News and primary-source research on the Watchtower organization
A Governing Body update makes the storage and reinfusion of a patient's own blood a matter of personal conscience — the latest move in an 80-year doctrine that keeps shifting in one direction. Transfusions of donor blood remain prohibited.
In Governing Body Update #5, released on jw.org on August 22, 2025, David Splane addressed 'additional secular education' and, per ex-member transcriptions, presented it more as a personal choice than the spiritual risk decades of Watchtower literature had described.
A 2024 change retired the word "disfellowshipping" for "removed from the congregation" and eased a single rule about greeting former members. But the announcement, the no-socializing, and the shunning of critics all remained — and the change arrived just as the practice faced its sharpest legal test in Europe.
A Governing Body Update dated December 15, 2023, and reportedly presented by Stephen Lett relaxed a decades-long grooming norm, reframing a neatly trimmed beard as a matter of personal conscience and local decision.
COVID-19 made Jehovah's Witnesses do something they had never chosen to do: stop knocking on doors. When the ministry came back two and a half years later, it came back as a hybrid — and a quieter 2023 decision retired the count of preaching hours the religion had kept since 1920.
A July 15, 2011 study article urged Jehovah's Witnesses to shun former members it described, citing 1 Timothy 6:3-4, as 'mentally diseased.' The wording drew UK press coverage, a Portsmouth police complaint that produced no charge, and an Australian tribunal filing.