
ment, there has been surprisingly little written about it, and much of that
has come from sources so hopelessly prejudiced that their contribution is
quite worthless’.20 Precisely the same may be said half a century later.
8 Z. KNOX

There is a vast ocean of literature on Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watch

Tower Society, much of it so partial and methodologically impoverished as
to be of limited use to those seeking an understanding of the history of the
Society and the beliefs and practices of its members. Serious historians
have paid little attention to the subject. There are four main bodies of lit-
erature on Witness history: the material produced by the Society itself;
memoirs and accounts by former Witnesses; critiques written by oppo-
nents of the organisation; and historical studies. From the mid-1990s,
there was a brief flowering of Witness apologetic material, although this
has largely disappeared. Each of these will be outlined briefly here.21
The publication of religious literature has been of paramount impor-
tance to Witnesses since Charles Russell began publishing Bible tracts with
proceeds from his family’s haberdashery business. Even today, members
engaged in house-to-house ministry are known by the Society as ‘publish-
ers’ and figures on membership are given as ‘publishing statistics’.22
Consequently, historians of Witnesses have a wide range of printed mate-
rial at their disposal, including books, yearbooks, magazines, and bro-
chures, dating back to the earliest days of the movement. This body of
material offers unique opportunities and challenges for the historian.
There is a remarkable degree of uniformity in the Society’s literature
worldwide. The literature distributed by its branch offices (the national or
regional headquarters) around the world is produced by the Writing
Committee, one of six committees charged with articulating the policies of
the Governing Body. After translation into the vernacular by a linguistic
team 2500-strong, this material is published in its own printing plants. The
flagship magazine The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom (hereaf-
ter The Watchtower) is published in 303 languages simultaneously, which
includes thirty-six sign languages. It is also published in Braille in twenty
languages.23 The Society maintains a website (www.jw.org) with countless
pages of easily accessible and searchable information about Witnesses’ beliefs
and the organisation’s activities worldwide. This publicly available material
presents a sanitised and selective version of its history. This does not mark it
apart from other religious bodies, most of which make efforts to manipulate
their public image, although of course they would not use those terms.
The organisation is unusual in that it places little importance on the pro-
duction and preservation of sources on its past history, which has led to a
limited engagement with historical inquiry. Witnesses generally do not pub-
lish material on their own spiritual journeys or provide accounts of congre-
gational life independent of the official organisation, although these do
 INTRODUCTION 9

appear.24 Historians are largely denied the insights of rank-and-file Witnesses

into their organisation. The sociologist Ronald Lawson (an Adventist him-
self) observed that Seventh-­day Adventist universities and colleges have his-
torically had strong history departments due to the early preoccupation with
the fulfilment of ­prophecy.25 As a result a great deal of work has been done
on the early history of Adventism. Similarly, the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints’ emphasis on record keeping, archival collection, and his-
tory writing has led Mormon scholars to produce important work on the
origins and development of the Church.26 In stark contrast, there is no seri-
ous academic study even of Russell, the founder-leader of the organisation.27
This oversight has served to obscure the origins of the organisation.
There is a vast body of ‘apostate’ literature penned by former Witnesses
who have either defected (in the Society’s parlance, ‘disassociated’) or
been ex-communicated (‘disfellowshipped’). The purpose of these publi-
cations is usually to tell the author’s story and, in doing so, uncover the
inner workings of the world headquarters, expose the inhumanity of the
Governing Body, or reveal how the organisation ‘controls’ ordinary
Witnesses. The sociologist Bryan R. Wilson argued for the necessity of
treating the testimonies of ex-members of any faith with caution:

The disaffected and the apostate are in particular informants whose evidence
has to be used with circumspection. The apostate is generally in need of self-­
justification. He seeks to reconstruct his own past, to excuse his former affili-
ations, and to blame those who were formerly his closest associates. Not
uncommonly the apostate learns to rehearse an ‘atrocity story’ to explain
how, by manipulation, trickery, coercion, or deceit, he was induced to join or
to remain within an organization that he now forswears and condemns.28

The material produced by former Witnesses must be analysed with

Wilson’s caution in mind. As a rule, apostate literature can be identified by
its title; two widely read books are Blood on the Altar: Confessions of a
Jehovah’s Witness Minister and 30 Years a Watch Tower Slave.29 For the
most part, these kinds of accounts do not purport to contribute to the
reader’s understanding of Witness history and theology beyond exposing
the evils of the organisation, but are nonetheless often cited uncritically,
even in academic publications. This speaks to the paucity of historical
scholarship on the group.
A third type of literature is produced by those who write from a
Christian denominational perspective. Very often the explicit aim is to
help Witness readers to escape from the Society’s clutches and to find ‘true
10 Z. KNOX

Christianity’ (which takes any number of forms). Its authors use the emo-
tive language of the Christian Countercult Movement (CCM), which has
its origins in the early twentieth century, and the Anti-Cult Movement
(ACM), which emerged in the United States in the 1970s, and usually
aims to expose the fallacies in the Watch Tower Society’s interpretation of
scripture. These authors have, by and large, failed to engage with aca-
demic studies, as Religious Studies scholars George D. Chryssides and
Benjamin E. Zeller have observed: ‘… the ACM has largely decided to
disparage academic study, frequently referring to prominent academics in
the field [of New Religious Movements] as “cult apologists”’.30 Although
most of this material has very little scholarly value, it is relied upon by
scholars outside of the discipline of history who seek to understand the
fundamentals of Witness history. It has had a profound influence on public
perceptions of Witnesses (explored in Chap. 7) despite its inherent biases.
Related to this is a genre of literature that has now largely receded but
is important by virtue of its very existence, however diminished: Witness
apologetics. The best known Witness apologist, Marley Cole, wrote his
popular Jehovah’s Witnesses: The New World Society (1955) in the voice of
an outside observer, but Cole was a Witness and the book was c­ ommissioned
by the Society.31 At the turn of the millennium, the apologetic genre flour-
ished as a number of Witnesses published defences of their faith indepen-
dent of the organisation’s oversight.32 This was partly in response to the
ongoing campaign against them by members of the CCM and partly in
response to the new opportunities afforded to them by the Internet to
foster a network of like-minded believers. In addition to books, in contri-
butions to conferences, websites, blogs and chat rooms, Witnesses dis-
cussed elements of Watch Tower theology free from official scrutiny. By
2007, however, this activity had become too high profile for the Governing
Body to ignore. A short piece in Our Kingdom Ministry unequivocally
condemned the ‘independent groups of Witnesses who meet together to
engage in Scriptural research or debate’.33 The emerging apologetic com-
munity was largely silenced in the wake of this opprobrium.34
Finally, there is a slowly expanding body of literature written by profes-
sional historians. There are only two scholarly books focusing on the
organisation’s history, which is remarkable given its renown. Herbert
H. Stroup’s The Jehovah’s Witnesses (1945) was published more than sev-
enty years ago, and is thoroughly outdated. It does not address the dra-
matic international expansion after World War II, for example. M. James
Penton’s Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses (first pub-
lished in 1985 and most recently revised in 2015) is deservedly regarded a
 INTRODUCTION 11

landmark study in the field of Witness history. His estrangement from the
Witness community colours his analysis, however.35 Penton was disfellow-
shipped from his congregation in Lethbridge, Canada in 1981 and expe-
rienced a traumatic exit from the organisation, one which was covered in
the national media and has since been well documented.36 A recent book
by Chryssides matches Apocalypse Delayed in its comprehensive coverage
of the Watch Tower Society’s teachings. Jehovah’s Witnesses: Continuity
and Change (2016) is important for its recognition of the pressing chal-
lenges facing the Society and examination of how these shape the modern
organisation. Chryssides is not a historian and his treatment of the history
of the community is therefore not detailed.37
In the last decade there has been a surge of interest in Witness history
that is overturning historical orthodoxies in some areas. For example,
rather than regard them as a unique case, recent scholarship has sought to
situate the Bible Students/Jehovah’s Witnesses more firmly within the
Protestant tradition (this is directly opposed to the position taken by ACM
and CCM writers, who emphasise their departure from it). The historians
Gerhard Besier and Katarzyna Stokłosa, for example, identify many
Witness beliefs, such as the denial of the Trinity, as ‘merely part and parcel
of the history of Christian minorities’. They note that such minority
groups have always been viewed as heretics and ‘dismissed as irrelevant by
the majority’.38 The denigration and dismissal of Witnesses by the main-
stream Christian churches might therefore be seen as part of a broader
effort to marginalise newcomers. The efforts of amateur historians B. W.
Schulz and Rachael de Vienne to uncover the origins of the Bible Students
and trace their transition to a distinctive community revealed not Russell’s
radical departure from the Protestant dissenters of the day but, on the
contrary, many shared positions, at least initially, and a more organic pro-
cess of community formation than previously appreciated.39 It was during
the Rutherford era that the Bible Students/Jehovah’s Witnesses became
further removed, indeed irrevocably separated, from other premillennial
groups. Despite these recent studies, there remains a dearth of historical
scholarship on Witnesses. Besier and Stokłosa, co-editors of two essay
­collections on the community, went so far as to refer to the contributing
authors’ ‘pioneer spirit’ in their efforts to chart Witness history.40
There are only two areas on which there is a sizeable body of historical
literature on Jehovah’s Witnesses: Nazi Germany and the United States
and Canada in World War II. The focus of these studies have been remark-
ably narrow. Histories of German Witnesses have centred on the reasons
for Nazi persecution of the community and, more recently, the Society’s
12 Z. KNOX

stance towards Nazism in the first years of the regime.41 Histories of

Witnesses in Canada and the United States have largely focused on their
role in shaping civil liberties and religious rights.42 Complementing legal
historian Shaun Francis Peters’ important work, which examined the
implications of the Society’s landmark legal trials for the development of
civil rights,43 Jennifer Jacobs Henderson has opened up a new area of
inquiry by drawing on local, regional, and state rulings, tracing the
Society’s campaign of litigation down to the local level.44 This offers
insights into the priorities of the organisation’s leadership in the 1930s
and 1940s, decades when, as Chap. 2 explains, Witnesses further consoli-
dated their position as a community standing apart from other Christians.
Examining the historical contexts of Nazi Germany and wartime America
is useful for pointing to instances of sharpest conflict between Jehovah’s
Witnesses and twentieth-century governments. It is not only during war-
time that Witnesses have historically been persecuted, however, although
the historiography would suggest this. In the Soviet Union, for example,
the communist regime portrayed Witnesses as a highly politicised, fanati-
cally anti-Soviet, bellicose, misanthropic, conspiratorial religious organisa-
tion directed from the heart of the capitalist West, New York City.45 In the
late 1960s and early 1970s, Witnesses in Malawi were beaten and even
lynched for their refusal to buy membership cards for the ruling Malawi
Congress Party and expelled from the country en masse.46 During times of
peace the community has continued to test the limits of what is acceptable
in any number of countries and has often been defined explicitly in opposi-
tion to it. Moving the historiography beyond wartime experiences is essen-
tial to appreciate the influence of Witnesses across the modern world.
Historians have yet to analyse the confrontation between Jehovah’s
Witnesses and modern governments outside the United States, Soviet
Union, and Germany in a detailed manner. Important articles on Japan by
Witness researcher Caroline Wah and Australia by historian Jayne Persian
have expanded the geographic scope in crucial ways, but these analyses
focus on wartime experiences.47 There have been essays on a range of
other countries, most notably in three edited collections published in
2016.48 These essays tend to be rich in detail, often providing extensive
information about individual or family biographies or cases of intense or
sustained persecution, but weak on analysis, generally failing to connect
these developments with broader trends in religious history, compare the
experiences of Witnesses with other religious minority groups, or consider
the treatment of Witnesses across different countries or continents. The
 INTRODUCTION 13

tendency of the existing literature to focus on a single country precludes

insights that might be gained from examining the broader context. This
book situates Jehovah’s Witnesses more firmly in the broader field of reli-
gious history by attending to these historical lacunae.
It is not so much the history of the movement per se that has interested
historians but almost exclusively their persecution. The literature therefore
appraises the historical role of Witnesses in very narrow terms. Typical is
the opening sentence of an essay on Greece: ‘The modern history of
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Greece has largely been a history of persecution’.49
It is rare that historians have moved beyond this to consider the contribu-
tions Witness communities have made in other areas of history, although
there have been some recent efforts.50 As such, this book also aims to
move the field beyond the current preoccupation with casting Witness his-
tory as a story of repression. It examines the historic tensions between
Witnesses and governmental authorities, civic organisations, established
churches, and the broader public, focusing on what in Watch Tower theol-
ogy has led to conflict between Witnesses on the one hand and state and
society on the other, rather than charting a history of persecution.
The shortcomings of the existing literature is partly a reflection of the
way the history of the organisation has been presented in the Society’s
own materials. The Society tends to focus on individual countries, from
the first missionaries and converts, to obstacles overcome, and finally
growth and current status. This book draws on a wide range of sources to
offer the reader an alternative to the Society’s own publications and to the
material produced by critics of the organisation, which together largely
comprise the existing body of literature on Jehovah’s Witnesses. It also
looks beyond the limited historical contexts that have preoccupied Witness
historians. In doing so, it attends to spheres of conflict in Witnesses’ rela-
tions with the world which have been hitherto largely ignored.

Structure
The next chapter (‘Watch Tower, Witnesses, and the World’) examines the
growth of the movement from its earliest incarnation as groups of Bible
Students in Pennsylvania to its current status as an international organisa-
tion of more than eight million active (i.e., evangelising) members in 240
countries. It focuses in particular on how the organisation maintains unity
given this global reach. The chapter also explains how the Society’s bibli-
cal literalism determines Witnesses’ interactions with the world and shapes
14 Z. KNOX

their lifestyle. Readers desirous of a primer on the history of the Society

and the beliefs and practices of Witnesses are advised to consult Penton’s
Apocalypse Delayed or Chryssides’ Jehovah’s Witnesses, which both take a
more systematic, chronological approach to the subject than here.
Chapter 3, ‘Politics’, examines the historical junctures at which both
public and political hostility towards Jehovah’s Witnesses has been sharp-
est: during times of war. Since 1915, the Bible Students/Witnesses refusal
to serve in the military has led to persecution. The chapter examines the
organisation’s position on secular war, which derives from the doctrine of
political neutrality. The claim to neutrality has been rejected outright by
some states; in the Soviet Union, for example, the Watch Tower Society
was identified as an anti-Soviet political organisation and Witnesses were
subjected to state reprisals, among them mass arrest and deportation. The
refusal to bear arms has led them to be regarded with hostility by regimes
of various political stripes all over the world. The question of why
Witnesses, who repeatedly claim to be politically neutral, are so often
regarded as a highly politicised group is a key concern of this chapter.
Chapter 4, ‘Ministry’, considers how the Watch Tower organisation’s
distinctive emphasis on public ministry has brought Jehovah’s Witnesses
into conflict with governmental authorities. The imperative to spread the
truth in the Bible is not merely one component of Witnesses’ belief system
(the way field service is for Mormons, for example), but integral to their
very definition of who is considered one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The
imperative to evangelise has brought its adherents into direct conflict with
state authorities in arenas that are not traditionally the domain of religion,
such as trespass laws and child labour laws.
Jehovah’s Witnesses’ doctrinal position on blood is entirely unique.
They do not object to medical treatment per se but to the ingestion of
blood and the primary components of blood, which they believe the Bible
proscribes. Since 1945, the doctrine on blood has been the most conten-
tious of the Watch Tower Society’s teachings. It banned the storage, dona-
tion, and transfusion of blood for Witnesses of all ages. Chapter 5, ‘Blood’,
examines the scriptural basis of the Society’s teachings on blood and the
response of governments to this stance. In the modern era it has brought
into particularly sharp focus questions about the respect of the informed
refusal of treatment and the legal rights of patients, parental rights and the
welfare of children and adolescents, and the legal issues surrounding the
treatment of minors.
 INTRODUCTION 15

Chapter 6, ‘Religion’, charts the dramatic shift in attitudes towards

other religions by the organisation. Russell spoke alongside Jewish leaders
at public events and was open to dialogue and debate with clergy from
other Christian groups, regarding them as capable of achieving salvation.
His position hardened towards the end of his life, however, and the Bible
Students came to regard themselves as the exclusive bearers of ‘the Truth’.
Under Russell’s successor, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, the position
towards the mainstream Christian churches became openly hostile. He
mounted scathing attacks on the established churches, blaming Catholic
and Protestant clergy for Witnesses’ persecution throughout the world
and, after Witnesses were present on Soviet soil in large numbers after
World War II, the Orthodox Church. It examines how the Society has
presented the Christian churches and how, in turn, they have responded
to this vitriol.
Chapter 7, ‘Opposition’, examines how the mainstream media has
drawn on the issues examined in the previous four chapters (neutrality,
ministry, blood, and religion) to present Witnesses as deviant, both reli-
giously and socially. It examines how popular understandings of the
Society have been shaped by coordinated campaigns against Witnesses and
by media representations of them as a deviant, marginal community.
Witnesses were cast as the enemy other in both the United States and
Soviet Union during the Cold War, and the chapter considers why they
were appropriated in this way by these ideological opponents. It also
assesses the transmission of the ACM’s agenda to governmental policy,
focusing on initiatives prompted by the European Parliament in 1984 that
stigmatised, marginalised and, in some countries, even criminalised the
Society.
The concluding chapter identifies the major challenges for modern
states arising from the Watch Tower organisation’s unique doctrinal sys-
tem. In doing so, it demonstrates that Witnesses have repeatedly chal-
lenged 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 under-
standings of religious freedom, civil liberties, and individual rights, from
Russell’s day to the present. As this book will show, this has led Witnesses
to be viewed as subversive by governments of all ideological stripes.
16 Z. KNOX

Sources and Methodology

This book is not a critique of the Watch Tower Society’s theology or an
exposé of its inner workings. There is plenty of published material with
those foci. Readers interested solely in criticism of the Society’s teachings
are advised to consult the voluminous body of literature written by its
countless critics in the Christian churches rather than the research of an
academic historian. This is a historical analysis of the organisation that is
at once respectful of its adherents’ convictions whilst also casting a critical
eye on what the Society’s teachings have meant for the Bible Students/
Jehovah’s Witnesses since the 1870s and the historical conflict, oftentimes
of their own making, with the government authorities and agencies which
have sought to monitor, control, and sometimes restrict their activities at
the international, national, and local levels. The author is an ‘outsider’
rather than an ‘insider’ and has no claim to unique knowledge of Jehovah’s
Witnesses or perspective beyond her academic training.51 The historical
sources informing this study are, for the most part, accessible to any seri-
ous visitor to the relevant archives and libraries.
The deliberations of the Governing Body are almost entirely unknown
to those outside this small circle.52 The lack of access to sources frustrated
the earliest scholars of Witnesses. Stroup, whose The Jehovah’s Witnesses was
the earliest book-length study of the community, wrote: ‘Since the move-
ment is in many ways a “secret” one, the membership were loathe to give
me openly any information. Moreover, the leaders issued orders to all local
groups that I should not be aided in any direct way in securing my informa-
tion’. Stroup reported receiving a letter from Nathan Homer Knorr, who
became president in 1942 after Rutherford’s death. Knorr informed Stroup
that the Society ‘does not have the time, nor will it take the time, to assist
you in your publication concerning Jehovah’s witnesses’.53 This was not
merely obstructionism; as we shall see, there is an urgency to the Witnesses’
message, which means, to them, time really is of the essence. There is no
blanket policy of non-cooperation, however. The Watch Tower Society has
been willing to help researchers with their inquiries in some areas, as shown
by the fruitful correspondence from the early 1950s (when Knorr was still
president) between the world headquarters and George Shepperson, a
historian at Edinburgh University, who sought to trace the influence of the
organisation on independence movements in southern Africa. It is notable
that one response was from Milton Henschel, who became president of the
Society in 1992 (succeeding Frederick W. Franz).54
 INTRODUCTION 17

To return to the treatment of Stroup, it is significant that Knorr referred

to the pressure of time in his reproof. The Society’s teaching on the immi-
nence of Armageddon means there has been little emphasis upon the pres-
ervation of materials (after all, what use is archiving if the creation of
Jehovah’s Kingdom is imminent?). The Society’s attitude towards secular
history shapes scholars’ access to documents on the origins and develop-
ment of the organisation above all else. It is rare that there are references in
the Society’s literature to materials held in its own archives, but these do
appear.55 There is mention of the destruction of ‘official files’ during World
War I, but it is not clear what type of material was lost.56 Penton observed
during research in the 1970s that the Canadian and British archives were
‘poorly kept’ and reported in 2004 that he was told in ‘more recent years’
that the ‘American Witness archives are still not properly catalogued’.57 This
may have changed, but it is not clear what resources are held at the world
headquarters because it does not have a publicly accessible library or
archives. There is a museum exhibit and accompanying audio guide in the
main lobby of the world headquarters, but this is the extent of what is acces-
sible to scholars outside the organisation. Given the limitations on access to
non-Witness researchers, the author has turned toward the Society’s publi-
cations to trace decisions on major theological points and subsequent policy
changes. This book draws on material produced for both Witness and non-
Witness audiences from the earliest days of the movement.
The existing scholarly studies tend to draw on the Society’s own
accounts. This is evident in the literature on the persecution of Witnesses
in Malawi: the Society reported the violence in an unusual level of detail
and, perhaps as a result, journalistic and scholarly accounts drew heavily
on the Society’s publications.58 Official Watch Tower material tells a par-
tial story, of course. It is also worth noting that the Society’s reluctance to
appeal to civil liberties and religious rights organisations for representation
means that archives that we might expect to house extensive documenta-
tion on Witnesses—such as the Keston Archive at Baylor University, a
major repository of material on religion under communist regimes—often
have very little.59 Their rejection of ecumenism further contrives to keep
Witnesses out of the archives of Christian bodies.
Given the limitations of the research materials available to historians,
writing on Witness history demands that scholars are enterprising about
the range of possible sources, looking beyond the material produced by
the Watch Tower Society and by its critics. This study is based on the
analysis of an unusually wide range of primary sources that include, but is
18 Z. KNOX

not limited to, legal documents, sources produced by state agencies and
non-governmental organisations, memoirs and autobiographies, docu-
mentary films, and news reports.
As an international study, this book considers the experiences of Witnesses
around the world. It draws on material accessed in archives and libraries in
Australia, Switzerland, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States, in the
English, French, and Russian languages, as well as material in translation. In
order for this project to be manageable, there had to be limits on the author’s
ambitions. Although it would have been desirable to examine the conflict
between Witnesses and the states in all the countries in which they are active,
instead the book focuses on just four key themes and explores these through
case studies that offer a detailed examination of a particular country or region.
Although the book aims to take a global view, so much about the movement
is a product of American history and American religious culture that the his-
tory of Witnesses in the United States and the Western world looms largest.
Taken together, this thematic and transnational approach demon-
strates that Witnesses were regarded as subversive (and sometimes sedi-
tious) in a variety of political and geographical contexts and, furthermore,
that in their intransigence in the face of repression and discrimination,
Witnesses posed profound challenges to the jurisdiction of nation states
in a uniquely large range of arenas, from inculcating patriotism and regu-
lating public conduct to conscripting armies and administering health-
care practices.

Terminology
A note on the various terms used to describe Jehovah’s Witnesses and the
Watch Tower Society may be helpful here. Terminological issues are highly
significant: as we shall see, the definitions used by modern governments
informs the Society’s legal status, whether that be for the purposes of taxa-
tion or for the right to legally operate. In 1977, James Beckford, a
­sociologist of religion, wrote: ‘Few people can consider the Witnesses neu-
trally’.60 In this book, terms have been selected first for their impartiality
and second for their clarity, brevity, and simplicity. The author has striven
to use language that is balanced and impartial and does not impart judg-
ment or imply criticism. The vocabulary of Witnesses is unique to that
community. It will be made clear in the first instance when using the
Society’s own phrasing. This will be to impart a nuanced understanding
rather than to endorse its position.
 INTRODUCTION 19

Jehovah’s Witnesses are described as Christian because they regard the

Bible (Old and New Testament) as the ultimate authority on matters both
sacred and profane. Indeed, Witnesses believe they are the only Christians.
The sustained conflict between Witnesses and the wider world is regarded
by the Society as evidence of this status. It believes that the leaders, clergy,
and laity of other churches made concessions to the secular realm which
offer evidence that they are not in fact Christians at all. Witnesses eschew
Catholicism and Protestantism, believing themselves to be neither.61 Nor
do they see themselves as dissenters, since they have not broken away from
any other church. Witnesses regard the mainstream Christian churches as
‘false religion’ and errant on fundamental teachings, but nonetheless the
biblical basis of their theology coupled with their self-definition is suffi-
cient to characterise them as Christian. The key points of divergence from
mainstream Protestant churches arise from their interpretation of scrip-
ture, particularly in the New Testament.
The descriptors ‘church’, ‘denomination’, ‘sect’, ‘new religious move-
ment’, and (in particular) ‘cult’ are a terminological minefield. Sociologists
of religion have spent more than a century debating, defining, and refining
church-sect theory, which seeks to explain how established and mainstream
religious groups evolved from novel and marginal ones by charting a com-
mon journey from churches and ecclesia, through to denominations, and
finally sects and—the greatest outliers—cults.62 In the ­mid-­1980s, the soci-
ologists Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge identified a key feature
determining this transition: the level of tension between a religious group
and the ‘surrounding sociocultural environment’.63 Using their parame-
ters, the Watch Tower Society in most of the Western world today would
be regarded a sect, maintaining some tension with the state and society but
by and large existing within its parameters.64 The story is very different
when examining their status elsewhere in the world.
Whilst church-sect theory may be useful when referring to a single
country—hardly surprising given that it has mostly sought to describe the
changing religious landscape in the United States—in this book the dis-
cussion of Witnesses worldwide makes a single designation problematic.
For example, they may be thought of as a sect in the United States, where
the organisation emerged and where, in the twenty-first century, they exist
with a low level of tension with the state, but as a cult in Russia, where
they are viewed as a western import hostile to the Russian way of life to the
point that their activities were outlawed in 2017. In addition to changes
over temporal space, there are also shifts over time, which the literature on
20 Z. KNOX

church-sect transition seeks to chart. This might be due to broader soci-

etal changes (for example, the move to a five-day working week meant that
Sabbath observance on Saturday no longer pitted the Seventh-day
Adventist Church against the state) or changes within a faith (for example,
from the year 2000 the First Church of Christ, Scientist softened its
approach towards conventional medicine, conceding that it may supple-
ment healing through prayer).65 These insights from the discipline of soci-
ology are useful when considering historical changes in attitudes towards
the community in individual countries but they generally fail to account
for shifts beyond a single nation state or within a particular region.
By the 1980s, Anglophone analysts had generally ceased using the term
‘cult’ for three chief reasons: its pejorative connotations, presupposition of a
culture dominated by Christianity, and appropriation by the Anti-Cult
Movement. They generally replaced the term with ‘New Religious
Movement’ (NRM), which was intended to be value neutral. The NRM
designation also poses problems when it comes to the Society, however: the
organisation emerged in the 1870s, some century and a half ago, and can
hardly be described as new. Moreover, as Chryssides has pointed out, NRM
is often mistaken by those within the organisation as the academics’ synonym
for ‘cult’, which is quite the opposite of the intended meaning.66 Given the
problems with these designations, the author has generally avoided them.
The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society has many names around the
world, and even different renderings in English. It is formally known as
the International Bible Students Association in Great Britain, for example.
There is inconsistency in the organisation’s own use of ‘Watchtower’ and
‘Watch Tower’, across temporal, administrative, and geographical planes.
For the sake of clarity, the name of the legal corporation for Jehovah’s
Witnesses in different countries will only be given where relevant to the
analysis. The organisation will simply be referred to as ‘the Watch Tower
Society’ or ‘the Society’ throughout the book. This does not denote solely
its legal entity but the organisation’s structures as a whole. The remarkable
level of co-ordination around the world, described in Chap. 2, makes this
possible. Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves are referred to variously as
‘Witnesses’ and ‘members’. For the sake of consistency in the text, the
participants in the ecclesias which began to meet in the 1870s are called
Bible Students, although the term was not widely used until years later.
Even after the adoption of the name ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ in 1931, the
Society’s publications continued to render ‘witnesses’ with a lower case
‘w’. It is drawn from Isaiah 43:10: ‘Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord’. It
 INTRODUCTION 21

was only decades later, and in particular from the 1970s, that the Society
consistently referred to Witnesses with an upper-case ‘w’.
Since 1961, the Society has had its own version of the Bible, called the
New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT). It was translated
from Hebrew and Greek into ‘modern speech’67 by the New World Bible
Translation Committee, which at the time was based at the world head-
quarters in Brooklyn. The NWT was published in six instalments between
1950 and 1960. The complete volume was first published in 1961 and has
since been revised four times, most recently in 2013. One distinctive fea-
ture of the New World Translation was the rendering of ‘you’ in upper case
(i.e., YOU) when this referred to the plural, but this convention was aban-
doned in 2013. The most notable departure from standard translations
such as the New International Version (NIV) is the exclusive use of
‘Jehovah’ for the tetragrammaton, which is not unique to Witnesses (it was
used in the American Standard Version, for example). The attempt to ren-
der the translation accessible has led to some turns of phrase which might
be jarring for readers familiar with more standard versions of the Bible. The
biblical passages quoted in this book are from the NWT. When the sub-
stance of the translation differs markedly from the NIV, this will be noted.
These terminological clarifications indicate the extent to which this
Christian community must be considered in a more nuanced way than
simply another Christian minority. This book will explore the nature of
this departure further, examining key points of conflict between Witnesses
and modern states in a number of global contexts.

Notes
1. R. W. Emerson, ‘The Chardon Street Convention’ in J. E. Cabot (ed.),
Emerson’s Complete Works: Lectures and Biographical Sketches: Vol. 10
(London: The Waverley Book Company, Limited, n.d.), 352. Emerson’s
account first appeared in The Dial, a magazine initially published by
Transcendentalists.
2. He reached this conclusion by examining Daniel 8:14, which specified that
it would be 2300 days before the cleansing of the sanctuary. This was inter-
preted as Jesus’ return to cleanse the earth. Miller replaced these 2300 days
with years and counted from 458 BC, when Ezra was authorised to rebuild
the temple in Jerusalem, to arrive at 1843.
3. On the number of followers, see D. L. Rowe, ‘Millerites: A Shadow Portrait’
in R. L. Numbers and J. M. Butler (eds), The Disappointed: Millerism and
Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1987), 1–17.
22 Z. KNOX

4. Emphasis in original. H. Edson, ‘I Began to Muse On This Wise;..’ in

R. L. Numbers and J. M. Butler (eds), The Disappointed: Millerism and
Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1987), 215.
5. Hereafter the legal entitles the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of
Pennsylvania, Peoples Pulpit Association, and the Watchtower Bible and
Tract Society of New York, Inc. will simply be referred to as the ‘Watch
Tower Society’ or ‘the Society’.
6. P. K. Conkin, American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity
(Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
7. Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 2016 Yearbook of
Jehovah’s Witnesses (New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of
New York, Inc., 2016), 176, 186. This might be compared to the Church
of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, whose members (the Mormons)
number 15,372,337 worldwide. Of these, 6,466,267 were in the United
States. ‘Facts and Statistics’, Newsroom www.mormonnewsroom.org/
facts-and-statistics, accessed 6 April 2016. This official LDS Church site
does not specify how current these figures are.
8. W. Fautré and M. Barwick, Freedom of Religion or Belief World Annual
Report 2015: Religious Minorities under Oppression (Brussels: Human
Rights Without Frontiers International, 2016), 35. According to the
organisation, more than 19,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses have been impris-
oned in South Korea over the past sixty years. ‘South Korea Court
Acknowledges Human Rights Concerns of Conscientious Objectors (9
June 2017)’, at www.jw.org/en/news/legal/by-region/south-korea/
court-acknowledges-human-rights-concerns/, accessed 17 August 2017.
9. M. D. McGarvie, Law and Religion in American History: Public Values and
Private Conscience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 133.
10. Watchtower Society v. Village of Stratton (536 U.S. 150 2002).
11. See, for example, Kokkinakis v. Greece and Krupko and Others v. Russia,
both discussed in Chap. 7.
12. M. J. Penton, Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Third
Edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 212.
13. This point has been made in relation to the litigious nature of the Society:
P. Côté and J. T. Richardson, ‘Disciplined Litigation, Vigilant Litigation,
and Deformation: Dramatic Organizational Change in Jehovah’s
Witnesses’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40, no. 1 (2001),
11–25.
14. For a typical link, see WTBTS, 1977 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses (New
York: WTBTS, 1976), 5.
15. For example, ‘Italian District Assembly Aids Free Worship’, The Watchtower,
15 April 1951, 247; ‘Supreme Court Rules for Freedom of Speech’,
Awake!, 8 January 2003, 9–11.
 INTRODUCTION 23

16. One analyst maintained: ‘Until recently, members of the Governing Body
remained completely anonymous to Witnesses at grass roots level’.
A. Holden, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Portrait of a Contemporary Religious
Movement (London: Routledge, 2002), 32. Although there has never been
an attempt to present members of the Governing Body as celebrities,
Watch Tower literature has frequently named them. Furthermore, photo-
graphs of members were printed in Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
of Pennsylvania, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (New
York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., 1993), 116.
17. Raymond Franz wrote of the discussions within the Governing Body relat-
ing to sex in R. Franz, Crisis of Conscience: The Struggle Between Loyalty to
God and Loyalty to One’s Religion, Fourth Edition (Atlanta: Commentary
Press, 2007), 47–54.
18. R. Aída Hernández Castillo, Histories and Stories from Chiapas Border
Identities in Southern Mexico. Translated by Martha Pou (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2001), 81. Similarly, Katarzyna Stokłosa noted that while
sustained persecution under the Franco regime greatly diminished the size
of the community in Spain, ‘Toward the end of the 1950s, they were much
less than one thousand, yet their activity gave the impression of much
greater numbers’. K. Stokłosa, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses During Franco’s
Dictatorship’ in G. Besier and K. Stokłosa (eds), Jehovah’s Witnesses in
Europe: Past and Present Volume 1/1 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2016), 329.
19. G. Norman Eddy, ‘The Jehovah’s Witnesses: An Interpretation’, Journal of
Bible and Religion 26, no. 2 (Apr., 1958), 117.
20. W. C. Stevenson, Year of Doom, 1975: The Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses
(London: Hutchinson, 1967), 210.
21. For more detailed discussion see Z. Knox, ‘Writing Witness History: The
Historiography of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watch Tower Bible and
Tract Society of Pennsylvania’, Journal of Religious History 35, no. 2
(2011), 157–180.
22. In accordance with Isaiah 52:7: ‘How comely upon the mountains are the
feet of the one bringing good news, the one publishing peace, the one
bringing good news of something better, the one publishing salvation, the
one saying to Zion: “Your God has become king!”’.
23. These figures were provided by the Office of Public of Information at the
world headquarters for Jehovah’s Witnesses, New York and are current as
of 1 August 2017. The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom has
carried a number of different titles since its first incarnation as Zion’s Watch
Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence in 1876. It became The Watch Tower
and Herald of Christ’s Presence in 1909, The Watchtower and Herald of
Christ’s Kingdom in January 1939, and The Watchtower Announcing
Jehovah’s Kingdom in March 1939.
24 Z. KNOX

24. One example is O. Gol’ko, Sibirskii marshrut (Lviv: Favorit, 2004).

25. R. Lawson, ‘Onward Christian Soldiers? Seventh-Day Adventists and the
Issue of Military Service’, Review of Religious Research 37, no. 3 (Mar.,
1996), 196. According to Lawson, his affiliation made it more likely that
fellow Adventists would consent to interviews with him for his research.
26. Leonard J. Arrington’s oeuvre is a prime example.
27. One author finally answered the call made in 1965 by the historian of mil-
lenarianism David E. Smith for an impartial study of ‘Charles T. Russell,
Millennial-Dawnism, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ (D. E. Smith,
‘Millennial Scholarship in America’, American Quarterly 17, no. 3 (1965),
549), with mixed results. F. Zydek, Charles Taze Russell: His Life and
Times: The Man, the Millennium and the Message (Connecticut: Winthrop
Press, 2010) is intended as a serious biographical study but has shortcom-
ings. See Z. Knox, ‘The History of the Jehovah’s Witnesses: An Appraisal
of Recent Scholarship’, Journal of Religious History 41, no. 2 (2017),
252–253.
28. B. Wilson, The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism: Sects and New Religious
Movements in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 19.
29. D. A. Reed, Blood on the Altar: Confessions of a Jehovah’s Witness Minister
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996); W. Schnell, 30 Years a Watch
Tower Slave (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001). At the time this book
was going to press, a new and lengthy memoir looked likely to become
influential: L. Evans, The Reluctant Apostate: Leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses
Comes at a Price (no place of publication: JLE Publishing, 2017).
30. G. D. Chryssides and B. E. Zeller, ‘Opposition to NRMs’ in G. D.
Chryssides and B. E. Zeller (eds), The Bloomsbury Companion to New
Religious Movements (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 177.
31. Cole described himself as a ‘reporter’ and wrote: ‘I had tried to study them
to the point where I could speak their language, think their thoughts,
catch their vision’. M. Cole, Jehovah’s Witnesses: The New World Society
(New York City: Vantage Press, 1955), 168–169.
32. See, for example, A. Byatt and H. Flemings (eds), Your Word is Truth
(Malvern: Golden Age Books, 2004); G. Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses
Defended: An Answer to Scholars and Critics Third Edition (Huntington
Beach, CA: Elihu Books, 2000).
33. ‘Question Box’, Our Kingdom Ministry, September 2007, 3.
34. D. R. Jacobs, ‘Unofficial Jehovah’s Witness Apologetics: The Rise and Fall
of a Precarious Community’ 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), 75–92.
35. This point is further developed in Knox, ‘The History of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses’, 258. See also M. J. Penton, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Third
 INTRODUCTION 25

Reich: Sectarian Politics under Persecution (Toronto, Buffalo, London:

University of Toronto Press, 2004).
36. J. A. Beverley, Crisis of Allegiance: A Study of Dissent Among Jehovah’s
Witnesses (Burlington, ON: Welch Publishing Company, 1986); Penton,
Apocalypse Delayed, 157.
37. G. D. Chryssides, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Continuity and Change (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2016).
38. G. Besier and K. Stokłosa, ‘Introduction: Jehovah’s Witnesses in Western
and Southern Europe’ in G. Besier and K. Stokłosa (eds), Jehovah’s
Witnesses in Europe: Past and Present Volume 1/1 (Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2016), 6.
39. B. W. Schulz and R. de Vienne, A Separate Identity: Organizational
Identity Among Readers of Zion’s Watch Tower: 1870–1887 (Milton Keynes:
Fluttering Wings Press, 2014).
40. Besier and Stokłosa, ‘Introduction: Jehovah’s Witnesses in Western and
Southern Europe’, 12.
41. C. E. King, The Nazi State and the New Religions: Five Case Studies in
Non-Conformity (New York, Toronto: E. Mellon Press, 1982); Penton,
Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Third Reich; D. Garbe, Between Resistance and
Martyrdom: Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Third Reich (Madison, WI: University
of Wisconsin Press, 2008). A notable exception is the book-length essay
A. Nerlich, ‘“And Suddenly the Germans were here”: The Persecution of
Jehovah’s Witnesses in France and Luxembourg’ in G. Besier and
K. Stokłosa (eds), Jehovah’s Witnesses in Europe: Past and Present Volume
1/1 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 86–288.
42. See, for example, the following: S. Barringer Gordon, The Spirit of the Law:
Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America (Cambridge, MA
and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010),
15–55; W. Kaplan, State and Salvation: The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Their
Fight for Civil Rights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989);
Z. Knox, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses as Un-Americans? Scriptural Injunctions,
Civil Liberties, and Patriotism’, Journal of American Studies 47, no. 4
(2013), 1081–1108; D. R. Manwaring, Render Unto Caesar: The Flag-
Salute Controversy: A Study of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Legal Struggle against
Constitutional Flag Salute in Public Schools (Chicago, London: University
of Chicago Press, 1962); M. O. Newton, Armed with the Constitution:
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Alabama and the U.S. Supreme Court, 1939–1946
(Tuscaloosa, London: University of Alabama Press, 1995); I. Weiner,
Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism
(New York and London: New York University Press, 2013), 98–135.
43. S. F. Peters, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the
Dawn of the Rights Revolution (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas,
2000).
26 Z. KNOX

44. J. Jacobs Henderson, Defending the Good News: The Jehovah’s Witnesses’
Plan to Expand the First Amendment (Spokane, WA: Marquette Books,
2010).
45. 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); Z. Knox, ‘Preaching the Kingdom Message: The
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Soviet Secularization’ in C. Wanner (ed.), State
Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 244–271.
46. T. Hodges, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Africa (London: Minority Rights Group,
1985), 4–5.
47. C. R. Wah, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Empire of the Sun: A Clash of
Faith and Religion during World War II’, Journal of Church and State 44,
no. 1 (2002), 45–72; J. Persian, ‘“A National Nuisance”: The Banning of
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia in 1941’, Flinders Journal of History and
Politics 25 (2008), 4–17. Also notable is the special issue on Witnesses
under communist regimes of Religion, State & Society 30, no. 3 (2002).
48. G. Besier and K. Stokłosa (eds), Jehovah’s Witnesses in Europe: Past and
Present Volume 1/2 and Volume 2/2 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2016); 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).
49. A. Reppas and T. Sigalas, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses in Greece: A History of
Endurance’ in G. Besier and K. Stokłosa (eds), Jehovah’s Witnesses in
Europe: Past and Present Volume 1/1 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2016), 289.
50. M. Angel Plazza Navas, ‘Music and Jehovah’s Witnesses: An Historical
Approach to their Hymnal and Music Practices’ in the conference proceed-
ings: 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), 23–45.
51. For a summary of this debate, see G. D. Chryssides, ‘The Insider/Outsider
Problem in the Study of NRMs’ in G. D. Chryssides and B. E. Zeller (eds),
The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements (London:
Bloomsbury, 2016), 29–32.
52. The most revealing account of the Governing Body’s decision-making is
by Raymond Franz, the nephew of Frederick Franz, President of the
Society from 1977 until 1992. Raymond Franz worked at the world head-
quarters for fifteen years, for nine of those as a member of the Governing
Body (1971–1980). He was disfellowshipped. Franz, Crisis of Conscience.
 INTRODUCTION 27

53. H. H. Stroup, The Jehovah’s Witnesses (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1945), vi.
54. See the correspondence preserved in the Papers of George Albert
Shepperson, The University of Edinburgh: CLX-A-18.
55. See, for example Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania,
Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose (Brooklyn, NY: Watchtower Bible
and Tract Society of New York, Inc. and International Bible Students
Association, 1959), 166–167 (footnotes b and c).
56. Ibid., 89.
57. Penton, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Third Reich, 239.
58. See for example K. Jubber ‘The Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in
Southern Africa’, Social Compass: Special Issue on Jehovah’s Witnesses 34,
no. 1 (1977), 121–134.
59. There are some instances of the Society appealing to human rights organ-
isations to aid Witnesses during periods of intense persecution, such as
under the Franco regime, when Spanish Witnesses wrote to Amnesty
International asking for help to alleviate their plight. These are the excep-
tion rather than the rule. Stokłosa, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses During Franco’s
Dictatorship’, 327–328.
60. J. Beckford, ‘Introduction: The Watchtower Movement World-wide’,
Social Compass: Special Issue on Jehovah’s Witnesses 24, no. 1 (1977), 5.
61. For a concise explanation of why the Society does not identify as Protestant,
see ‘Our Readers Ask: Are Jehovah’s Witnesses a Protestant Religion?’, The
Watchtower, 1 November 2009, 19. For a scholarly analysis of the polemi-
cal, politicised nature of the term ‘Protestant’ from its inception, see
A. Ryrie, ‘“Protestantism” as a Historical Category’, Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society 26 (2016), 59–77.
62. For the earliest iteration see E. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the
Christian Churches, 2 vols. Translated by Olive Wyon (New York: Macmillan,
1931).
63. R. Stark and W. Bainbridge, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival
and Cult Formation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
64. On the transition from sect to church in the French context, see
R. Dericquebourg, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses in Twentieth-Century France’ in
G. Besier and K. Stokłosa (eds), Jehovah’s Witnesses in Europe: Past and
Present Volume 1/1 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016),
47–80.
65. See R. Lawson, ‘Church and State at Home and Abroad: The Evolution of
Seventh-Day Adventist Relations with Governments’, Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 64, no. 2 (1996), 279–311; R. B.
Schoepflin, Christian Science on Trial: Religious Healing in America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
28 Z. KNOX

66. These and other definitional challenges are outlined in G. D. Chryssides,

‘New Religious Movements: Some Problems of Definition’, Diskus 2,
no. 2 (1994) at http://jbasr.com/basr/diskus/diskus1-6/CHRYSSI2_2.
TXT, accessed 13 August 2017.
67. New World Bible Translation Committee, New World Translation of the
Holy Scriptures (New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1961), 5.
 CHAPTER 2

Watch Tower, Witnesses, and the World

Unlike most of the groups that emerged from the broad umbrella of the
Adventist movement, the Bible Students not only survived into the twen-
tieth century but flourished.1 The Seventh-day Adventist Church, the best-
known outgrowth of Adventism, was established in 1863 and thus has
greater longevity than Charles Russell’s organisation by just a decade or so.
Although Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses emanated from
different strands of Adventism (Seventh-day and Second, respectively),
both have established a level of visibility and a global presence that sur-
passes that of other groups arising from the tradition. Jehovah’s Witnesses
have, it might be ventured, more notoriety than Seventh-day Adventists,
since the latter secured a greater level of acceptance over the course of the
twentieth century whilst, in many countries, Witnesses existed in a state of
considerable tension with the world around them.
This chapter will identify five key reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have
come into conflict with state authorities. Firstly, the conclusions Russell
reached from the close study of scripture led him to resolutely reject some
fundamental creeds of the established churches, such as the existence of
hell. This has created a challenge for governments that have sought to
defend mainstream Christian traditions from criticism. Secondly, Russell’s
successor, Joseph Rutherford, consciously forged a separate, distinct iden-
tity for the Bible Students, primarily by introducing practices that brought
them into the public domain more often than, and in ways different from,

© The Author(s) 2018 29

Z. Knox, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Secular World,
Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39605-1_2
30 Z. KNOX

other Christian communities. A new name was part of this strategy.

Thirdly, the Watch Tower Society teaches that true Christians are ‘no part
of the world’. The ostensible detachment from the earthly realm has led
Witnesses to refuse to comply when governments seek to enroll citizens in
patriotic projects. Fourthly, Witnesses cite biblical scripture as their source
of authority but—crucially—as interpreted by the Governing Body of
Jehovah’s Witnesses. Its teachings are adhered to by Witnesses even when
this means deviation from standard practices, societal expectations, or
legal requirements. Finally, ever present is a tension that results from the
fact that Witnesses do not do consider themselves a part of the world and
yet they reside, labour, and pursue leisure within it. They live alongside
non-Witnesses whilst maintaining a distinct lifestyle, which makes them at
once familiar and foreign to those beyond the community. The chapter
will conclude by considering the impact of the dramatic international
expansion after World War II on the organisation. Its worldwide presence
and global reach has meant that tensions between Witnesses and secular
authorities have been evident in different historical, ideological, and
national contexts, some of which this book explores.

Departures from Christian Convention

Russell was of Scots-Irish descent. He was raised a Presbyterian, but in his
youth became a member of the Congregational Church and the Young
Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). He later grew disillusioned with
the established Christian churches and, in 1868, began to question many
of their fundamental tenets. In Russell’s own telling, this ‘threatened to be
the utter shipwreck of faith in God and the Bible…’.2 This all changed
when, in 1869, he wandered into a sermon given by Jonas Wendell, a
Second Adventist preacher, quite by accident. Russell had only gone along
to see if anyone speaking at the service ‘had anything more sensible to
offer than the creeds of the great churches’. Russell wrote that Wendell’s
sermon ‘sent me to my Bible to study with more zeal and care than ever
before’. Ultimately, it was not his faith in God that was wrecked but his
‘confidence in human creeds and systems of misinterpretation of the
Bible’.3 He resolved to examine scripture and determine the true nature of
Christianity.
Russell found a receptive audience for his (re)interpretation of scrip-
ture. Beginning in 1870, small groups of men began meeting to study
scripture, guided by ‘Pastor’ Russell’s own tracts.4 A. H. Macmillan, an
 WATCH TOWER, WITNESSES, AND THE WORLD 31

early associate of Russell and later a key figure in the organisation, explained
how these study circles (ecclesias) worked in Faith on the March (1957),
his history of the organisation. He described the method followed by the
men as they explored scripture together: ‘Someone would raise a question.
They would discuss it. They would look up all related scriptures on the
point and then, when they were satisfied on the harmony of these texts,
they would finally state their conclusion and make a record of it’.5
According to Macmillan, this approach mirrored that of the first-century
Christians and became the pattern for Witnesses’ collective study of the
Bible.6 From the earliest days of the movement, Russell’s followers drew
on scripture to question accepted tenets of Christianity. As we shall see,
these were not minor deviations from the churches’ teachings but funda-
mental challenges to them, mounted with an increasing vehemence (and
becoming inflammatory in the Rutherford era).
A unique theology thus began to take form in the ecclesias, and the
participants developed a collective identity as a result. They were known
by a variety of names. Their opponents in the Christian churches scorn-
fully called them ‘no-hellers’,7 but they were more commonly known as
‘Russellites’ or ‘Millennial Dawners’, and their study groups as ‘Dawn
Circles’, after Russell’s book series Millennial Dawn (later renamed Studies
in the Scriptures). They became best known as Bible Students. Their con-
clusions, which were largely inseparable from Russell’s own insights, were
widely disseminated through books, booklets, and tracts, beginning with
fifty thousand copies of Russell’s booklet The Object and Manner of Our
Lord’s Return in 1877. This marked the start of a prolific publishing ven-
ture. Russell’s personal wealth allowed him to circulate his writing widely.8
Most notable was the periodical Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s
Presence, which eventually became The Watchtower. The opening sentence
of the first issue, published on 1 July 1879, stated the aims of the
publication:

That we are living ‘in the last days’—‘the day of the Lord’—‘the end’ of the
Gospel age, and consequently, in the dawn of the ‘new’ age, are facts not
only discernible to the close student of the Word, led by the spirit, but the
outward signs recognizable by the world bear the same testimony, and we
are desirous that the ‘household of faith’ be fully awake to the fact…9

It was, for Russell as for today’s Witnesses, imperative to reach the wid-
est audience possible. Zion’s Watch Tower was published monthly. The
32 Z. KNOX

print runs for the first issue in July and the second issue in August were
6000 copies, sent out as samples. Thereafter, readers were asked to pay
fifty cents for an annual subscription. It was sent free of charge to those
with an interest in Russell’s message but without the means to
subscribe.10
Russell was explicit that he was not the founder of a new religion, nor
was he a prophet. He was not even an ordained minister. Although he was
widely known as Pastor Russell, this was an honorary title given to him by
the Bible Students.11 Instead, Russell said he was merely an earnest ­student
of the Bible. He claimed no particular insight or vision but simply a dedi-
cation to uncovering the true meaning of scripture and spreading the mes-
sage. On a number of fundamental points Russell’s interpretations ran
counter to the teachings of the established Christian churches. Although
the organisation has changed so radically since his death in 1916 that it
would be barely recognisable to Russell today, on matters of theology
there has been a more modest change. Later in the chapter, the most sig-
nificant points of deviation are considered by way of demonstrating how
they challenge many common Christian conventions. The beliefs that
mark them apart will be discussed here, since it is assumed the reader will
be familiar with the basic tenets of Christianity.
Jehovah’s Witnesses follow the teachings of Jesus, whom they regard
the only-begotten son of God. His life course is, they believe, accurately
described in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Witnesses
have a distinctive view on his identity: they believe that Jesus Christ and
the Archangel Michael were one and the same. The Society teaches that
the name Michael was given to God’s son before he left heaven and after
his return; he was known as Jesus Christ during his time on Earth. The
Bible’s rendering of ‘archangel’, meaning ‘chief or principal angel’, in
the singular in Jude 9 is one piece of evidence cited in support of this.12
Witnesses deny any scriptural basis for the interpretation that the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit together form one God united in the Trinity.13
Witnesses believe that the Kingdom of God is a government in heaven.14
The year 1914 is crucial to the Watch Tower Society’s teachings on heaven.
Russell taught that Jesus returned to rule the Earth invisibly in 1914.
Rutherford reaffirmed that it was indeed a watershed year marking the
invisible presence of Christ in a speech in February 1918. (The speech was
the foundation of the tract ‘Millions now living will never die!’, one of the
most widely circulated publications in the organisation’s history).
Rutherford wrote: ‘The physical facts, the fulfilled prophecy and prophecy
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Pasha, even whilst they were conspiring to perpetrate the Treaty of
Sevres. Greece likewise was adopting the insolent attitude of the
conqueror, more galling to the Turks than the domination of any
other foe. Upon the Commission instituted to govern the affairs of
Turkey in general and Constantinople in particular, England glanced
with wary eye at the deeds of her colleagues, France, Italy, and
Greece. It might be urged that England has quite enough to do with
her own vast territories and enormous responsibilities without adding
to the burden by taking more than a nominal interest in the
development of Turkey. Against such a view the men on the spot
protest with indignation. There is a land of inestimable fruitfulness. It
lies on the route of valuable British possessions. It is possessed by a
race holding high repute amongst the peoples of that part of the
world which is not averse to England. Widely advertised Armenian
massacres ought not to be permitted to blind the untravelled to the
fact that the Turk is regarded very highly by most people who know
him well. His faults of cruelty and corruption he shares with all
Eastern peoples. His virtues of cleanliness, sobriety, and (in the
country) honesty and industry mark him out for peculiar admiration. I
have to confess that I met nobody who expressed dislike of the Turk.
I met everywhere people who spoke with contempt of the Greek and
the Armenian.
“Tell me,” I said to a British officer in Constantinople, “why does
everybody hate the Armenians? I do not myself know any of these
people; but I can find nobody with a good word to say for them. I
have just heard one educated man declare that the only thing to do
with the Armenians is to massacre them.”
“It is certainly true,” he replied. “There is a saying in this part of the
world that it takes two Jews to make a Greek, two Greeks to make a
Levantine, and two Levantines to make an Armenian. Perhaps that
explains it.”
“You mean that they are notorious beyond all words for
commercial dishonesty and extortionate dealing? But is that all? That
is very bad, of course; but does it explain all the bitter hate?”
 “I don’t know; but I don’t believe for a moment that it is purely a
hatred of Christianity. The Turks are a warlike race. They hate the
pacifism of races like the Jews and the Armenians. To them it is
effeminate weakness. They despise the drunkenness of Christian
tribes. They are abstainers by religion. And the plundering of the
peasants by Christian extortioners has done more to set the
Crescent against the Cross than any preaching of Christian doctrine
could have done by itself.”
“I am proposing to return to this part of the world to visit Armenia in
the spring, unless the Bolsheviks from Angora capture it between
now and then.”
“Well, good luck to you!” said the young Englishman. “Nothing
would tempt me to go. Please remember that if half the Armenians
reported to have been massacred had really died, there would not
have been any Armenians left to visit!”
The Bolsheviks have captured Armenia, and the Allies do nothing
to help. Therein the Armenians have a real grievance. Their really
marvellous propaganda had secured them the sympathy of the
whole Western world. They had received distinct or tacit promises
from the Allies and the League of Nations. But neither the one nor
the other has done anything to save them from their frightful fate at
the hands of Russian Bolsheviks and Kemalist Turks.
Prince S——, the nephew of Abdul Hamid, is a cultured Turkish
gentleman of the very first order. His beautiful little daughter was
educated in England. She speaks perfect English, her father
admirable French. Over the Turkish coffee, thickly sweet and
delicious, we discussed the future of Turkey. I had met the prince
and his daughter first in Switzerland, at Caux, overlooking the
Montreux end of the Lake of Geneva. The Castle of Chillon, and
mountains of Savoy on the French side make a picture of
extraordinary beauty. Then, as in Constantinople, he spoke warmly
of England. I have seldom met a foreigner who had a higher opinion
of England and English institutions. In Turkish matters the prince
appears to stand half-way between the Turkish Nationalists and the
representatives of the old order. He looks for the day of an
independent Turkey, self-governing and governing with intelligence;
but he appears to think that day has not yet arrived. Before that,
there should be universal education for Turkey, free and progressive.
The rich, natural soil of agricultural Turkey should be subject to
intensive cultivation on modern scientific lines. Land should be made
available for all would-be cultivators; estates limited in size, but not
alienated from the owners by the State.
Till the day of its emancipation arrives this patriot prince would
have for Turkey the assistance of England. It was obvious to the
least interested amongst us that Constantinople suffered atrociously
from the divided authority of the Allies. Who were their masters—
French, Italian, British, or Greek—the wretched Turks really did not
know. Each set of nationals in authority got into the others’ way.
There were general suspicions and dislikes. Could the prince have
had his way, Turkey would have been ruled jointly by Turks and
British until education in responsibility had gradually but surely fitted
the Turks to be absolute masters in their own house.
This amiable cultured Turkish gentleman admitted the awful
atrocities committed by the Turkish Government in the past against
the Armenians, and regretted them. His secretary and not himself
spoke of equally fearful cruelties practised upon the Turks by
Armenians—the same dreadful game of reprisals with which a mad
world appears to be anxious to destroy itself.
A marked feature of the British personnel in Turkey is the extreme
youth of most of its members. Those who do not take themselves
and their work very seriously do not suffer. Those who are
conscientious and have their country’s interests really at heart suffer
acutely, not only through the physical strain of getting things done
against indifferent officialism in a country of unequalled opportunities
and matchless interest, but from the mental pain which is born of
seeing great opportunities passed by, or seized by wiser people in
the interests of nations other than England.
 There is a new-born Socialist Movement in Constantinople—at
least, it calls itself Socialist. It came into being as the result of a
successful tram strike. As a matter of fact it is really a Trade Union
Movement. It has little knowledge of the economics of Marx. Its
leader would be described as a Radical in England. I have the same
view about the Socialist Movement that Prince S—— has about the
Nationalist Movement—that a period of education would be a
valuable and is, indeed, a necessary precedent to the agitation for
Socialist government, even municipal government.

When we boarded the train in Constantinople it was intensely hot.

Within an hour of leaving it blew so cold that the women of our party
were constrained to put on their furs. For two days the intense cold
lasted. Not until we had passed over the bleak moor and forest lands
of Bulgaria, reminiscent of certain parts of Scotland, did we begin to
feel anew the warmth of autumn days. Milder Serbia warmed our
blood, and we ventured to make an excursion into Belgrade, where
the express rested for four hours. Tired of train food, we betook
ourselves in a party to the Hôtel Moscou and enjoyed a first-rate
supper amongst the joyous Serbs.
I hope to see Belgrade by day in order to revise my opinion of the
city. As it is, I have the poorest opinion of it. Its streets are paved
with cobble-stones and are full of shell-holes which would hold the
proverbial horse and cart! In the pitch black of the night—for the
streets were either badly lighted or not lit at all—we were constantly
tumbling into the smaller of these unspeakable holes or twisting our
ankles on the round cobble-stones. One required the feet of a
mountain goat to maintain oneself erect in such abominable
thoroughfares.
But a pleasing experience superseded the unpleasant memory of
Belgrade streets. I had been given a letter to post to Budapest by a
lady in Constantinople, who feared it might be opened if posted in
that city. I had given a solemn promise that this should be done. To
venture into those Belgrade streets alone was impossible. I had to
wait until my fellow-delegates had done feasting. Time passed, and
still they ate and ate. Soon it would be impossible. The train was due
to leave in a little while. I waited. The eating went on. I rose to go
alone. M. Marquet’s kind French heart was touched. He went with
me. We wandered over half Belgrade before we found the post
office, and when we found it it was closed! We walked to the back of
the premises, and there were two young men packing letters into
bags. In a mixture of French, English, and German we contrived to
make them understand we wanted a stamp. One of them, smiling
broadly, took out his pocket-book and produced the necessary
article, sticking it on to the letter himself, which he then pushed into
his bag. We laid down a substantial coin. But with a graceful bow
and a fine smile he declined payment. We shook hands cordially and
parted, the travellers with a happier estimate of Belgrade than its
stones had supplied!
If one can in any real measure judge a country’s state from the
railway train, Serbia and the highlands of Jugo-Slavia are enjoying
considerable prosperity. At the time we passed through the country
the same abundance of produce was everywhere visible as in
Belgium. In addition, the little pigs for which Serbia is renowned were
numberless. They ran all over the lines at the railway stations and
clustered in herds round every cottage door. The neat, bright comfort
of the mountain farms of the Tyrol made a very profound impression,
and were a real joy to those of us who were on the look out for as
much happiness and prosperity as we could discover in a world torn
with sorrow.
A rush round the city of Trieste, a long wait in the railway station in
Venice on account of a serious railway accident just ahead, a peep
at Milan, a glimpse at Lausanne, and we were on the last stage of
our long journey to Paris. The journey had been fairly comfortable
with the exception of the last day. There was no water for washing in
our carriage. I mean by “our carriage” the one in which the English
delegates were. We gave mighty tips, but the attendant would not be
comforted and refused to get us more water! He protested savagely
at the amount of water the English people used. He complained of
the number of times we thought it necessary to wash ourselves. We
were thoroughly in disfavour. We bore the discomfort and the feeling
of not looking our best till we got to Paris. There came relief,
cleanliness and good coffee. Twelve more hours and we should see
the home faces once more and recount our adventures to interested
friends.
Every one of us vowed we would not go abroad again for a very
long while. Every one of us has broken that pledge. It must be so.
The human spirit, once having escaped from the circumscribing
atmosphere of native city or even country, will never more be content
to be environed perpetually by so much less than it has known. It
must go out again and again to the scenes and the people it has
known in other lands, or break its wings against the bars of its cage,
imprisoned in the infinitely small and narrow. Let all who can travel,
for the broadening of their minds, the widening of their outlook, the
strengthening of their sympathies. And let those who cannot travel
read, so that they may know what the men and women of other
lands are thinking and feeling, and may co-operate with them in the
shaping of brighter and better things for mankind.
 CHAPTER XV
THE DISTRESSFUL COUNTRY

Late one evening I was returning home from a Fabian lecture

when a tall, middle-aged man, with slightly wavy hair and a pair of
merry blue eyes, accosted me. He carried under his arm a large and
rather untidy brown-paper parcel, which looked as though it might
contain groceries and gave him the appearance of the middle-class
father of a family. His voice was soft and pleasant, his accent
unmistakably Irish.
“Pardon me, madam, but are you an Irishwoman?” he asked
interestedly.
“No,” I replied. “I was born in Yorkshire. But why do you ask?”
“Forgive me, but your voice carries a long way, and I could not
help hearing a part of your conversation with the lady who left you at
Hampstead. You were talking about Ireland. Your voice and the kind
things you said about Ireland made me think you might be an
Irishwoman.”
“No,” I said again; “I am not Irish, but I am going to Ireland to-
morrow.”
“Ah!” he said, drawing a deep breath. “And why are you going to
Ireland at a time like this? Surely not for pleasure?”
“No, indeed; there can be no pleasure in Ireland for anybody with
a spark of human feeling. I am going to Ireland to try to discover the
truth, if that is possible.”
“You are a newspaper woman, then?” was the next query. I made
no further answer, feeling that the conversation with a perfect
stranger, albeit a courteous and sympathetic one, had gone on long
enough, when he began to speak with added warmth both of speech
and manner.
 “Ah! you English people, you do not understand, you never will
understand Ireland. In your imagination you have peopled our island
with devils and conceive it to be your duty to exterminate the plague.
‘The dirty Irish’ is the way you think about us. Hunting down Irishmen
is by some Englishmen regarded as legitimate sport. I am a native of
Cork. I am not a Sinn Feiner. I do not want to see Ireland cut loose
from the Empire. And I deplore as much as anybody the murders on
both sides. But I understand my countrymen. I doubt if you do. I very
much doubt if you can. The differences are too great. But whosoever
goes to Ireland without clearly realizing that the English and the Irish
are two distinct and separate nations will fail to understand the things
he sees and hears when he gets there. I am constantly hearing talk
on this side about the possibility of Ireland making terms with
Germany, becoming even a German province if she secures self-
government.” Here his voice became louder and his manner more
excited than ever; the newspaper he was holding dropped from his
hand and fluttered away in the wind. “Surely if such people
understood the racial differences between English and Irish they
would realize that the same applies, though in a much greater
degree, to the German and Irish?”
“Believe me,” I said, holding out my hand, “there are many people
in this country who do understand and who labour continuously to
create understanding in others. They yearn to bring about peace
between the two countries. Between peoples who speak the same
language war is a crime. I am going to Ireland to get more
knowledge about her, to talk to her people directly. And when I return
I shall join the band of workers for peace and reconciliation.”
He raised his hat, renewed his apologies for detaining me, and
disappeared. Under the gas lamp I caught a glimpse of tears on his
lashes—tears of a strong man for Ireland, his native land, a suffering
thing he cannot help.
The Labour Party’s delegation to Ireland had not included a
woman. Several members of the Women’s International League, and
a few Quaker women on errands of mercy, had visited the country.
This was some time before the Labour Party had decided upon an
official visit. The secretary of the party had received from an
Irishwoman a letter imploring him to include a woman amongst his
investigators, but it was not thought wise to do this by the men on
account of the danger and inconvenience. When one of the
executive proposed my name as one of the delegates Mr.
Henderson, with the most paternal solicitude, suggested that the
Executive Committee ought not to take upon itself the responsibility
of running any woman into such real danger as existed for travellers
in general and investigators in particular in Ireland at that time. So
the proposal fell to the ground.
No such objection was raised when the delegation to Russia was
appointed. On the contrary, Mr. Henderson strongly pressed me to
go to Russia. I cannot imagine that the concern of this genuinely
kind-hearted man for the safety for his women colleagues was in
abeyance on that occasion. Mr. Henderson had been to Russia and
suffered considerable danger himself. I can only conclude that this
serious-minded colleague of mine believed the danger to be greater
in Ireland under British rule than in Russia under the rule of the
Bolsheviks! I agreed to go to Russia with some reluctance on my
own account. Not because of any fear of going. Atrocity stories and
wild tales of epidemics had no terrors for me. But the time of the
proposed Russian visit was inopportune. I had received invitations to
go to Poland, Spain, and Hungary. Preparations for the journey to
Madrid had already been made and had to be cancelled.
But there were no obstacles to the Irish visit. I wanted to go.
Irishwomen wanted me to go. I received one pressing letter after
another. The Labour Party’s objection was laughed to scorn. I must
say the idea that women who have lived more summers than they
care to confess cannot be allowed to take the responsibility for their
own lives, but must be a burden and a charge, whether they like it or
not, on the consciences of their men comrades is in these days
vastly amusing; particularly to the women of the Labour Movement,
whose conception of progress is of equality of effort, of danger, of
suffering, and of reward for men and women.
None the less, I understood and valued at its very real worth the
altogether gracious and kindly thought which lay at the root of the
action of the Labour Executive.
 It was impossible to resist the pleading of Irishwomen that as
many women as could do so should go over there and see with their
own eyes what the women and children of Ireland are called upon to
endure.
On Saturday, January 15, 1921, I left Euston for Holyhead, alone,
and without having in any way advertised my intention. I landed in
Dublin in the evening and proceeded to friends in one of the
suburbs. We drove from the station in a jaunting-car. In such a
fashion did I get my first glimpse of Dublin under what the majority of
Irishmen consider to be foreign occupation. Westland Row Station,
as well as Kingstown Harbour, was full of soldiers and police.
Passengers coming off the boat were heavily scrutinized. We were
closely examined in the train. In the streets and public places of all
sorts in every town I visited during the ten days of my visit, even in
country villages and lanes, the atmosphere was tense with the
expectation of the sudden assault, the quick firing of rifles, the rough
arrest, the climbing of military lorries on to the footpaths, the
humiliating search, the heart-breaking insult. Women and men alike
feared these things. Here was an equality of treatment which nobody
objected to so far as Irishwomen were concerned, least of all the
Republican women themselves, who would think shame of
themselves if they were unwilling to suffer what their men are called
upon to endure. But the pity of it! Little children are often victims.
Boys and girls have been shot dead.
On this night the streets of Dublin were lively with the clatter of
armoured cars and lorry loads of singing soldiers not too sober.
Occasionally a distant shot was heard. Now and then a side-car
packed with merry little dare-devils flaunting their green flag
provocatively for the sheer fun of the thing would rattle past. One
trembled for the ignorant folly of madcap youth.
My host, who is one of the best-known and most highly respected
citizens of Dublin, did everything in his power to bring me into touch
with every shade of Irish opinion, so that I might judge of things for
myself without bias or pressure from outside. I never was in any
country where there were fewer attempts to make proselytes. He
himself is a Quaker, and has a long record of devoted service to his
country and to the less fortunate of his fellow-citizens to his credit,
which inspired confidence and respect. His beautiful wife and lovely
children gave me a warm Irish welcome, and, although an
Englishwoman and, therefore, a justifiable object of suspicion, I was
never permitted for a moment to feel myself an intruder.
From Saturday night till Tuesday morning the hours were packed
with incident. I think it would have been difficult for anybody to see
more people and hear more tales of woe than it was my lot to see
and hear during these ten days in Ireland. Amongst my new
acquaintances were Republicans of all sorts, Nationalist Home
Rulers, Unionists, Labour Party officials, Trade Unionists, Quakers,
humble citizens with no particular political affiliations, Catholic priests
and Protestant ministers boys and girls from the country “on the run”
in the city, newspaper men, writers of books and pamphlets, British
officers, lawyers by the dozen, ex-soldiers, high-born ladies, the
widows of men executed in the rebellion of 1916, suffragettes,
women doctors, temperance folk, members of the Irish Republican
Army, commercial travellers, and men and women suspected of
being British agents and spies. I should like to disclose the names of
all these interesting persons. In most cases I have full authority to do
so. But when that permission is coupled with a declaration that they
do not care two pins about the consequences to themselves, I am
involved in too great a responsibility to be reckless in a matter where
human life and liberty are so manifestly involved.
But because I believe even the present British Government, more
profligate of its power than any Government of modern times in this
country, would scarcely dare to mishandle a man so great in the
esteem, not only of Ireland but of the whole world of culture, I feel I
may write freely of that towering personality, Mr. G. W. Russell (“Æ”),
whom I met several times in Dublin, always to my great spiritual
profit.
Picture a face and figure not unlike those of William Morris in the
prime of his life, with a tenderness joined to his strength which I
imagine was less conspicuous in the English poet. Masses of wavy
hair tossed back but occasionally falling over a fine square forehead,
a full mouth, glorious eyes full of humour and gentleness, a soft
musical voice; the frame of a Viking, the heart of a saint, the
imagination of a poet, the vision of a prophet; a man to whom
children would run with their troubles, whom women would trust
unflinchingly, whom men would serve with utter loyalty; the
embodiment of the real Ireland, the Ireland that is not known in
England—this is the man whose devoted, lifelong work for the
salvation of Ireland is being wantonly and savagely annihilated by
British troops.
Mr. Russell spoke without a trace of bitterness, though I know he
suffers keenly, when he told me of the destruction of Irish creameries
and of the difficulties which co-operative enterprise is meeting with in
every part of Ireland. He edits the Irish Homestead, and there he has
voiced the complaints of Irish co-operators in language of the
greatest beauty; but to hear him tell the story himself was a pleasure
fraught with pain to his English auditor.
“It cannot be that the system of reprisals has become an integral
part of the British nation’s scheme of justice?” he asked, as we sat
talking by the fire in the house of a friend. “It would be too terrible to
think that that were true.”
“The British people do not know all that is happening here,” I
replied. “Oh, I know they ought to. Enough has been said and written
about it. The ignorance of affairs outside the little circle of their own
interests of the average man and woman makes me almost despair
of democracy at times. But there is this explanation of the inactivity
of the British public about Irish matters. In the first place, very many
people know nothing. Those who do read that part of their daily
paper which is not devoted to the sporting news or the Divorce Court
proceedings read a partial tale. The news is generally coloured in
favour of Dublin Castle and the Black and Tans. I cannot believe that
British co-operators would be content to tolerate the things which are
being done to Irish co-operative enterprises if they knew the facts.”
I was given a tiny yellow book containing the facts which I
promised to help circulate in England. It is an amazing story. The
statements would have appeared incredible to me had I not seen
with my own eyes the blackened walls and twisted machinery of the
gutted creameries in several parts of Ireland. Forty-two attacks by
the Crown forces on these village and country town institutions had
been made up to the time of my conversation with “Æ.” In these
attacks the factories were burned down, the machinery destroyed,
the stores looted, the employés beaten and sometimes wounded
and killed.
Questioned in Parliament, the Government has excused itself by
declaring that the creameries were centres of propaganda and of
Sinn Fein activity. They alleged that in two cases shots were fired at
the troops from the buildings. The most searching inquiries by
responsible people, including Sir Horace Plunkett, failed to produce
any evidence in support of the charges of the Government. But Mr.
Russell is not concerned about the result of these inquiries. He
wants a Government inquiry into the whole of the circumstances
connected with this particularly lamentable form of reprisal, and this
inquiry is steadily denied. Why?
Travellers in Ireland to-day see all over the country these new
ruins, centres of village industry and culture utterly wrecked, and the
peasant farmers and their families driven back to their lonely farms
to live in poverty and isolation; driven back to feed not only upon
their own scant produce but upon the black passions of hate and
individualism from which the co-operative idea had begun so
successfully to rescue them.
“Surely the English workmen begin to realize the connexion
between our problem and theirs,” said another distinguished co-
operator. “If our economic life continues to be so seriously disturbed,
or if it be destroyed, we cannot buy from England as we have been
doing. Do you know that, with the single exception of India, Ireland is
the best customer that England possesses within the British
Empire?” The political views of this cultured gentleman are distinctly
non-Republican, yet his house is not safe from the official intruder,
and he is tormented hourly with the sense of outrage and injustice
which the destruction of his life’s labours must necessarily produce.
“To us it would be simply unbelievable but for the other follies we
have seen perpetrated by your statesmen, that any Government with
the least knowledge of the world-situation could willingly add to its
dangers and difficulties. Yet I cannot believe that the members of the
British Government are all ignorant and stupid.” This third speaker
was a man who had served with distinction in the British Army during
the war. But the droop of his figure, the gloom in his eye, the bitter
curl of his lips—everything about him spoke of a confidence lost and
a faith killed.
“Two millions of adult people in Great Britain either wholly or
partially unemployed; wives and children beginning to hunger;
industrial strife on a scale hitherto unimagined clouding the horizon;
men by the million trained to kill, ready to be used by one side or the
other in a class war; hate and violence the fruit of it all, and appalling
suffering for all classes before one side recognizes the right of the
workers to an assured and abundant life and the other side realizes
that Russia’s way is not the way even for Russia. All this and more—
and yet the British Government actually or tacitly encourages the
troops to add Irish tens of thousands to the British millions of
workless, starving, hating men and women, and is slowly but surely
converting the only revolution in history which makes a point of
preserving the rights of private property into something which will be
akin to a class war for a Communist republic—an issue which I
should deeply deplore.”
I am bound to confess that I discovered no substantial evidence
that the civil war in Ireland has either a Communist basis or a
Communist ideal. The utter conservatism of the Irish is the most
striking thing about them. Their determination to win self-government
is based almost entirely upon that conservatism, the love of the
Ireland of history, the passion for the Irish tongue, the devotion to the
ancient faith, their love of the soil—these things and the memory of a
thousand wrongs put upon them by the alien conqueror have much
more to do with Irish discontent than any desire to hold the land in
common and convert the industries from private to public ownership
and control; which ideas would, indeed, be repugnant to the last
degree to the peasant owners of the South and West of Ireland.
Speaking on this point with some of the workingmen leaders I
asked how far, in their opinion, the Communist propaganda had
captured the Irish workers. “Scarcely at all,” was the quick reply.
“There was fearful anger over the cruel death of Connolly. His
execution did a great deal to unite the Labour Movement in Ireland
with the Republican Party. It was the sheer brutality of it. The poor
fellow hadn’t more than forty-eight hours to live. He had been shot in
the scrimmage in Dublin, and gangrene had set in. Yet they dragged
him out of his bed groaning with pain, put him on a chair and shot
him—the brutes! They think it’s all in the day’s work to shoot a ‘dirty
Irishman.’ But our people will never forget Connolly and the way he
died. No; the Irish workers are not Communists. They just hate
England and want to be quit of her.
“Ay, and there’s the case of Kevin Barry while you’re on about the
killing. Do you know they tortured that poor lad to get him to tell the
names of his comrades? We have his affidavit. They bruised his
flesh and twisted his limbs and then they hanged him—hanged him,
mind you, when the poor lad begged that he might be shot as a
prisoner of war! Your Prime Minister calls it war when he wants to
excuse the murders of his own hired assassins. But if so, our men
are prisoners of war when they are captured. Who ever heard of a
civilized nation hanging prisoners of war? But praise be to God,
every time you hang a boy like Kevin Barry you make hundreds of
soldiers for the Republican Army. Eighteen hundred men in Dublin
joined up the day Kevin was hanged.”
The little man who thus broke in began to fill with tobacco the bowl
of his small black pipe, and when he had lit it he turned on me,
fiercely demanding: “Why have you come to Ireland now? Why didn’t
you come before? Why don’t more of you come? How many
thousands of our brave boys have got to be killed before you folks
find out what your bloody troops are doing to Irish men, women, and
children?” And he flung himself out of the room.
I felt sorry to have appeared indifferent for so long, and said so to
the rest of the assembled company. “But to tell you the truth, I have
lived all these years under the impression that Irish men and women
preferred to win their own battles in their own way; that they
regarded rather as an intrusion any effort of English people to help
and advise them. From the first hour of my political life I have been a
supporter of self-government for Ireland; but I never dreamt that you
wanted me, or any of the rest of us, to come to Ireland to say so. I
believed that you wanted to work out your own salvation.”
“So far as advice is concerned you were right,” said a young fellow
with a large freckled face and fine eyes. “I reckon the English can’t
teach us much about politics.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said very softly. “After all, you have not got what
you have been fighting for during more than a hundred years, and
you have not got rid of the oppression that has tormented you for
several hundreds of years. Perhaps it is possible that co-operation
might have done it. We can all teach each other something. Ireland
has glorious lessons for us English. Perhaps you could have learnt a
little of something from us.”
There was a long pause, and I continued: “It is of the first
importance to carry the plain matter-of-fact people of England with
you. Ordinary men and women in England have a strong sense of
justice, but their imagination is weak. They find it difficult to
understand what they do not endure themselves. They find it hard to
believe in the wounds unless they can lay their fingers on the prints.
You must admit that some of the things which are happening in
Ireland are almost incredible. One thing which makes it difficult to
open and keep open the minds of English people on the subject of
Ireland’s wrongs is what they regard as Ireland’s wrongdoing, the
killing of soldiers and police. Of course, a certain section of the
newspaper press exploits this to the last degree. Why do you do it?
Why use the methods so hateful in the others? Why put an argument
in the mouths of the enemy? Why soil and stain a good cause?”
“Because we are at war,” was the prompt reply. “You have just
heard that your Prime Minister says so. He justifies the methods of
the Government because it is war. We do not like killing people; but
can we be expected to sit quietly whilst our own men and women are
killed and their property looted? It isn’t in human nature. Would
Englishmen sit quiet under such provocation? We don’t like it. And,
remember, we don’t kill innocent people like the other side. Every
person executed by the Irish—executed, mark you, not murdered—is
tried by the Republican Courts and found guilty on substantial
evidence of traitorous conduct or brutal murder.” He folded up the
copy of the Irish Bulletin he had been reading, and then proceeded:
“I’m glad you came over. I wish others would come. I’m sure you’ll
help Ireland. Tell your people that if it’s war they want, war they will
get till every young man in Ireland is dead. Then they can begin with
the old men and the women—they’ve begun with the women—and
after that they’ll have to wait till the children grow up. But they’ll find
them every bit as keen as their fathers. It’s in the blood of us. There
are only two ways to peace, and God knows we want peace. You
can either give Ireland her freedom, or you can sink the whole
country in the sea. It’s the peace of the dead you’ll get if you won’t
have that of the living.”
It is only fair to say that nine out of every ten of the Republicans to
whom I spoke expressed sorrow and regret that the policy of
violence had been adopted instead of that of passive resistance.
“But now that the fighting has been begun it is very difficult to stop
it without laying ourselves open to the charge that we are
weakening, or without giving the British Government the opportunity
of saying that its policy of reprisals has succeeded. The very thought
of these things is hateful to the sons and daughters of a brave
fighting race.” The distinguished old lady who said this drew herself
up as she spoke with the dignity of a queen and flashed swords and
daggers from her fine proud eyes.
Her house had been searched twice by Crown forces. They did
some small damage to doors and windows, nothing serious, for she
is a woman of property and social position, an outstanding example
of the thing I found to be true, that the severity of the reprisals, the
ruthlessness of the visitations, the length and discomforts of the
imprisonments were generally in proportion to the means or in
accordance with the religious beliefs of the suspects. Age and sex
did not count.
During an official reprisal which I witnessed in Cork, the blowing-
up of two excellent shops in one of the main thoroughfares, when
armed troops kept the crowd moving, and armoured cars, fully
manned, kept the roads, I heard an old woman tremblingly ask a
good-natured Tommy carelessly swinging his rifle as he moved
people along the pavement, what the matter was. “We’re only going
to send all you bloody Catholics to hell,” was the cheerful reply.
To refer once more to the searchings of private houses and shops:
I investigated three cases, the one to which I have referred, the
house of the old lady and her secretary, and two others, both shops.
The usual practice is to knock loudly and demand admittance, but to
give no time for anyone to run to the door, which is frequently burst
open. Sometimes shots are fired into the passage as a precaution,
killing or wounding perchance the man who is descending the stairs
to answer the summons, which often comes in the middle of the
night. A soldier stands guard over each member of the family. If the
house be big enough each is placed in a separate room. If it be small
they are turned into the streets and guarded there. A rigorous search
is made, beds stripped, mattresses sometimes bayoneted, drawers
opened and their contents tossed out, pictures pulled off the walls,
letters opened and read, cupboards emptied—the whole house
turned topsy-turvy. A shop is usually looted of half its contents.
Recently, in the attempt to restore discipline, the householder has
been requested to sign a paper stating that the soldiers left all in
order and stole nothing. But no opportunity of checking is allowed,
and the dazed and frightened woman (it is generally a woman, for
the men are “on the run”) signs quickly, and would sign anything to
get the soldiers and police out of the house and her terrified children
into their beds.
In the case of the little sweet and tobacco shop the whole family,
including two young children and an old woman, were turned into the
street at midnight and made to stand there in the pouring rain for two
hours. The gentle young Irish mother with the soft voice and
seductive Irish drawl told me the story.
“It was me brother they wanted. He’s in the arrmy. But it’s weeks
since Oi saw the face av him. Oi couldn’t tell thim where he was, but
they wouldn’t belave me. It nearly broke me heart to see thim poke
thurr bayonets thru the pickshure av the Blessed Virgin. An’ all the
swates was trampled on the flure. The bits av tobaccy wint into the
pockets av the crathurs. An’ the pore children was gittin’ thurr deaths
av cold in the rain outside. An’ now the pore lambs will nut slape
widout a light over thurr beds in the noight furr the fear av the cruel
men that is on them. An’ what have Oi done but keep moi house an’
pay moi way like an honest woman? Shure,” she said, with a droll
look and a twinkle, “if Oi knew whurr moi brother was, would Oi be
tellin’ the soldiers? Oi would not, indade. Wolfe Tone is the name av
him. An’ wouldn’t they be afther shootin’ at sight a man wid a name
loike that?”
The Irish sense of humour never forsakes them even in their
deepest distress. Mrs. A. Stopford Green, the widow of the great
historian and herself an historian of merit, told me of a Catholic priest
who had his home invaded and sacked. Standing amongst the
wreckage of his little home, he exclaimed, between tears and smiles:
“Glory be to God! They’ve taken everything they could lay their
hands on. But there’s one thing they haven’t taken, because they
can’t take it, and that is—the laugh!”
I came to one house in order to have an interview with a young
Irish patriot who is “on the run.” He came secretly and at great risk to
himself. He was cheerful and jolly; but, like everybody else in Ireland,
he showed clear signs of strain and of an imminent breakdown. Eight
times his premises had been searched, and each time valuable
things had been stolen. Even whilst we talked a telegram from a
friend arrived to say that the night before they had raided him again
and taken away a pair of much-prized army boots.
A splendid type of cultivated and idealistic young manhood, he
was hunted hourly from pillar to post on suspicion of ill-doing; but his
life’s work had been humanitarian, designed by the slow but sure
methods of education and co-operation to win the suspicious and
illiterate peasant from his bondage to ignorance and intolerance.
He had been tried once and acquitted. He and his friend had been
lodged in the guard-room. There was a struggle, and bombs, and the
dead and mutilated body of his friend was carried out. The story was
set about that the two of them had thrown the bombs at the troops.
The bombs were lying loose in the guard-room. Nobody believed a
story so thin. The pacific reputation of the two men was well known.
Everybody asked why live bombs were left lying about in such a
place. Were they put there to furnish an excuse for premeditated
crime? Some believed this. Nothing is clear. In the subsequent
inquiry before a Military Court composed of young and ignorant
officers with a natural prepossession in favour of their profession and
caste, it was denied that Clun’s body was mutilated. But a reliable
witness told me that he had counted thirteen bayonet wounds.
The first thing which impressed me about the Sinn Feiners I met
was their culture, then their courage, finally their spirituality. I speak
now of those I met in the city—probably two hundred. Many of them
would have been shot at sight if they had been seen coming out of
their hiding-places to meet me. At the moment of writing more than
one of those with whom I talked lies in a dark and dismal prison cell,
notably Desmond Fitzgerald, head of the Republican Propaganda
Department.
What amazed me continually was the entire absence of bitterness
in the speech of most of these people. Bitterness they must have
felt, and yet so sure are they of the goodness of their cause and of
its ultimate triumph, that they can talk with calmness and even
humour of the tragic events of which so many of them are the central
figures.
“They say in England that this is first and foremost and all the time
a religious quarrel; that the domination of Irish politics by the Pope is
to be greatly feared if Ireland gets self-government. What have you
to say to that?” I asked the handsome youth whose effective
propaganda has filtered through to every country in Europe. It is one
of the important facts of the present situation that the conduct of
England towards Ireland is breeding a cynical contempt for England
throughout the world.
“I have to say of the first statement that it is not true, and of the
question that the fear is groundless. The Irish priests have tried in
vain to stop the ambush. They have denounced it from their pulpits.
But they have protested in vain. This defiance is the symbol of a
conviction that the place of the priest is at the altar. When he leaves