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Jehovah's Witnesses are directed to study the Bible using Watch Tower Society publications. Jehovah's Witnesses regard secular education as fundamental, but they emphasize their preaching work as the top priority in their life. Therefore, they promote moral and spiritual education over secular education. [173]
The doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses have developed since the publication of The Watchtower magazine began in 1879. Early doctrines were based on interpretations of the Bible by Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society founder Charles Taze Russell, then added to, altered, or discarded by his successors, Joseph Rutherford and Nathan Knorr.
Jehovah's Witnesses are taught that the Bible prohibits the consumption, storage and transfusion of blood, based on their understanding of scriptures such as Leviticus 17:10, 11: "I will certainly set my face against the one who is eating the blood" and Acts 15:29: "abstain from … blood." This standpoint is applied even in emergencies.
In all, Jehovah's Witnesses brought 23 separate First Amendment actions before the U.S. Supreme Court between 1938 and 1946. [36] [37] Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone once quipped, "I think the Jehovah's Witnesses ought to have an endowment in view of the aid which they give in solving the legal problems of civil liberties." [38]
In 1990, 68 Jehovah’s Witness elementary students were expelled for refusing to participate in daily flag-raising ceremonies. In Ebralinag, et al. vs. Division Superintendent of Schools of Cebu, the court ruled that Jehovah's Witnesses are permitted to refrain from saluting the Philippine flag and singing the national anthem.
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus is God's only direct creation, that everything else was created through him by means of God's power, and that the initial unassisted act of creation uniquely identifies Jesus as God's "only-begotten Son". [157] As part of their nontrinitarian beliefs, they do not believe that Jesus is God the Son. [158]
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the entire Bible, including both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is inspired of God and important for the Christian faith.(2 Timothy 3:16,17) Witnesses generally use a translation of the Bible that they developed in the mid-twentieth century, known as the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT).
Religious values are usually based on values reflected within religious texts or by the influence of the lives of religious persons. [1]Known as the ‘Indigenous Religious Values Hypothesis’, the origin of religious values can be seen as the product of the values held by the society in which the religion originated from. [1]