A recent arti­cle from salon.com sug­gests that reli­gion may not sur­vive the Inter­net. This may already be the case with Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es. A new report pub­lished by JW Sur­vey com­pares the 2012 world­wide mem­ber­ship sta­tis­tics against Inter­net sat­u­ra­tion. Coun­tries with high Inter­net avail­abil­i­ty are slow­ing in reli­gious growth com­pared to oth­er less devel­oped areas.

It used to be much eas­i­er for a high-con­trol reli­gion to keep embar­rass­ing and neg­a­tive infor­ma­tion from mem­bers and poten­tial recruits. The Watch­tow­er Bible & Tract Soci­ety, the moth­er orga­ni­za­tion for Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es, has been quick to use copy­right laws to remove secret infor­ma­tion from the Inter­net. For exam­ple, in 2010 when the secret man­u­al used by con­gre­ga­tion elders leaked online, Watch­tow­er Legal issued a flood of DMCA take­down orders to have it removed.

A more recent and dis­turb­ing exam­ple is an Octo­ber 2012 let­ter sent to con­gre­ga­tion elders updat­ing their pol­i­cy in deal­ing with accused child moles­ters in their ranks. A con­cerned whistle­blow­er elder leaked the infor­ma­tion to the Inter­net and it was post­ed with com­men­tary on JW Sur­vey. The let­ter con­tained shock­ing state­ments like, “It can­not be said in every case that one who has sex­u­al­ly abused a child could nev­er qual­i­fy for … ser­vice in the con­gre­ga­tion.” Again the Watchtower’s legal depart­ment sprung to action, cit­ing copy­right infringe­ment which lead to a tem­po­rary take­down of the pop­u­lar web­site.

Per­haps more sur­pris­ing is the lengths that the Watch­tow­er will go to remove its pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion from unof­fi­cial sources. From its incep­tion, the reli­gion has been geared toward the pub­lic dis­tri­b­u­tion of its print­ed mes­sage, which it believes is the ful­fill­ment of Jesus’s prophe­cy that the “good news of the king­dom” would be spread through­out the earth. It may be assumed that a reli­gion that seems great­ly con­cerned that its mes­sage be wide­ly avail­able would be grate­ful for expo­sure on pop­u­lar Inter­net sites like YouTube. How­ev­er this is not the case.

In 2012 atten­dees of the Watchtower’s world­wide con­ven­tions were pro­vid­ed a free ani­mat­ed children’s video. One seg­ment con­tained the sto­ry of a young Jehovah’s Wit­ness child who brings home an action fig­ure giv­en to him from a school­mate. The moth­er quick­ly deter­mines that the action fig­ure uses “mag­ic” and guilts the child into throw­ing it away. With­in the care­ful­ly con­di­tioned Jehovah’s Wit­ness com­mu­ni­ty the video hard­ly pro­voked a response, but to out­siders it was seen as an exam­ple of cru­el emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion and indoc­tri­na­tion The video was uploaded to YouTube and viewed by thou­sands before it suf­fered a quick take­down by the Jehovah’s Wit­ness lawyers.

The Watchtower’s use of the strong arm of copy­right law has gone beyond this. In 2005 it sued an ex-mem­ber who set up a web­site only offer­ing short, if embar­rass­ing, quo­ta­tions from their pub­licly avail­able lit­er­a­ture. The reli­gion asked for $100,000 in dam­ages. Lack­ing the resources to defend him­self against the wealthy religion’s in-house legal team, the own­er was forced to remove the crit­i­cal web­site.

For orga­ni­za­tions like the Watch­tow­er, absolute con­trol of their mes­sage is para­mount. It will not even allow its own adher­ents to spread their “good news” online. The Novem­ber 1997 Our King­dom Min­istry (an inter­nal bul­letin) man­dates: “There is no need for any indi­vid­ual to pre­pare Inter­net pages about Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es, our activ­i­ties, or our beliefs. Our offi­cial site (www.watchtower.org) presents accu­rate infor­ma­tion for any who want it.”

While the Watch­tow­er has had some suc­cess in stymy­ing the release of dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net, it has not been able to stop it all. Such things as doc­tri­nal flip-flops and past false end-of-the-world pre­dic­tions are read­i­ly avail­able to ques­tion­ing Wit­ness­es and poten­tial recruits.

Pri­or to the Inter­net, the Watch­tow­er tried to down­play its cul­pa­bil­i­ty in pre­dict­ing the end of the world in 1975. It blamed some of the mem­bers for unwise spec­u­la­tions. How­ev­er, quotes from the lit­er­a­ture point­ing to the year in var­i­ous ways are avail­able online. For exam­ple a 1969 issue of the Awake! mag­a­zine urges young Wit­ness­es: “If you are a young per­son, you also need to face the fact that you will nev­er grow old in this present sys­tem of things. Why not? Because all the evi­dence in ful­fill­ment of Bible prophe­cy indi­cates that this cor­rupt sys­tem is due to end in a few years.” Anoth­er YouTube video offers a pub­lic talk giv­en by a Watch­tow­er rep­re­sen­ta­tive in 1968 who urges a crowd of thou­sands to “stay alive until ‘75”.

Anoth­er threat the Inter­net pos­es to the Watch­tow­er, is that it allows the free exchange of ideas among Wit­ness­es keen on exam­in­ing the truth­ful­ness of their reli­gious teach­ings. About this their lead­er­ship warns, “a few asso­ciates of our orga­ni­za­tion have formed groups to do inde­pen­dent research on Bible-relat­ed sub­jects. Some have pur­sued an inde­pen­dent group study of Bib­li­cal Hebrew and Greek so as to ana­lyze the accu­ra­cy of the New World Trans­la­tion. … ‘The faith­ful and dis­creet slave’ does not endorse any lit­er­a­ture, meet­ings, or Web sites that are not pro­duced or orga­nized under its over­site.” (King­dom Min­istry, Sep­tem­ber 2007)

Despite stern warn­ings, web forums, such as jehovahs-witness.net, have pro­vid­ed a safe haven for active Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es to exchange in free com­mu­ni­ca­tion with each oth­er, and even ex-mem­bers. On the Inter­net, doc­trines, poli­cies, and per­ti­nent news is open­ly dis­cussed in way that could nev­er hap­pen in a King­dom Hall. This cir­cum­vents one of the high-con­trol group’s most effec­tive tools in quaffing free thought, the harsh, rit­u­al shun­ning of ex-mem­bers.

Pri­or to the Inter­net, dis­fel­low­shipped Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es, often fad­ed away into obscu­ri­ty. Their friends and fam­i­ly in the reli­gion were for­bid­den to speak to them. Dis­fel­low­shipped ones had lit­tle means to net­work with each oth­er, let alone cur­rent Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es. Web sites like Jehovah’s Wit­ness Recov­ery offer ex-mem­bers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with oth­ers for sup­port and heal­ing. Pop­u­lar social net­work­ing sites like Face­book help Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es to stay in touch with dis­fel­low­shipped fam­i­ly mem­bers, much to the leadership’s con­ster­na­tion.

High con­trol reli­gions like Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es have good rea­son to fear the Inter­net. By its nature, it bypass­es the restric­tion on infor­ma­tion and secre­cy that allows cults to obtain and retain mem­bers. It seems that the Watch­tow­er rec­og­nizes this threat. In a 2012 brochure intend­ed to edu­cate the pub­lic about Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es, they warn: “Some web­sites have been set up by opposers to spread false infor­ma­tion about Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es. … We should avoid them.” How­ev­er as the evi­dence sug­gests, the pub­lic, or even its own mem­bers, are not heed­ing the religion’s warn­ings. As Inter­net avail­abil­i­ty grows, becom­ing acces­si­ble to all, the future looks grim for the Jehovah’s Wit­ness reli­gion.