ABSTRACT
The Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) mobilize nearly seven million people around the world to engage in hours of direct marketing every month. The JWs are therefore of far more than incidental interest to sociologists of religion; they have been held up as representative of an ideal type and in consequence serve as an especially useful case study. The leading proponents of the ‘market model’ of religion argue that the Witnesses demonstrate what a religious group can achieve if it simply adopts the right strategy. JWs believe that the world has entered the end times and the destruction of governments and false religion is imminent. There is an alternative speculation about the possible trajectory of the JWs that could be worth consideration. The proselytizing orientation of the JWs makes them vulnerable to decline when conditions become unfavourable.
