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Last month, after having lunch with a friend in Dumbo, I decided spontaneously to take a tour of the Watchtower buildings – the Jehovah’s Witnesses World Headquarters in Brooklyn Heights. It’s one of the things you grow up with in New York City – you tell the time and the temperature by it whenever you’re in the Heights, and people will say occasionally, “Hey, that’s the Vatican of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, right there in Brooklyn” – but I like most New Yorkers had never visited it. I was impressed by its extent – at least fourteen (by my count) huge buildings in the area, which made the Vatican comparison more apposite than might have been thought. It took me awhile to find which was the main building, where tours are given, but eventually I made it there and found an English-language tour leaving in just a few minutes.

Inside I was welcomed by a group of clean-cut white men in well-pressed suits and ties. They were beamingly pleasant, got me signed up for a tour, and asked me if I wouldn’t maybe want to take my coat off and hang it in the coatroom. Leaving the coatroom – which was positively filled with coats – I asked for and was directed to a bathroom. When I walked in I found the lights so low I could hardly see, and I was looking for a light-switch, when another door in the bathroom cracked open and a person leaned in briefly, flicked a switch that was far away from the door I had come through, and vanished. Man, these people were nice.

When I had finished in the bathroom I had a few moments in the atrium before my tour left. The place had the pleasant clean blandness of an expensive chain hotel. You entered through revolving doors which pierced a tall glass wall; you walked on dark carpeted floors; you got help at the long tall counter where people in jackets and ties were there to assist you; at the edges of the open space were long, blank, straight, windowless hallways lined with identical doors. The only noticeable deviation from the Marriott was a large globe, seven or eight feet in diameter, accurately tilted to 23 1/2 degrees off vertical (so I am told) and revolving with a slow, even motion. I presume it was a symbol of apostolic ambition. “Teach ye all nations.”

I found at the edge of the atrium an unusual corridor whose entryway was a fake stone threshold inscribed with the Greek words LAOS TO ONOMATI SOU – “a people for your name.” There were exhibits behind the threshold, but the time for the tour arrived and I ended up returning to the exhibits later.

I was on the tour with four other people, all from New Hampshire and traveling together. I presume they were related, a father and three sons, because they were of different ages, but they might have been a “youth minister” and three teenagers. They knew each other well and were all Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A tour is of course a packaged presentation, and the last place to look for any kind of objective understanding of an organization. But a liar is still present in his lies, and the artifice is still an indicator, if the reader reads aright, of the artificer. The Jehovah’s Witnesses need not be who they say they are, but who they say they are is an interesting thing in itself. And of course sometimes people are honest. And so I was quite astonished that the first stop on our tour was the “building services department,” and we stood in the hallway as our tourguide, a gentle young man from Gainesville in a nice suit many sizes too big for him, told us that the building services department vacuumed the carpets and mopped the floors and emptied the trashcans and in short did all those things that the building services department would be expected to do. He even showed us a picture of the Jehovah’s Witnesses garbage truck, which they use to gather all their garbage and (I suppose) bring it to the dump. This was noted not without some pride: “Listen, we’re so big we have our own garbage truck. With our logo on the side.” This led into a theological digression on their belief that “cleanliness is next to godliness” and indeed I can say that everything was, in fact, very clean: squared-off, corporate, unimaginative to the point of being ugly even, but clean. And hence, I suppose, like God, who never made dirt (I guess) or if He did, He did not intend for His People to have any but brief intimacy with it.

That was how the tour began, and it continued that way: we went through two buildings in the course of nearly two hours, stopping in the hallways outside departments, and the work of the department – which was entirely predictable based on its name – would be described, with pictures to aid the presentation. It was astonishingly prosaic. We did not actually visit the departments themselves, or see people working: we just passed by the closed doors. There were occasional Jesus-related paintings in the hallways, but they were decorations for the workers more than proselytizing tools. They were in the Twentieth Century “Biblical Style”: hairy Jewish people wearing robes, with tanned lined skin and gleaming white teeth, listening to Jesus, or smiling at him, in sunny ancient Galilee. Jesus was not the blue-eyed, long-brown-haired figure we are accustomed to seeing, however: he was black-haired and tan, though alone of all the Jews he wore no turban and had short hair, like a modern American. He had a noticeably European face as well. His short black hair was complemented by a short, beautifully groomed and impeccably even-colored “Just For Men” black beard. In short, he was superlatively clean and got haircuts and beardtrims weekly. One of the reasons why the study of antiquity is so interesting is that it functions as a Rohrschach test for modern projections: a mirror, as always, to the unselfconscious mind.

We walked past a writings department, a food department, an art department, and even a footwear department, where they resoled and polished the shoes that pounded so many front porches. My favorite was the inhouse barber shop/beauty salon, where men and women could stay neat for the Lord without leaving the building or coming back inadvertently from the salon with a fashionable haircut. But the department that interested the kids most was the building department. Here was done the organizational work for the construction of new buildings all over the world. The buildings are designed by Witnesses and built almost entirely with volunteer labor – a worthy practice: I think it is something, to know that you had built the church you worshipped in (or your father or mother or grandfather had). This department intrigued the kids the most because it was clear that volunteer builders – particularly those with some training and skills in construction – got to travel all over the world, and work for months in a foreign country, seeing the project through from beginning to end. It was legitimately one of the ways for a young Witness to engage deeply with the world and travel and see things. And they had pictures of building projects literally all over the world, from the Caribbean to Africa to India to the Philippines and Slovakia and everywhere else.

But of course there were downsides to a principled relagation of architecture to amateur effort: the buildings were square, unimaginative, simple, and altogether unbeautiful. The differences between buildings in different countries were ultimately cosmetic (the best options were in the African countries which built not buildings but open-air pavilions, but even these were basically concrete). There was no ethic of starting from scratch: the materials were the type that could be had cheaply at Home Depot or some building supply company: concrete blocks, i-beams, bricks, poured concrete, and so forth. As I have said, I respect the fact that these people are builders: though it is sad to build something yourself and find it is not one whit better, or even different, from something mass-produced. Everything they had pictured had a “Days Inn” feel to it, something tossed up in a few weeks once the new highway exit was built.

Besides the information about the work done by the departments, we were told a great deal about daily life in the headquarters, which is known as a “Bethel” (House of God). This was, I presume, because the main purpose of the tour was to encourage Jehovah’s Witnesses to apply to work there: and so there was information about how work there was good for you spiritually, how there were morning prayer meetings, communal meals (which begin precisely on time with everyone eating at the same time), and free time (when people engaged in “wholesome recreation”). Information was given on how to apply to work there. The general impression was that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were a bunch of very normal people who believed in cleanliness first of all, and who studied the Bible because they thought it would be good for them, and they helped organize Bible Study clubs all over the world, building clubhouses when necessary. That was it. There was very little (no?) inspirational idealism, very little (no?) “we NEED to get the WORD out TODAY!” urgency, very little (no?) sense that they were right and everyone else was wrong. They presented themselves as simple people who took care of themselves and studied the Bible.

I will say that I was moved by this. It was very different, say, from the Vatican, which clearly aims at greatness, impressiveness, and beauty, to the point where it tells itself it does not need to care about what any actual person might think anymore (or more accurately, it does not aim at greatness so much as bask smugly in the greatness it had 500 years ago, convinced it does not need to do anything else). The Jehovah’s Witnesses had none of that. And the Vatican is wrapped up not only in the cult of impressiveness but also in the cult of papal personality, much as the Mormons always have a living Prophet. I did not even learn if the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a leader – when I asked I was told they had a “governing body.” There were no pictures of them, the way you would have a picture of a pope or president or governor. Even if the church were run by an iron-fisted cult leader, he clearly was not aiming to seem that way.

Another thing which moved me, and was clearly part of the Witnesses’ program of self-presentation, is how diverse the church was ethnically. Everyone in every picture was clean and well-dressed, but they were legitimately people of every racial type and it appeared that missionary efforts were underway everywhere in the world. And there was no sense that some people were more important than others: no celebrities, no mention of Prince, no talk of getting “the best and brightest” the way Opus Dei or the Jesuits or Scientologists might boast. Anyone who took a daily bath and got a haircut and some clean clothes was in.

I was so taken in by this pleasing presentation that I was surprised a bit when I arrived (toward the end of the tour) at their medical services department, which among other things printed out special Jehovah’s Witnesses medical information cards, to be carried at all times as a requirement of the faith, which would inform medical staff that the bearer was a conscientious objector to all blood transfusions. Of course I knew this – we all know Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t do blood transfusions just as they don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance – but it struck me as utterly absurd after spending two hours learning that the Witnesses are really just nice people who study the Bible in the hope of maybe becoming better people. Of course this command is hardly Biblical, as the Bible never mentions blood transfusions. A placard outside the medical services department cites the passage that they interpret as the source of the prohibition: the apostle Paul tells the brethren that they can do whatever they like and there are no longer any dietary rules anymore, because such rules are silly, but he does say please don’t eat food that has been consecrated to idols – not because there is anything wrong with the food, but because it would seem to ratify the notion that there exist such deities who can be placated with food-offerings of this sort – and he says “and abstain from blood.” The meaning of this in its context is clear: there were pagan rituals in which food (usually a sacrificial animal) was offered to the gods and then consumed by the worshippers, and similar rituals in which an animal would be bled dry and the worshippers would drink the blood. Paul asks the Christians not to do this, not because there is anything wrong with eating animals per se but because of the participation in the pagan ritual.

That this should be taken to mean that if your child is hit by a car and has lost fifty percent of his blood he cannot be given a blood transfusion to save his life is a gross absurdity, and needless to say only the Jehovah’s Witnesses interpret it this way, though they are not the only people who take the Bible seriously. In fact there is not even the slightest controversy over blood transfusions in any other Christian denomination, save of course the Christian Scientists who do not allow any medicine at all, thinking that robs God of his special role as healer. The Jehovah’s Witnesses can go to doctors, but they can’t get blood transfusions. The closest Jesus comes to discussing this issue is in a discussion about the Sabbath – a typical small rules versus big picture, letter versus spirit battle:

He went on to another place, and entered their synagogue. A man was there with a withered arm, and they asked Jesus, “Is it permitted to heal on the Sabbath?” (Their aim was to frame a charge against him.) But he said to them, “Suppose you had one sheep, which fell into a ditch on the Sabbath; is there one of you who would not catch hold of it and lift it out? And surely a man is worth far more than a sheep! It is therefore permitted to do good on the Sabbath.” Turning to the man he said, “Stretch out your arm.” He stretched it out, and it was made sound like the other. But the Pharisees, on leaving the synagogue, laid a plot to do away with him. (Matthew 12:9-14)

The point being that there are more important things than the rules, life being one of them. It is permitted to do good, even if it means involving yourself with blood.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses by going to such lengths to abstain from blood, have gotten blood on their hands – the natural contrapasso – and it is not pleasant to think of the people who must have died for this inanity that has neither common sense nor Scripture to back it up. It roused me from my “the Jehovah’s Witnesses are just a nice Bible-study club who vacuum daily” slumber.

I knew the picture was more complicated than that already, because of my friendship with a former Witness who has written about her experiences, and because I have spent some time talking with the Witness proselytizers you see standing in subway stairwells. I am not the sort of person who has so many people willing to talk to me about deep topics that I will willingly pass up a freely proffered conversation about God. And because I am always impressed by the inveterate tendency of religions (like scientists at departmental meetings) to get petty and irrational, and furthermore I am interested in how that pettiness and irrationality makes these religions more popular and powerful. No one wants a religion that makes sense all the time, any more than they want to listen to someone intelligent get to be on television. I heard a religious man, Jim Wallis, on NPR this morning and he was so reasonable on every topic that I was not surprised I had never heard of him. No reasonable, fair-minded, thoughtful rich man will ever get a million twitter followers like ignorant hateful twit Donald Trump, even if he had just as much money. Virtue has friends but vice has adherents. And anyone who has run an organization knows how much more useful an adherent is than a friend.

Talking with my friend later about my visit to the Jehovah’s Witness Headquarters, and hearing her stories of the group’s “organizational idolatry, institutionally enforced shunning, and repression of thought” – the way they discourage independent Bible study, hold hearings to determine if a Witness’s actions merit excommunication (called “disfellowshipping”), and ostracize former members and insist that current members have no contact with them – I was struck by the fact that human organizations really always do the same things, and the problems are likely in the human social mind rather than in religion itself (e.g. the same charges can be leveled at the Communist Party as the Catholic Church as the Jehovah’s Witnesses as certain corporations, in varying degrees depending on the level of fanaticism and the amount of power involved). It is hence in every organization’s, and every religion’s, special interest to develop procedural and educational safeguards against the following:

1) a gap between what is permitted and what is good for people. The Romans were fairly literal and oftentimes dumb people, but stupidity is occasionally brilliant. When Christianity came preaching salvation to all men, the Romans had no way of expressing what the Christians meant by salvation, and so they used the word “salus,” which means “health.” It is a brilliant conflation. Still, to this day, every religious deviation from an ideal that would result in human health and general wellbeing is open to suspicion. If God is good and wants his creatures to be happy, he will not make their wellbeing and their salvation come into routine conflict. Half the Christian world is abandoning the religion because it cannot accept that health and the Golden Rule might be rules enough for sexuality – cannot accept that health and salvation might be aligned even when it comes to sex. The rule is that it is always permitted to do good. In the extreme case of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is always permitted to save a child’s life, even if it is on Sunday, even if it is on Saturday, even if it involves giving him food during daylight hours of Ramadan (and this is Islamic practice, in fact: health is a reason for not performing the fast), even if it involves killing a cow and even if it involves a blood transfusion. I think there is ample evidence that this was Jesus’s position, but it was not spelled out on every single issue in the Gospels and so we have had to figure it out later on.

2) diffidence in the oneness of truth. If truth is one, and the maker of the universe is not out to deceive us, then it stands to reason that you can come to true conclusions via multiple avenues. In science this works consistently: our current understanding of the age of the universe, suggested by the parallax of the stars, can be confirmed by carbon dating, or potassium-argon dating, or studying DNA divergence rates. Whenever there is secrecy or suppression of facts, there is the implication that knowledge of what is will not lead to the desired conclusion, i.e. that the desired conclusion is false. Even if there are short-term burps in the process, loyalty to the truth, and confidence that it ultimately prevails by our loyalty to it, is absolutely required. If your son wants to study to become a voodoo priest, I say let him do it, and be confident that if you study voodoo priestcraft long enough, you will get to the same place as someone studying physics or sacramental theology. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are notorious for rejecting other groups’ Bible research, and the evangelical Christians have had a century and a half of truly idiotic opposition to paleontology and evolution. The Muslim opposition to further knowledge of the Quran and the Hadith – to good textual criticism and acknowledgement of the human errors in the text – is so strong that there will probably be many men and women actually martyred before there is something like a critical text of the Quran. It is likely that such research will, in fact, bulldoze religious traditions and manmade rules, but we must have confidence: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” “It was for freedom that Christ set us free.”

3) replacement of God by the organization. This was what my friend called “organizational idolatry.” Eventually a religious organization is so complex and rich and powerful that God himself is unnecessary to it. On the tour I was told that Jehovah’s Witnesses get together every Sunday and do thirty minutes of Bible study, followed by sixty minutes of Watchtower study. They were originally a Bible-study group, that wanted to clear away all the other later Christian nonsense and get back to the source, but by now their own writings are two times as important as the Bible to them. You cannot make this stuff up. And if you worship the organization itself, it then becomes important that the organization be pure, and that you keep the bad people out, and serve as their judge, and all that. It makes you need to defend the organization from taint. This of course leads not only to judgement and exclusion but also secrecy. Needless to say the organizations are all fallible, and are, in fact, like all human mobs rather on the stupid side. A great deal of the intentional blindness and stupidity of religious people, as with deeply political people, comes from a deep need for the institution of which they are a part to be entirely good, which cannot be. The end result is persistent and self-destructive self-deception, or leaving the faith. Organization-worship also makes possible the notion that the organization can order anything, such as the destruction of all those outside the organization, and can in general play God on Earth.

I think these are the three great root sins found in religious groups, which will be with us always but which a little self-awareness and institutional precaution can at least lessen. There is some evidence that the Jehovah’s Witnesses in fact started out very well, but after the death of their founder the movement was fading away and the reins fell into the hands of a more ruthless man who had a better sense of what worked for an organization. (It was he, for instance, who determined that the group needed a better name than “the Watchtower Society,” and he decided that he would call the group “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” and focus on the use of the word Jehovah, which is of course merely the Latin translation, and that not a good one, of the Hebrew YHWH. The Witnesses then went into the Bible and inserted the name Jehovah wherever words like “God” or “the Lord” are used, helping to create a new brand). But still the history of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is not without dignity. There is a historical museum on the side of the atrium by the entrance to the building, which I recommend for anyone who has a few extra minutes in Brooklyn Heights. The museum chronicles first the misdeeds of the various Christian churches and rails indignantly at the things done in the name of Christ. This is fairly easy to do, but I find that the accusations hit home every time. Then the museum chronicles the rise of the Witnesses, and their utter resistance to government coercion of every sort. During the First World War they preached pacifism, and for writing tracts saying that Christians could not fight in wars Woodrow Wilson threw the tractwriters in jail under an “espionage act,” saying that preaching pacifism was tantamount to fighting covertly for the enemy. Later the Witnesses went to court because they refused to abide by a pledge of allegiance to any flag. In the Reich they were the only Christian group to resist Hitler, and in response he sent every single Jehovah’s Witness he could get his hands on in Europe to the concentration camps.

This is a past with some dignity and principle, even if you find it contradictory in the end (e.g. that it was only by Christians enlisting to fight as soldiers that Hitler was eventually defeated). And I do not doubt that such things as their organizational idolatry gives them conviction enough to resist governments, even to the point of martyrdom. But I cannot but hope that someday this organization, and all the others, will learn that there are no divine commandments against our well-being in this world, no commandments against knowledge and openness and honesty, and no commandments that create boundaries between people that love cannot daily cross.