like most people, my primary experience with jehovah's witnesses has been through their visiting me. unlike most people, I let them talk. I understand their primary impulse is to witness to god in the world and whether I agree with them or argue with them is unimportant--it's the act of witness that matters to them and I'm rarely doing anything important enough to keep me from being a witness to that. there are places further on the rim than we are and one of them is the college town 20 miles east of us. this is where I had served a uu congregation until last june, and since I left it, I've made a practice of visiting different congregations from different faiths each month, and this week's visit, by my wife and me, was to the kingdom hall in menomonie.
the folks there were unfailing polite and solicitous. if your group has a reputation among outsiders as time-wasting, inconvenient proselytizers, you're likely to want to counter that misapprehension by treating outsiders well when they visit. all the women, even the little girls, wore skirts and all the men, including the young boys, wore ties. every male over the age of 6 or 7 wore a suit. their dress struck me more as the "sunday-go-to-meetin'" outfit one wears in order to display respect for god's message than an outfit to show off to co-parishioners (although in every group there're probably some for whom the plainest dress is meant to convey the flashiest soul). I was reminded of my childhood among the adventists, whose services always required a clip-on tie.
sitting directly in front of me was a guy who reminded me of a midwestern protestant norman mailer, and who had a single cowlick above one ear. I was tempted to lick my fingers and reach forward to smooth it down. it's been a long while since I've attended a jw service and I don't think I'd realized just how teaching-based their services are. it was the least effective kind of teaching--purely rote and repetition, with correct answers and definite, unspoken, incorrect ones--but education-based nonetheless, and with a solid moral lesson. the men who stood to address the congregation--and they were all men, taking the lessons of 1 timothy 2:11-12 seriously--were uniformly soft spoken and sedate, sincere in their belief and unafraid of voicing it. in fact, one of today's lessons was to speak up boldly and decisively about their beliefs and let others know how they stand. in their singing (which was described by my wife as "humbly" and me as "mumbly") and in their public declarations they strike me as a group of introverts forcing themselves to learn to be extroverts.
it was not an unpleasant way to spend 2 hours on a sunday morning. the chairs were comfortable and the company friendly and accommodating--perhaps too much so in some instances, as when the woman responsible for coordinating our visit answered my wife's question whether women speak before the congregation became uncomfortable referring to 1 timothy, as if she knew it was frowned on in the wider world and was aware my wife might have a contrary opinion--but we felt genuinely welcome and it was obvious the congregants, of which there were nearly 100 and who the interlocutor called by name during the question-and-answer portion (no one wore badges), were fond of one another. we meant it when we said we might return for a future service.
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