Having never been visited by a Jehovah’s Witness, L.L. doesn’t believe they exist. He is ready for them, though. He has a plan. When they come to his door, he will welcome them with milk and cookies, and invite them to sit down in his living room. He will deflect their conversion with his own highly-developed Christian theology. They will fall silent as he explains the fallacy of their biblical notions. When he’s done, they will be Episcopalians, and then they’ll all go see Ratatouille.
Us normal people can sneer all we want at those odd Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are infamous for door-to-door proselytizing about how impending Armageddon will result in precisely 144,000 people ascending into heaven while the remaining believers enjoy earthly paradise. But if you love freedom, you gotta love for the Witnesses. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle points out that these odd zealots do serve a secular purpose: Legal experts say Jehovah’s Witnesses’ lawsuits to protect their beliefs have done more over the past century to protect First Amendment freedoms than any other organization. The right to refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance, the ability to pamphleteer without government monitoring and the expansion of the Bill of Rights into state law are among the many precedents established or strengthened by litigation by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The next time someone knocks on my door all eager to share the teachings of Jehovah, I have a prepared statement that I will read. “I respect that the Supreme Court has ruled that you do not need a permit in order to solicit door-to-door. I appreciate that your crazy beliefs have tested the boundaries of this country’s laws to establish our civil liberties. I acknowledge that the First Amendment protects our freedom to think and say pretty much whatever we want (with the exception of fighting words, as Jehovah’s Witness Walter Chaplinsky discovered). It’s all really great, really American. But I could never, ever be a Jehovah’s Witness. Your highly-developed doctrines about blood are too much for me. I’m a fainter, you see. Just looking at you, I’m picturing you bleeding to death on principles based on a random bible verse in the book of Acts. It’s making me light-headed, so I’m closing the door now.”
