Jehovah's Witnesses Splinter Groups
A number of splinter groups have separated from Jehovah's Witnesses since 1931 after members broke affiliation with the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Earlier group defections from the Watch Tower Society, most of them between 1917 and 1931, had resulted in a number of religious movements forming under the umbrella term of the Bible Student movement.
After 1931, some isolated groups of Jehovah's Witnesses came to distrust "outside" instruction; some preferred their autonomy even after persecution and isolation abated, such as in Germany following World War II, in Romania following Nicolae Ceauşescu, and in the former USSR following the Cold War. Beginning in the 1990s, other former Witnesses used Internet technologies to group themselves around shared ideas such as numerical analysis of the Bible, or a wish to embrace some but not all Jehovah's Witness beliefs and practices.
Read more about Jehovah's Witnesses Splinter Groups: Britain, Germany, Postwar, Romania, USSR, Internet-era Departures
Famous quotes containing the words jehovah, witnesses, splinter and/or groups:
“Then did they to Jehovah cry
When they were in distress:
And therupon he bringeth them
Out of their anguishes.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm CVII (Bay Psalm Book)
“You are witnesses of these things.”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 24:48.
Resurrected Jesus to his disciples.
“Let me be
a splinter in your side
or a bride.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Belonging to a group can provide the child with a variety of resources that an individual friendship often cannot—a sense of collective participation, experience with organizational roles, and group support in the enterprise of growing up. Groups also pose for the child some of the most acute problems of social life—of inclusion and exclusion, conformity and independence.”
—Zick Rubin (20th century)