Joshua Sur­tees

Je­ho­vah's Wit­ness­es are look­ing more like reg­u­lar peo­ple every day. Here in con­tem­po­rary Lon­don, the Je­ho­vahs (I like to short­en their name, it's a bit of a mouth­ful, isn't it) move freely among us.

They have mi­grat­ed away from their usu­al en­vi­ron­ment (the doorstep or the non­de­script sub­ur­ban street) and they've aban­doned their chaste, over­ly for­mal style of dress in favour of mod­ern cloth­ing man­u­fac­tured by fash­ion­able sports brands, high street moun­taineer­ing brands and multi­na­tion­al sweat­shop re­tail­ers.

All of this mod­ernising makes me nos­tal­gic for the old Je­ho­vah's women sit­ting in the shade of the trees in Wood­ford Square with their hats, their mod­est flat shoes and thick pairs of tights, some stand­ing, hand­ing out copies of Watch­tow­er with soul-search­ing ti­tles like Have You Ever Con­tem­plat­ed What It's Like To Have Your Testes Nailed To The Cross? And, Do Rab­bits Chase Hu­mans In­to Un­der­ground Tun­nel Net­works In The Af­ter­life?

I would take these leaflets with min­i­mal per­sua­sion. Just a cour­te­ous, "some­thing to read, sir?" and I was sold. These were good old-fash­ioned Je­ho­vahs. Not like your new, snazzy ones we have here in Eng­land.

One of the leaflets I took from the Wood­ford Square posse had an im­age of a cou­ple on the front, with echoes of Patrick Swayze and De­mi Moore in Ghost. The head­line asked a ques­tion: "Can the dead re­al­ly live again?" They al­ways ask ques­tions, they're ex­treme­ly in­quis­i­tive peo­ple–the Je­ho­vahs.

I stopped in my tracks. I was sweat­ing like a pig in an abat­toir and I was flum­moxed. There were three pos­si­ble an­swers print­ed un­der­neath the ques­tion: Yes? No? Maybe?

"Look here, miss," I said to the woman. "What's the cor­rect an­swer here?"

"Well, what do you think?" she asked, soft­ly smil­ing.

"Does it mean ghosts? Or zom­bies?" I said.

"How do you in­ter­pret it?" she asked, still smil­ing. "Are you go­ing to an­swer all my ques­tions with a ques­tion?" I went on.

"Would you like me to give you a straight an­swer?" she asked.

"Yes!" I replied.

"Yes I am," she said.

"Well, thank you for your hon­esty," I said, "and have a pleas­ant day."

When I reached work I re­alised that the leaflet's quick-fire sur­vey had failed to give its re­spon­dents a "Don't know" op­tion, which (as any mar­ket re­searcher will tell you) would re­sult in poor com­ple­tion rates.

The leaflet, pub­lished in Brook­lyn (the Je­ho­vah's HQ), had an on­line ver­sion of the su­per­nat­ur­al dilem­ma fea­tur­ing an au­dio record­ing–the Je­ho­vah's have em­braced dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy as God would have wished–but it was ul­ti­mate­ly in­con­clu­sive and left things on a re­al cliff-hang­er, re­fer­ring me to Corinthi­ans 15:26 for fur­ther read­ing. Ain't no­body got time for that!

Here in Eng­land, our Je­ho­vahs are try­ing to bring the king­dom of God in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry, but if you're any­thing like me, you'll pine for the days when they dressed more pi­ous­ly.

I came out of the tube sta­tion the oth­er day and there un­der the bru­tal­ist ar­chi­tec­ture was a com­plete­ly nor­mal-look­ing man and woman hand­ing out pam­phlets.

"Is the hos­pi­tal un­der threat of clo­sure?" I won­dered. "Is a new cof­fee shop open­ing in the neigh­bour­hood?" "Oh, it's nice to see the Green Par­ty en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists cam­paign­ing in the area..."

But no, one of them smiled at me and I re­alised they were Je­ho­vahs. That clas­sic Je­ho­vahs smile that can sug­gest, "Oh, you poor dear: you're des­tined to burn in hell, like, for­ev­er."

It's a se­duc­tive tech­nique: a mix­ture of mad­ness, fear and friend­li­ness. They're nice peo­ple.

You see them wait­ing for you af­ter work as the sun goes down. They're qui­et, re­spect­ful, pleas­ant. They un­der­stand that no eye con­tact means no.

I could be­come a Je­ho­vah quite hap­pi­ly, if it wasn't for the pro­hi­bi­tion on blood trans­fu­sions, their be­lief that Sa­tan (who con­trols hu­man gov­ern­ments) was cast down to earth in 1914 and will one day at­tack the Je­ho­vah's Wit­ness­es, trig­ger­ing Ar­maged­don and a judg­ment day last­ing 1,000 years, their be­lief that heav­en is a gov­ern­ment ruled by Je­sus and a par­lia­ment of 144,000 Chris­tians, their be­lief that gam­bling, drink­ing, drugs and non-mar­i­tal sex (es­pe­cial­ly ho­mo­sex­u­al sex) are evil and the fact that they in­ac­cu­rate­ly pre­dict­ed the end of the world in 1975.

I don't have a prob­lem with the Je­ho­vahs oth­er than those mi­nor points. But I was re­al­ly put out one Sat­ur­day morn­ing when they knocked on my door and we got in­to a de­bate about evo­lu­tion.

"You at least be­lieve that di­nosaurs ex­ist­ed though?" I asked the young man as the dis­cus­sion reached its peak. "Do you be­lieve that di­nosaurs ex­ist­ed?" he replied.

I qui­et­ly closed the door and put his leaflet in the re­cy­cling bin with­out read­ing the ques­tion writ­ten on the front. It was prob­a­bly rhetor­i­cal any­way.