09/07/2025 15:15 - 17:30

HALL: Seminar Room 06

Chair: Pace E.

Speaker: Chu J., Harvey S., Mcandrew S., Messner F.

The research hypothesis underlying the JW-MAP (Jehovah's Witnesses' Motivations, Attitudes, Practices) project is the existence of a gap between the beliefs and behaviour of JWs on the one hand, and the general public's perception of them on the other. In order to verify the existence of this gap and to understand its causes, the research considers 6 different countries (Argentina, Canada, France, Japan, Nigeria, United Kingdom). In each of these countries, a questionnaire was distributed to JWs with questions covering different areas of their lives (family, education, participation in public life, level of satisfaction, etc.): the analysis of the answers provides new and interesting data on the way JWs view their personal, social and religious life. Since this survey needs to be contextualised, a second line of research consists of examining the 6 national contexts to which these data refer, considering for each country the history of JWs and how the media, courts, social and political actors have interacted with them.
This panel compares the data from two countries, France and the United Kingdom, which present very different models of inclusion of religious groups in their legal and social systems. The challenges faced by JWs in these two countries, the political and legal model that has proved most effective in addressing them, how JWs have embedded themselves in two such different national realities, and how British and French society has responded to their presence are some of the issues that will be discussed in the panel.