Jehovah’s Witnesses

In Law of the Harvest, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are the recurring comparison case for the book’s central thesis: high-demand faiths grow faster and retain better, not worse. The book pairs them with the Seventh-Day Adventists as denominations that “impose commitments as demanding as the LDS Church’s, retain far better, and grow 8–11% annually,” citing the “Hartsem Faith Communities Today” study that strictness of member expectations contributes to high growth rather than dissuading converts.

The mechanism the book attributes to their success is member behavior, not doctrine. The average Jehovah’s Witness “proselytizes nonmembers for an average of fifteen to twenty hours each month” — elsewhere put at sixteen hours — and they are “mentored early in proselyting by experienced members, often even before they are formally baptized.” This applied, hands-on training is contrasted directly with what the book calls the LDS Church’s “abstract, theoretical member-missionary exhortations that rarely reach beyond the pulpit.” The book also notes the demands required: Witnesses give up birthday parties, Christmas and Easter, and complete extended Bible-study courses before baptism. The case is used to argue that fractional LDS retention “cannot be attributed to deficiencies of local cultures,” since Witnesses retain well in the very same societies.

Context: Jehovah’s Witnesses are a millenarian Christian denomination founded in the late 19th century, known for door-to-door evangelism, refusal of certain holidays and blood transfusions, and high expectations of member participation in public ministry.

Where this appears

• Law of the Harvest — the central comparison faith proving the “strictness correlates with growth” thesis, via member proselyting hours, early mentoring, and retention contrasts with the LDS Church.