"WHAT WE OWE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES" - RUSSIANS AND EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS

[bruceq]

What We Owe Jehovah’s Witnesses

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BY SARAH BARRINGER GORDON 
1/27/2011 • AMERICAN HISTORY

Jehovah’s Witnesses were unlikely champions of religious freedom.

One of the most momentous cases on the Supreme Court docket as war raged globally in 1943 was about a single sentence said aloud by schoolchildren every day. They stood, held their right hands over their hearts or in a raised-arm salute and began, “I pledge allegiance to the flag…” To most Americans the pledge was a solemn affirmation of national unity, especially at a time when millions of U.S. troops were fighting overseas. But the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious sect renowned for descending en masse on small towns or city neighborhoods and calling on members of other faiths to “awake” and escape the snare of the devil and his minions, felt otherwise. They insisted that pledging allegiance to the flag was a form of idolatry akin to the worship of graven images prohibited by the Bible. In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Walter Barnett (whose surname was misspelled by a court clerk) argued that the constitutional rights of his daughters Marie, 8, and Gathie, 9, were violated when they were expelled from Slip Hill Grade School near Charleston, W.Va., for refusing to recite the pledge.

 

 

 

 

In a landmark decision written by Justice Robert Jackson and announced on Flag Day, June 14, the Supreme Court sided with the Witnesses. “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds,” Jackson said. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses were unlikely champions of religious freedom. The sect’s leaders denounced all other religions and all secular governments as tools of the devil, and preached the imminence of the Apocalypse, during which no one except Jehovah’s Witnesses would be spared. But their persistence in fighting in the courts for their beliefs had a dramatic impact on constitutional law. Barnette is just one of several major Supreme Court decisions involving freedom of religion, speech, assembly and conscience that arose from clashes between Jehovah’s Witnesses and government authorities. The Witnesses insisted that God’s law demanded they refrain from all pledges of allegiance to earthly governments. They tested the nation’s tolerance of controversial beliefs and led to an increasing recognition that a willingness to embrace religious diversity is what distinguishes America from tyrannical regimes.

The Witness sect was founded in the 1870s, and caused a stir when the founder, Charles Taze Russell, a haberdasher in Pittsburgh, predicted the world would come to an end in 1914. Russell died in 1916; he was succeeded by his lawyer Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who shrewdly emphasized that the Apocalypse was near, but not so near that Witnesses didn’t have time to convert new followers, which they were required to do lest they miss out on salvation. This “blood guilt” propelled in-your-face proselytizing by Witnesses in various communities on street corners and in door-to-door visits. Soon the sect developed a reputation for exhibiting “astonishing powers of annoyance,” as one legal commentator put it.

Rutherford ruled the Witnesses with an iron fist. He routinely encouraged public displays of contempt for “Satan’s world,” which included all other religions and all secular governments. At the time, the number of Witnesses in the U.S.—roughly 40,000—was so small that many Americans could ignore them. But in Nazi Germany, no group was too small to escape the eye of new chancellor Adolf Hitler, who banned the Witnesses after they refused to show their fealty to him with the mandatory “Heil Hitler” raised-arm salute. (Many Witnesses would later perish in his death camps.) In response, Rutherford praised the German Witnesses and advised all of his followers to refuse to participate in any oaths of allegiance that violated (in his view) the Second Commandment: “Thou shall have no Gods before me.”

With conflict looming around the world in the 1930s, many states enacted flag salute requirements, especially in schools. The steadfast refusal of Witnesses to pledge, combined with their refusal to serve in the military or to support America’s war effort in any way, triggered public anger. Witnesses soon became a ubiquitous presence in courtrooms across the country.

The relationship between Witnesses and the courts was complicated, in part because of the open disdain Rutherford and his followers displayed toward all forms of government and organized religion. Rutherford instructed Witnesses not to vote, serve on juries or participate in other civic duties. He even claimed Social Security numbers were the “mark of the beast” foretold in Revelations. The Catholic Church, said Rutherford, was a “racket,” and Protestants and Jews were “great simpletons,” taken in by the Catholic hierarchy to “carry on her commercial, religious traffic and increase her revenues.” Complaints about unwelcome public proselytizing by Witnesses led to frequent run-ins with state and local authorities and hundreds of appearances in lower courts. Every day in court for Rutherford and the Witnesses’ chief attorney, Hayden Covington, was an opportunity to preach the true meaning of law to the judges and to confront the satanic government.

In late 1935, Witness Walter Gobitas’ two children—Lillian, 12, and Billy, 10—were expelled from school in Minersville, Pa., because they balked at the mandatory recital of the Pledge of Allegiance, and a long court battle ensued. When Gobitis v. Minersville School District (as with Barnette, a court clerk misspelled the family surname) made its way to the Supreme Court in the spring of 1940, Rutherford and Covington framed their argument in religious terms, claiming that any statute contrary to God’s law as given to Moses must be void. The Court rejected the Witnesses’ claim, holding that the secular interests of the school district in fostering patriotism were paramount. In the majority opinion, written during the same month that France fell to the Nazis, Felix Frankfurter wrote: “National unity is the basis of national security.” The plaintiffs, said Frankfurter, were free to “fight out the wise use of legislative authority in the forum of public opinion and before legislative assemblies.”

In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Harlan Stone argued that “constitutional guarantees or personal liberty are not always absolutes…but it is a long step, and one which I am unwilling to take, that government may, as a supposed educational measure…compel public affirmations which violate their public conscience.” Further, said Stone, the prospect of help for this “small and helpless minority” by the political process was so remote that Frankfurter had effectively “surrendered…the liberty of small minorities to the popular will.”

Public reaction to Gobitis bordered on hysteria, colored by the hotly debated prospect of American participation in the war in Europe. Some vigilantes interpreted the Supreme Court’s decision as a signal that Jehovah’s Witnesses were traitors who might be linked to a network of Nazi spies and saboteurs. In Imperial, a town outside Pittsburgh, a mob descended on a small group of Witnesses and pummeled them mercilessly. One Witness was beaten unconscious, and those who fled were cornered by ax- and knife-wielding men riding the town’s fire truck as someone yelled, “Get the ropes! Bring the flag!” In Kennebunk, Maine, the Witnesses’ gathering place, Kingdom Hall, was ransacked and torched, and days of rioting ensued. In Litchfield, Ill., an angry crowd spread an American flag on the hood of a car and watched while a man repeatedly smashed the head of a Witness upon it. In Rockville, Md., Witnesses were assaulted across the street from the police station, while officers stood and watched. By the end of the year, the American Civil Liberties Union estimated that 1,500 Witnesses had been assaulted in 335 separate attacks.

The reversal of Gobitis in Barnette just three years later was remarkably swift considering the typical pace of deliberations in the Supreme Court. In the wake of all the violence against Witnesses, three Supreme Court justices—William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy and Hugo Black—publicly signaled in a separate case that they thought Gobitis had been “wrongly decided.” When Barnette reached the Supreme Court in 1943, Harlan Stone, the lone dissenter in Gobitis, had risen to chief justice. The facts of the two cases mirrored each other, but the outcome differed dramatically. Most important, in ruling that Witness children could not be forced to recite the pledge, the new majority rejected the notion that legislatures, rather than the courts, were the proper place to address questions involving religious liberty. The “very purpose” of the Bill of Rights, wrote Justice Robert Jackson, was to protect some issues from the majority rule of politics. “One’s right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, may not be submitted to vote….Fundamental rights depend on the outcome of no elections.” Jackson’s opinion was laced with condemnation of enforced patriotism and oblique hints at the slaughter taking place in Hitler’s Europe. “Those who begin in coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters,” Jackson wrote. “Compulsory unification of opinions achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” Religious dissenters, when seen from this perspective, are like the canary in the coal mine: When they begin to suffer and die, everyone should be worried that the atmosphere has been polluted by tyranny.

Today, the Witnesses still proselytize, but their right to do so is well established thanks to their long legal campaign. Over time they became less confrontational and blended into the fabric of American life.

In the wake of the Barnette decision, the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance continued to occupy a key (yet ambiguous) place in American politics and law. The original pledge was a secular oath, with no reference to any power greater than the United States of America. The phrase “under God” was added by an act of Congress and signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower on Flag Day, June 14, 1954. Eisenhower, who had grown up in a Jehovah’s Witness household but later became a Presbyterian, alluded to the growing threat posed by Communists in the Soviet Union and China when he signed the bill: “In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resources in peace and war.”

Eisenhower’s political instincts for the ways that religion functioned in American life were finely honed: Support for the amendment to the Pledge of Allegiance was strong, including an overwhelming majority of Catholics and Protestants as well as a majority of Jews. According to a Gallup survey, the only group that truly opposed the change was the smattering of atheists. In a country locked in battle with godless communism, a spiritual weapon such as an amended pledge that was not denominationally specific made sense. Only after the intervening half-century and more does the “Judeo-Christian” God invoked in the pledge seem less than broadly inclusive.

Sarah Barringer Gordon is the author of The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America.

[bruceq]

Did anyone notice these words by Justice Jackson :'“Compulsory unification of opinions achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” Religious dissenters, when seen from this perspective, are like the canary in the coal mine: When they begin to suffer and die, everyone should be worried that the atmosphere has been polluted by tyranny. 

How true those words and many media recently have also stated that Jehovah's Witnesses are the FIRST to be targeted and banned then persecuted and killed just like in Nazi Germany and now in the Russian Federation. We are the canary in the mine.See also the book ""Dissent on the Margins How Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses Defied Communism and Lived to Preach About It". On ebay under lisa.joeywit.

Here is the ebay write-up :

Here is a new book from 2014 by Baran called "Dissent on the Margins How Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses Defied Communism and Lived to Preach About It". This is an excellent 382 page book about "Jehovah's Witnesses and how they survived decades of brutal persecution, and emerged as one of the region's fastest growing religions after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. The Soviet state considered Witnesses to be the most reactionary of all underground religious movements, and used extraordinary measures to try and eliminate this threat. Yet the 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..." [from book jacket].

    Currently as of 2015 the Russian Federation just like its predecessor the Soviet state has been repressing the Jehovah's Witnesses in particular. So much so that they even banned the official website that they use as noted below. Thinking they are extremist because of their Christian neutrality and the fact that they are "no part of the world" as the Bible says Christians should be. And as Jesus said the "World would hate them" because of their stand as true Christians. [John 15:17-19 ;17:16; 18:36].

 

    Seven months after the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation declared  jw. org to be extremist, Russian authorities banned the official website of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The ban became effective on July 21, 2015, when the Russian Federation Ministry of Justice added jw. org to the Federal List of Extremist Materials. Internet providers throughout Russia have blocked access to the website, and it is now a criminal offense to promote it from within the country. Russia is the only country in the world to ban jw. org.

 

 UPDATE : On April, 5 2017 the Supreme Court in Russia may BAN Jehovah's Witnesses. Out of over 2,000 religions in Russia WHY are they picking only on this small religion of peaceful people and proclaim they are the same as terrorists by banning them?  {lisa.joeywit}

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dissent-on-the-Margins-Watchtower-Research-neutrality-Jehovah-Russia-Soviet-/391739411559?hash=item5b357d0c67:g:P8AAAOSw37tWDtWR

[Jim Meyer]

World

Jehovah’s Witnesses in Crimea Ordered to Renounce Faith

or Fight for Occupying Russian Army

By Jason LE MIere 

06/23/17

 

The CULT of Jehovah’s Witnesses

The issue of military service is a separate issue and, yes, they profess political neutrality; however, in the past they have been allowed to bribe public officials in Mexico (in the late 60s or early 70s) to obtain political cards saying that they had completed military service when, in fact, they never participated. Their fellow witnesses in Malawi never had that opportunity. During the same time in Malawi and hundreds, if not thousands of Witnesses, were killed under President Banda. The witnesses were told not to buy a political card for 25 cents. Death for 25 cents. It is interesting that the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses were more interested in saving their material possessions e.g. halls, printing presses and branch facilities in Mexico while not giving the same opportunity or consideration to their brothers in Malawi, where such facilities were either absent or of little to no value.

Aside from that they are an extremist cult. Governments of ALL nations are ruled and directed by a corrupt angel named Satan the Devil. They are told what clothes are acceptable and not for both men and women; what music they can listen to, what games are acceptable or should be avoided, what foods they can eat, how long hair can be for men and that the men cannot wear beards, how long skirts or dresses must be for women, wives are to be completely compliant to their husbands with regard to sexual intimacy and not challenge their headship at all. These women are told that they have ‘smaller brains’ and therefore have not the capacity to usurp their husband’s authority. They have ‘curves’ in the right places for their husbands to enjoy. They also allow corporeal punishment for the children. Hitting their children to make them obedient, compliant and morally astute adults. In addition, they are told to view those who are not JWs as poor, if not bad association, who will be destroyed at Armageddon unless they become a Witness. Their literature is filled with such pronouncements with lurid and vivid illustrations.

They are told to not be drinking or transfusing blood in hospital settings due to medical emergencies. They are willing to die, (or be shunned if they take a transfusion and live) as such, by refusing to accept a blood transfusion; however, even more egregious, adults will under severe pressure from their Hospital Liaison Committee (HLC) refuse to give live saving blood transfusions to their minor children and in most cases without any regard for the child's permission. Children are to obey and nothing more. Thousands of mothers at birth, children die each year at birth and from preventable illnesses or accidents that could have spared their life with a blood transfusion. Some of these cases are being referred to various countries' supreme court by non-witnesses’ relatives.

They are not allowed to question their elders over any scriptural matters; women are to learn in ‘quiet.’ Questions could lead to their being excommunicated or disfellowshipped should they pose a threat to the local elders, congregation or Governing Body. They are told to watch each other and report anything (George Orwell’s 1984) that would be contrary to their beliefs to the elders for investigation.

With regard to children, especially young girls and women, they do not report to the authorities any allegation of CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE. They regard child sexual abuse as a sin, rather than a civil and criminal offense. Elders (who have absolutely no training regarding sexual matter and the psychological affects of CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE) may investigate and if they have no second witness THEY DO NOTHING; absolutely nothing, to protect the child, this is true even if the abuser is a close relative as a father, brother or uncle etc. The children must go back home with the abuser and NOT SAY ANYTHING about it to anyone else. If they are baptized they themselves could be disfellowshipped, regardless of how old they are e.g. 7,8,9-years-old etc. If they are disfellowshipped they are cut off from their immediate and extended fleshly family and members of the congregation. They are shunned and completely isolated, regardless of the psychological and sociological ramifications. They may attend the Kingdom Halls; however, they are not to talk to anyone and this may be for months, if not years, so as to prove that they are repentant. Many of these witnesses have committed suicide rather than go through this complete loss and denial of their existence.

Currently, the organization has been spending millions and millions of dollars out of court to settle CHILD ABUSE CASES and place a gag order on the plaintiffs who are immediately ‘shunned’ by the congregation; this even though the organization made a monetary settlement to avoid public scrutiny and a possible backlash from the community at large.

They have been told to view those that leave the congregation or organization as ‘apostate, dead, ‘mentally diseased and poison;’ to be avoided at all cost. If someone disobeys and starts to associate with a shunned member, they are disfellowshipped and shunned by the community of witnesses, which is in theory all seven million plus witnesses. This shunning is a predictable way of CONTROL in this organization. (I have not spoken with my son for about four years. I left this cult and he refuses to have anything at all to do with me. I have no idea if he is even alive.)

I was part of this cult and brainwashed for several decades. I was an Elder, Vacation Pioneer, Regular Pioneer, Special Pioneer and gave talks at local Congregations, Circuit and District Conventions for about twenty deeply regretful years. I am ashamed of how I allowed myself to be bought by this cult concept rationalizing itself as a religion. I have little regard for religion and am now an atheist. I cannot undo my past; however, I can help ones now who may be investigating whether they want to get involved with this cult. Please do not subject yourself and your children to this cult.

The individual people in this cult may well be good people. They simply have been programmed and conditioned with so much propaganda and fear they cannot see any way out. I suspect if the ‘shunning’ policy were lifted thousands would leave; however, as of now losing their family is too much to bear. Believe me, it is extremely difficult when an organization as this can destroy family bonds. I hope this will help someone. Jim