This examination of Witness iconography provides an interesting index by which to observe the evolving international and multiethnic self-consciousness of the Watchtower Society. Read more…

by Joel Elliott

A Paper Presented to the American Academy of Religion
Washington, DC, November 21, 1993

Send me email at elliott@email.unc.edu

Please do not quote or reproduce this document
without my permission.
© 1993

This paper is very much work-in-progress, and I would love to hear your responses to this essay as I begin to revise it.

Since their origins in late nineteenth-century America, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have evolved into a well-defined and efficiently organized religious group of global proportions. Recent Society statistics indicate that less than one fourth of contemporary Witnesses live in the country of the movement’s birth; the Society now claims a world-wide core membership of over four million. Read more…

Witness discourse is heavily jargonized; it is filled with “buzz words” that immediately differentiate themselves from both the outside world and from other Christian groups. Read more…