Joseph Rutherford and the Making of Jehovah's Witnesses

When Charles Taze Russell died on a train in Texas in October 1916, the Bible Students lost the man who, in the words of one close associate, had been "the Society." Twenty-five years later it had a new name, a new structure, a new hope for most members and a string of Supreme Court cases. The man at the center of that change was a Missouri lawyer, Joseph Franklin Rutherford.

Jehovah's Witnesses honor him as a courageous leader whom God used to prepare the preaching work. The Bible Students who parted from him in 1917 remember the man who turned a fellowship into a centralized organization. Legal historians remember an advocate whose people made the courts take religious liberty seriously. This article sets the Witnesses' own publications beside the court records and the dissenters' accounts, and closes with an Orthodox Christian reading.

In brief

Rutherford (1869 to 1942), the Watch Tower Society's legal counsel, was elected its president in January 1917. Within months he removed four opposing directors, saying their appointments had never been confirmed, and the dispute split the Bible Students. In 1918 he and seven colleagues were convicted under the Espionage Act; an appeals court reversed the conviction in 1919 because the trial had been unfair, and the government dropped the case in 1920. His 1920 booklet Millions Now Living Will Never Die said readers could "confidently expect" the return of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in 1925. That did not happen, and Witness histories now call the expectation mistaken. In 1931 the movement adopted the name Jehovah's witnesses; in 1932 congregations stopped electing elders; in 1938 The Watchtower declared the organization "in no wise democratic." Refusing Nazi and flag salutes brought persecution in Germany and mob violence in America, and Witness lawsuits produced landmark rulings such as Barnette (1943).

Thesis: The Jehovah's Witness organization as it exists today took its shape under Rutherford rather than Russell, and the record supports both the Witnesses' account of courage under persecution and their critics' account of a failed prophecy and a concentration of authority.

Who Rutherford was

According to the Witnesses' history, Rutherford was born to Baptist parents on a farm in Morgan County, Missouri, on November 8, 1869. He became a court reporter, was licensed to practice law on May 5, 1892, served four years as a public prosecutor in Boonville, and sometimes sat as a special judge, which is why he was called "Judge" Rutherford. He accepted three volumes of Russell's Millennial Dawn from colporteurs in 1894, was baptized in 1906, and became the Society's legal counsel the next year.¹

The 1917 schism

After Russell's death an executive committee of three, Rutherford among them, ran the Society. On January 6, 1917, he was elected president; The Watch Tower reported that he was "declared the unanimous choice of the Convention as President."² A history published by the Bible Students who later separated disputes that picture. It says the chairman recognized only those who would nominate or second Rutherford, that new by-laws were passed without being read to the members, and that Rutherford persuaded the five trustees named in Russell's will not to vote the shares he had left them.³

The Witness account describes what followed as a bid for control: "Four members of the board of directors of the Society went so far as to endeavor to wrest administrative control from Rutherford's hands."⁴ On July 17, 1917, the Brooklyn headquarters received The Finished Mystery, a posthumous seventh volume of Russell's Studies in the Scriptures. At the same meal it was announced that the four opposing directors had been replaced by Rutherford's appointees. A five-hour argument followed, and on August 8 the former directors and their supporters left.⁵

The legal reasons differ. The Witness history says the four had been appointed by Russell, but the appointments "had never been confirmed by vote of the corporation members at the annual meeting," so "the four of them were not legal members of the board of directors at all!" The Bible Students' history answers that "officers of the board cannot be elected unless they are first members of the board; therefore, there are either seven members or no members." Both sides, it adds, "purchased legal opinions to support their claims," and the ousted directors declined to sue, citing 1 Corinthians 6.⁶ {{debated: Whether Rutherford's removal of the four directors was lawful has never been settled by any court, and each side's account rests on its own legal opinions.}}

The outcome is not in dispute. At the meeting of January 5, 1918, Rutherford's slate won, and even the dissenting history reports that only "about 13% of the votes recorded" went to the opposing candidates, though it complains that proxies let the holder override the voter's choice.⁷ The minority kept their own Memorial in March 1918 and in November resolved to form the Pastoral Bible Institute. The movement Russell left became several movements, and the largest was Rutherford's.⁸ (Russell's own life is told in our article on Charles Taze Russell.)

Prison and the appeal

The Finished Mystery used harsh language about the clergy and the war. Canada banned it on February 12, 1918, and on May 7 the United States obtained warrants for Rutherford and seven others under the Espionage Act. After a trial from June 5 to June 20, 1918, seven received twenty years and one received ten.⁹ The Watchtower later quoted the judge: "The religious propaganda which these defendants have vigorously advocated and spread . . . is a greater danger than a division of the German Army."¹⁰ In January 1919 the shareholders re-elected him while he was in the Atlanta penitentiary, and in March the prisoners were released on bail.

On May 14, 1919, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the conviction. Witness publications speak of men "falsely convicted" and "unjustly imprisoned."¹¹ The court said something narrower. Judge Henry Ward wrote for the majority: "We think there was sufficient evidence upon which to submit the case to the jury." The fault lay with the trial judge's handling of three reluctant witnesses, above all his jailing of William F. Hudgings for contempt in front of the jury. Ward concluded: "It is not enough to justify a conviction that the defendant be guilty. He has a right to be tried in accordance with the rules of law. The defendants in this case did not have the temperate and impartial trial to which they were entitled, and for that reason the judgment is reversed." Judge Martin Manton dissented: "I see no error warranting a reversal of this conviction in the conduct of the trial judge."¹² The case was sent back for retrial, and on May 5, 1920, the government withdrew it.¹³ {{strong: The 1919 reversal held that the defendants had not received a fair trial; it was not a finding of innocence, and the government then abandoned the case.}}

So the eight were never lawfully convicted, but no court declared them falsely accused.

"Millions Now Living Will Never Die" and 1925

Back at work in 1919, Rutherford launched The Golden Age magazine and a campaign built around one lecture, which the Witness history says he gave at the New York Hippodrome on March 21, 1920; the booklet appeared the same year.¹⁴ Counting seventy jubilees (Leviticus 25) from Israel's entry into Canaan brought him to 1925:

"Therefore we may confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the faithful prophets of old, particularly those named by the Apostle in Hebrews chapter eleven, to the condition of human perfection."¹⁵

A few pages later it said "we must reach the positive and indisputable conclusion that millions now living will never die."¹⁶ {{very-strong: Rutherford's 1920 booklet told readers they could "confidently expect" the resurrection of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in 1925.}}

The Witnesses' history does not hide this. It says of the hope: "Though mistaken, they eagerly shared it with others." It adds that "Following 1925, meeting attendance dropped dramatically in some congregations in France and Switzerland."¹⁷ Its explanation is that the apostles too expected the kingdom too soon (Acts 1:6) and the faithful stayed. The movement's other dates are covered in The Dates That Refused to Die and 1914 and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Beth Sarim

The hope for the faithful men of old outlived 1925 and took the form of a house. Left with one good lung after pneumonia in 1919, Rutherford from 1929 spent winters in San Diego at a residence he named Beth-Sarim, built, the Witnesses say, with funds given for that purpose. The 1939 book Salvation explained that the name means "House of the Princes" and that it was built as "tangible proof" that some "believe that the faithful men of old will soon be resurrected by the Lord, be back on earth, and take charge of the visible affairs of earth."¹⁸ The text in view was Psalm 45:16 (Psalm 44 in the Septuagint numbering): "Instead of Your fathers shall be Your sons, Whom You shall make princes in all the earth."¹⁹ After his death the board sold the house, which The Watchtower said "had fully served its purpose and was now only serving as a monument quite expensive to keep." In 1950 the teaching was adjusted: the men of old would be raised after Armageddon, not before.²⁰

A new name in 1931

Russell had refused a distinctive name: "We are satisfied with the name, Christian, by which the early saints were known," he wrote in 1888.²¹ After 1917, though, rival groups also called themselves Bible Students. From 1925 The Watch Tower repeatedly discussed Isaiah 43:10: "'You are My witnesses,' says the Lord, 'And My servant whom I have chosen'" (NKJV; the Hebrew has the divine name).²² At Columbus, Ohio, on July 26, 1931, Rutherford read a resolution ending: "We desire to be known as and called by the name, to wit, Jehovah's witnesses." The Witness history sets two readings side by side, citing a writer who called it "the greatest stroke of genius" on Rutherford's part and A. H. Macmillan's conviction that "the Lord guided him in that."²³ Either way, the name separated his followers from every other Bible Student group and made witnessing the mark of membership.

From congregations to theocracy

Under Russell, congregations elected their own elders. Rutherford changed that in stages, each recorded in the Witnesses' history.²⁴

• 1922: At Cedar Point, Ohio, he urged the Bible Students to "advertise, advertise, advertise, the King and his kingdom," making public witnessing every member's work.
• 1932: Elected elders had often resisted field service; congregations voted to end the annual election of elders and deacons, and some "elective elders" left.
• 1935: Rutherford taught that the "great multitude" of Revelation 7 has an earthly hope, distinct from the 144,000 (see Who Are the 144,000?).
• 1938: The Watchtower declared: "Jehovah's organization is in no wise democratic. Jehovah is supreme, and his government or organization is strictly theocratic." Congregations were invited to ask the Society to appoint all their servants.

Practices changed too. Headquarters held its last Christmas celebration in 1926; the pyramid chronology was dropped in 1928; the cross-and-crown emblem left the magazine's cover after 1931; and in 1936 the Society taught that Jesus died on a stake (see our article on that claim).²⁵ The Society opened radio station WBBR in 1924, reached a peak of 408 stations in 1933, made portable phonographs from 1934, and published 24 books and 86 booklets during his presidency.²⁶ Witnesses call this progressive light (Proverbs 4:18); from outside it looks like centralization, the foundation of today's Governing Body (see also The 1919 Appointment).

The flag salute and the courts

The issue arose first in Nazi Germany, where Witnesses refused the Nazi ("Heil Hitler") salute and military service. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reports that at least 3,000 Witnesses were sent to concentration camps, where they wore purple triangles, and that "An estimated 1,000 German Jehovah's Witnesses died or were murdered in concentration camps and prisons during the Nazi era, as did 400 Witnesses from other countries."²⁷ (Rutherford's own dealings with the regime in 1933 are debated by historians and lie outside this article.)

In the United States, after eight-year-old Carleton Nichols of Lynn, Massachusetts, declined to salute in 1935, Rutherford said on the radio: "The refusal to salute the flag, and to stand mute, as this boy did, could injure no one."²⁸ The Supreme Court later summarized the Witnesses' reason fairly: they read Exodus 20:4-5 literally, and "They consider that the flag is an 'image' within this command."²⁹ Lillian and William Gobitas were expelled from school in Minersville, Pennsylvania (a clerk's error gave the case the name "Gobitis").³⁰ Rutherford himself appeared as their counsel, and on June 3, 1940, the Court ruled 8 to 1 against them; Justice Frankfurter wrote: "National unity is the basis of national security."³¹

The political scientist David T. Smith writes: "Between 1940 and 1942 there were hundreds of violent attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States, with estimates of the exact number as high as 2,500." Riots involved whole towns such as Litchfield, Illinois, and Kennebunk, Maine. The violence "resulted in no recorded deaths," Smith notes, but was "an extraordinary episode in American history."³²

The Witnesses kept litigating, winning Lovell v. Griffin (1938) on literature permits, Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), which held states "as incompetent as Congress" to restrict free exercise, and Murdock v. Pennsylvania (1943) on license taxes.³³ On Flag Day, June 14, 1943, the Court overruled Gobitis in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, where Justice Jackson wrote:

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."³⁴

Rutherford did not live to see it, and Hayden Covington was the Witnesses' counsel in Barnette. But the strategy was set under his presidency, when the Society "wisely established a legal department in Brooklyn to render counsel."³⁵ {{strong: Litigation by Jehovah's Witnesses, begun in the Rutherford era, produced leading Supreme Court decisions on religious liberty and free speech: Lovell and Cantwell during his presidency, Murdock and Barnette shortly after his death.}}

Rutherford died at Beth-Sarim on January 8, 1942, aged 72. At headquarters, the Witness history records, "No one took the day off to mourn."³⁶ Five days later the directors elected Nathan H. Knorr president.³⁷

An Orthodox reading

The Orthodox Church neither judges the Witnesses by Rutherford's temperament nor denies their courage. It asks what this history shows about prophecy, authority and conscience.

On setting dates

Christ said, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only" (Matthew 24:36), and "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority" (Acts 1:7).³⁸ Blessed Augustine drew the lesson: "In vain, then, do we attempt to compute definitely the years that may remain to this world, when we may hear from the mouth of the Truth that it is not for us to know this."³⁹ The Church has had date-setters, but has never bound its members to a calculation; 1925 shows the cost of doing so.

On authority

Rutherford concluded that a true church must be "theocratic" and governed from a center. The Orthodox Church also believes God governs His Church, but conciliarly, through bishops, councils received by the whole Church, and a faithful people who resist innovation. The Eastern Patriarchs wrote in 1848 that patriarchs and councils could not introduce novelties, "because the protector of religion is the very body of the Church, even the people themselves."⁴⁰ On that view, authority answerable to no council and no wider body of the faithful is what Orthodox ecclesiology resists, though its own check is episcopal and conciliar, not congregational (see our guide to apostolic succession). The Witnesses would answer that after the apostles, in their history's words, "Satan sowed seeds that produced imitation Christians," and that the Church of the councils belongs to that apostasy.⁴¹ That disagreement one presidency's history cannot settle.

On conscience and the state

Here Orthodox Christians should feel kinship. When officials asked St Polycarp, "What harm is there in saying, Lord Caesar, and in sacrificing," he refused and died. Yet the same account has him say, "we are taught to give all due honour (which entails no injury upon ourselves) to the powers and authorities which are ordained of God."⁴² The Orthodox tradition draws its line where Polycarp did, at worship, rendering "to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21). On that reading, honoring a flag is civic respect, not worship; that is this article's interpretation, and the Witnesses apply the same principle and conclude otherwise. But the right they won in Barnette, not to be forced to confess by word or act what one does not believe, is one the martyrs died for.

The strongest objections

Objection: the four directors were not legally on the board, and the members confirmed Rutherford

Partly strong: by the dissenters' own count the 1918 vote went overwhelmingly to Rutherford. Response: that shows whom the members preferred, not whether the 1917 removal was lawful, a question no court tested.

Objection: 1925 was an honest mistake, like the apostles' expectations

Response: partly fair; sincere people misread prophecy. But in Acts 1 the apostles asked a question and Christ corrected them, while Rutherford's booklet spoke of what readers could "confidently" expect and of an "indisputable" conclusion. A mistake taught as certainty weighs more, though the Witnesses' frank admission deserves credit.

Objection: the conviction was reversed, so they were falsely convicted

Response: they stand legally innocent, since no valid conviction survived. But the court found enough evidence for a jury and reversed only for unfairness. Both halves belong in an honest account.

Objection: Rutherford betrayed Russell (the Bible Students' view)

Response: the change was real. Russell refused a distinctive name, let congregations elect elders and dated Christ's presence to 1874; the organization dropped the first two under Rutherford and the third later. Witnesses reply that Rutherford's early presidency, by their record, continued Russell's methods before it changed them.⁴³ Whether the changes were development or departure depends on where one believes authority lies.

What we can say confidently

• Rutherford became president in January 1917, removed four directors on July 17, 1917, and won the January 1918 vote; the dispute permanently divided the Bible Students.
• He and seven others were convicted under the Espionage Act in 1918; the conviction was reversed in 1919 for an unfair trial, and the prosecution was withdrawn in 1920.
• Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1920) told readers to "confidently expect" the return of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in 1925; Witness publications now call that hope mistaken.
• Beth Sarim was built in San Diego around 1929 to 1930 for the expected "princes," used by Rutherford, and sold after his death.
• The name Jehovah's witnesses was adopted on July 26, 1931; elected elders ended in 1932; the organization was declared "in no wise democratic" in 1938.
• Witnesses who refused flag salutes suffered severe persecution in Nazi Germany and mob violence in the United States, and their litigation produced Barnette and other landmark rulings.

What remains disputed

• Whether the 1917 removal of the directors was lawful, and how fairly the 1917 and 1918 elections were run.
• How far Rutherford's personality, rather than doctrine, drove the schism and the later centralization.
• Whether the changes of 1925 to 1938 were divine guidance (the Witness view), legitimate development, or a departure from Russell (the Bible Student view).
• How many attacks on Witnesses occurred in the United States in 1940 to 1942; estimates run from hundreds to as many as 2,500.

Conclusion

Rutherford led a grieving movement through schism and prison and left disciplined preachers who would not bow to a flag or a dictator. He also tied their hope to a date that failed and built an organization no congregation could check. Both facts are in the Witnesses' own books.

The Orthodox Church reads such a story with humility, knowing its own quarrels and abuses of authority. Its answer is to wait for Christ's appearing without calculating it, to submit to the conciliar mind of the Church rather than to any single office, and to give Caesar honor while giving God worship. Orthodox Christians can recognize the courage of Witnesses who stood firm in American schoolrooms and German camps, and pray that they will come to know Christ as the Creed confesses Him, true God of one essence with the Father. (For how Witness teaching compares with the Creed, see Are Jehovah's Witnesses Christian?)

Notes

1. Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (Brooklyn: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1993), ch. 6, box "J. F. Rutherford's Background," p. 67. ↩
2. Proclaimers, ch. 6, pp. 63-65, quoting The Watch Tower, January 15, 1917. The phrase "the Society" in the opening paragraph is A. H. Macmillan's, quoted in the same chapter. ↩
3. James Parkinson, "1916-1918," in "Special History Issue: Troubled Years," The Herald of Christ's Kingdom (Pastoral Bible Institute), online at herald-magazine.com. This is a Bible Students' (non-Witness) account. ↩
4. Proclaimers, ch. 6, p. 66. ↩
5. Proclaimers, ch. 6, pp. 66-68. ↩
6. Proclaimers, ch. 6, pp. 67-68; Parkinson, "1916-1918." The two accounts differ on which four directors were replaced (the Witness footnote lists the board as Ritchie, Van Amburgh, Rockwell, Wright, Hoskins, Pierson and Rutherford; Parkinson names Ritchie, Wright, Hoskins and Hirsh), so this article does not name them. ↩
7. Parkinson, "1916-1918"; Proclaimers, ch. 6, p. 68 and n. d (results of the January 5, 1918, meeting). ↩
8. Proclaimers, ch. 6, p. 68; Parkinson, "1916-1918" (Providence convention, November 8-10, 1918). ↩
9. "1918: One Hundred Years Ago," The Watchtower (study edition), October 2018, pp. 3-5 (Canadian ban, warrants, trial dates); Rutherford v. United States, 258 F. 855 (2d Cir. 1919), opinion of Ward, J. (sentences, Espionage Act sections 3 and 4, trial June 5 to 20, 1918). ↩
10. The Watchtower, October 2018, p. 4. The judge's words are quoted from the Witness article; Proclaimers, ch. 29, p. 652, names him as Harland B. Howe. The sentencing transcript was not consulted. ↩
11. Proclaimers, ch. 6, p. 69 ("falsely convicted of conspiracy"); "1919: One Hundred Years Ago," The Watchtower (study edition), October 2019, pp. 2-5 ("unjustly imprisoned"). ↩
12. Rutherford v. United States, 258 F. 855 (2d Cir., decided May 14, 1919), majority opinion by Ward, J., and dissent by Manton, J. Text from the Caselaw Access Project (static.case.law). The Supreme Court decision on the contempt is Ex parte Hudgings, 249 U.S. 378 (1919), cited in both opinions. ↩
13. Proclaimers, ch. 29, p. 654, which also quotes Justice Department correspondence on the decision not to retry. ↩
14. Proclaimers, ch. 28, p. 632 (lecture of March 21, 1920; the Jubilee calculation); ch. 7, p. 77 (The Golden Age). The booklet's prefatory letter is dated May 17, 1920. A similarly titled talk was given in Los Angeles on February 24, 1918 (Proclaimers, ch. 29, p. 648). ↩
15. J. F. Rutherford, Millions Now Living Will Never Die! (Brooklyn: International Bible Students Association, 1920), 89-90. Scan and text at archive.org (identifier millionsnowlivin00ruth). ↩
16. Rutherford, Millions Now Living, 97. ↩
17. Proclaimers, ch. 7, p. 78 (quoting the booklet); ch. 28, pp. 632-633. ↩
18. Proclaimers, ch. 7, box "'House of the Princes,'" p. 76, quoting Salvation (1939). Salvation itself was not consulted. ↩
19. Psalm 45:16, New King James Version. ↩
20. Proclaimers, ch. 7, p. 76 and n. j, quoting The Watchtower, December 15, 1947, and citing The Watchtower, November 1, 1950, pp. 414-417. ↩
21. Proclaimers, ch. 11, p. 149, quoting Zion's Watch Tower, September 1888. ↩
22. Isaiah 43:10, New King James Version; Proclaimers, ch. 11, pp. 151-152. ↩
23. Proclaimers, ch. 7, p. 82; ch. 11, p. 152 (Chandler W. Sterling and A. H. Macmillan quoted there). ↩
24. Proclaimers, ch. 7, pp. 72, 78, 84 (1922, 1925, 1935); ch. 15, pp. 213-219 (1932 and 1938, quoting The Watchtower, June 1 and 15, 1938). ↩
25. Proclaimers, ch. 14, pp. 199-201, including the box "Practices That Have Been Abandoned." ↩
26. Proclaimers, ch. 7, boxes on pp. 80-81 and 87, and caption on p. 88. ↩
27. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Nazi Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses," Holocaust Encyclopedia, encyclopedia.ushmm.org. ↩
28. Proclaimers, ch. 14, pp. 196-197, quoting Rutherford's radio talk "Saluting a Flag," October 6, 1935. ↩
29. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 629 (1943). ↩
30. Alex Aichinger, "Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940)," The First Amendment Encyclopedia, Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University (2009); Proclaimers, ch. 30, n. k. ↩
31. Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 595 (1940). The report lists "Joseph F. Rutherford, of Brooklyn, N.Y." with George K. Gardner as counsel for the respondents. ↩
32. David T. Smith, Religious Persecution and Political Order in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), ch. 6, "Mass Violence Against Jehovah's Witnesses, 1940-1942," 119-150 (quoted from the chapter's opening, available on Cambridge Core). ↩
33. Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444 (1938); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303 (1940); Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 (1943). ↩
34. Barnette, 319 U.S. at 642. The report lists Hayden C. Covington as counsel for the appellees. ↩
35. Proclaimers, ch. 7, p. 82. ↩
36. Proclaimers, ch. 7, pp. 86-89. ↩
37. Proclaimers, ch. 8, p. 90 (election of January 13, 1942). ↩
38. Matthew 24:36 and Acts 1:7, New King James Version. ↩
39. Augustine, City of God 18.53, trans. Marcus Dods, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 2 (1887), at newadvent.org. ↩
40. Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848: A Reply to the Epistle of Pope Pius IX, "to the Easterns," §17, English text in the Internet Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University). ↩
41. Proclaimers, ch. 11, p. 150. ↩
42. Martyrdom of Polycarp 8 and 10, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 (1885), at newadvent.org; Matthew 22:21, New King James Version. ↩
43. Proclaimers, ch. 6, p. 66 ("inclined, not to change the direction of the organization, but to continue in the forward-moving pattern established by Russell"); ch. 28, p. 631 (the 1874 presence). ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Rutherford, J. F. Millions Now Living Will Never Die! Brooklyn: International Bible Students Association, 1920. Archive.org, identifier millionsnowlivin00ruth.
• Rutherford v. United States, 258 F. 855 (2d Cir. 1919). Caselaw Access Project, static.case.law/f/258.
• Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444 (1938); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940); Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940); Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 (1943); West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943). Texts at the Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School.
• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• The Martyrdom of Polycarp. Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885. Revised edition at newadvent.org.
• Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 2. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887. Revised edition at newadvent.org.
• Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848: A Reply to the Epistle of Pope Pius IX, "to the Easterns." Internet Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University.

Other scholarship

• Smith, David T. Religious Persecution and Political Order in the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Chapter 6, "Mass Violence Against Jehovah's Witnesses, 1940-1942." doi:10.1017/CBO9781316338216.006.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Nazi Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses." Holocaust Encyclopedia. encyclopedia.ushmm.org.
• Aichinger, Alex. "Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940)." The First Amendment Encyclopedia. Free Speech Center, Middle Tennessee State University, 2009.

Sources from the tradition being discussed

• Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom. Brooklyn: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1993. Chapters 6, 7, 11, 14, 15, 28, 29 and 30, at wol.jw.org.
• "1918: One Hundred Years Ago." The Watchtower (study edition), October 2018, 3-5. At wol.jw.org.
• "1919: One Hundred Years Ago." The Watchtower (study edition), October 2019, 2-5. At wol.jw.org.
• Parkinson, James. "1916-1918." In "Special History Issue: Troubled Years," The Herald of Christ's Kingdom. Pastoral Bible Institute. herald-magazine.com. (An account by the Bible Students who separated from Rutherford.)