by Charlesie Robison & Adam West
For the past few years at Centre College, students have noticed their passing periods seemingly “interrupted” by a presence on campus. This presence sits in chairs at the crosswalks, handing out books and pamphlets to anyone who might give them a listen. These are members of Danville’s Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious group dedicated to spreading their belief and gospel to the student body of Centre College.
Two Cento writers decided to investigate what this group’s promotion truly entails.
Charlesie Robison:
I went and spoke to them during one of my passing periods, giving them the chance to talk about what they believed in, and what they were hoping to gain while standing outside Centre College. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to them as Jane and John Doe. John began, talking about what the current focus of the Jehovah’s Witness belief is, and what they are hoping to spread to Centre students. They stated that “the end is coming soon”, quoting that we have seen reality patterns which match up with the Bible’s description of what is widely known as “The Rapture.” This includes plagues, civil unrest, and rising temperatures. They stated that “we don’t have an exact date, but we know it is coming”, and that they wish for students to be aware of its soon arrival. When I asked them for more questions about their beliefs, I was encouraged to look at and promote their website: JW.Org, which had sections about their beliefs and ideals on the world. I was also given a pamphlet, which was dogeared on the chapter about “Why bad things happen”, which they stated is typically the biggest question they get by people who avoid the religion. Their answer was that bad things happen not because of God, but instead as a result of the original sin of man.
The next part of the conversation was dedicated to their time at Centre college. They stated that they have been coming to Centre for years, and will typically arrive during lunch hours on days when the weather permits, due to the heavy foot traffic. I also used this time to ask if they have converted many people during their time at Centre, however I got no response to this question in specific.
The Jehovah’s Witness website goes into further detail about their beliefs and ideologies. They are a denomination of Evangelical Christianity which focuses on the verbal spreading and teaching of beliefs as they are stated in the Bible, taking the biblical teachings to be the absolute and literal truth rather than metaphor. During my time talking with some, a group of students walked by and referred to them as a cult, which is a common belief held by non-practices based on the intense beliefs of the religion. This belief is most commonly attributed to their conservative beliefs on homosexuality and gender roles, alongside the religion’s belief on blood transfusion, which was made widespread by its inclusion in a 2013 episode of Grey’s Anatomy. In the episode, a child is rushed into the hospital and needs a blood transfusion, but the doctors in the show are unable to offer it to the child. When they confront the parents of the child, they refuse to consent to the life saving surgery, and instead swear that “God will save the child”. The religion has also been heavily criticized for its historical failure in reporting abuse cases within the religion and the shunning of ex-practicers.
The practitioners standing at Centre’s crosswalks showed no indications of stopping anytime soon, despite the verbal harassment and lack of progress they seem to have seen. Rather, they only seem more determined to “spread the good word” as they have been for years past, with their final goal being to save the souls of Centre students for when the “end” they believe in finally arrives.
Adam West:
At the same time as the first writer was talking to the Jehovah’s witnesses, I, too, was talking to them about their religion. Even calling Jehovah’s Witnesses a religion is something that they would debate, “not just something they do on Sunday;” instead, they would say that it is “just a way of life,” and that they view themselves “as a worldwide brotherhood,” inclusive of 9 million people worldwide, many of whom don’t speak the same language. Although both John 2 and Jane 2 were raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses and experimented with other religions, they found “the love” and “the hope” to be the “biggest thing(s)” that brought them back to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
They even have educational videos for kids to get them involved, following a little boy named Caleb and his sister Sophia.