Refine Search

Standing on Street Corners

UNDER that title the Episcopal Churchnews for March 15 carried the following editorial, which we quote by their kind permission:

“You find them everywhere, in the busiest part of the big cities. At General Convention in Boston they stood where the street-corner concentration of round collars was thickest, and patiently, politely, held out copies of The Watchtower. More than one cleric hastily succumbed to curiosity and made a purchase, which he stuck into his pocket for future reading.

“Meanwhile, the members of Jehovah’s Witnesses make themselves unpopular by refusing to salute the flag and by going to jail rather than to war. Our tendency—reasonable and respectable people that we are—is to brush them off from our consciousness, to murmur ‘those fringe people’ and pour another cup of tea or the second cocktail.

“But suppose we have a look at a copy of The Watchtower and see how the world appears to the ‘peculiar people’ who are equally ready to stand on street corners or go to jail for their faith. We find first of all that a knowledge of English is not needed for the salvation which the Witnesses proclaim. The Watchtower can be had in thirty-eight other tongues, including Indonesian, Tagalog, Silozi, Twi, and Yoruba (we aren’t making these names up). We wish we could say the same thing for Episcopal Churchnews.

“As one reads through The Watchtower, what word best describes the feeling running through all its articles? Perhaps the word is ‘urgency.’ Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Christ returned in 1914 and is now reigning, though invisibly; that we are living at 5 minutes of twelve and the final culmination of history is visibly shaping up; that it is now or never—choose God and partake of the resurrection of the righteous; deny Him and your existence will be blacked out and annihilated.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses are in a hurry. They believe the time is very short, and that the decision each must make is a plain Yes or a plain No; that Yes is the password into everlasting life, and No the invitation to extinction.

“They are more right than otherwise. As Episcopalians we do not try to work out God’s timetable; we dare not predict the split second of Christ’s return. But we have His promise that He will return. And for the individual, each second of this present life is as fraught with eternal consequences as the Witnesses say it is. We are choosing now, this day, this moment; our big decisions and little decisions are adding up to the final decision.

“When we begin to know this in our bones and our blood, perhaps something new will be seen on the face of the earth: Episcopalians (lay or clerical) standing at street corners, with tracts in their hands. And they will look across the street at the Watchtower salesman and wave a friendly greeting to him. However much they may differ, they are members of the Brotherhood of the Urgent.”