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Book Review

Canada and the United States

Shawn Francis Peters. Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2000. Pp. x, 342. $34.95.

The early and mid-1940s were "grim years" for Jehovah's Witnesses throughout much of the United States. Shawn Francis Peters focuses on "a narrow and troubling chapter of the Witnesses' history" and examines its impact on American law. "Targeted largely because they refused to salute the American flag," he states, hundreds were "beaten, kidnapped, tarred and feathered, throttled in castor oil . . . and otherwise consigned to mayhem" (p. 8). Repeatedly, state and local authorities "either ignored the Witnesses' requests for assistance or actively participated in the suppression of their civil liberties." Noting the "pervasive unpopularity" of the victims, even the attorneys in the Civil Rights Section of the U.S. Justice Department were "extraordinarily reluctant to prosecute anti-Witness vigilantes" (p. 10). 1

To appreciate the Witnesses's crusade, one needs to understand their beliefs. Although Peters does not concentrate on ideology, he makes it clear that their faith gave Witnesses little choice. They felt obliged to warn the world that Armageddon was at hand and that eternal life depended on conversion. Each Witness was considered a minister. Devoted to Jehovah, they pored over the Scriptures to determine his will. They refused military service and would not salute the flag, "not because [they] did not love [their] country" but because they "love[d] God more and . . . must obey his commandments" (p. 37). They were often strident, especially toward Roman Catholicism. Many felt that Witnesses "went out of their way to court trouble" (p. 117). . . .

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