I was having dinner with my uncle the other night. All right, "uncle" is not quite right - I think technically he's my father second cousin - but in the Greek world these things get really muddy. In any case, we were sitting down with a few of his friends, and talk turned to religion.

"What's the deal with the Jehovah's Witnesses," one couple asks. They recently bought a loft in the trendy Dumbo area of Brooklyn, and just realized that the neighborhood was home to the headquarters for the Watchtower magazine.

What's the deal with the Jehovah's Witnesses? A lot of people have been asking that question in the last week - especially friends north of the border who have been following the sextuplets that were born to a Jehovah's Witness couple in British Columbia. The Toronoto Star has some good coverage. The babies were born four months premature, and the standard procedure involved supplying blood transfusions. Blood transfusions are considered ungodly by Jehovah's Witnesses, so the parents refused. Two children died. The state decided to intervene, and as of today, still maintains they have the right to intervene.

So - what IS the deal with the Jehovah's Witnesses? What's the blood thing about? I asked a friend who was raised an the faith, and he pointed me to the Acts of the Apostles, where Chrsitians are enjoined to "abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well." Here's the beginning of the christians distancing themselves from the sacrifice cultures of their era (see my post from yesterday). Also - note that fornication places a distant fourth!

I'm not sure if this reference is the only justification. Like all religious groups, the Jehovah's witness cannot be summed up in a few sentences. Some of the other practices that define them include a history of spotty millenialism (the end of the world has come and gone a few times), the use of Jehovah - the "covenant" name of God, and the non-observance of most traditional Christian holidays.

Want to know more? Do what I told the couple. Head to Dumbo and knock on the big doors. Or better yet - wait until someone knocks on yours.