Bible Student Movement - Leadership Dispute

Leadership Dispute

Russell died on October 31, 1916, in Pampa, Texas during a cross-country preaching trip. On January 6, 1917, board member and society legal counsel Joseph Franklin Rutherford was elected president of the Watch Tower Society, unopposed, at the Pittsburgh convention. Rutherford then announced publication of The Finished Mystery, which he claimed was a posthumous volume of Russell's Studies in the Scriptures. 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 powers of management from the president, but 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 the four were not legally directors of the society. On July 12, Rutherford filled what he claimed were four vacancies on the board, appointing A. H. 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, disruptive and dishonest conduct. 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 were forcibly escorted by police from the Brooklyn headquarters on August 8. On January 5, 1918 Rutherford was returned to office.

By mid-1919, about one in seven Bible Students had chosen to leave rather than accept Rutherford's leadership, forming groups such as The Standfast Movement, Paul Johnson Movement, and the Pastoral Bible Institute of Brooklyn. It is estimated that as many as three quarters of the Bible Students associating in 1921 left the movement by 1931 in protest to Rutherford's rejection of Pastor Russell's teachings. To reduce public confusion regarding the existence of several groups of Bible Students no longer associated with the Watch Tower Society, Rutherford's faction of Bible Students adopted the name Jehovah's witnesses on July 26, 1931 at a convention in Columbus, Ohio.