For Jehovah’s Witnesses, the pandemic has meant putting principles ahead of personal preferences.
“Our preference is to meet together, to hug one another, to greet one another, to see each other’s smiles, but our principles won’t let us do that, not yet,” said Robert Hendriks, US spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
For the second year, the global denomination of 8.6 million is holding its annual large-scale summer worship conventions online through August. Kingdom halls, where congregants would typically meet twice a week, remain closed across the country. Door-to-door preaching has not resumed.
Hendriks said these decisions were made early on in the pandemic. Congregants continue to solely meet on Zoom. Letter writing and phone calls have replaced door-to-door knocking.