When was the church of Jehovah's Witnesses established?
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Jehovah's Witnesses originated as a branch of the Bible Student movement, which developed in the United States in the 1870s among followers of Christian Restorationist minister Charles Taze Russell. Bible Student missionaries were sent to England in 1881 and the first overseas branch was opened in London in 1900. The group took on the name International Bible Students Association and by 1914 it was also active in Canada, Germany, Australia and other countries. The movement split into several rival organizations after Russell's death in 1916, with one—led by Russell's successor, Joseph "Judge" Rutherford—retaining control of both his magazine, "The Watch Tower", and his legal and publishing corporation, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.
History of Jehovah's Witnesses
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"Zion's Watch Tower" (now called "The Watchtower", the primary journal of the Watch Tower Society) had subscribers in Russia as early as 1887. In 1935, the Watch Tower Society unsuccessfully attempted to establish a branch office in the Soviet Union to support members already there. By 1939, thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses were residing in the Baltic states when the Soviet Union absorbed those formerly independent countries. In the 1940s, the Soviet government forcibly dispersed thousands of Witnesses, in a program named Operation North, later described by Dr. N. S. Gordienko, a professor at Herzen University as having "just the opposite of what was expected; they wanted to weaken the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses in the USSR, but in fact they only strengthened it". In the 1950s and 1960s, Jehovah's Witnesses were tracked, infiltrated, harassed, and persecuted by the Soviet government. By 1971, there were more than 4,500 Witnesses in the Soviet Union. When the denomination was formally recognized in March 1991, the organization reported 15,987 members in Russia. Beginning in 1993, Witness missionaries from Germany were assigned to Russia to support the local members. By 2014, Jehovah's Witnesses reported over 170,000 members in Russia.
Christianity in Russia
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From 1936 to 1959, Jehovah's Witnesses faced religious and civil opposition in Quebec. Historically, the Roman Catholic Church had been the dominant institution in the life of the province of Quebec and a major influence on French Canadian culture. It nurtured the young people of Quebec, in language and faith; and at the same time it endorsed the legitimacy of British rule and of the established economic order.
Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Canada
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Originally known as the "Peoples Pulpit Association", the organization was incorporated in 1909 when the Society's principal offices moved to Brooklyn, New York. In 1939, it was renamed "Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Inc.", and in 1956 the name was changed to "Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc". Until 2000, a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses was president of both the "Watch Tower" (Pennsylvania) and "Watchtower" (New York) corporations, as well as Britain's International Bible Students Association corporation; in 2001, it was decided that the corporations' directors need not be members of the Governing Body."Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, Inc." was established to organize and administer the congregational affairs of Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States. It filed for incorporation on August 21, 2000 in New York State as a “domestic non-profit corporation” in Putnam County, New York. An incorporation record was also filed with the State of Florida on March 3, 2006, as a "foreign non profit corporation" with agency in Collier County, Florida.
Corporations of Jehovah's Witnesses
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In 1997, the authorities in Transnistria announced that they would annul the registration of the Jehovah's Witnesses. The Jehovah's Witnesses in Transnistria were originally registered in 1991, and the church was reregistered by the "Ministry of Justice" in 1994 and 1997. However, in 1997 the "President's Commissioner for Religions and Cults" sent official letters to public authorities falsely claiming that the activity of the Jehovah's Witnesses was banned and that their registration was annulled. Using the "President's Commissioner's" deceptive letter, authorities have repeatedly harassed the Jehovah's Witnesses, including halting the distribution of religious literature and refusing to approve a property request to build a house of worship. In 2001, the Jehovah's Witnesses lodged an official complaint with the "President" of Transnistria, and in 2002, they lodged a complaint with the Magistrate in Tiraspol against illegal actions taken by the "President's Commissioner for Religions and Cults." In July 2002, the "President's Commissioner for Religions and Cults" sent a letter to various government departments with instructions to consider the Jehovah's Witnesses as illegal until the case brought against them had been finalized. The Jehovah's Witnesses have lodged an official complaint and a counter lawsuit against the "President's Commissioner for Religions and Cults." Following several hearings, the Court has decided to suspend the trial until the liquidation case has been finalized.In December 2003, the Jehovah's Witnesses were informed that the two trials would be combined into one trial that would be heard by a panel of three judges. The case was being heard at the close of the period covered by this report.
Freedom of religion in Moldova
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The leadership structure of Jehovah's Witnesses was reorganized from January 1, 1976, with the power of the presidency passed to the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses and the establishment of six committees to oversee tasks such as writing, teaching, publishing and evangelizing work. At this time, Watch Tower Society publications began using the capitalized name, "Jehovah's "W"itnesses". Subsequent presidents of the Watch Tower Society after Knorr's death in 1977 have been Frederick William Franz, Milton George Henschel and Don A. Adams.
History of Jehovah's Witnesses
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Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, and from that point forward, persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses intensified. Witnesses, being politically neutral, refused to swear loyalty to the Nazi regime. Initially, Witness indifference to the Nazi state manifested itself in the refusal to raise their arms in the Nazi salute, join the German Labor Front, participate in Nazi welfare collections, perform air raid duties, or participate in Nazi rallies and parades. Nazi Party SA stormtroopers raided the homes of Witnesses who failed to vote in a November 1933 plebiscite over German withdrawal from the League of Nations and marched them to the polling booths. Some were beaten or forced to walk holding placards declaring their "betrayal" of the fatherland; in one town, a billboard was displayed in the marketplace listing Bible Student "traitors" who had not voted, and mobs also gathered outside Witnesses' homes to throw stones or chant. Similar action was taken at subsequent elections in the one-party state.
Nazi authorities denounced Jehovah's Witnesses for their ties to the United States and derided the apparent revolutionary millennialism of their preaching that a battle of Armageddon would precede the rule of Christ on earth. They linked Jehovah's Witnesses to "international Jewry" by pointing to Witness reliance on certain Old Testament texts. The Nazis had grievances with many of the smaller Protestant groups on these issues, but only Jehovah's Witnesses and the Christadelphian Church refused to bear arms or swear loyalty to the state.
Activities of the Bible Students Association were banned in the states of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Bavaria on 10 April 1933 and 13 April 1933, respectively. When Witnesses responded with a nationwide house-to-house booklet distribution campaign, many were arrested, and within a week bans were extended to the states of Saxony and Hessen. Publications were also confiscated in some states. On 24 April, police seized the Bible Student headquarters at Magdeburg, withdrawing five days later after US diplomatic efforts. From mid-May, other states issued decrees outlawing the Bible Students, and by the middle of June they were banned in almost every state. In one state's decree, the rationale for the ban was said to be that Bible Students were "imposing" Watch Tower Society journals on householders, "which contain malicious attacks on the major Christian churches and their institutions".
Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany
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A Kingdom Hall is a place of worship used by Jehovah's Witnesses. The term was first suggested in 1935 by Joseph Franklin Rutherford, then president of the Watch Tower Society, for a building in Hawaii. Rutherford's reasoning was that these buildings would be used for "preaching the good news of the Kingdom". Jehovah's Witnesses use Kingdom Halls for the majority of their worship and Bible instruction. Witnesses prefer the term "Kingdom Hall" over "church", noting that the term often translated "church" in the Bible refers to the congregation of people rather than a structure.
Kingdom Hall
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In July 1940 the government of Canada banned the Jehovah's Witnesses. Overnight it became illegal to be a member of this sect. The law, passed under the War Measures Act, was vigorously enforced. Beatings, mob action, police persecution, and state prosecution confronted the Jehovah's Witnesses as they ignored the ban and continued to go about their work spreading the word of God... The struggle was bitter indeed. Jehovah's Witness children who refused to sing the national anthem and salute the flag during patriotic exercises in public schools were often expelled from class, and in a few cases, removed from their parents' care and placed in foster homes and juvenile detention centres. Men of military service age who refused to fight spent the war trying to get out of alternative service camps established across Canada for conscientious objectors. Jehovah's Witness spent a good deal of time in the courts during the war years; they challenged government policies with which they disagreed, and were arrested in the hundreds and charged with being members of an illegal group.
Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Canada
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After its formal establishment in 1971, the Governing Body met regularly but, according to Raymond Franz, only briefly; Franz claims meetings were sometimes as short as seven minutes, to make decisions about branch appointments and conduct that should be considered disfellowshipping offenses. Franz claims that in 1971 and again in 1975, the Governing Body debated the extent of the authority it should be given. The Governing Body voted in December 1975 to establish six operating committees to oversee the various administrative requirements of the organization's worldwide activities that formerly had been under the direction of the president; furthermore, each branch overseer was to be replaced by a branch committee of at least three members. The change, which took effect on January 1, 1976, was described in the Watch Tower Society's 1993 history book, "Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom", as "one of the most significant organizational readjustments in the modern-day history of Jehovah's Witnesses."
Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses
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On March 9, 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned and remanded the Supreme Court of Rhode Island's affirmation of the conviction of a Jehovah's Witnesses member for holding a religious meeting in a city park of Pawtucket. The opinion of the court was that a religious service of Jehovah's Witnesses had been treated differently from the religious services of other denominations. The court stated that the city had not prohibited church services in the park, as Catholics and Protestants could conduct services there without violating the ordinance.
Supreme Court cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses by country
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Two missionaries were sent to England in 1881 and overseas branches were opened in London (1900), Germany (1903) and Australia and Switzerland (1904). The Watch Tower Society's headquarters were transferred to Brooklyn, New York in 1908.
In 1910 Russell introduced the name "International Bible Students Association" as a means of identifying his worldwide community of Bible study groups. The name was also used when advertising and conducting conventions of Russell's followers.
History of Jehovah's Witnesses