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Jehovah's Witnesses

The Jehovah's Witnesses religion is a millennialist Christian denomination that developed out of the International Bible Students Association, founded in 1872 in Pittsburgh by Charles Taze Russell during the Adventist movement. As millennialists, Witnesses believe they are living in the last of days, and they look forward to the imminent establishment of God's kingdom on Earth. The Jehovah’s Witnesses organization sent missionaries aroudn the world to seek converts in the 1890s. Currently, there are approximately 7 million Jehovah's Witnesses in more than 200 countries.

In 1872, Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916), the second son of devout Presbyterian parents, founded the International Bible Students Association in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was his purpose, through intense Biblical study, to uncover God’s word, which had been “buried under a morass of pagan teachings” mistakenly adopted by mainstream Christian churches over the centuries. In 1931, the Association under Russell’s successor, Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869–1942), changed its name to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Invoking the prophet Isaiah (43:12) — “You are my witnesses, and I am God” — adherents have dedicated themselves to bearing witness to Jehovah’s name and His Kingdom.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses anticipate the establishment of an earthly paradise under God’s Kingdom. They believe this Kingdom will emerge following Armageddon — a final battle between the forces of good and evil. The Witnesses use the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, as the main text for their beliefs. While they do not believe that Jesus is God, they consider Christ the chief agent for his father, who is God.

The Witnesses meet in churches called Kingdom Halls. Most members of local congregations are “publishers” expected to spend as much time as circumstances permit in door-to-door preaching. The Jehovah’s Witnesses publish books, tracts, record-ings, and periodicals, including The Watchtower and Awake, which appear in more than 100 languages and over 200 nations. Three corporations direct the activities of the Witnesses: the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania and the Brooklyn-based Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Inc. of New York and the International Bible Students Association. According to their figures, nearly five million “publishers” were active in some 70,000 congregations in over 220 countries.

Jehovah’s Witnesses saw themselves as citizens of Jehovah’s Kingdom; they refused to swear allegiance to any worldly government. They were not pacifists, but as soldiers in Jehovah’s army, they would not bear arms for any nation.

Jehovah’s Witnesses endured intense persecution under the Nazi regime in Germany. Jehovah’s Witnesses, in Germany as in the United States, refused to fight in the Great War. This stance contributed to hostility against them in a Germany still wounded by defeat in that war and fervently nationalistic, attempting to reclaim its previous world stature. In Nazi Germany, Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to raise their arms in the “Heil, Hitler!” salute; they did not vote in elections; they would not join the army or the German Labor Front (a Nazi affiliate, which all salaried employees were required to join after 1934).

By the early 1930s, only 20,000 (of a total population of 65 million) Germans were Jehovah’s Witnesses, usually known at the time as “International Bible Students.” Even before 1933, despite their small numbers, door-to-door preaching and the identification of Jehovah’s Witnesses as heretics by the mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches made them few friends. Individual German states and local authorities periodically sought to limit the group’s proselytizing activities with charges of illegal peddling. There were also outright bans on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ religious literature, which included the booklets The Watch Tower and The Golden Age. The courts, by contrast, often ruled in favor of the religious minority.

Jehovah’s Witnesses were denounced for their international and American ties, the apparent revolutionary tone of their millennialism (belief in the peaceful 1,000-year heavenly rule over the earth by Christ, preceded by the battle of Armageddon), and their supposed connections to Judaism, including a reliance on parts of the Bible embodying Jewish scripture (the Christian “Old Testament”).

Many of these charges were brought against more than 40 other banned religious groups, but none of these were persecuted to the same degree. The crucial difference was the intensity Witnesses demonstrated in refusing to give ultimate loyalty or obedience to the state. Actions against the religious group and its individual members spanned the Nazi years 1933 to 1945. In the early 1930s, Nazi brownshirt storm troopers, acting outside the law, broke up Bible study meetings and beat up individual Witnesses. After the Nazis came to power, persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses intensified. Unlike Jews and Sinti and Roma (“Gypsies”), persecuted and killed by virtue of their birth, Jehovah’s Witnesses had the opportunity to escape persecution and personal harm by renouncing their religious beliefs. The courage the vast majority displayed in refusing to do so, in the face of torture, maltreatment in concentration camps, and sometimes execution, won them the respect of many contemporaries.

The beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses are governed by their interpretation of scriptural laws and principles. In 1945, the Watchtower Society, the governing council of the Jehovah's Witnesses, prohibited the practice of blood transfusions, specifically referencing 3 biblical passages: Genesis 9:3-4, Leviticus 17:10-16, and Acts 15:28-29. These passages detail the sacredness of blood and the prohibition of blood consumption, which the Jehovah's Witnesses interpret as a ban to intravenous and oral routes.

Jehovah's Witnesses exercise the right of any adult with capacity to refuse medical treatment and often carry advance directive cards indicating their incontrovertible refusal of blood. Despite their belief regarding transfusion, Jehovah's Witnesses do not have a higher mortality rate after traumatic injury or surgery. Transfusion requirements are often overestimated. There are many modalities to treat the Jehovah's Witness patient with acute blood loss. Treatment with recombinant human erythropoietin, albumin, and recombinant activated Factor VIIa have all been used with success. Autologous autotransfusion and isovolemic hemodilution can also be used to treat patients who refuse transfusion. Hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers may play a future role as intravascular volume expanders in lieu of transfusion of red blood cell concentrates.

Changes in the blood ban guidelines are outlined in an article entitled “Be Guided by the Living God” in a 2004 edition of The Watchtower. This article details what is unacceptable and what is for the “Christian to decide.” The above treatments are still banned, but the administration of blood fractionates from red cells, white cells, platelets, and plasma are permissible and their use is up to the discretion of the individual. These fractionates include albumin, recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO), immunoglobulins, and factor concentrates.

The medical ethics are further complicated when children of Jehovah's Witnesses are involved. In pediatrics, parents or guardians have the authority to give consent by proxy, based on the assumption that their interests lie in safeguarding the child's welfare. However, the physician's legal and ethical obligation ultimately lies with the child patient and not the desires of the parents. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that the physician and other healthcare professionals recognize and respect the importance of religion in personal, spiritual, and social lives of patients and “to avoid unnecessary polarization when conflict over religious practices arises.” However, if religious convictions interfere with medical care that is likely to prevent substantial harm and suffering or death, the physician should initiate legal action to override parental objections.

The European Court of Justice has identified some limitations on religious freedom that do not violate the European Convention on Human Rights, such as prohibitions against “polygamy, child marriages, flagrant crimes against the equality between the sexes and acts forced upon members of a religious organization against their will.” The Court noted that religious freedom is internationally protected and that any limitation must be a based on “serious and compelling reasons,” as prescribed in the European Convention on Human Rights.