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.
A federal complaint filed February 13, 2026, alleges the Governing Body and three Watchtower entities failed to protect a Cordele teenager from more than 100 acts of abuse by his Bible-study instructor, who is separately convicted. The organization's alleged liability is unproven; the case is pending.
A complaint filed in SDNY on Nov. 12, 2025 alleges a Circuit Overseer abused Stella Cristina Gomes De Souza beginning at age 12 in Brazil, and that Watchtower routed reports internally. The allegations are unproven; the case is pending.
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.
On February 22, 2023, the organization behind Jehovah's Witnesses announced in one sentence that Governing Body member Anthony Morris III 'no longer serves' — gave no reason — and then scrubbed his recorded talks from jw.org over the following weeks.
Geoffrey Jackson, a member of the Governing Body that runs Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide, gave sworn evidence to Australia's Royal Commission — on the group's claim to speak for God, the two-witness rule, and whether women could judge abuse cases.
Anthony Morris III, then on the Jehovah's Witnesses' Governing Body, condemned tight clothing in a recorded talk and tied the style to "homosexual" designers — remarks that circulated widely and drew criticism.