The Jehovah's Witnesses on PBS

Coming less then a month after the airing of 'The Mormons' documentary on PBS, I thought I would include this post on the film 'Knocking', which was broadcast tonight as an episode of 'Independent Lenses'. This post comes from my movie blog, 'His Other Band'.

Knocking (2006)
IMDb

I found Joel Engardio's concise little documentary on the Jehovah's Witnesses to be very enlightening. I know relatively little about the faith, despite having some contact with members of various Kingdom Hall's on my mission. Often Witnesses I meet knocking doors would be very prepared to share their faith with us missionary's, and somehow get us to go away with a pamphlet. At other times I enjoyed swapping stories of how people had been rude to us when we showed up at their doors. Sometimes we LDS missionary's where mistaken for Jehovah's Witnesses (you really have to know pretty little about either group to make that mistake, in my opinion), and the general impression I got from these and other occurrences, was that the average southerner found Mormons to be more blasphemous, but Jehovah's Witnesses to be more annoying, or more aggressive proselytisers. In general I really think they disliked the JW's more then the Mormons, and I'm not entirely sure why, though it might have something to do with their lack of patriotism (as traditionally understood).

The documentary covers briefly the history of the Jehovah's Witnesses, including important civil liberty's cases they where involved in (mostly involving the right to proselytize), as well as some of their more distinctive doctrines and practices. Mostly however the film follows two families, one a Jewish Holocaust survivor who converted to the faith, and his children both Jewish and JW. The other a family of converts whose oldest son suffers from a degenerative liver condition, one that is typically treated by a transplant that involves blood transfusion, with the latter aspect of the surgery being expressly forbidden by the Witnesses beliefs. Both families are engaging, and offer opportunity's to look at important aspects of the Witnesses faith as a whole.

So far as the family with the (twenty-something) child with the liver condition goes, we get to explore both the impact of strict adherence to the beliefs about blood on the family's handling of a health crises (they eventually have a successful bloodless liver transplant performed at a Los Anglos area hospital, an advancement that will be equally helpful to members of all faiths), and the impact of the faith on non-Jehovah's Witness family members. The mother-in-law thinks going through the bloodless surgery is too dangerous for her grandchild, and resents the family's non-participation in Christmas and other holiday actives, a practice (or lack there of) dictated by their faith. That mother-in-law reminds me of many friends and relatives to LDS people, convinced that that seemingly alien faith is keeping them from fully embracing loved ones who do not prescribe to its precepts. In both the Jehovah's Witness and Latter-day Saint cases, I think it is often the 'non-member' parties who place the biggest distance between adherents and non, often based on mistaken our stereotyped understandings of the faith in question, and reading non-participation in certain activities as a personal rejection (i.e. JW's not showing up for Christmas dinner, and non-Mormons not being allowed to attend LDS temple marriages).

Of course the concept of family strain is also more then evident in the story of the Jewish convert. When the old man comes to tale the tale of his Holocaust experience at a local school, his Jewish daughter seems somewhat uncomfortable when he begins to speak of the imprisoned Jehovah's Witness that so inspired him as a boy. The whole story of the Jehovah's Witness in Europe during the second World War (and I suppose even in America, where they were sometimes beaten on grounds of unpatriotism) is a very interesting one to me. I wouldn't mind seeing a documentary on only that, so any JW reading this should feel free to leave a message if they know of a way that I might receive one. I admit part of this fascination is rooted in a kind of spiritual envy, most Latter-day Saints in Germany and environs during the war cooperated with the Nazi's (probably not important, but I think there were fewer Mormons in Europe at that time the Jehovah's Witnesses). I think that its a kind of manifestation of spiritual guilt that so much exposure has been given in the past decade to the story of a teenage Mormon resistance fighter who was killed by the Nazi's during the war ( I forgot his name, some Mormon could probably help me out on this). I mean what he did was brave and all, but he was the exception not the rule. In fact the Nazi's were big fans of Mormon genealogical recording keeping, thinking it a fine tool for confirming or denying racial purity. The one real negative thing I came away with from this doc, was that Jehovah's Witness sure seem to excommunicate a lot of people, roughly 30,000 a year out of a membership of about 7 million.

Anyway I liked this documentary and the people in it, wouldn't mind talking about what I learned. However I live with other people and JW's would not be welcome at my house, so let's keep it to an online chat, an open invitations to any Jehovah's Witness who might happen upon this blog.