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A recent article by Zoe Knox, a historian associated with the University of Leicester, opines that since about year 2000 the Watchtower organization has perhaps softened its historical position discouraging independent examination of its own history.[1]
Making her case Knox cites Watchtower’s response to independent analysis by a researcher in the late 1920s who distributed a survey form to gain demographical information about the community then known as Bible Students. As Knox observed, the then Watchtower position toward this survey was to denounce it and offer direct admonition that Bible Students “have nothing to do with [the survey].”[2]
Since that time Knox concludes things have changed.
Have things changed?
In April of year 2001 Watchtower sent a letter to all its appointed congregation elders.[3] This letter informed elders that researchers were sending surveys to Jehovah’s Witnesses and directed elders on how to handle this. Basically, Watchtower directed that each body of elders designate one from their midst who would be the point of response representing the whole congregation, if they responded at all.
A few months later in one of its strictly internal monthly organizational handouts the Watchtower organization included an announcement to all members that in the event a researcher seeking information about Jehovah’s Witnesses presented with a survey form they should defer the researcher to an elder in their congregation and let them “handle such inquiries” according to a letter dated April 25, 2001.[4]
What reason did the Watchtower offer for having Jehovah’s Witnesses defer responding to researchers rather than responding on their own? Watchtower writes[3]:
Is this change?
In year 1929 the president of the Watchtower organization, Joseph Rutherford, gave answer to the author of the then survey and thought that sufficient. He objected to having individuals among Bible Students complete this questionnaire for sake of the author’s research.
In year 2001 the Watchtower organization again responded to attempt by researchers to independently examine the community. Specifically, Watchtower again asked individuals among Jehovah’s Witnesses to refrain from completing such questionnaires and, instead, to let higher-ups do the talking. The reason was to keep researchers from learning the individual views held by the community of Jehovah’s Witnesses and, instead, to get a sanitized version of events.
Conclusion
Author Zoe Knox is correct saying “the critical examination of the history of the organisation has been actively and persistently discouraged by the Society.” But she is mistaken in thinking this position has softened or otherwise changed. To this day Watchtower seeks to impeded independent research into its history.
To use my own jargon, my opinion is that the fox has succeeded in convincing author Zoe Knox that the fox is no longer guarding the hen-house.
Marvin Shilmer
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References:
1. Knox, Zoe, Writing Witness History: The Historiography of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 35, No. 2, June 2011 pp. 157-180.
2. Golden Age, published by Watchtower, March 6, 1929, p. 369. The survey:
3. Watchtower letter dated April 25, 2001 sent to all bodies of elders.
4. Our Kingdom Ministry, January 2002, p. 7.
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