Flip-side News: Jehovah's Witness Child Retention Rate — What does it indicate?

Note: This post is not meant to discuss the child retention rate of Jehovah’s Witnesses itself. It is a short rebuttal of what is said this retention rate represents.
According to a 2014 Religious Landscape Study conducted by the Pew Research Center, Jehovah’s Witnesses have the lowest child retention rate when compared to other ‘religious traditions’ at 34 percent. This simply means that 34 percent of individuals raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses identify as such as adults. But Jehovah’s Witnesses need not be discouraged by this number.

Many times, opposers will cite this retention rate as evidence that our beliefs and practices are wrong, or unscriptural. Their argument goes something like this: “If you have the true religion, then more people would stay” or “...they would not leave at all”. The argument that our beliefs are wrong because only 34 percent of people raised in the faith believe it as adults is the same as saying that the Earth is flat because only 34 percent of people raised to believe that it is round continue to believe that it is round as adults. The argument is faulty because it operates under the assumption that popularity or consensus equals validity.

This raises an interesting thought, however: If true religion is determined by how well it retains people, then the religion with the highest retention rate would be the true religion, which, according to the data I have found, would be the Hindu religion. Do our opposers believe Hinduism is the true faith? Not likely, so it becomes apparent that these statistics are used as a means to discredit us. That being said, what does the Bible have to say about the popularity (or lack thereof) of true Christianity?

People would “fall away”

Jesus Christ spoke an illustration highlighting the fact that people would “fall away” from his teachings. He presented different types of “soil” (or heart conditions of people) who would hear and accept the word initially, but for various reasons, eventually fall away. (Luke 8:11-15) Was Jesus here uttering a prophecy that his teachings would prove to be false because he knew people would leave them?

Jesus never suggested that retention rates would determine the true faith. He said the results, or “fruits” of those that obey him would be the determining factor. (Matthew 7:16, 20) In other words, both conduct and teachings are what marks true Christianity. This is why there is such a thing as false religion. (Revelation 17:5) Furthermore, Jesus stated that “few” would find the road to life, while “many” are on the road to destruction. (Matthew 7:13,14) Many of Jesus’ disciples no longer walked with him when they did not agree with some of his teachings. (John 6:66) Obviously, numbers played no role in the veracity of the Jesus’ teachings.

The following are Bible accounts showing how much Jehovah cares about numbers:
  • Only eight people survived the Flood – 1 Peter 3:20
  • Only Lot and his two daughters survived destruction - Gen 19:15,26
  • Jehovah used a mere 300 men to defeat 135,000 enemies – Jg 7:7, 8:10
The only type of religion that would retain its membership and hold sway over the vast majority of mankind would be Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, who sits on “many waters”, or most people. (Revelation 17:1)

Like God and Christ, Jehovah’s Witnesses are not concerned with how many people remain with our organization. What we have taught for decades is that Godly conduct and true teachings are marks of true Christianity.

The Watchtower of June 1, 2009 had this to say regarding how one identifies true religion: ”True followers of Christ must display love for one another that is so outstanding as to characterize them as true worshipers in the eyes of observers." The question remains, why do our opposers fixate on retention rates, while neither we nor the scriptures do?

What the Child Retention Rate Really Means

Relatively low child retention rates are indicators that Bible prophecy is being fulfilled. Jesus compared our day to Noah’s day, when most people took “no note” until the end of that system of things began. (Matthew 24:37-39) It also tells us another thing: that Jehovah’s Witness are not at all “brainwashed”. The fact that 34 percent of children raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses remain as such as adults is some of the strongest evidence against alleged “brainwashing”. Brainwashing would surely manifest itself in higher retention rates, not lower ones.

This is not to say that we have the truth because we are relatively small. If that were the case, then any small group could represent the true faith. What is being shown here is that people leaving our faith is not unprecedented. If people walked away from following a perfect man who preformed miracles, how much more so will people walk away from an organization run by imperfect men?

Really, focusing on how many people leave or remain Jehovah’s Witnesses is nothing more than a means of distracting people from the real factors that mark true Christianity. This is the goal of apostates and other opposers, to distort the truth and draw people away from it by any means.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, could easily retain people if they wanted to and bolster their membership numbers by celebrating holidays, by adding gimmicks to their worship services, or having more lax and liberal standards and not removing unrepentant sinners.

But we will not do this because we understand what determines true Christianity – conduct and teachings that closely represents those of Jesus. (Luke 6:46-49; 10:16; John 13:35)

Comments

Dismythed said…
Thank you Robert, for contributing this post.

I'd like to officially welcome Robert as a new contributor to Opposers Dismythed. Robert wrote the above post and has more posts in the making, which I think you will find just as informative as any other article on this site and which conform to my very strict standards for content. I am grateful to Robert for putting up with my brutal standards and meddling.
Sean Killackey said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Robert said…
Thank you CJ for allowing my contributions. I love defending the faith against false accusations, and I think this is a wonderful place to do it.

And Sean, that's exactly my reason for wanting to do an article like this. It is a red-herring, one meant to discourage JWs. But really, it means nothing.

Truth is not determined by popular vote. Falsehood isn't determined by lack of popularity.
Robert said…
Something I just thought about. The poll concerns itself with those "raised" Jehovah's Witnesses, not those who 'believed' the teachings and later rejected them. Let me dig into this a little bit here...just for kicks.

If one wants to use a poll like this as evidence against our beliefs, then it would need to be shown that the persons who left believed the teachings at some point. If they really never believed them, then it never impacted them in an significant way, so it cannot be said that the belief system itself drove them away. They could have just been attending meetings because of their parents.

Using myself as a example, I believed what we taught, but I still left at 18 because my mind was on the "temporary enjoyment if sin", to be brutally honest. And if I was asked BEFORE getting baptized, I would have said I was raised a JW, but am not one now. But I believed the teachings. See?

Without a poll being subjected to those rigors, it can tell us nothing...really, but that only 34 percent of people raised in a JW household get baptized as adults, It doesn't explain why.

Just thought I throw that out there....




WitnessFTP said…
Something else to consider about these polls: There is no way for the pollster to know if what the respondent tells them is accurate, especially from our standpoint.

For example: I know a number of people that consider themselves Witnesses even though they have never been baptized or were ever an unbaptized publisher. I, and others in my congregation, have met people in the ministry who said that they were "raised in the Truth" but that there mother or father never got baptized. What kind of meaningful/well founded exposure to the Truth did these children really get if their parent(s) never took the Truth seriously? The same could be said of inactive ones with children.

What about disfellowshipped ones? I know some that still consider themselves Witnesses. So their children might consider themselves "raised in the Truth."

So, to reiterate Robert's comments,these kind of polls can really tell us nothing and, in fact, can be very misleading.
Robert said…
Oh yeah, WitnessFTP -- that's a great point!

I just wish opposers were more intellectually honest and weren't misusing and abusing polls like this by making them say something they are incapable of saying...
Dismythed said…
This 34% retention rate also undermines the argument of our opposers that child indoctrination somehow prevents that child from being able to decide for themselves when they get old enough to exercise their own choices. At least half of that 34% goes away and comes back. So which is it? Child indoctrination doesn't work to control minds or it does? Clearly, it doesn't. We can only raise them in our beliefs, but ultimately, despite all the things our opposers claim we do, or the reasons we do them, they are going to choose for themselves. We do not exercise any control over that.

Then there's the fact that, supposedly, disfellowshiping forces people to stay. But a 34% child retention rate undermines that claim as clearly 66% are not so retained under that same threat. Are we supposed to believe that the 34% only stay under threat of disfellowshiping? Sorry, not in my experience. Most of those who stay or come back do so to either 1) clean up their lives or 2) have the spiritual fellowship they don't get in the world, or 3) because they want to have a relationship with God and no other religion will do because they know it's the truth.

And I believe, Robert, that you know from personal experience what I'm talking about. Correct me if I'm wrong. (I hope I'm not putting you on the spot.)
Robert said…
Exactly. And that's why, CJ, I added that little tidbit that a low retention rate disproves "brainwashing" and by extension, threats of disfellowshipping. Apostates are making stuff up, as usual.

And don't worry about putting me on the spot -- I love sharing my journey from the truth and back.

I came back for reasons number 1 and number 2. I didn't have friends I could trust, and I my life did take an immoral turn, albeit, to a small degree.

So I knew exactly where to go to get back on track, and I've been here ever since.

These are the contradictions in their so-called "reasoning" you were talking about in the Convention post, CJ. They cannot claim that most people leave during adulthood, while out of the opposite side of their mouths, claim people stay because they're scared to "lose their entire family and social network".

Which is it?
Robert said…
Apostates have not stopped at the retention rate...they're using phone polls as evidence that there is disharmony:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/26/a-closer-look-at-jehovahs-witnesses-living-in-the-u-s/
Dismythed said…
Clearly at least 10% of the people polled were not actually Jehovah's Witnesses. But otherwise those numbers look about right. I wouldn't call Prince a shining example of our membership.