The Surprising Sociology Of Jehovah’s Witnesses
This is why I love the Substack community — a couple of weeks ago, one of my subscribers (Ben Hein) asked me if I had any good data on Jehovah’s Witnesses.
And you know what? I actually do.
For reasons that elude me, I have just never dug that deeply into this religious group and there’s a whole lot here that really surprised me about these folks.
Of course, I can’t offer a full history of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but here’s a really brief introduction. The Jehovah’s Witnesses trace their background to the Bible Student movement that emerged in the late 19th century, closely associated with the teaching and publishing work of Charles Taze Russell.
One of the most important figures in the early institutional development of the movement was Joseph F. Rutherford, who succeeded Russell as president of the Watch Tower Society and moved aggressively to centralize leadership, standardize doctrine, and expand the organization’s evangelistic efforts.
One key aspect of Jehovah’s Witness theology is their rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity, a belief that places them outside the boundaries of orthodox Protestant and Catholic Christianity.
Sociologically, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are an interesting group because they engage in aggressive “boundary maintenance” with the rest of the world. JWs are incredibly engaged with congregational life and the denomination has a strict code of conduct that can often lead to disfellowshipping. They are supposed to be politically neutral, in fact they are not supposed to salute a national flag or engage in military service. Education is also not a primary emphasis of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
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Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.