Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Opposition

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World

Part of the book series: Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000 ((HISASE))

  • 702 Accesses

Abstract

Chapter 7 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 religiously and socially. It examines how popular understandings of the Watch Tower organisation have been shaped by co-ordinated 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 Anti-Cult Movement’s agenda to governmental policy, focussing on initiatives prompted by the European Parliament in 1984 which stigmatised, marginalised and, in some countries, even criminalised the organisation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for example, an article in Britain’s most widely read online newspaper, the Mail Online: ‘PC Police Order Couple to Take Down Jehovah Witness Sign’, Mail Online (27 July 2006) at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-397960/PC-police-order-couple-Jehovah-Witness-sign.html#ixzz1U44bav7i, accessed 11 August 2017. Note that the name of the community is rendered incorrectly in the headline of the article.

  2. 2.

    ‘PC Police Order Couple to Take Down Jehovah Witness Sign’.

  3. 3.

    The blood doctrine has heavily influenced the Society’s public image. Côté and Richardson state: ‘…from the early 1960s to the 1980s, the blood taboo developed into a public relations disaster for the Witnesses’. P. Côté and J. T. Richardson, ‘Disciplined Litigation, Vigilant Litigation, and Deformation: Dramatic Organization Change in Jehovah’s Witnesses’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40, no. 1 (Mar., 2001), 17.

  4. 4.

    S. McCloud, Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955–1993 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 1.

  5. 5.

    F. D. Nichol, Midnight Cry: A Defense of the Character and Conduct of William Miller and the Millerites, Who Mistakenly Believed That the Second Coming of Christ Would Take Place in the Year 1844 (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1944), 14–15.

  6. 6.

    J. T. Richardson and B. van Driel, ‘Journalists’ Attitudes toward New Religious Movements’, Review of Religious Research 39, no. 2 (1997), 116–136. Witnesses were one of five ‘older minority religions’ used as a ‘comparison group’ for analytical purposes (the others were Christian Science, Salvation Army, Mennonites and Peoples Temple).

  7. 7.

    Richardson and van Driel, ‘Journalists’ Attitudes toward New Religious Movements’, 117.

  8. 8.

    For a rebuttal of the claim that journalists are poorly educated when it comes to NRMs, see M. Silk, ‘Journalists with Attitude: A Response to Richardson and van Driel’, Review of Religious Research 39, no. 2 (1997), 137–143.

  9. 9.

    B. van Driel and J. T. Richardson, ‘Categorization of New Religious Movements in American Print Media’, Sociological Analysis 49, no. 2 (Summer 1988), 171–183.

  10. 10.

    J. A. Beckford, Cult Controversies: The Societal Response to New Religious Movements (London and New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985), 1.

  11. 11.

    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), 79.

  12. 12.

    See the records of the Abilene Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas.

  13. 13.

    ‘Beware of Music That Debases!’, The Watchtower, 15 October 1983, 10–15. The article concluded: ‘There is a wide variety of Scripturally acceptable and upbuilding music, including delightful Kingdom songs enjoyed by Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide. So we are not missing anything worthwhile by rejecting music that debases’.

  14. 14.

    ‘Young People Ask … What About Music Videos’, Awake!, 22 May 1984, 19.

  15. 15.

    ‘Choosing Between Two Loves in My Life’, Awake!, 22 April 1977, 16–21.

  16. 16.

    ‘1998 Prince NPG Essence Performance Stauros’ at /www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKnCXXy13DU, accessed 11 August 2017.

  17. 17.

    ‘Prince and Larry Graham Talking About the Truth & Accurate Knowledge’, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASOwpI1UF5k, accessed 11 August 2017.

  18. 18.

    See the following on Bobby Tambling, a soccer player for Chelsea: ‘Tambling May Quit for Sect’, The Times, 15 September 1969, 1. Archive file <Gen 12-Jeh Jehovah’s Witnesses>, Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society, Baylor University.

  19. 19.

    R. A. Nelson, ‘Propaganda for God: Pastor Charles Taze Russell and the Multi-Media Photo-Drama of Creation (1914)’ in R. Cosandey, A. Gaudreault and T. Gunning (eds), Une Invention du Diable? Cinema Des Premiers Temps et Religion/An Invention of the Devil? Religion and Early Cinema (Les Presses de l’Universite Laval: Sainte-Foy/Editions Payot Lausanne/Lausanne, 1992), 233; T. Richter, ‘International Bible Students and Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Australian Press 1896–1941’ 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), 166.

  20. 20.

    Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists or Christians? (Flyer), 1951. There is no date given on the flyer itself. In response to an inquiry, the Society confirmed that it was printed in 1951. Office of Public of Information at the world headquarters for Jehovah’s Witnesses, New York. Walter Martin therefore incorrectly dates the flyer to 1953 in Kingdom of the Cults (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1997), 92.

  21. 21.

    For discussion of the contested meanings of ‘un-American’, see G. Lewis, ‘An Un-American Introduction’, Journal of American Studies 47, no. 4 (Nov., 2013), 871–879.

  22. 22.

    The use of ‘other’ and ‘othering’ here draw on Edward Said’s insights into the uses of identifying the alien and divergent in opposition to a given norm. E. W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1979).

  23. 23.

    ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses to Begin Construction of Ten-Story Addition to Brooklyn Home’, New York Times, 17 January 1947, 12.

  24. 24.

    This represents a slight decline on the previous year. WTBTS, 1947 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses (New York: WTBTS, 1946), 46.

  25. 25.

    WTBTS, 1957 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses (New York: WTBTS, 1956), 40, 36.

  26. 26.

    M. Q. Sibley and P. E. Jacob, Conscription of Conscience: The American State and the Conscientious Objector, 1940–1947 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952), 71.

  27. 27.

    ‘Citizenship Denied to 2: Judge Rules Jehovah’s Witnesses Are Not Entitled to Rights’, New York Times, 5 September 1947, 21.

  28. 28.

    ‘4 “Witnesses” Held on Pacifist Issue’, New York Times, 19 July 1950, 52; ‘5 of Religious Sect Sent to Ellis Island’, New York Times, 21 July 1950, 38.

  29. 29.

    ‘Police Protect Jehovah Rally’, The New York Times, 26 April 1948, 16.

  30. 30.

    Z. Knox, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses as Un-Americans? Scriptural Injunctions, Civil Liberties, and Patriotism’, Journal of American Studies 47, no. 4 (Nov., 2013), 1081–1108.

  31. 31.

    This was a major theme in a speech by Knorr at an international convention in 1950. ‘Part 3: United States of America’, 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses (New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1956), 232.

  32. 32.

    ‘“Nominal” Catholics Chided By Missionary’, New York Times, 22 December 1952, 19.

  33. 33.

    ‘The Legion—Watchdog of American Freedom?’, Awake!, 8 September 1950, 3.

  34. 34.

    ‘District Assemblies During 1952’, The Watchtower, 15 December 1952, 748. It is probable that the Society also meant to refer to the Legion’s history of vigilantism by the ‘un-American position of the Legion’.

  35. 35.

    Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (New York City: WTBTS, 1993), 406.

  36. 36.

    H. H. Dirksen, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses under Communist Regimes’, Religion, State and Society 30, no. 3 (2002), 231.

  37. 37.

    ‘Reconstructive and Relief Work in Europe’, The Watchtower, 1 February 1946, 47. This figure has been broken down as 227 Russians and 73 Ukrainians in M. Reynaud and S. Graffard, The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Nazis: Persecution, Deportation, and Murder, 1933–1945 (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001), 189.

  38. 38.

    Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Jehovah’s Witnesses, 508; ‘Reconstructive and Relief Work in Europe’, 47.

  39. 39.

    K. Marx, ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: Introduction’ in J. Cohen (ed.), Karl Marx. Frederick Engels. Collected Works (London, 1975), 175; V. I. Lenin, ‘The Attitude of the Workers’ Party to Religion (1909)’, Collected Works Vol. 15 (March 1908–August 1909) (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1963), 402–413.

  40. 40.

    Mikhail I. Odintsov, Sovet ministrov SSSR postanovliaet: ‘Vyselit’ navechno!’ (Moscow: Art-Biznes-Tsentr, 2002), 20–21. Official documents relating to the deportations can be found in Sovet ministrov SSSR postanovliaet. For accounts by Jehovah’s Witnesses, see Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 2008 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses (New York City: WTBTS, 2008).

  41. 41.

    J. F. Rutherford, Government (Brooklyn, NY: International Bible Students Association/Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1928), 13.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., 247–248.

  43. 43.

    ‘Communist Leaders Fear Bible Truth’, The Watchtower, 1 April 1956, 215.

  44. 44.

    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), 68. See Dissent on the Margins, 31–69 for detailed discussion of the persecution of Witnesses under Stalin.

  45. 45.

    Although it was, and still is, widely used, the term ‘Iegovisty’ is derogatory and has been recognised as such in both Soviet and post-Soviet studies of Witnesses. V. V. Konik, ‘Istiny’ svidetelei Iegovy (Moscow: Politizdat, 1978), 101; L. N. Mitrokhina (ed.), Khristianstvo: Slovar’ (Moscow: Respublika, 1994), 156.

  46. 46.

    See, for example, E. A. Pritchina, ‘Svideteli iegovy’ na sluzhbe imperializma (Moscow: Obshchestvo po rasprostraneniiu politicheskikh i nauchnykh znanii RSFSR, 1959).

  47. 47.

    A. Gerasimets and N. Reshetnikov, Religioznaia sekta Iegovistov (Irkutsk: Irkutskoe otdelenie vserossiiskogo obshchestvo po rasprostraneniiu politicheskikh i nauchnykh znanii, 1959); Grigorii Dodu, Ia ushel ot sektantov (Chita: Chitanskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1959); Fedor Boiarskii, Proroki: Ocherk (Alma Ata: Kazakhskoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1960); V. Varavka and S. Meshavkin, Pravda o sektantakh (Sverdlovsk: Knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1960); M. V. Andibur, Pered sudom naroda (Abakan: Khakasskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1963); N. Rogozniak, N. Khamei and V. Pron’, My ne mozhem molchat’ (otkrytoe pis’mo chlenam organizatsii ‘Svidetelei Iegovy’) (Irkutsk: Znanie, 1963).

  48. 48.

    See, for example, a letter from Vasilii Babiichuk, of Irkutsk region, to a local newspaper in 1959 explaining how his release from the clutches of Witnesses allowed his reintegration into Soviet society. The letter is reprinted in V. Babiichuk, ‘Kak khorosho b’et’ neveryiushchii’ in A. S. Gerasimets (ed.), Nam ne po puti s iegovistami’ (Irkutsk: Irkutskoe otdelenie obshestva po raspostraneniiu politicheskikh i nauchnykh znanii RSFSR, 1960), 53. The testimonials of ‘former sectarians’ are discussed in E. B. Baran, ‘“I Saw the Light”: Former Protestant Believer Testimonials in the Soviet Union, 1957–1987’, Cahiers du Monde russe 52, no. 1 (2011), 163–184.

  49. 49.

    See Varavka and Meshavkin, Pravda o sektantakh, 21; Boiarskii, Proroki, 7; A. S. Gerasimets, ‘Predislovie’, in A. S. Gerasimets (ed.), Nam ne po puti s iegovistami’ (Irkutsk: Irkutskoe otdelenie obshestva po raspostraneniiu politicheskikh i nauchnykh znanii RSFSR, 1960), 3.

  50. 50.

    For these charges, see Gerasimets and Reshetnikov, Religioznaia sekta Iegovistov, 5–6, 27; Grigorii Dodu, Ia ushel ot sektantov, 21; Boiarskii, Proroki, 9; Varavka and Meshavkin, Pravda o sektantakh, 23.

  51. 51.

    See for example ‘Communist Leaders Fear Bible Truth’, 209–218.

  52. 52.

    Indicative of the regime’s disregard for such measures, a letter dated 2 March 1957 from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults that accompanies a copy of a petition from Lahore, Pakistan includes only one brief statement about the group: ‘The leadership of this reactionary sect is located in the USA’. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation, hereafter GARF), f. 6991 (Sovet po delam religii pri Sovete Ministrov СССР), o. 4, d. 79, l. 43. Copies of the petition can be found in GARF, f. 6991, o. 4, d. 77, ll. 7–26.

  53. 53.

    ‘Part 30—“Your Will Be Done on Earth”’, The Watchtower, 15 January 1960, 56–60.

  54. 54.

    This is the central argument of Baran, Dissent on the Margins.

  55. 55.

    P. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon, 1985).

  56. 56.

    L. McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000).

  57. 57.

    It placed Witnesses alongside Christian Scientists, Mormonism, Roman Catholicism, Spiritualism, evolutionism, atheism, and more, all faiths or convictions regarded by the authors as a danger to Christianity.

  58. 58.

    W. G. Moorehead, ‘Millennial Dawn: A Counterfeit of Christianity’ in The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, Vol. VII (Chicago: Testimony Publishing Co., n.d.), 93.

  59. 59.

    J. K. van Baalen, The Chaos of Cults: A Study in Present-Day Isms, Second Edition (Grand Rapids, Wm: B. Eerdmans, 1956), 231.

  60. 60.

    H. Charles, ‘Strange Sects of Today: 1. Jehovah’s Witnesses: Chosen Race that Comes round with Tracts’, Church Times, 9 January 1959, p. no number visible. Archive file <Gen 12-Jeh Jehovah’s Witnesses>, Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society, Baylor University.

  61. 61.

    E. C. Gruss, Apostles of Denial: An Examination and Expose of the History, Doctrines and Claims of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Pub Co., 1975).

  62. 62.

    R. Cotton in consultation with A. Lung, ‘Truth Freedom and Conscience: The Experience of a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses’, (supplement) Evangelical Times, May 1985, p. iii.

  63. 63.

    ‘I have tried to help Christians understand the Witnesses better and show that we can learn positive lessons from considering the ways in which Jehovah’s Witnesses read the Bible’. R. M. Bowman, Understanding Jehovah’s Witnesses: Why They Read the Bible the Way They Do (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991), 7.

  64. 64.

    Gruss’ precise contribution to the authorship of the work is not clear. The names are withheld because ‘To give their names could invite malice unheard of in the Christian community upon these men, their families, their friends and relatives’. E. C. Gruss and former Jehovah’s Witnesses (eds.), The Four Presidents of the Watch Tower Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses): The Men and the Organization They Created (USA: Xulon Press, 2003), ix.

  65. 65.

    R. Morey, How to Answer a Jehovah’s Witness: How to Successfully take the Initiative When They Come to Your Door (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany Publishers, 1980), 9.

  66. 66.

    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), 165.

  67. 67.

    D. G. Bromley and A. D. Shupe, Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981).

  68. 68.

    P. D. Coates, ‘The Cult Awareness Network’ in A. Shupe and D. G. Bromley (eds), Anti-Cult Movements in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994), 93–101. Coates was the Chairperson of the Cult Awareness Network, Los Angeles Affiliate.

  69. 69.

    J. T. Richardson and B. Kilbourne, ‘Classical and Contemporary Applications of Brainwashing Models: A Comparison and Critique’ in D. G. Bromley and J. T. Richardson (eds), The Brainwashing/Deprogramming Controversy: Sociological, Psychological, Legal and Historical Perspectives, Studies in Religion and Society, Volume 5 (New York and Toronto: The Edwin Mellon Press, 1983), 43.

  70. 70.

    J. Clark, M. D. Langone, R. E. Schacter and R. C. D. Daly, Destructive Cult Conversion: Theory, Research and Treatment (Weston, MA: American Family Foundation, 1981).

  71. 71.

    R. J. Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of ‘Brainwashing’ in China (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).

  72. 72.

    W. Adler, ‘The Chilling Signs of Mind Control’, Washington Post, 6 January 1980, B7.

  73. 73.

    E. Shapiro, ‘Destructive Cultism’, American Family Physician (February 1977), 80–83. The article concluded: ‘Destructive cultism is a sociopathic illness which is rapidly spreading throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world in the form of a pandemic’. Shapiro, ‘Destructive Cultism’, 83.

  74. 74.

    Notably Ted Patrick, author of Let Our Children Go! (New York: Ballantine, 1976).

  75. 75.

    For criticism, see Deprogramming: Documenting the Issue (New York: ACLU, 1977) and J. T. Richardson, ‘The Brainwashing/Deprogramming Controversy: An Introduction’ in D. G. Bromley and J. T. Richardson (eds), The Brainwashing/Deprogramming Controversy: Sociological, Psychological, Legal and Historical Perspectives Studies in Religion and Society, Volume 5 (New York and Toronto: The Edwin Mellon Press, 1983), 1–11. For a spirited defence, see B. D. Zablocki, ‘The Blacklisting of a Concept: The Strange History of the Brainwashing Conjecture in the Sociology of Religion’, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 1, no. 1 (1997), 96–121.

  76. 76.

    D. Brion Davis, ‘Some Themes of Counter-subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Mormon, Anti-Catholic Literature’, Mississippi Historical Review 48, no. 2 (1960), 205–224.

  77. 77.

    Beckford, Cult Controversies, 232.

  78. 78.

    D. E. Cowan, ‘Exits and Migrations: Foregrounding the Christian Counter-Cult’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 17, no. 3 (2002), 339–354.

  79. 79.

    W. Martin, Kingdom of the Cults (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, this edition 1997), 7.

  80. 80.

    Martin specifically targets Charles Braden, author of These also Believe: A Study of Modern American Cults and Minority Religious Movements (New York: Macmillan Co., 1949). Martin, Kingdom of the Cults, 18.

  81. 81.

    For example brainwashing is criticised in Bowman, Understanding Jehovah’s Witnesses, 8.

  82. 82.

    J. T. Richardson, ‘Definitions of Cult: From Sociological-Technical to Popular-Negative’, Review of Religious Research 34, no. 4 (June 1993), 348–356.

  83. 83.

    A. Shupe and D. G. Bromley, ‘Introduction: The Global Scale of Anti-Cultism’ in A. Shupe and D. G. Bromley, (eds), Anti-Cult Movements in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994), viii.

  84. 84.

    For more on the religious boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s, see Z. Knox, Russian Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia after Communism (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), 75–104.

  85. 85.

    Ibid., 156–183.

  86. 86.

    M. Shterin, ‘New Religious Movements in Russia in the 1990s’ in M. Kotiranta (ed.), Religious Transition in Russia (Helsinki: Kikimora Publications, 2000), 185. The author estimates that a more accurate figure would be 250,000–300,000, if members of ‘old’ and ‘new’ NRMs are taken together.

  87. 87.

    Baran argues that the Russian ACM was primarily influenced by the European rather than the American ACM, writing ‘In many respects, the Russian anticult movement is best seen as a variant of the European anticult movement’. E. B. Baran, ‘Negotiating the Limits of Religious Pluralism in Post-Soviet Russia: The Anticult Movement in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1990–2004’, Russian Review 65, no. 4 (Oct., 2006), 652. Given that the European ACM is itself a variant of the American ACM, it is not clear that these different anticult traditions can be disentangled.

  88. 88.

    Missionerskii Otdel Moskovskogo Patriarkhate Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi, Novye religioznye organisatsii Rossii destruktivnogo i okkultnogo kharaktera: Spravochnik (Belgorod: Missionerskii Otdel Moskovskogo Patriarkhate Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi, 1997).

  89. 89.

    Reshenie: Golovinskii raionnyi sud Severnogo AO g. Moskvy (26 March 2004), 1. The author is grateful to the Office of Public Information of The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in New York City for providing a facsimile of the original court document.

  90. 90.

    Reshenie: Golovinskii raionnyi sud Severnogo AO g. Moskvy, p. 1.

  91. 91.

    Sergei Alekhin, ‘In Tatarstan the Wahhabis run free and in Petersburg the Jehovah’s Witnesses feel at home’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 2 September 1999. See also the letter to the editor thanking the paper for publishing Alekhin’s insights (published under the title “Cry of the Soul: Armageddon has already arrived for my daughter”) in Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 October 1999. Ivan Lopatin, “Pochemu Iegova vybral ikh v ‘svideteli’?”, Rossiskaia gazeta, 2 February 2001, 11.

  92. 92.

    Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of New York, 2000 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses (New York City: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 2000), 36–37.

  93. 93.

    The article was published two days after the bombing of the Okhotny Ryad shopping centre in Moscow that killed one person and injured dozens more, hence the reference to terrorists.

  94. 94.

    T. Titova, ‘Legal Victory Does Not End Registration Battle for Lipetsk Jehovah’s Witnesses’ (Issue 6, Article 9) (E-Mail Bulletin) Keston News Service. Accessed 5 June 2000).

  95. 95.

    Baran, Dissent on the Margins, 241.

  96. 96.

    J. T. Richardson and M. Introvigne, ‘“Brainwashing” Theories in European Parliamentary and Administrative Reports on “Cults” and “Sects”’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40, no. 2 (2001), 143–168.

  97. 97.

    D. Wilshire, ‘Cults and the European Parliament: A Practical Political Response to an International Problem’, Cultic Studies Journal 7, no. 1 (1990), 1–14.

  98. 98.

    Wilshire outlines the sources of opposition in Wilshire, ‘Cults and the European Parliament’, 1–14. Both Cottrell and Wilshire report receiving threats following its publication. Personal communication between the author and Richard Cottrell. [Email], 19 November 2014; Wilshire, ‘Cults and the European Parliament’.

  99. 99.

    They were also characterised as insular, rapacious, and hostile to criticism. ‘The Cottrell Report: European Union, 1984’ in G. D. Chryssides and M. Z. Wilkins (eds), A Reader in New Religious Movements (London and New York: Continuum, 2006), 389, 391, 393.

  100. 100.

    ‘The EU Resolution’ in G. D. Chryssides and M. Z. Wilkins (eds), A Reader in New Religious Movements (London and New York: Continuum, 2006), 394–397.

  101. 101.

    ‘Case of Kokkinakis V. Greece (25 May 1993)’, European Court of Human Rights at http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx#{“dmdocnumber”:[“695704”],”itemid”:[“001-57827”]}, accessed 11 August 2017.

  102. 102.

    For a discussion of broader developments, see I. Merdjanova, ‘Religious Liberty, New Religious Movements and Traditional Christian Churches in Eastern Europe’, Religion, State and Society 29, no. 4 (2001), 265–304.

  103. 103.

    ‘Case of Krupko and Others v. Russia (17 November 2014)’, European Court of Human Rights at www.ceceurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/CASE-OF-KRUPKO-AND-OTHERS-v.-RUSSIA.pdf, page 2, accessed 11 August 2017.

  104. 104.

    The Watch Tower Society levelled additional allegations of police violence in its press release on the ruling: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, ‘The European Court of Human Rights Upholds the Right of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia to Meet for Worship (1 July 2014)’ at www.jw.org/en/news/legal/by-region/russia/echr-judgment-freedom-of-religion/, accessed 11 August 2017.

  105. 105.

    ‘Case of Krupko and Others v. Russia’.

  106. 106.

    He was highly critical of Russia’s record on religious liberty, writing: ‘… the domestic practice of disrupting and dispersing peaceful religious assemblies through police raids, confiscation of religious works and the arrest and detention of worshipers has not abated, and ill-treatment of and discriminatory behaviour towards religious minorities continues to be common practice in the respondent State’. ‘Case of Krupko and Others v. Russia’, 2.

  107. 107.

    In 2007 the ECtHR ruled in favour of Konstantin Kuznetsov and 102 other Witnesses from Chelyabinsk when it found that local authorities had illegally disrupted a meeting of hearing-impaired Witnesses. ‘Case of Kuznetsov and Others v. Russia (11 January 2007)’, European Court of Human Rights at http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-164944, accessed 11 August 2017.

  108. 108.

    C. R. Wah, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Responsibility of Religious Freedom: The European Experience’, Journal of Church and State 43, no. 3 (2001), 601.

  109. 109.

    Chryssides and Zeller, ‘Opposition to NRMs’, 167.

  110. 110.

    N. Drydakis, ‘Religious Affiliation and Employment Bias in the Labor Market’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49, no. 3 (2010), 477–493.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of History, Politics & International Relations, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Zoe Knox

Authors
  1. Zoe Knox
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Knox, Z. (2018). Opposition. In: Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World. Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39605-1_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39605-1_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-39604-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39605-1

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation