Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World PDF Author: Zoe Knox
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137396059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This book examines the historic tensions between Jehovah’s Witnesses and government authorities, civic organisations, established churches and the broader public. Witnesses originated in the 1870s as small, loose-knit groups calling themselves Bible Students. Today, there are some eight million Witnesses worldwide, all actively engaged in evangelism under the direction of the Watch Tower Society. The author analyses issues that have brought them global visibility and even notoriety, including political neutrality, public ministry, blood transfusion, and anti-ecumenism. It also explores anti-Witness discourse, from media portrayals of the community as marginal and exotic to the anti-cult movement. Focusing on varied historical, ideological and national contexts, the book argues that Witnesses have had a defining influence on conceptions of religious tolerance in the modern world.

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World PDF Author: Zoe Knox
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137396059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book

Book Description
This book examines the historic tensions between Jehovah’s Witnesses and government authorities, civic organisations, established churches and the broader public. Witnesses originated in the 1870s as small, loose-knit groups calling themselves Bible Students. Today, there are some eight million Witnesses worldwide, all actively engaged in evangelism under the direction of the Watch Tower Society. The author analyses issues that have brought them global visibility and even notoriety, including political neutrality, public ministry, blood transfusion, and anti-ecumenism. It also explores anti-Witness discourse, from media portrayals of the community as marginal and exotic to the anti-cult movement. Focusing on varied historical, ideological and national contexts, the book argues that Witnesses have had a defining influence on conceptions of religious tolerance in the modern world.

Studies in the Scriptures

Studies in the Scriptures PDF Author: Charles Taze Russell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jehovah's Witnesses
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description


Leaving the Witness

Leaving the Witness PDF Author: Amber Scorah
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 073522255X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
"A fascinating glimpse into the consciousness of being an outsider in every possible way, and what it takes to find your path into the life you'd like to lead."--Nylon A riveting memoir of losing faith and finding freedom while a covert missionary in one of the world's most restrictive countries. A third-generation Jehovah's Witness, Amber Scorah had devoted her life to sounding God's warning of impending Armageddon. She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture--and a whole new way of thinking--turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true. As a proselytizer in Shanghai, using fake names and secret codes to evade the authorities' notice, Scorah discreetly looked for targets in public parks and stores. To support herself, she found work at a Chinese language learning podcast, hiding her real purpose from her coworkers. Now with a creative outlet, getting to know worldly people for the first time, she began to understand that there were other ways of seeing the world and living a fulfilling life. When one of these relationships became an "escape hatch," Scorah's loss of faith culminated in her own personal apocalypse, the only kind of ending possible for a Jehovah's Witness. Shunned by family and friends as an apostate, Scorah was alone in Shanghai and thrown into a world she had only known from the periphery--with no education or support system. A coming of age story of a woman already in her thirties, this unforgettable memoir examines what it's like to start one's life over again with an entirely new identity. It follows Scorah to New York City, where a personal tragedy forces her to look for new ways to find meaning in the absence of religion. With compelling, spare prose, Leaving the Witness traces the bittersweet process of starting over, when everything one's life was built around is gone.

The A to Z of Jehovah's Witnesses

The A to Z of Jehovah's Witnesses PDF Author: George D. Chryssides
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810870541
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Originating from a small group of Bible students led by Charles Taze Russell in the 1870s, the Watch Tower Society grew into an international society. After Russell's death in 1916, Franklin Rutherford was named his successor and gave the society a new name: 'Jehovah's Witnesses.' The A to Z of Jehovah's Witnesses shows how World War I & II influenced Watch Tower attitudes to civil government, armed conflict, and medical innovations like blood transfusion, as well as to mainstream churches and the development of Jehovah's Witnesses' door-to-door evangelism. The theme of prophecy, the doctrine of the 144,000, end-time calculations, Armageddon, and the Witnesses' denial of hell are all considered in The A to Z of Jehovah's Witnesses, which contains a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and 250 cross-referenced dictionary entries relating to key people and concepts.

Jehovah’s Witnesses

Jehovah’s Witnesses PDF Author: George D. Chryssides
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135019090X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
What would happen if I accepted an invitation to Bible Study from Jehovah's Witnesses? What would attending a Kingdom Hall meeting involve? And if I invited door-knocking Witnesses into my home? This book introduces Jehovah's Witnesses without assuming prior knowledge of the Watch Tower organization. After outlining the Society's origins and history, the book explains their key beliefs and practices by taking the reader through the process of the seeker who makes initial contact with Witnesses, and progresses to take instruction and become a baptized member. The book then explores what is involved in being a Witness – congregational life, lifestyle, rites of passage, their understanding of the Bible and prophetic expectations. It examines the various processes and consequences of leaving the organization, controversies that have arisen in the course of its history, and popular criticisms. Discussion is given to the likelihood of reforms within the organization, such as its stance on blood transfusions, the role of women and new methods of meeting and evangelizing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jehovah's Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse

Jehovah's Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse PDF Author: David A. Reed
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 0801077397
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
No other book answers the Jehovah's Witnesses' misinterpretation of Scripture so immediately and shows how to use the same Scripture in leading Jehovah's Witnesses to Christ.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses PDF Author: George D. Chryssides
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351925423
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
From its origins in nineteenth century Adventism until the present day, the Watch Tower Society has become one of the best known but least understood new religious movements. Resisting the tendency to define the movement in terms of the negative, this volume offers an empathetic account of the Jehovah's Witnesses, without defending or seeking to refute their beliefs. George Chryssides critically examines the historical and theological bases of the organization's teachings and practices, and discusses the changes and continuities which have defined it. The book provides a valuable resource for scholars of new religious movements and contemporary religion.

Dissent on the Margins

Dissent on the Margins PDF Author: Emily B. Baran
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190495499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Emily B. Baran offers a gripping history of how a small, American-based religious community, the Jehovah's Witnesses, found its way into the Soviet Union after World War II, survived decades of brutal persecution, and emerged as one of the region's fastest growing religions after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In telling the story of this often misunderstood faith, Baran explores the shifting boundaries of religious dissent, non-conformity, and human rights in the Soviet Union and its successor states. Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses are a fascinating case study of dissent beyond urban, intellectual nonconformists. Witnesses, who were generally rural, poorly educated, and utterly marginalized from society, resisted state pressure to conform. They instead constructed alternative communities based on adherence to religious principles established by the Witnesses' international center in Brooklyn, New York. The Soviet state considered Witnesses to be the most reactionary of all underground religious movements, and used extraordinary measures to try to eliminate this threat. Yet Witnesses survived, while the Soviet system did not. After 1991, they faced continuing challenges to their right to practice their faith in post-Soviet states, as these states struggled to reconcile the proper limits on freedom of conscience with European norms and domestic concerns. Dissent on the Margins provides a new and important perspective on one of America's most understudied religious movements.

What Do Jehovah’s Witnesses Believe?

What Do Jehovah’s Witnesses Believe? PDF Author: John Ankerberg
Publisher: ATRI Publishing
ISBN: 1937136493
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description
Did you know that one in every 282 Americans is a Jehovah’s Witness? When a Jehovah’s Witness knocks on your door, do you know what to say? Now you can! In What Do Jehovah’s Witnesses Believe? you’ll experience Dr. Ankerberg’s interviews with three former Jehovah’s Witnesses and two experts on this growing religious movement. Topics include: The background of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. What do Jehovah’s Witnesses teach about Jesus, the Trinity, and other biblical beliefs? What is different about their Bible, the New World Translation? Why don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrate birthdays, Christmas, Easter, participate in patriotic activities or the armed forces, and refuse blood transfusions? How can I share my faith with a Jehovah’s Witness? This and much more are included in this book. You’ll find yourself more equipped in your own beliefs and be better prepared to discuss your faith with Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses PDF Author: Andrew Holden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113450151X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
This is the first major study of the enigmatic religious society. By examining the Jehovah's Witnesses' dramatic recent expansion, Andrew Holden reveals the dependency of their quasi-totalitarian movement on the physical and cultural resources have brought about the privatization of religion, the erosion of community, and the separation of 'fact' from faith.