After six months of winter weather, today Bostonians drank in weekend spring sunshine like dehydrated camels eager to stock up the balmy radiance for the inevitable bouts of foul weather that typifies our climate 90% of the time. I spent the morning in the laundromat — a hard place to cope with while the world frolicked outside. I had planned to spend my idle laundry moments strolling on the sidewalks, but my five separate loads were staggered in such a way that attention was required every few minutes.
I passed the time with the only reading material available: A Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower magazine. This Watchtower was from October 2001, and appeared to be in unread condition. The magazine may be dated, but its message? Timeless. On the cover, a middle-aged man adopts a close-mouthed zombie smile while holding a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses below the single headline: You can have true faith.
What impresses me most about the Watchtower is how nearly every sentence is appended with a Bible verse citation. Not only the direct biblical quotations, but also sentences like “Jehovah’s Witnesses strive to contact everyone they can with the Kingdom message. At times, it takes an extraordinary effort to reach those who are seldom at home (Mark 13:10).” I didn’t have my Bible with me, but I was dying to know how Saint Mark addresses the inconveniences of door-to-door proselytizing.
As creepy as the Watchtower is, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Gotta give those Jehovah’s Witnesses credit. By obstinately clinging to their rights to go proselytizing door-to-door, to be excused from military service on religious grounds, and to refuse to put another deity before God by saying the Pledge of Allegiance, Jehovah’s Witnesses have protected all of our civil liberties and speech freedoms — something not discussed in the Watchtower. Perhaps they should take their marketing to another level. Perhaps they should change their name to Jehovah’s Rebels.
