Jehovah’s Fitness or Witness?: That is the bloody question 

You can tell a Jehovah’s Witness from the way they walk; they put their best foot forward.

They usually walk in twos, making them four feet ahead of the traditional Nicene Christian, who sees door-to-door evangelism as a chore slightly lighter than the crucifixion.

JWs wear their beliefs and convictions on their sleeves, and they give you no room to mistake a Witness for any freethinker or denominational bigot who believes in the trinity of God being one with his Son Jesus, and fused into the Holy Spirit.

JWs are Christians, only a little different. If you have always wondered why they do not call their Kingdom Hall a church, invite yourself to a cocktail of the many things that set the JWs apart from other Christians.

Kingdom hall romance

One of those things is their stern refusal for blood transfusion based on strict religious prescriptions–in both the New and the Old Testaments.

While JWs believe in medical science and visit their doctors, they oppose blood transfusion to avoid the spread of disease, machine or human error, and immune system reaction.

Unlike Charismatic Christians who practice faith healing and performative miracles, JWs believe in scientific medical care, but only insist on bloodless treatments.

Another thing we know about the JWs is their position on Christmas, politics and popular holidays.

When we were young, we joked that a young man would save money if he dated a JW lady.

He is conveniently excused from buying her birthday gifts and ice cream for her friends.

We were not sure what the JWs thought about giving flowers to a lady, and whether they had a love language at all.

We also played mischief by comparing the JWs with Deeper Life Christians and the Mormons, and we voted for the least romantic. Well, the JWs often won.

There is something enigmatic yet admirable about the JWs.

They look decent and harmless, but they leave you guessing what they think about you when they flaunt their Watchtower and Awake magazines before our busy eyes.

How many people get awakened by the Awake, and commit to leave their denominations to join the JWs.

Yet the JWs continue to grow, pushing beyond 9.2 Million worldwide.

The bloody question

Beyond our admiration for the JWs lies some of our most perplexing questions:  What kind of religious stubbornness and denominational obstinacy entitle a person to wilfully elect to die rather than receive cure through blood?

There have been deaths and near deaths resulting from their refusal to accept blood, including a Canadian woman who died in 2016 of organ failure and hemorrhage during child birth through C-section.

She reportedly refused to accept blood. As recently as August 2025, the death of a 27-year old JW lady was widely reported in the Ghanaian media, after she declined blood transfusion during a fibroid surgery.

These were needless deaths which beg the ‘bloody question’: When would JWs ‘Awake’ from the ‘Watchtower’ of their conservatism?

Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t bend. So when the BBC recently reported that the JWs have bent their long-held beliefs on blood transfusion, permitting “members to have their own blood removed, stored and given back in medical procedures”, we wondered what other aspects of their strong beliefs will see reform.

They, however, insist that their core belief on blood transfusion has not changed, explaining that members would not accept blood from others, only their own blood.

Suddenly, they see value in not only being Jehovah’s Witnesses, but Jehovah’s Fitness.

The floodgates of change are not open yet, but we are intrigued and maybe excited at the gradual shifts at the Kingdom Hall.

To be fair, change has not always been a stranger to the JWs. Over the years, we have seen our JW friends embrace some reform in the areas of dressing and appearance, gradually wearing down their European suits and matching ties for other decent wears, including traditional African prints.

We have seen their men grow beards and keep facial hairs.

Awake to more changes

We even heard that until recently, they didn’t invest too much intellectual energy into very tasking scholarly pursuits, or other things that competed with their time for evangelism.

With the gradual ease of the rules on blood transfusion, we might wake up one day to a president of Ghana who is a Jehovah’s Witness.

It will be a spectacle watching a presidential motorcade ferry our president on a door-to-door field service, to distribute Awake to unemployed university graduates or cobblers on street corners. Will a JW president stand and recite the national anthem?

That would answer some of the questions we asked about the stance of the JWs on politics, civic commitments and nation building.

We wondered why the JWs felt comfortable that the rest of us should vote to elect leaders to fashion policies for everybody, including them.

If they have to obey the laws of state, don’t they feel cheated that they are not part of the process of enactment?

The world is constantly changing–along with all the changes we never imagined.

The reforms in blood transfusion rules are part of the gradual changes in the Kingdom Hall.

Yet we know one thing will not change about the JWs: they say only 144,000 people will go to Heaven.

What might soon change will be how the JWs treat invitations from other denominations.

If they ease that rule too, I would invite my childhood JW friend, Joseph Kozbi Agbogla, to my daughter’s wedding.

And if Kozbi ever needs a pint of my blood for any life-saving operation, I would gladly oblige him.

I am Anglican; we are taught to share, even blood and wine.

Tissues Of The Issues

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