Operations
The corporation is a major publisher of religious publications, including books, tracts, magazines and Bibles. By 1979, the society had 39 printing branches worldwide. In 1990 it was reported that in one year the society printed 696 million copies of its magazines, The Watchtower and Awake! as well as another 35,811,000 pieces of literature worldwide, which are offered door-to-door by Jehovah's Witnesses. As of 2013, the Society prints more than 43 million of its public issues of these magazines each month, totaling over 1 billion annually.
The society describes its headquarters and branch office staff as volunteers rather than employees, and identifies them as members of the Worldwide Order of Special Full-Time Servants of Jehovah's Witnesses. Workers receive a small monthly stipend with meals and accommodation provided by the society. The "Bethel family" in the Brooklyn headquarters includes hairdressers, dentists, doctors, housekeepers and carpenters, as well as shops for repairing personal appliances, watches, shoes and clothing without charge for labor.
The society files no publicly accessible financial figures, but reported in 2011 that it had spent more than $173 million that year "in caring for special pioneers, missionaries and traveling overseers in their field service assignments". Donations obtained from the distribution of literature is a major source of income, most of which is used to promote its evangelical activities.
Author James Beckford has claimed the status of voting members of the society is purely symbolic. He said they cannot be considered to be representatives of the mass of Jehovah's Witnesses and are in no position to challenge the actions or authority of the society's directors.
Read more about this topic: Watch Tower Bible And Tract Society Of Pennsylvania
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“You can’t have operations without screams. Pain and the knife—they’re inseparable.”
—Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)