LIBRARIES REPORT VANDALISM
TO BOOKS ON JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

Seminaries in three Indiana cities found that books in their libraries aimed at the Jehovah’s Witness religion were recently vandalized or are missing. In all, nearly 70 volumes were found damaged or have vanished from library shelves at the Lutheran, Church of God and Disciples of Christ seminaries.

The mutilated publications were found either with torn or missing pages, cut with a knife or razor, or ripped in half. Only material written about the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society were sabotaged. Literature analyzing other cultic groups was not harmed.

However, not all of the damaged literature was critical of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Christian Theological Seminary (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis reported that three Italian-language volumes on its shelves which were damaged were, in fact, favorable to the Jehovah’s Witness cause.

Following the April 28 discovery of the vandalism, librarians made use of the Internet to notify other schools and municipal libraries across Indiana, encouraging them to keep watch over any similar subject matter.

Watchtower spokesman Robert Johnson told the Religion News Service, “We regret that this has been done and we do not encourage this sort of thing at all.” “We have responsible people there (in Indiana) who might have some idea about why this has occurred so that we can prevent it from happening again,” Johnson said.

There are no suspects, nor have police been called in to investigate the incidents.

—MKG

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