![]() When people ask him why he doesn’t vote, he tells them this: “I already voted for Jesus’ kingdom the day I got baptized. He is 52 now and an elder at a Kingdom Hall in National City.įajardo has never voted in a political election and mirrors much of what Wallis says. After straying briefly, he was baptized at the age of 20. ![]() I love his balance when he said there are obligations, you have to pay Caesar his things and God his things.”Įdwin Fajardo grew up in a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He says he feels “the best positive change I can make, and it’s been a lot of work, is to try to improve what kind of person I am and the children I’ve raised.”Ī few minutes later, he adds this: “We really have tried to model our way of life after Jesus and what he would do. “Like all Americans, we can choose how much, if any, active involvement in politics that we choose. ![]() What does he say to folks who resent doing the heavy lifting in this democracy - going to candidate nights, studying the propositions, wrestling with decisions that shape all our futures - while he reaps the benefits of their labors? I feel that being a subject of God’s kingdom has brought me many benefits.” “I chose to pledge my allegiance to God’s kingdom. “I actually feel I have cast a vote,” the Oceanside resident tells me. I asked Wallis, who has never voted in an election, what it feels like to sit on the sidelines all these years. Elders are men who shepherd and care for the well-being of their congregation. He’s 67 now and an elder for the Buena Vista congregation, which meets at a Kingdom Hall in Carlsbad. But as a young man, he began studying with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and was baptized in 1972. George Wallis wasn’t raised in a religious family. Because neither Jehovah’s Witnesses nor former members I spoke with in San Diego ever heard of a Witness who secretly voted. If a member signs their name to a document joining the military or a political party and it was done purposefully and without remorse, “the moment they did that is the moment they resigned as a Jehovah’s Witness.”īut the tough talk may not be necessary. Hendriks insists it’s not the church doing the deciding. “And if they persisted in that and didn’t want to stop, they could no longer serve as Jehovah’s Witnesses.” “If they participated in non-neutral activities, it would certainly be a violation of our Christian standard,” Hendriks says. With those kinds of numbers, I wondered whether all of them really follow this teaching - and what would happen if they didn’t. There are 1.3 million Jehovah’s Witnesses in this country, including approximately 30,000 in San Diego County. But if it’s because of our political ideology, well that’s just not something that a Christian would do, in our mind. “If somebody says get off my step because I don’t want to hear about the kingdom, well that’s OK,” he explains. “Once we take a stand for a political party or leader, we stand against our brothers and sisters,” says Hendricks, who is 55 and was raised in this faith.įor a group known for its (pre-COVID) door-to-door proselytizing, taking partisan stands could be an unwelcome turn-off. “That would be a violation of our neutrality and that would clearly not put us in line with the way Jesus would have acted.” “The act of voting is not a problem, but the act of voting for a particular political candidate or issue would be a problem,” he says. Just not a political issue or partisan candidate. They are not a sect.Over Zoom, Hendriks told me members may vote on issues in their homeowners association or some other residential situation. Jehovah’s Witnesses have not broken away from any church. Rather, they converse with people, usually one-on-one, using reason and convincing evidence, in imitation of the early Christians.- Acts 19:8.Ī sect is a dissenting group within a religious community or one that breaks away to form a new religion. As mentioned, they abstain from politics and do not impose their views on others by political or any other means. Some Fundamentalist organizations “have adopted social and political positions based on a literal use of Biblical texts.” That definition does not fit Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Fundamentalism is a broad movement within Protestantism in the United States,” says The World Book Encyclopedia. Nor does it teach that humans have an immortal soul or that Christians should meddle in politics.- Ezekiel 18:4 John 15:19 17:14 Romans 6:23. For example, the Bible does not teach that God-the very personification of love-tortures people forever in a fiery hell. Jehovah’s Witnesses are Christians, but they are not Protestants for the same reason that they are not Catholics-they recognize certain teachings of those religions as unscriptural.
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