They’re someone who acted as a witness in the case of Jehovah v. Everyone, a class-action case filed when some dick allegedly caused a flood and destroyed the world.

I have to say allegedly as terms of the settlement

This response coming from a Christian, let me try to answer this in a bullet point list:

• they’re strict;
• they don’t celebrate birthdays, or don’t do anything they believe it’s associated with paganism;
• they’re strict;
• they knock on people’s doors with a strict dress code to make more people join in;
• they’re also around the world, as missionaries;
• have I mentioned they’re strict?

thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Don’t take what I said as fact and do your own research.

If you have the time for an hour-long deep dive into the history, check out this video from a history youtuber I’m a big fan of:

Temporary Residents in this World | Jehovah’s Witnesses - Knowing Better

You can skip the first 2 minutes if you don’t care about the skit stuff.

I care very little about people’s peculiar beliefs, however you should know about Jehovas witnesses:

• they are absolutely a cult and dangerous.

• they believe joining their cult is the only way to achieve eternal life. Everyone else is doomed.

• they put a very high focus on „saving“ people, aka bringing them into the cult. In fact, how many people you brought in is a big factor in determining your worth. Members are absolutely convinced they are doing good and actually saving souls. At least the normal folk who don’t abuse their brothers and sisters.

• members are discouraged from forming bonds and meaningful interaction with non-members, unless it serves bringing them into the cult.

• if someone leaves the cult, other members are forbidden from interacting with them, even within families. Except for the purposes of stalking and harassment of course.

• obeying authority without question is very important. The children obey the parents. The wife obeys the husband. The husband obeys those above him in the pecking order. This creates a fertile breeding ground for domestic and sexual abuse, which are dealt with „internally“, aka swept under the rug.

That said, most of them are normal people trapped in a very bad system. They can be kind, absolutely lovely people, or huge pricks, or pure evil, everything people outside the cult can be. It’s just that every single one of them needs to pull you inside, for your own good.

A JW to non-JW relationship is not possible in the long term. Either your daughter will be absorbed by the cult (because he can’t let his wife and their children be condemned) and distance herself from you and her former friends or he will leave and be shunned by his family and friends inside the cult. Anything else will not be tolerated by his community.

The best you can do is to find out about their methods and dangers and also prepare your daughter to never give up thinking for herself. I hope she is level headed enough to understand that it is not going to go well, even if he is a genuinely good person.

Im surprised you have them in the area and don’t know about them as they are big time door knockers.

I had a close friend in high school who was brought up JW. Sometime afterwards, he decided he didn’t really align with the faith and left the church.

His family immediately kicked him out and estranged themselves from him. (Side note, this was a guy with mental health concerns, which this event naturally did not help with)

That’s coloured my perception of JWs ever since

essentially a cult that believes in alternative christian bible concepts.

I dont trust them because they took a friend of mine i had away from me.

If you ever want to feel uncomfortable and depressed, go watch a sermon at a Kingdom Hall (Jehovah’s Witness church). It’s all about Armageddon.

I could write a lot about my experience with that group, but instead I’ll just say they are toxic as fuck. What they do to people is emotional torture.

One of the many cults that formed after the Great Disappointment that then managed to get promoted to sect at some point. Others include Mormanism, Branch Davidians, and Seventh-day Adventists. All made of of people still pissed 180 years later that the world didn’t end in 1844.

Plenty of good answers here, so I’ll just add my experience with them. They’re (yet another) Christian offshoot/cult. But at least what I’ve seen they’re not that bad. I used to know a couple of member, and they were alright.

People here gave really thorough descriptions, but what I remember is that their pamphlets (awake?) have a really cool graphical style, and that mesmerized me as a kid. Not the content itself, but the shadows, the gradients, etc. I went into graphic design because of :) still an atheist though.

For day-to-day purposes, they’re anti-fun. They don’t celebrate holidays, birthdays, etc.

I’d say your daughter is dodging a bullet, but it’s more like he’s pushing her out of the way.

Hopefully, when (if) he goes to college, he’ll put this crap behind him. Telling young people that they can’t date is ridiculous. Excessive self-denial is not an enjoyable life for yourself or the people around you.

I wouldn’t call them a cult - they have some elements like a cult, but I want to reserve the word cult to something a little stronger/less moral. Cults tend to abuse children (child abuse is everywhere, but cults it would be part of them) or commit mass suicide.

The JW’s are a specific branch o protestant Christianity that arose in the USA.

They are evangelical, note the small e, in that they believe it is their express duty to spread their take on Christ’s message. They are NOT Evangelical in the sense of non-denominational Christianity.

They are non-trinitarian (there is just God not parts of God), they believe Armageddon is imminent.

Witnesses still fall into most of the red flags for cultishness but they are a little too big to be viewed as a cult.