Overlooked by the Religion News Service—How Can That Be?

[TrueTomHarley]

I visited religionnews.com and found that my religion does not exist. Jehovah's Witnesses are nowhere listed in their tree of faiths. Everyone else is. Jehovah's Witnesses are not. Can it be? RNS "strive to inform, illuminate and inspire public discourse on matters relating to belief and convictions," says their About page. So where are Jehovah's Witnesses?Few religions have been in the news as much as they, especially with their recent ban in Russia. Is Religion News Service a Russian site? No. Is it their aim to suck up to the Russians? I don't think so. So where are the Witnesses?

The reason that there is not a Jeopardy clue: "They visit door to door to speak about the Bible" is that the answer is too obvious and would stump no one. In some ways Witnesses are plainly the foremost of religions. "And this good news of the Kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14), for example. Nobody is known for taking the "good news of the Kingdom' to each and every person like Jehovah's Witnesses, especially before "the end will come.' Here is a cartoon of how JWs found Osama Bin Laden:

Or what about the verse, "beating their swords into plowshares.' (Isaiah 2:4) It is an inspirational slogan for all. The ones who actually DO it are Jehovah's Witnesses. They may be the only ones to completely do it, in that, not only will they not participate in wars, but they will not perform civilian work that is clearly designed to support war efforts. 

Yet, look through the comprehensive list at the bottom of the religionnews.com website"”they do not appear.

The first place you check, of course, is Christianity. There you find four subdivisions: Catholics, Latter Day Saints, Orthodox, and Protestants. If they are in any of the four, it must be Protestants. There you find three subdivisions: Black Protestants, Evangelical, and Mainline. Well, they're not the first or the third. Since they preach the good news of the Kingdom, could they be the second? Nope. Scroll through the stories in that category. You won't find them.

Okay, got it. They are not counted as Christian because RNS assumes that one must believe in the Trinity to be Christian"”many times we've run across this. It makes no sense, but there it is. Most verses used to advance the Trinity teaching are verses that, if they were seen in any other context, would be instantly dismissed as figure of speech. There is no verse that directly states the Trinity, and the one in the King James Version that does (1 John 5:7) has been recognized by all modern scholars as a spurious insertion and thus either removed or footnoted. One almost pictures a scribe reviewing scriptures, getting madder and madder that his favorite doctrine is no where to be found, and slipping it in when no one was looking. 

Where else might Jehovah's Witnesses be if not in the Christian category? Well, maybe the Alternative Faiths category, or the Other Faiths category. Nope. Scroll through the stories on either category. They do not appear. 

Is it an oversight? Is it a snub? Is it avoidance because any story about Jehovah's Witnesses will reliably attract swarms of their virulent "apostates' alarmed at any favorable mention and insistent upon maligning their former faith and so RNS just doesn't want to deal with it? (See TrueTom vs the Apostates) Dunno. But is certainly is strange. 

Now, to be sure, if you enter Jehovah's Witnesses in the Search box, a few items appear"”not many, but a few. There is someone there at RNS that knows that if your textbook is the Bible, if you teach from it, if you have even invented an entirely new non-commercial distribution channel and translated it into overlooked languages of developing countries so that common persons there are not stuck with some 200-year old turkey of a translation that they can neither understand nor afford, you must be a religion. Still, Jehovah's Witnesses are not listed in the list that includes everyone else. 

Do not think that the JW organization will be miffed at not being included in the list. They may even draw satisfaction from it. "Good. Here is a list of the religions "of the world' and we are not on it," they may say. If there is one verse they take seriously over there at JW HQ, it is John 17:16, where Jesus prays about his followers: "They are no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world."

For that reason I will not go the RNS site and holler, "Hey!"”what is it with you clowns?!" The site is an offspring of the Missouri School of Journalism. It speaks of the "academic experts' that monitor all. I don't want to tangle with experts. Maybe they will try to pull rank on that basis. Who knows? Maybe they are right. Maybe I am not part of a religion, even if I do speak of the Bible door to door and keep the peace.

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

Quote @TrueTomHarley " but they will not perform civilian work that is clearly designed to support war efforts."

This choice was taken from JWs in WW2 because the Leaders of the JWs took away people's conscience by misusing the Romans  scripture regarding Superior Authorities. 

Many of the younger generation now, who have no religion, will not go to war. Punks, a subculture, are anti-war. Hippies were also anti-war. It is not just a JW thing. 

Quote "Nobody is known for taking the ‘good news of the Kingdom’ to each and every person like Jehovah’s Witnesses, especially before ‘the end will come.’ "

Perhaps also, nobody is known for telling as many lies about how to serve God,and the 'Good News'.

Perhaps the JWs are best known for false predictions of Armageddon. Or maybe CSA.

JWs can be known for scaremongering, but In those cases i think it is just that some JWs are a bit too keen to get a message across. Some even use this Covid-19 virus as an excuse.  

 

 

[Srecko Sostar]

46 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I visited religionnews.com and found that my religion does not exist. Jehovah’s Witnesses are nowhere listed in their tree of faiths. Everyone else is. Jehovah’s Witnesses are not. Can it be?

Why you are upset? WTJWorg preaching that you are not part of this world. If you are not par of it, why would you be part of these list? :))

[JW Insider]

8 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Why you are upset? WTJWorg preaching that you are not part of this world. If you are not par of it, why would you be part of these list? :))

TTH already mentioned that. I think you were supposed to read the part that had a line through the words, too. :))

[JW Insider]

Not completely ignored, though:

https://religionnews.com/2020/02/28/jehovahs-witnesses-complete-entire-bible-in-american-sign-language/

https://religionnews.com/2019/09/17/eritrea-has-held-three-jehovahs-witnesses-in-jail-for-25-years/

https://religionnews.com/2019/11/04/worlds-most-widely-translated-website-jw-org-features-content-in-1000-languages/

https://religionnews.com/2019/02/08/six-year-prison-sentence-for-jehovahs-witness-in-russia-sparks-outcry/

https://religionnews.com/2018/01/10/ex-mormon-launches-faithleaks-to-root-out-abuse-and-corruption-in-churches/

Here's a link to about 20 of their articles from the last 3 years (about JWs):

https://religionnews.com/tag/jehovahs-witnesses/

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

TTH already mentioned that. I think you were supposed to read the part that had a line through the words, too. :))

I don’t know where the strike throughs came from. It wasn’t me, unless it was by accident. A software glitch? Dunno. But there weren’t supposed to be any. 

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

Not completely ignored, though:

That is acknowledged, too. Searching, one may find some things. But in the tree of faiths that includes most everyone, at least in the alternative or other category, Witnesses are not to be found.

As you stated to Srecko, I’m not upset about it, and Bethel may even be happy about it. As usual, 4Jah is all wet. These others he mentioned can and are maneuvered into other forms of violence, even if nationalism has become passé for some of them. And without a unity founded on love, it takes nothing for the national king to convince them that the villains are to be found in the domain of the other king. It takes nothing to stir up people today.

[Arauna]

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

For that reason I will not go the RNS site and holler, “Hey

Good that they do not recognise us!  The image of the beast will go for all other religions - to remove them - and forget about us.  Then at last they will come for us when we deliver a special message..... just before Armageddon!  This will be their undoing..... to therafter attack JWs.

[Arauna]

1 hour ago, 4Jah2me said:

JWs took away people's conscience

Bad argument!   Their consciences are refined so they can love their enemies and not take political sides!  So they can cross all political and racial barriers! 

[TrueTomHarley]

Just now, Arauna said:

Good that they do not recognise us!  The image of the beast will go for all other religions - to remove them - and forget about us.  Then at last they will come for us when we deliver a special message..... just before Armageddon!  This will be their undoing..... to go for JWs.

That is the moral of the post that you stated more succinctly than I. In a list of “the religions of the world,” we are not on it.

If you were to ask Bethel to describe their faith, very quickly would come up that statement that true Christians “are no part of the world.”

Make of it what you will. I don’t make anything of it. I just note it.

 

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, 4Jah2me said:

Some JWs are a bit too keen to get their message across. Some even use this Covid-19 virus as an excuse.  

I haven’t. Nor have I seen anyone here who has. More importantly, The JW organization clearly hasn’t.

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/87136-‘using’-the-pandemic-to-‘recruit’-people-sheesh-what-is-it-with-these-nutcases/

But if any individual has, I can certainly understand. A pandemic that has not been seen in 100 years. Economic disruption not seen since the Great Depression. In the US, there have been numerous reports of food lines up to two miles long. I would forgive any brother for going there, even if the organization itself has not. So far it is just one more nail in the coffin of human mismanagement of the earth to them.

[JW Insider]

31 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

That is acknowledged, too

True. You said there were a few, and I took this to mean only about 3 or 4 and I thought I had remembered more. It's odd that it's only about 20, considering, but at least most of them are pieces of news that we would consider relevant, like Russia, persecution, etc.

[TrueTomHarley]

1 minute ago, JW Insider said:

It's odd that it's only about 20, considering, but at least most of them are pieces of news that we would consider relevant, like Russia, persecution, etc.

One of them is not JW per se, but is of someone who wrote a book on how to refute them, along with the Mormons, latching on to key scriptures cites and how to answer back.

Bring it on, I say. Any Witness worth his salt knows how to answer such things.