¹ Parallels to this “fatalistic” attitude may be found in the view of those political radicals who disclaim interest in reform within the framework of the capitalistic system. Various ideological parallels with Communism are discussed by Stroup, H. H., “Class Theories of the Jehovah's Witnesses,” Social Science, XIX (1944), 94–97Google Scholar; see also the same author's The Jehovah's Witnesses, New York (Columbia University Press), 1945Google ScholarPubMed.

² A notable instance occurred on August 20, 1940, at North Windham, Maine. Deputy Sheriff E. Dean Pray, a man active in American Legion circles, was fatally shot by Arthur F. Cox, one of Jehovah's witnesses, whom, with another brother, Pray was attempting to drive from his filling station following an attempt to witness to him. The defense alleged that Pray was brandishing a tire iron, and that Cox was merely acting in self-defense. However, he was found guilty on a murder charge and was sentenced to life imprisonment. While he was supported by them in his defense, many brothers felt, as I heard several remark, that Cox had no business to be carrying firearms, and that there was reason to believe he was overly hasty in his action.

³ See the author's Some Problems in the Integration of Social Groups, With Special Reference to Jehovah's Witnesses, doctoral thesis (unpublished) submitted to the Department of Sociology, Harvard University, 1942.

⁴ The witnesses greatly prefer to gain draft exemption through classification in 4D (ministers of religion) rather than 4E (consciencious objectors). Failing to achieve the former status, many prefer imprisonment to C. O. camps. A large proportion of those serving Federal sentences for draft evasion during the recent war have been witnesses. These brethren justify their refusal on the ground that they must acquiesce in nothing necessitating a discontinuance of their all-important witnessing activities. To other C. O.'s life in a small community of like-minded men, where they can carry on work which is, or which they hope may be, more or less congenial to them and to their interests, may hold out attractive prospects; but to the witnesses, whose principal group activity cannot be extensively pursued within the camps, to live in a community under the supervision of the Devil's world would hold no very attractive prospects. In personal conversation, C. O.'s of other faiths have expressed to me respect for the witnesses for their courage, etc., but have informed me that t lose brethren who have gone to the camps, while hard workers, tend to remain aloof from, and disinterested in, much of the life of the rest of the community. In the light of the present discussion, this is not to be wondered at. All this, furthermore, is one more indication that to the witnesses the issue is not primarily one of an objection to participation in warfare as such.

⁵ Rutherford, J. F., Salvation, (Brooklyn, 1939), 257–265Google Scholar.

⁶ Notice that here, again, the emphasis is on Christians, not on men in general.

⁷ Doubltess many witness children have a far keener sense for the official meaning of the flag than the children of most American Legionaires!

⁸ See 1944 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses (Brooklyn, 1943), 45 ff.

⁹ “The tendency of the witnesses and others like them to show special interest in agricultural work — conducted “far from the noise and din of this dying, wartorn old world” (1944 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, Brooklyn, 1943, p. 39) — is presumably connected with their almost misanthropic tendency to glorify the Divine, identified with “nature,” at human expense.

It is significant that the suspicion is less of those farms operated in direct conjunction with the Bethel families and to provide provisions for these.

¹⁰ Cf. n. 4.

¹¹ Thus, though nonparticipation was at times ignored by sympathetic teachers, no formal status of “conscientious objection” to flag-saluting was ever established. A factor in this was probably the lack of the precedent of similar objections by other groups enjoying, like the Quakers, high popular esteem, who had already fought and won the battles leading to the formal definition of a special status for objectors to military service.

¹² In general terms, this implies a lack of certain institutional controls, present as between other rival faiths, to regulate the interaction between the witnesses and other groups. Often the witnesses define the situation relative to their outside relationships differently from that in wider acceptation, as in their insistence upon the mutual exclusiveness of certain patterns which the more generally accepted tradition defines as merely supplementary.

¹³ Indeed, they are often suspected and accused of being actually Communistic, Fascistic, or otherwise “subversive”!

¹⁴ Probably related to this attitude as both cause and effect is an apparent American tendency, in both the framing and the administration of ordinances, to attempt to deal with violence and the threat thereof by the imposition of restraints upon the witnesses and other unpopular movements as inciters to violence rather than upon the actual initiators of the violence who respond to the “incitement.” Cf. American Civil Liberties Union pamphlet, “The Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses,” New York, 1941Google Scholar. In this connection American and British policies seem to present a noticeable contrast.

¹⁵ Elsewhere (see n. 3) I have attempted to define at length the principal “bases of the group's appeal.”

¹⁶ By this interchange the witnesses also promote each other's zeal and enthusiasm. Where he has had a painful or frustrating experience, an individual is guaranteed a sympathizing audience; where his witnessing efforts have met with notable success, he is guaranteed an admiring one.

¹⁷ “As we shall see later, this ideology offers an explanation of the “meaning” of frustrations, including those consequent upon rebuffs experienced during witnessing. The more active in group activities a witness is, the greater may thus be expected to become the need for the ideology and vividness of the latter, and this increased vividness would in turn promote greater activity. We thus find a basis for a possible cumulative effect, whereby the appeal to an individual of membership in a group would tend to increase with continued association with it. These considerations have also a clear relevance to the explanation of the tendency, if it is a tendency, for persecution to promote enthusiasm.

¹⁸ Of course, this does not mean that their hope is not often discussed in transcendental terms or does not embrace also transcendental elements. As I have shown elsewhere (“Some Notable Features in the Authority Structure of a Sect,” Social Forces, XXI, 1943, 344–350Google Scholar), they have a fairly vivid sense of leadership by Jehovah and Christ. They often refer to the experience of a “vision of the Theocracy,” meaning a sense or feeling that it is now in operation.

¹⁹ The significance of this for the group's authority structure I have discussed in the article mentioned in the preceding note.

²⁰ The obscuring of value conflicts through their confinement to different planes is emphasized by Myrdal, G. (An American Dilemma, New York, 1944Google Scholar).

²¹ 1941 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses (Brooklyn, 1940), 43Google Scholar, 44. Here, as elsewhere in this discussion, the important point is the expression of two opposed attitude trends. Whether a formulation achieves a logically consistent compromise is a question pertaining not to the existence of a conflict but to the manner in which the conflict works itself out in practice.

²² The Watchtower, Feb. is, 1941, p. 60.

²³ Thus, in answer to the question, Why do Jehovah's witnesses warn people against “the conspiracy against democracy” when the latter is shortly to he destroyed at Armageddon, it is urged that democracy affords them more liberty to preach than do other regimes, and that by calling the conspiracy to the attention of the people it is possible to reveal to them who their real enemies are.

²⁴ Thus, from an article entitled “The Death of Poland” (Consolation, Dec. 13, 1939): “There are not many who love justice who are grieved when a burglar gets hijacked, even though all decent people despise Hitler, the international hijacker.”

²⁵ Thus, in this and similar connections, it is often said that “it isn't wrong — we just don't do it, that's all,” and that the Lord is mindful of the fact that his children have many “weaknesses of the flesh” not easy for them to control.

²⁶ Although the rank-and-file show some disposition to be suspicious of it, Judge Rutherford specifically advised that the Bible tolerates, even recommends, moderate indulgence in wines. (Consolation, May 28, 1041, p. 16).

²⁷ That there is such a persisting entity, to which the various conceptions of the world are varying reactions, is a plausible view; but the view should be defended by argument, not merely taken for granted with no demonstration.

²⁸ Herein lies another reason why it can put us off the track to speak of “attitudes toward the world,” this formulation failing to do justice to the intimacy of the relation between the word and the attitudes as integral parts of the word's meaning.

²⁹ In a context in which the opposite of hostile attitudes are being emphasized, such status as a thing may usually be given as a part of the world is not emphasized. To describe a thing as “part of the world” or “worldly” is to condemn it. While many worldly things may be objects of ambivalent sentiments, the world itself is not, at least in the same way; and if found to be so with some individuals, as is not unlikely, such a situation ought probably to be viewed as a different order of phenomenon from the ambivalences we have discussed, but rather implying a current of revolt against submission to the group.

³⁰ Rutherford, J. F., Children (Brooklyn, 1941), p. 241 fGoogle ScholarPubMed.

³¹ It is interesting to note that this usage is the opposite of the more common one where there is also a value-reference, in that the reference is negative, not positive. This forcibly emphasizes the contrast; the witnesses' faith is presented as so different from others that, rather than “true religion” — the common phrase — it is not religion at all.

³² Preëminent among these protests, as I attempt to show elsewhere (see notes 3 and 18) is that against authority, especially, though not exclusively, officially-constituted, human — in their own terms, “worldly” — authority.

³³ The observance of divinely-appointed duties often involves sacrifice of personal inclinations; but the latter are viewed as “weaknesses of the flesh” characteristic of life under the regime of the Devil, and destined to be removed as human creatures become “perfected” under the Kingdom. These frustrations are thus also blamed on the Devil.

³⁴ On the rôle of religion in providing answers to questions as to the “meaning” of frustrations, see Parsons, T., The Structure of Social Action, (New York, 1937), 565 ffGoogle Scholar.