Jehovah’s Witnesses

The Witnesses

May 10, 2019 Sacred Liberty

A tiny, reviled, and obnoxious American religion forces the nation to define what religious liberty really means. Excerpted from Sacred Liberty Robert Fischer was trying to escape from Litchfield, Illinois, when the mob caught up with him. The crowd pulled him out of his car and started destroying his Jehovah’s Witnesses literature. It was June 16, 1940, war hysteria was mounting, and the residents were livid that Fischer and the other Witnesses refused, as a matter of conscience, to salute…

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West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Dissenting Opinion by Felix Frankfurter

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

1943 In 1942, the state board of education issued a rule requiring kids to salute the American flag—“in the spirit of Americanism”—and declared that refusal “would be regarded as an Act of insubordination.” Ten-year-old Marie and eight-year-old Gathie Barnett, the children of a pipe fitting helper at a local DuPont factory, refused to salute during a ceremony at Slip Hill Grade School. They were expelled. The Witnesses appealed all the way to the highest court. In his brief to the…

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Cantwell v. Connecticut Majority Opinion

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

US Supreme Court Justice 1940 This was the case through which the U.S. Supreme Court “incorporated” the “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment so that state and local governments could no longer infringe on the rights outlined in the Constitution. The case arose after Newton Cantwell and his son Jesse went to spread the gospel in a Catholic neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut. They brought a portable hand-cranked phonograph and played bits of Rutherford’s book Enemies, which includes passages…

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The Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

American Civil Liberties Union 1941 These are excerpts from a report done by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1941. The ACLU represented the Witnesses in several of their cases. Only a recital of the extraordinary incidents which reached their peak in May and June of this year will indicate the extent of the persecution. The following instances are taken from the volume of testimony presented to the Department of Justice based upon affidavits and reports from the field, and…

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West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

US Supreme Court 1943 The Jehovah’s Witnesseses had been looking for a test case to demand more expansive religious liberty. They found it near Charleston, West Virginia. In 1942, the state board of education had issued a rule requiring kids to salute the American flag—“in the spirit of Americanism”—and declared that refusal “would be regarded as an Act of insubordination.” Ten-year-old Marie and eight-year-old Gathie Barnett, the children of a pipe fitting helper at a local DuPont factory, refused to…

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