Doctors at the Pretoria Academic Hospital have obtained an urgent court order enabling them to give a month-old baby a blood transfusion. They felt the life of the infant – one of twins – was at stake.

But the baby’s family, who live in Sunnyside and are Jehovah’s Witnesses, are deeply distressed. Read the rest »

You are now able to reply on each individual post with the new Nested Comments-functionality. This functionality will help to make the discussions more natural. You can collapse or unfold a threads by clicking on the collapse/unfold-buttons. If you click on “comments” you will see an example.

Disfellowshipped Dasun Allah, editor of the hip-hop magazine The Source and now member of the Islam-based Nation of Gods and Earths, “tagged” the assembly hall to expose the religion’s “hypocrisy.” Read the rest »

This paper examines the socialisation of second and subsequent generation members and describes how the movement deals with those who refuse to comply with its regime. Extracts are presented from interviews with young members who recall their childhood memories of growing up in the movement and explain what happened when they rebelled against its quasi-totalitarian doctrines. The main argument advanced in the paper is that parents who socialise their children in accordance with this particular creed are protecting them from a modern world of relativism and uncertainty. Read the rest »

This paper examines the ways in which the movement promotes its millenarian message to prospective recruits. It also considers how the Witnesses are able to hold futuristic beliefs and at the same time, lead active lives in the present. The methods of data collection include unstructured interviews with devotees and content analysis of the movement’s own literature. The paper concludes that while the Witnesses’ futuristic symbolism is a form of escape from the modern world, it is also part of their own pseudo-corporate ‘branding’ which has contributed to their international success. Read the rest »