Joseph Franklin Rutherford

Joseph Franklin Rutherford (November 8, 1869 – January 8, 1942), also known as Judge Rutherford, was the second president of the incorporated Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. He played a primary role in the organization and doctrinal development of Jehovah's Witnesses, which emerged from the Bible Student movement established by Charles Taze Russell.

Rutherford began a career in law, working as a court stenographer, trial lawyer and prosecutor. He became a special judge in the 14th Judicial District of Missouri at some time after 1895. He developed an interest in the doctrines of Watch Tower Society president Charles Taze Russell, which led to his joining the Bible Student movement, and he was baptized in 1906. He was appointed the legal counsel for the Watch Tower Society in 1907, as well as a traveling representative prior to his election as president in 1917. His early presidency was marked by a dispute with the Society's board of directors, in which four of its seven members accused him of autocratic behavior and sought to reduce his powers. The resulting leadership crisis divided the Bible Student community and contributed to the loss of one-seventh of adherents by 1919 and thousands more by 1931. Rutherford and seven other Watch Tower executives were imprisoned in 1918 after charges were laid over the publication of ''The Finished Mystery'', a book deemed seditious for its opposition to World War I.

Rutherford introduced many organizational and doctrinal changes that helped shape the current beliefs and practices of Jehovah's Witnesses. He imposed a centralized administrative structure on the worldwide Bible Student movement, which he later called a theocracy, requiring all adherents to distribute literature via door to door preaching and to provide regular reports of their preaching activity. He also instituted training programs for public speaking as part of their weekly meetings for worship. He established 1914 as the date of Christ's invisible return, asserted that Christ died on a tree rather than a cross, formulated the current Witness concept of Armageddon as God's war on the wicked, and reinforced the belief that the start of Christ's millennial reign was imminent. He condemned the observance of traditional celebrations such as Christmas and birthdays, the saluting of national flags and the singing of national anthems. He introduced the name "Jehovah's witnesses" in 1931 and the term "Kingdom Hall" for houses of worship in 1935.

He wrote twenty-one books and was credited by the Society in 1942 with the distribution of almost 400 million books and booklets. Despite significant decreases during the 1920s, overall membership increased more than sixfold by the end of Rutherford's 25 years as president.

Early life

Rutherford was born on November 8, 1869, to James Calvin Rutherford and Leonora Strickland and raised in near-poverty in a Baptist farm family. Some sources list his place of birth as Boonville, Missouri, but according to his death certificate he was born in Versailles, Missouri.Dept. of Public Health, San Diego California, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, Certificate of Death issued February 6, 1942 Rutherford developed an interest in law from the age of 16. Although his father discouraged this interest, he allowed Rutherford to go to college under the condition that he pay for a laborer to take his place on the family farm. Rutherford took out a loan and helped to pay for his law studies by working as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman and court stenographer.

Law career

Rutherford spent two years as a judge's intern, became an official court reporter at age 20, and was admitted to the Missouri bar in May 1892 at age 22. He became a trial lawyer for a law firm"Modern History of Jehovah's Witnesses", ''Watchtower'', March 15, 1955, p. 175. and later served for four years in Boonville as a public prosecutor. He campaigned briefly for Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, ''Visions of Glory – A History and Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses'', Simon & Schuster, 1978, chapter 6. He was appointed as a Special Judge in the Eighth Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri,''The New York Times'', January 17, 1919, Section I, p. 9
As Retrieved 2010-03-02
/ref> sitting as a substitute judge at least once when a regular judge was unable to hold court. As a result of this appointment he became known by the sobriquet Judge Rutherford. He was admitted to the New York bar in 1909 and admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States the same year.

Watch Tower Society

In 1894, Rutherford purchased the first three volumes of Charles Taze Russell's '' Millennial Dawn'' series of Bible study textbooks from two colporteurs who visited his office. Rutherford, who then viewed all religions as insincere, shallow and hypocritical, was struck by Russell's sincerity and his sentiments towards religion, which mirrored his own view. Rutherford immediately wrote to the Watch Tower Society to express appreciation for the books. He was baptized twelve years later and he and his wife began holding Bible classes in their home. In 1907, he became legal counsel for the Watch Tower Society at its Pittsburgh headquarters, and from around that time began to give public talks as a "pilgrim" representative of the Society.

As Russell's health deteriorated, Rutherford represented him on trips to Europe. In April 1915 he was deputized to speak at a major debate with Baptist preacher J. H. Troy over four nights in Los Angeles before an audience of 12,000, debating various subjects, including the state of the dead, hellfire and Christ's Second Coming. Rutherford wrote a pamphlet, ''A Great Battle in the Ecclesiastical Heavens'', in defense of Russell and served as chairman of the Bible Students' Los Angeles convention in September 1916.

Board of directors

By 1916, Rutherford had become one of the seven directors of the Watch Tower Society; when Russell died on October 31, 1916, he joined vice-President Alfred I. Ritchie and Secretary-Treasurer William E. Van Amburgh on a three-man executive committee that ran the Pennsylvania corporation until a new president was elected at the annual general meeting the following January. He also joined a five-person editorial committee to run ''The Watch Tower'' from the December 15, 1916 issue. Russell's will, drawn up in 1907, had named the five people he wished to run the magazine after his death; Rutherford appeared only on a second list of five alternative members to fill any vacancies that arose.

Bible Student Alexander H. Macmillan, who served as an aide to the executive committee, later wrote that tensions at the Watch Tower Society headquarters mounted as the day for election of the Society's officers approached. He wrote: "A few ambitious ones at headquarters were holding caucuses here and there, doing a little electioneering to get their men in. However, Van Amburgh and I held a large number of votes. Many shareholders, knowing of our long association with Russell, sent their proxies to us to be cast for the one whom we thought best fitted for office."

Macmillan, who claimed he had declined an offer from an ailing Russell months earlier to accept the position of president after his death, agreed with Van Amburgh that Rutherford was the best candidate. According to Macmillan, "Rutherford did not know what was going on. He certainly didn't do any electioneering or canvassing for votes, but I guess he was doing some worrying, knowing if he was elected he would have a big job on his hands ... There is no doubt in our minds that the Lord's will was done in this choice. It is certain that Rutherford himself had nothing to do with it."

Presidency dispute

On January 6, 1917, Rutherford, aged 47, was elected president of the Watch Tower Society, unopposed, at the Pittsburgh convention. By-laws passed by both the Pittsburgh convention and the board of directors stated that the president would be the executive officer and general manager of the Society, giving him full charge of its affairs worldwide.

By June, four of the seven Watch Tower Society directors—Robert H. Hirsh, Alfred I. Ritchie, Isaac F. Hoskins and James D. Wright— had decided they had erred in endorsing Rutherford's expanded powers of management, claiming Rutherford had become autocratic. In June, Hirsch attempted to rescind the new by-laws and reclaim the board's authority from the president. Rutherford later claimed he had by then detected a conspiracy among the directors to seize control of the society. In July, Rutherford gained a legal opinion from a Philadelphia corporation lawyer that none of his opposers were legally directors of the society. The Watch Tower Society's official 1959 account of its history claimed the legal advice given to the ousted directors confirmed that given to Rutherford. The pamphlets produced by the expelled board members at the time indicated that their legal advice, acquired from several attorneys, disagreed with Rutherford's.

On July 12, Rutherford filled what he claimed were four vacancies on the board, appointing Macmillan and Pennsylvania Bible Students W. E. Spill, J. A. Bohnet and George H. Fisher as directors. Between August and November the society and the four ousted directors published a series of pamphlets, with each side accusing the other of ambitious and reckless behavior. The former directors also claimed Rutherford had required all headquarters workers to sign a petition supporting him and threatened dismissal for any who refused to sign. The former directors left the Brooklyn headquarters on August 8. On January 5, 1918, shareholders returned Rutherford to office.

The controversy fractured the Bible Student movement and some congregations split into opposing groups loyal either to Rutherford or those he had expelled. By mid-1919 about one in seven Bible Students had chosen to leave rather than accept Rutherford's leadership, and over the following decade they helped form or joined other groups including the Stand Fast Movement, the Layman's Home Missionary Movement, the Dawn Bible Students Association, the Pastoral Bible Institute, the Elijah Voice Movement, the Concordant Publishing Concern, and the Eagle Society.

''The Finished Mystery''

In late 1916, Fisher and another prominent Bible Student at the Brooklyn headquarters, Clayton J. Woodworth, sought the Executive Committee's approval to produce a book about the prophecies of the books of Revelation and Ezekiel based primarily on Russell's writings. Work on the book, ''The Finished Mystery'', proceeded without the knowledge of the full Board of Directors and Editorial Committee and was released by Rutherford to headquarters staff on July 17, 1917, the day he announced the appointment of the four replacement directors.

The book, which was misleadingly labeled as the posthumous seventh volume of Russell's ''Studies in the Scriptures'', was denounced by Rutherford's opponents, but became a best-seller and was translated into six languages and serialized in ''The Watch Tower''. Expecting God's Kingdom to establish rule on earth and for the saints to be raised to heaven in 1918, Rutherford wrote in January of that year: "The Christian looks for the year to bring the full consummation of the church's hopes." He embarked on a vast advertising campaign to expose the "unrighteousness" of religions and their alliances with "beastly" governments, expanding on claims in ''The Finished Mystery'' that patriotism was a delusion and murder.

The campaign attracted the attention of governments and on February 12, 1918, the book was banned by the Canadian government for what a Winnipeg newspaper described as "seditious and antiwar statements". On February 24 in Los Angeles Rutherford gave a talk entitled "The World Has Ended—Millions Now Living May Never Die" (subsequent talks in the series were renamed, "Millions Now Living ''Will'' Never Die") in which he attacked the clergy, declaring: "As a class, according to the Scriptures, the clergymen are the most reprehensible men on earth for the great war that is now afflicting mankind." Three days later the Army Intelligence Bureau seized the Society's Los Angeles offices and confiscated literature.

Imprisonment and release

In early May 1918, US Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory condemned ''The Finished Mystery'' as "one of the most dangerous examples of ... propaganda ... a work written in extremely religious language and distributed in enormous numbers". Warrants were issued for the arrest of Rutherford and seven other Watch Tower directors, who were charged under the 1917 Espionage Act with attempting to cause insubordination, disloyalty, refusal of duty in the armed forces and obstructing the recruitment and enlistment service of the U.S. while it was at war.

On June 21, seven of them, including Rutherford, were sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. Rutherford feared his opponents would gain control of the Society in his absence, but on January 2, 1919, he learned he had been re-elected president at the Pittsburgh convention the day before, convincing him that God wanted him in the position. On 26 March 1919 the directors were released on bail after an appeals court ruled they had been wrongly convicted; in May 1920 the government announced that all charges had been dropped.

Reorganization

Administrative changes

Following his release from prison, Rutherford began a major reorganization of Bible Student activities. At a May 1919 convention in Ohio he announced the publication of a new magazine, ''The Golden Age'' (later renamed ''Awake!''). Because Russell's will had decreed the Society should publish no other periodicals the new magazine was at first published by "Woodworth, Hudgings & Martin", with a Manhattan (rather than Brooklyn) address. Within months Bible Students were organized to distribute it door-to-door. He expanded the Society's printing facilities, revived the colporteur work and in 1920 introduced the requirement for weekly reports of Bible Students' preaching activity. He expanded and reorganized overseas branch offices in what he regarded as a "cleansing" and "sifting" work.

Beginning with an eight-day convention at Cedar Point, Ohio, in September 1922 Rutherford, launched a series of major international conventions under the theme "Advertise the King and Kingdom", attracting crowds of up to 20,000. Audiences were urged to "herald the message far and wide". He stressed that the primary duty of all Bible Students was to become "publicity agents" in fulfillment of Matthew 24:14, especially in the form of door-to-door evangelism with the Society's publications. In 1928 Rutherford began to teach that the Cedar Point convention and the events resulting from it fulfilled the prophecy of the 1290 days at Daniel 12:11.

In 1920, Rutherford published a booklet, ''Millions Now Living Will Never Die'', and a year later published his first hardcover book, ''The Harp of God''. This was followed by a further nineteen hardcover books, each with one-word titles, such as ''Creation'' (1927), ''Jehovah'' (1934) and ''Children'' (1941). His publications reached a total printing of 36 million copies. In 1925, he gained full control over what doctrines would be taught in Watch Tower Society publications, overruling the refusal by the five-man Editorial Committee to publish his article, "Birth of the Nation", which contained significant doctrinal changes.

Rutherford later claimed Satan had "tried to prevent the publication of that article ... but failed in that effort";''Watchtower'', July 1, 1938, p. 201. In 1927 the Watch Tower Society ceased printing of Russell's ''Studies in the Scriptures''. The Editorial Committee was dissolved in 1931, after which Rutherford wrote every leading article in ''The Watch Tower'' until his death. The 1933 Watch Tower Society ''Yearbook'' observed that the demise of the Editorial Committee indicated "that the Lord himself is running his organization".

Rutherford expanded his means of spreading the Watch Tower message in 1924 with the start of 15-minute radio broadcasts, initially from WBBR, based on Staten Island, and eventually via a network of as many as 480 radio stations. A 1931 talk was broadcast throughout North America, Australia and France, but his attacks on the clergy resulted in both the NBC and BBC
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