Statistics
2016 Jehovah’s Witness average publishers: 167,960. Congregations: 2572. Baptisms: 8168. Memorial attendance: 500,548. Preaching hours: 42.6 million
Early History
In 1887, the Colombian government entered a concordat with the Catholic Church which stated that Roman Catholicism was the state religion. More religious freedom was granted by the government in 1930, facilitating increased activity by Protestant groups and by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Colombia recognized full religious freedom in 1956.
Watch Tower Society literature was mailed to a man in Colombia in 1915 (Yearbook 1990). Heliodoro Hernández became the first adherent in the country in 1922 after reading copies of the Watch Tower magazine and the booklet Millions Now Living Will Never Dieand began to preach to others. Juan Bautista Estupifian learned of these teachings as a result of Hernández’s efforts, and the two preached in towns and villages of the northwest. In 1932, Hernández and Estupifian were baptized in...
References
Tracy, Elizabeth. Our parents taught us to love god. Watch Tower Tract and Bible Society of Pennsylvania, 1 December 1999, pp 20–24
1990 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, New York/Colombia, pp 66–137
(1993) Jehovah’s Witnesses – proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, New York, pp 438, 464, 666–668
2017 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, New York, pp 178–186
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Stewart, D.G. (2018). Jehovah’s Witnesses in Colombia. In: Gooren, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_443-1
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