Frequently Asked Questions About Jehovah’s Witnesses (jw.org), “Who Was the Founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
“Among that group of sincere Bible students was a man named Charles Taze Russell. While Russell took the lead in the Bible education work at that time and was the first editor of The Watchtower, he was not the founder of a new religion. ... Since Jesus is the Founder of Christianity, we view him as the founder of our organization.”
The organisation's current public answer to the question of who founded Jehovah's Witnesses. The wording “not the founder of a new religion” repeats the phrase first printed in Russell's own obituary in 1916.
Official source (opens in new tab) Archived or alternative copy (opens in new tab)
Provenance and verification note for Frequently Asked Questions About Jehovah’s Witnesses (jw.org), Who Was the Founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Confidence note. Read on jw.org and on the Watchtower Online Library; the two agree. Both give the citation code “ijwfq article 10” — this is article 10 of the organisation’s online Frequently Asked Questions series, not page 10 of a printed publication, and neither copy carries a publication date. The wording “not the founder of a new religion” is the phrase first printed in Russell’s obituary in 1916.
Corroborated by. src-ctr-wt-1916-1201-biography, src-ctr-jv-1993-p707-not-founder
Notes. Previously recorded in this ledger as page 10 of the 2012 brochure Jehovah’s Witnesses—Who Are They? What Do They Believe? That attribution was wrong: a full-text search of the library returns this sentence only in the FAQ series and in Proclaimers’ quotation of the 1916 obituary.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-ctr-jwfaq-founder