Conflicting expectations? Insider and outsider methods of studying Jehovah’s Witnesses

Abstract

Using personal experience of a scholar’s editorial policy, the author discusses problems in researching the history of the Jehovah’s Witnesses that arise from the different positionalities of insider and outsider. Past research on new religious movements (NRMs) has tended to place the outsider-author in a privileged and superior position, often to the detriment of the NRMs under discussion. Drawing on W. Cantwell Smith and James L. Cox, the question of whether it is possible or desirable to privilege or accommodate the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ account is examined. It is argued that Jehovah’s Witnesses lack a tradition of scholarship, and place limited value on higher education; hence the Watch Tower Society’s methods of compiling its publications differ from those that are expected of scholarly material. In particular, the Society’s policies of author anonymity, the use of in-house archival material, the desire to provide spiritually sustaining publications, the need to endorse the Society’s doctrines, and the reticence to engage in debate with academic scholars, all militate against producing an insider’s account of Watch Tower history which is academically credible. It is concluded that the differences between the respective approaches of the Watch Tower Society and academic scholarship create serious problems in attempting to forge a dialogical relationship between insider and outsider in one’s research methodology.