Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World by Zoe Knox

Author:Zoe Knox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

One writer blamed the presence of ‘animal filth’ in human blood circulation for loosened sexual mores20 and another for ‘mental and moral degeneration’ due to vaccination’s ‘dementalizing influence’.21 This continued when The Golden Age became Consolation, from 1937 to 1946. In one issue, Consolation featured nauseating cartoons likening receiving a vaccination to drinking a cocktail of animal pus, forced on unwilling citizens by a coalition of the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry.22 This was part of a wider discourse that denigrated the medical profession and questioned medical progress.23 Through these articles, the Bible Students (and from 1931, Jehovah’s Witnesses), learned that medical science was founded on ‘ignorance, error and superstition’.24

Historians attribute the tirades against vaccination to Clayton J. Woodworth, who became the editor when The Golden Age was first published on 1 October 1919.25 As discussed in Chap. 3, Woodworth co-authored The Finished Mystery (although it was attributed posthumously to Russell) and was one of seven men jailed alongside Rutherford in 1918. Under his editorship, the magazine frequently included articles by practitioners of what would today be called complementary medicine. Much of what was written in its pages went against contemporary scientific teaching. An article published in January 1924 denied the germ theory of disease, which was almost universally accepted by that time.26 As editor, Woodworth would have approved these articles, and likely penned some of them. His position was not unique; there are other examples, historical and contemporary, of religious groups rejecting vaccination: the Church of Christ, Scientist was also opposed to the practice in the 1920s and 1930s (it has since changed its position, although many Christian Scientists continue to refuse it).27

By World War II, there was a belief in some quarters that the Society’s position on vaccination had been overturned. In his account of the organisation’s history, Faith on the March, A. H. Macmillan recounted his part in convincing Witness prisoners in the United States to be vaccinated. He would have been well aware of changes in the Society’s teachings; he was a significant figure in the movement from 1918, when he joined the Society’s board, until his death in 1966. On one of his regular visits to Witnesses imprisoned for their refusal to conduct military service, Macmillan was permitted by the warder to speak with the inmates, including those in solitary confinement. The government had put in place a programme to vaccinate all prison guards and inmates, but Witness prisoners refused to comply on the grounds that this violated scripture. Macmillan told them that Witness missionaries received vaccinations, explaining: ‘Now vaccination is not anything like blood transfusion. No blood is used in the vaccine. It is a serum. So you would not be violating those Scriptures which forbid taking blood into your system’. The men conceded to vaccinations and sent a letter of apology to prison authorities for the trouble caused by their misguided stand.28

By 1952, the Society’s prohibition on vaccinations was formally overturned. In the ‘Questions from Readers’ section of The Watchtower of 15 December 1952, ‘G.

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