Forward of the 2018 US Open, Serena Williams stunned followers when she stated she wouldn't be celebrating daughter Alexis Olympia's first birthday — or any, for that matter.
Motive? Williams is a Jehovah's Witness.
“We're Jehovah's Witnesses, so we don't try this,” the tennis celebrity advised reporters on the US Open press convention.
In response to the official web site for Jehovah's Witnesses, followers of the church don’t imagine in celebrating birthdays “as a result of we imagine that such celebrations displease God.”
“Though the Bible doesn’t explicitly forbid celebrating birthdays, it helps us mirror on the important thing options of those occasions and perceive God's view of them,” the web site stated. One of many causes Jehovah's Witnesses keep away from birthdays is that they imagine the celebration has pagan roots.
Whereas Williams doesn't usually speak about her religion, she has on uncommon events.
In response to the Jehovah's Witnesses web site, the faith is a type of Christianity that follows each the Previous and New Testaments of the Bible. Jehovah's Witnesses see Jesus because the son of God and savior, however don’t imagine that he’s “Almighty God”.
Moreover, members of the religion don’t imagine that the soul survives demise, and consequently don’t adhere to the Christian concept of hell, as said on the web site.
Different practices embody not voting and remaining politically impartial. As well as, Jehovah's Witnesses imagine that blood is sacred and subsequently don’t obtain blood transfusions.
In addition to birthdays, Jehovah's Witnesses are suggested to chorus from celebrating non secular holidays and American holidays – together with Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day and Halloween.
Additionally it is advisable that Jehovah's Witnesses don’t attend weddings of different religions (though Williams and husband Alexis Ohanian had been current on the marriage ceremony of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at St George's Chapel in Windsor in Might 2018).
Williams and her siblings—together with fellow tennis star Venus Williams—transformed within the early Eighties. The Washington Publishafter their mom Oracene Worth.
In 2015, the outlet reported that Williams beforehand stated she attended church and took part in required door-to-door evangelism as a part of her religion.
As The Washington Publish Williams usually thanked God Jehovah after matches.
Nonetheless, there have been occasions when her religion wavered and strengthened her.
RELATED VIDEO: Serena, Venus to sq. off at US Open this week — What to know
In response to The New York Occasionsafter a profanity-laced outburst towards a US Open linesman in 2009 — throughout which a lady claimed the athlete threatened her — Williams needed to confront older witnesses.
“They needed to discuss to me,” Williams advised the paper in 2012. “And I knew it was coming. However I felt actually unhealthy as a result of it's like I'm not.”
She continued, “They only discuss to you. They present you the scriptures. Not servants; they name them elders. It's nearly like a rebuke, but it surely's not unhealthy as a result of it says within the Bible that God loves you, and if somebody reprimands you, I like you. ”
Years in the past — when her sister Yetunde Worth was murdered in 2003 — Williams additionally leaned on scripture and attended three Jehovah's Witness conferences per week, she stated Occasions in 2007. “I used to be attempting to develop a greater relationship with God,” she stated.
As her profession has soared over time — and in 2017 she married Alexis Ohanian and welcomed their daughter — Williams has discovered herself taking a step again and returning to her religion.
“Being a Jehovah's Witness is necessary to me, however I've by no means actually practiced it and needed to get into it,” she stated. Vogue in 2017.
She added of her husband: “Alexis didn't develop up in any church, however he's actually receptive and even takes the lead. He places my wants first.”
