Today's Sunday, Claremont, NH Eagle Times has an interesting article on JWs - inspired in part by a quick build Kingdom Hall going up this weekend in Rockingham, VT.
Here's the link: Eagle Times Article October 23, 2005
I thought the article was good, but may have gone a bit easy on the Witnesses. No mention of Witness shunning, the Dateline expose, SilentLambs, the blood issue, Witness beliefs, etc. Also a bit confusing is the assertion of the tremendous growth rate at the same time that the article states that baptisms have dropped off 33% in the US since the mid-90s (holy shit! that's huge!), and growth in Vermont has been flatlined for years. Also, the original growth rate figures of 3-5% are for a study done in 1997, when things were starting to fall off.
I'm requesting that if any of you can drop an e-mail to the paper (the e-mail form is at the bottom of the page with the article on it), or a letter to the editor, it would be a tremendous help in getting the word out in this area about what the Witnesses really are. There is likely to be a follow-up piece on this, and if a few dozen of you would respond, it would be extremely important. My guess is that this paper would never have gotten a response like that to any other article, and I'd like them to sit up and take notice. Also, the hits on the website over the next few days are important.
Also, please put this link on as many other sites as possible, along with this same request to e-mail the paper.
Thanks for responding, and drop a note here on this thread if you wrote the paper.
S4
edited to provide direct link to article ~ Scully