'Hypocrite' Jehovah's
Witnesses abandon secret link with UN
Stephen Bates, religious
affairs correspondent
Guardian
Monday October 15, 2001
The Jehovah's Witnesses
have hurriedly disaffiliated from the United Nations within days
of a Guardian story in which members accused the sect of hypocrisy
for supporting an organisation it has repeatedly denounced
privately.
After the article last
Monday, the organisation's New York based hierarchy pre-empted a
UN inquiry by agreeing to dissociate the Witnesses from an
organisation which it holds to be the scarlet beast named in the
Book of Revelation.
The Watchtower Bible and
Tract Society of New York, as the sect is formally known, has 6m
members worldwide and 130,000 in Britain. It had been secretly
affiliated to the UN as a non-governmental organisation for 10
years.
Recognised organisations
are supposed to demonstrate that they share the UN's objectives,
but Witnesses are instead told by elders to regard it as "a
disgusting thing in the sight of God and his people" for
allegedly aspiring to world domination like Babylon the Great, the
beast in Revelation.
The sect does not believe
in participating in government and initially strove to play down
or deny the evidence of the UN's website, which lists it as one of
1,500 affiliated NGOs.
Those bringing the
evidence to light were accused of apostacy. Disaffiliated members
become known informally, like the rest of humanity, as "bird
seed" in line with biblical prophesy of the fate of
non-believers, whose corpses will be pecked bare by crows.
Within hours of the
article's appearance on the Guardian website on Monday and its
posting on a Jehovah's Witnesses bulletin board, more than 14,000
people across the world had read it.
By yesterday there were
353 official posts and 325 message boards discussing the article
and its revelations, with Witnesses in the US demanding to see
copies of the paper.
Guardian Unlimited,
Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001