SOURCE: “Insider's View,” in Christian Century, Vol. XCVI, No. 7, February 28, 1979, p. 224.

In the following review of Visions of Glory, Mills lauds Harrison's study as both perceptive and insightful.

Jehovah's Witnesses are believers in a fundamentalist, apocalyptic, prophetic religion; they have been proclaiming, since the 1930s, that “millions of our living will never die.” To the extent that they are known—their notoriety arises from their refusal to receive blood transfusions, salute the flag, or serve in the army of any country, as well as from their aggressive proselytizing—they are perceived as rather drab, somewhat eccentric people and dismissed as irrelevant. But this book Visions of Glory provides both an “inside” and an “outside” story written by one who for 12 years was a Witness and for three of those years served on the Watchtower Society's headquarters staff.

By using historical and psychological analysis, Barbara Harrison describes the religion...