The Reluctant Apostate: Leaving Jehovah's Witnesses Comes at a Price

by Lloyd Evans

The greatest and the most oppressive empire on earth is the Anglo-American empire. By that is meant the British Empire, of which the United States of America forms a part. Rutherford was convinced that the “Anglo-American empire,” not Hitler’s regime, was the real threat to world peace in the 1930s. And he would cling to his delusion that America and Britain were the true bad guys on an irreversible slide toward fascism until his final years. In his “Face the Facts” lecture at London’s Royal Albert Hall on September 11, 1938 (apparently, when the Judge had something to say, it was a “fact”), he informed his audience that the USA, “once the bulwark of democracy, is all set to become a part of the totalitarian rule.” In a style more reminiscent of the wide-eyed screeching conspiracy theorist Alex Jones than a font of Christian grace and wisdom, Rutherford grimly foretold: When the totalitarian Catholic combine gains control of the British Isles, which it is certain to do, then all liberties of the people will be at an end. But all of that was to come. Back in 1933, the Judge had a would-be genocidal maniac to appease, and he knew he had common ground in their mutual loathing of Jews. Hot on the heels of his condemnation of the United States and Britain, Rutherford included the following in his declaration: It has been the commercial Jews of the British-American empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as a means of exploiting and oppressing the peoples of many n...