It is incorrect to describe Jehovahs Witnesses as a world renouncing faith or a faith that stands in opposition to the world. 729), claiming that they cannot be an authentic religious organization, since they teach that religion is against God. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, for example, portrays them as preaching hatred of all existing institutions (Cross and Livingstone, 1978, p. The Jehovahs Witnesses position is often seriously misunderstood. This paper aims to explore what the Jehovahs Witnesses understand by conscience, and how the notion of conscience relates, first to civil society, and second to other sources of authority within the Watch Tower organization. The author concludes that, in the main, exercising ones conscience entails deciding to do what is known to be right, rather than deciding what the right actually is.

According to Watchtower teachings, individual conscience on its own is unreliable, however, and hence the organization allows limited scope for individual decision is moral and spiritual matters. The controversies relating to flag saluting and to war are examined as examples of conflicts between the two types of law. Witnesses subordinate conscience to scripture, and to civil government, provided that the latter does not demand disobedience to divine law. Abstract: This paper examines the way in which the concept of conscience is understood by Jehovahs Witnesses, and how they relate it to conformity with human law, and to divine law, as revealed in the Bible.

Jehovah witness crisis of conscience