The Jehovah’s Witnesses are still a financial Empire. Billions of copies of publications are distributed for a donation. That adds up. Worldwide, in 2001, there were over 6,000,000 “witnesses”. Nearly 1,000,000 are here in the States. Multiply their persons times their work and you get over 1 billion hours of door to door “preaching” worldwide (2,001).

An April, 2016, report of the Pew Research Center tells this about JW demographics:“Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the most racially and ethnically diverse religious groups in America. No more than four-in-ten members of the group belong to any one racial and ethnic xbackground: 36% are white, 32% are Hispanic, 27% are black and 6% are another race or mixed race.“Most Jehovah’s Witnesses – roughly two-thirds (65%) – are women, while only 35% are men. Christians worldwide are more likely to be women than men, but this gender gap is particularly large in the context of U.S. Christian groups. For instance, 54% of U.S. Catholics are women.

“Compared with other U.S. religious groups, Jehovah’s Witnesses tend to be less educated. A solid majority of adult Jehovah’s Witnesses (63%) have no more than a high school diploma, compared with, for example, 43% of evangelical Protestants and 37% of mainline Protestants.“Jehovah’s Witnesses have a low retention rate relative to other U.S. religious groups. Among all U.S. adults who were raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses, two-thirds (66%) no longer identify with the group. By contrast, about two-thirds of those who were raised as evangelical Protestants (65%) and Mormons (64%) still say they are members of those respective groups.

“On the flip side, about two-thirds (65%) of current adult Jehovah’s Witnesses are converts –raised in another faith.

Religious beliefs and practices The Pew report continues:“By traditional measures of religious commitment, Jehovah’s Witnesses are one of the most highly religious major U.S. religious groups. Nine-in-ten Jehovah’s Witnesses (90%) say religion is very important in their lives, while similar shares say they believe in God with absolute certainty (90%) and that the Bible is the word of God (94%).

“Our survey found at least two other interesting ways in which Jehovah’s Witnesses stand out in their beliefs. For one, while half of Jehovah’s Witnesses say they believe in heaven, very few (7%) say they believe in hell, the traditional image of which is challenged by the denomination’s teaching. The share of all U.S. Christians who believe in hell is 10 times larger (70%). And most Jehovah’s Witnesses (83%) say their religion is the one true faith leading to eternal life; only about three-in-ten U.S. Christians (29%) believe this about their own religious faith.

“Compared with U.S. Christians overall, Jehovah’s Witnesses are especially likely to say they attend religious services at least once a week (85%, compared with 47% of all U.S. Christians), pray daily (90% of Jehovah’s Witnesses vs. 68% of all U.S. Christians) and – perhaps not surprisingly – share their faith with others at least once a week (76% vs. 26%). They also are more likely than U.S. Christians overall to participate in prayer or scripture study groups and to read scripture at least weekly, among other religious behaviors.

Social and political views “Like many other highly religious Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses tend to take conservative positions on social issues. For example, three-quarters (75%) say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while similar shares oppose same-sex marriage and say homosexuality should be discouraged by society (76% each). Roughly three-quarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses (74%) also reject evolution, saying humans have always existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

“But Jehovah’s Witnesses do not commonly advocate for these beliefs in the political sphere. The denomination teaches that its members should remain politically neutral and abstain from voting or participating in ‘any action to change governments.’ “This is reflected in our polling. Three-quarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses (75%) say they are political independents who do not lean toward either major party. Half (50%) decline to answer a question about political ideology (i.e., whether they describe their political views as conservative, moderate or liberal). And most Jehovah’s Witnesses (64%), when asked if they are registered to vote, say they are not registered or decline to answer the question.

Slipping? “Since 1995, statistics for the Watchtower Society have rapidly become less encouraging in almost every indicator. Most dramatic have been the increase in people leaving and the number of hours preaching required to gain one additional publisher [door to door/street worker].

“American studies show that Jehovah's Witnesses have the highest turnover of any religion, as supported by Watchtower figures presented in this section. This dramatic change in growth of Jehovah's Witnesses coincides with the change of the generation teaching in 1995, and access to information via the Internet. “In the 10 years from 1996 to 2005 there were 2,968,732 baptisms, yet the increase in average publishers was only 1,439,672. This shows 1,529,060 stopped publishing. Even accounting for the average death rate, over 1 million Witnesses left in a 10 year period.

Operations Today: The Governing Body, etc. Here are bits and pieces of information that may prove interesting to you.