Modern History of Jehovah’s Witnesses

Part 14—Fight Carried into the Law Courts

THE Watch Tower Society’s bitter religious opposers next tried to put a legal stop to the thunder of phonographic activity that from 1933 onward had circumvented their radio censorship stranglehold. In a Connecticut court, on complaint of two Roman Catholics, one of Jehovah’s witnesses was convicted as having incited a breach of the peace on April 26, 1938, by playing in their hearing the phonograph record of Judge Rutherford’s speech entitled “Enemies,” boldly exposing activities of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. That wrongful conviction was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. On May 20, 1940, the high tribunal’s nine justices (including Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes) unanimously ruled in favor of Jehovah’s witnesses. It was held that playing in the hearing of Catholics a phonograph record containing a strong attack upon all religion, and particularly Roman Catholicism, is right conduct fully secured by the United States Constitution and does not amount to a breach of the peace or incitement to commit a breach of the peace. The court said:

“In the realm of religious faith, and in that of political belief, sharp differences arise. In both fields the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor. To persuade others to his own point of view, the pleader, as we know, at times, resorts to exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been, or are, prominent in church or state, and even to false statement. But the people of this nation have ordained in the light of history, that, in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of the citizens of a democracy.”a

And in 1948, in another Supreme Court triumph for Jehovah’s witnesses, that court said:

“Loud-speakers are today indispensable instruments of effective public speech. The sound truck has become an accepted method of political campaigning. It is the way people are reached. . . . Annoyance at ideas can be cloaked in annoyance at sound. The power of censorship inherent in this type of ordinance reveals its vice.”b

So in the decade of the 1940’s Christendom’s archers failed again to stop the sound witness work that Jehovah’s people kept on performing, globally. As to their way of worship, the witnesses came off the religious battlefield victors, by Jehovah’s undeserved kindness!

In modern American history Jehovah’s witnesses have left their indelible mark as fighters for civil liberties not only for themselves but for all honest, upright people. Consider what historians say:

“Seldom, if ever, in the past, has one individual or group been able to shape the course, over a period of time, of any phase of our vast body of constitutional law. But it can happen, and it has happened, here. The group is Jehovah’s Witnesses. Through almost constant litigation this organization has made possible an ever-increasing list of precedents concerning the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to freedom of speech and religion. . . . More recently the same test has been applied to state legislation under the Fourteenth Amendment. And so, a body of precedent crystallizing rules regarding the limits of encroachments by the States has been developing. To this development Jehovah’s Witnesses have contributed the most, both in quantity and in significance.”c

“ . . . Whatever may be said about the Witnesses, they have the courage of martyrs. And they have money to hire lawyers and fight cases through the courts. As a result in recent days they have made more contributions to the development of the constitutional law of religious liberty than any other cult or group. Believe me, they are making it fast. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose.”d

“It is plain that present constitutional guaranties of personal liberty, as authoritatively interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, are far broader than they were before the spring of 1938; and that most of this enlargement is to be found in the thirty-one Jehovah’s Witnesses cases (sixteen deciding opinions) of which Lovell v. City of Griffin was the first. If ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,’ what is the debt of Constitutional Law to the militant persistency—or perhaps I should say devotion—of this strange group?”e

What is the background of this story of the battle in the courts of the nations?—Phil. 1:7, NW.

As already indicated, Christendom’s crusade of arrests of Jehovah’s people began in 1928 at South Amboy, New Jersey. Arrest statistics were not at first kept, but in 1933 for the United States alone there was record of 268; in 1934, of 340; in 1935, of 478, and in 1936, of 1,149.f In New Jersey and neighboring states repeatedly Kingdom publishers were brought into court falsely charged with selling without a license, disturbing the peace, peddling without a permit, violating Sunday sabbath laws, and being classed as solicitors or itinerant merchants rather than ministers of the gospel.g Jehovah’s people felt it their duty and high privilege to resist such lawless encroachments. The Society established a legal department in Brooklyn to render counsel and aid in the all-out fight that was developing. An “order of trial” was issued and all publishers carefully studied it, so that they could make their own defenses in court.h A policy was pursued of appealing all adverse decisions. Had the thousands of convictions entered by the magistrates, police courts and other inferior tribunals not been appealed, a mountain of adverse precedents would have piled up as a mammoth obstacle in the field of worship.i But by appealing they have achieved an opposite result, because the superior courts have come to the rescue of the witnesses to confirm their rights of freedom of worship and speech as ministers of the good news “announcing Jehovah’s kingdom.”

So once again Jehovah’s witnesses had seized the initiative in defiance of this clergy crusade of framing mischief against them by law. At Revelation 9:7-9 the witnesses are likened to “locusts” in battle performance. This began to appear in a remarkable way in 1933. Then 12,600 publishers volunteered as being ready on quick call for house-to-house field service on special missions in areas of civic opposition. They were organized into 78 divisions throughout the United States.j Ten to 200 automobiles with five workers each comprised a division. Special tactics of witnessing were employed, depending upon the type of clergy-police opposition anticipated and encountered. When some witnesses were arrested in the ordinary field work, a report was sent forthwith to Brooklyn, whereupon a call was flashed to the nearest division to go into operation on a Sunday soon thereafter for a thorough witness, covering in one or two hours every home in the entire community. Whenever an emergency call was sent out for the division to respond for duty, all car groups reported at a specially announced rendevous field some miles away from the town to be “besieged.” Here detailed instructions and individual car groups were duly assigned. When the “locusts” were in action in these communities where civic agents, at behest of the clergy, tried totally to forbid and suppress the Kingdom preaching work, the interrupters were overwhelmed by a host of witnesses. There was nothing they could do except arrest 20 or 30, the local jail’s capacity quota. In this way no matter how “hot” the territory, practically every house was preached to by sheer numbers.

The New Jersey battle front, being the hottest, frequently required the large New York and New Jersey divisions of 200 car units each (comprising a thousand “locusts” each) to go into action alternately, depending upon the weekly arrests. For further enlightening residents of the “besieged” community, the effective services of Watchtower radio station WBBR were regularly tied in with these eastern divisional-campaign exploits.—Dan. 11:32, 33, AS.

At Brooklyn Bethel a number of experienced actors, good at imitating, formed what was called “The King’s Theatre.” They became expert in faithfully reproducing modern court scenes and Bible dramas.k When during the week a clergy-influenced judge conducted a trial of the handful of witnesses of Jehovah falsely charged before him, a full stenographic record was made of all that took place. Indeed there were almost always some choice, prejudicial, uncontrolled and misaimed remarks by the ecclesiastical and civic spokesmen, clearly proving their purpose and attempt to “frame” the accused witnesses. Quickly rehearsing from the prepared script based on the stenographic record, and after wide advance publicity to build up a large radio audience, the following Sunday the King’s Theatre actors openly demonstrated to uncounted eager listeners the travesty of justice in the local courts. Turning this floodlight of publicity upon misguided police, prosecutors and petty judges soon made many of such public servants more astute as to their handling of Jehovah’s witnesses.

However, for years this struggle went on in New Jersey until finally November 22, 1939, the United States Supreme Court gave the victory to Jehovah’s witnesses in Schneider v. New Jersey.l This decision was based on the initial victory for Jehovah’s people in the case of Lovell v. Griffin. (The Lovell case, 303 U.S. 444, had been unanimously decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, the court’s opinion being written and announced by its Chief Justice, Charles Evans Hughes, on March 28, 1938, on an appeal from the State of Georgia.) After that eleven-year struggle New Jersey and adjoining states almost wholly discontinued their persecuting prosecutions in which they had kept on falsely applying irrelevant municipal ordinances and state statutes.

FLAG SALUTING

By 1934, irked by yet another vexation, opposers of Jehovah’s witnesses began to try to “frame” them as to their exclusive allegiance to the Supreme Sovereign, Jehovah. The flag-salute issue was unfurled. Two years before, the Nazis in Germany pushed compulsory flag salute to the fore as a means of regimenting the people in continental Europe under Hitler’s swastika. Now a similar wave of false demonstration of patriotism swept the United States and Canada. In the autumn of 1935 the press gave much publicity to the case of Carleton B. Nichols, Jr., an American schoolboy of tender years, son of one of Jehovah’s witnesses, who declined to salute the American flag.a The Associated Press asked the Watch Tower Society’s president to state the official view of Jehovah’s witnesses on this new issue.b On October 6, 1935, by means of a radio broadcast, Judge Rutherford gave the reply in his famous lecture “Saluting a Flag,” which immediately was published in a 32-page booklet entitled “Loyalty” and distributed in millions of copies. In this Scriptural reply to the American press it was pointed out that Jehovah’s witnesses respect the flag but that their Biblical obligations and relationship to Jehovah strictly forbade them to salute any image or representation, which, to them, amounted to an act of worship contrary to the principles of the Second of the Ten Commandments. (Ex. 20:4-6) Furthermore it was shown that Christian parents have the primary responsibility to teach their children the true religion and right conduct as they see it defined in the Bible.

Thousands of innocent children of Jehovah’s witnesses were caught in the very core of this national controversy. What a wonderful testimony these little hearts boldly gave of their primary devotion to the living God, Jehovah, above any for the state! Their noble stand against jeers and ostracism of the majority of their schoolmates put to the test the quality of the parental home Bible training of these youngsters. By remaining steadfast in their loyalty to Jehovah they made history, also bringing consternation into the highest councils of the nation. On November 6, 1935, Lillian and William Gobitis, children of Walter Gobitis, one of Jehovah’s witnesses, refused to salute the flag and were expelled from the public school at Minersville, Pennsylvania.c Their case, pressed in the federal courts, attracted nationwide attention, becoming the test case for the entire country. It was fought up to the Supreme Court at Washington. Seventy-year-old lawyer J. F. Rutherford, president of the Watch Tower Society, personally appeared before the United States Supreme Court and argued the case on behalf of Jehovah’s witnesses.d While the federal and state judiciary was taking half a decade to make its top decision, Jehovah’s witnesses, for the education of their children, had to organize and finance private schools, known as “Kingdom Schools.” These private boarding schools were operated in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Georgia.e Finally on June 3, 1940, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 8 to 1 against Jehovah’s witnesses, rendering the opinion that it was up to the school boards, not the courts, to determine what rules shall be enforced upon children in the schools.f A major loss in the struggle for freedom of worship was this. This blow of defeat set off a further wave of bitter persecution until June 14, 1943, when the Supreme Court reversed itself. As to the reaction of the 1940’s, this is described in the next part.

(To be continued)

If God is for us, who will be against us? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation or distress or persecution or hunger or nakedness or danger or sword? To the contrary, in all these things we are coming off completely victorious.—Rom. 8:31, 35, 37, NW.

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