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With nearly a million active "publishers" (members) in the United States last year, the group baptized only 30,000 converts, down from a high of nearly 50,000 in 1988, according to statistics in the group's January 1 Watchtower magazine. Globally, the group claims nearly 6 million publishers but added fewer than 300,000 members worldwide in 2000, a significant drop from 1997's high of 375,000.

The controversial sect, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, is non-Trinitarian. Evangelicals have long labeled the group, founded in Pittsburgh by Charles Taze Russell in 1870, a non-Christian cult. Failed attempts to pinpoint the return of Christ have marked the group's history. Russell himself predicted that Christ would begin his visible reign on Earth in 1914.

WTBTS formed three new corporations last fall. One, Kingdom Support Services Inc., will focus on the everyday needs of individual congregations. Another, the Religious Order of Jehovah's Witnesses, will interact with full-time workers, who take a vow of poverty. The third, the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, will oversee religious matters.

Milton Henschel, 80, resigned as WTBTS president post on October 7 as part of the reorganization, as did six other directors. They remain members of the Governing Body, an oversight panel that will now be dedicated to religious matters in conjunction with the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. Don Adams, 75, is the new president.

"Basically, there's a lot of politics going on," said ex-Jehovah's Witness Randall Watters of Manhattan Beach, California. A former employee and elder at the group's "Bethel" headquarters in Brooklyn, Watters runs FreeMinds Inc. (www.freeminds.org), which monitors the Witnesses.

"They're trying to become less hierarchical, to keep liability at [a] lower level," Watters said. "They think when lawsuits come, they can isolate particular committees."

Jehovah's Witnesses have been no strangers to litigation in part because of their highly separatist orientation. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1943 upheld their refusal to salute the American flag. In following their church's teachings, members also decline military service and blood transfusions.

Jehovah's Witnesses spokesman James N. Pellechia told CT that while "any group needs legal protection," the changes will help the Witnesses plan for and manage growth, allowing senior ministers who are not members of the Governing Body to be officers and directors of corporations serving the movement. "You reach a certain point where, if you do not start delegating, you cannot continue to grow," he said.

Raymond Franz, a former member of the Governing Body who left the movement in 1979 and wrote a book, Crisis of Conscience, criticizing the WTBTS leadership, said the move is designed to deal with the advancing age of Governing Body members.

Franz added that in Germany, the government ordered the Witnesses to provide severance pay to staff members. "Now when people apply [to join the staff], they sign a vow of poverty, which frees [the WTBTS] from having to treat the person as an employee," he said.

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March 5 2001, Vol. 45, No. 4