{"id":117,"date":"2007-05-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-22T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/knocking\/"},"modified":"2023-02-17T18:21:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T18:21:50","slug":"knocking","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/dipsy.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/knocking\/","title":{"rendered":"Knocking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are seven million Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in 230 countries worldwide. They spend 1.3 billion hours a year ministering door-to-door, making them one of America\u2019s favorite punch lines. Despite their 130-plus-year history, this Christian group is still often derided and misunderstood. <em>Knocking<\/em> opens the door on Jehovah&#8217;s Witnesses, revealing how they have impacted society in ways far greater and more surprising than the spreading of their faith.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>While protecting their own rights, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses have won a record number of U.S. Supreme Court cases, expanding freedoms for all Americans. In Nazi Germany, they chose non-violence, landing them in the concentration camps rather than fighting for Hitler. They refuse blood transfusions on religious grounds, yet support the science of bloodless medicine. They are moral conservatives who stay out of politics. They attempt to persuade, but not impose their beliefs.<\/p>\n<p><em>Knocking<\/em> follows two Jehovah\u2019s Witness families who stand firm for their controversial faith. Joseph Kempler was born a Polish Jew, but has been a Jehovah\u2019s Witness for nearly half a century. As the survivor of six concentration camps, he cursed God for allowing the Holocaust. After Joseph immigrated to the United States as a young man, a pair of Jehovah&#8217;s Witnesses knocked on his door. He found a renewed purpose for God in their teachings and eventually converted. Joseph still embraces his Jewish heritage, and part of his family remains religiously Jewish while the rest follow the tenets of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. In <em>Knocking<\/em>, both sides of Joseph&#8217;s family accompany him to Austria and Poland to visit the concentration camps where Joseph was imprisoned as a teenager.<\/p>\n<p>Raised as a Jehovah\u2019s Witness, Seth Thomas lives in suburban Dallas. A genetic disorder has ravaged his liver and at 23, he requires a transplant to survive. He has found a live-donor match with his father, who can give half of his liver to Seth. But neither will accept a blood transfusion, which goes against their beliefs. Surgeons at Baylor Medical Center in Texas turned the Thomas family down for treatment. But the University of Southern California Hospital in Los Angeles is willing to operate. Some members of the Thomas family are not Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses and oppose the religion\u2019s stand on blood, agreeing with the doctors who say this procedure is too risky.<\/p>\n<p>Narrated by filmmaker Joel P. Engardio, who was raised in a Witness household but chose not to join the religion, <em>Knocking<\/em> offers Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses as one example of how groups with increasingly polarizing religious and social views can peacefully coexist.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following two families who stand firm for their controversial and misunderstood Christian faith, Knocking reveals how Jehovah&#8217;s Witnesses have helped shape history beyond the doorstep, showing how they have impacted society in surprising ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1239],"class_list":["post-117","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-identity"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ 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