Absolute Costs for Vanishing Rules: The Tragedy of Loyalty to Moving Goalposts
In this article Helen Jefferson and Robert Shaw examine how rigid dogma affects mental health within the Jehovah’s Witness movement. It draws on John Spencer’s 1975 study, whose analysis explored how hyper-vigilance sustained by a century of failed prophecies and the sect's "tangential" interpretations of the Bible maintained potentially pre-psychotic states. The narrative culminates in the Jehovah's Witnesses' Governing Body's March 2026 policy shift that abruptly permitted the medical use of one's own blood, highlighting the tragic human cost of absolute loyalty to arbitrary and shifting dictates.