Are Jehovah’s Witnesses Christian? They Say Yes; Other Churches Say No

Understanding Jehovah’s WitnessesSee all 44 articles in this series

Ask a Jehovah’s Witness and you will hear a sincere yes: they follow Jesus, pray in his name and call themselves Christians. Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant churches answer no, because Witnesses reject the Trinity. Witnesses teach that Jesus is God’s Son and his first creation, not Almighty God, and so they do not worship him.

Both sides, then, are speaking of the same Jesus. Witnesses honor him as Savior, and once a year millions of them gather to remember his death, as he asked at the Last Supper. What divides them from the historic churches is the question of who he is, and it comes down to the last words of one verse: “and the Word was God” (John 1:1), or, in the Witnesses’ New World Translation, “and the Word was a god.”

Question	Jehovah’s Witnesses	Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant churches
God	The Father alone, whose name is Jehovah	One God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Jesus	God’s Son and first creation; the archangel Michael; honored as Savior; not worshipped	The eternal Son, fully God and fully man; worshipped
Holy spirit	God’s active force, not a person	The third person of the Trinity, fully divine
At death	The person ceases to exist until the resurrection	The soul lives on and faces God’s judgment
Hell	No place of torment; the wicked are destroyed	A place of everlasting punishment
Hope	144,000 rule in heaven; the rest live forever on a paradise earth	Eternal life with God, and a new heaven and new earth
Bible	66 books; the New World Translation preferred	66 books for Protestants, more for Catholics and Orthodox; many translations
Clergy	Unpaid elders, no titles; a Governing Body gives direction	Ordained ministers; bishops in most traditions
Holidays	The yearly Memorial of Jesus’ death only; no Christmas, Easter or birthdays	Christmas, Easter and the church year
Blood	Whole-blood transfusions refused; since 2026 the main components are a personal choice	No religious rule against transfusion

Our free tool, Compare Christian Denominations, sets any two of 23 churches side by side on 55 questions.

The Witnesses’ official site answers the question directly: “Yes. We are Christians for the following reasons.” It gives five: Witnesses try to follow Jesus’ teaching and conduct, they believe he is the key to salvation, new Witnesses are baptized in his name, Witnesses pray in his name, and they accept him as head over every man.

In the same answer the site admits that Witnesses stand apart from other churches, for “we believe that the Bible teaches that Jesus is the Son of God, not part of a Trinity.” Witnesses also reject the immortal soul and everlasting torment in hell, and they give no titles to the men who lead their congregations.

The movement began in the 1870s with a group of Bible Students near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, among them Charles Taze Russell, the first editor of The Watchtower. Witnesses say Russell “was not the founder of a new religion,” because they count Jesus as their founder. “Until 1931, we were known as Bible Students,” their site says, and in that year they took the name Jehovah’s Witnesses. In 2025 their peak number of Witnesses was 9,205,326, and 20,635,015 people attended their yearly Memorial of Jesus’ death. The first figure counts only people who preach and report it, some of them not yet baptized.

Other churches point out that their own history reaches back nearly two thousand years, while the Witness movement began in the 1870s. Witnesses answer that the first-century church is the model that counts: Russell and the Bible Students set out “to follow the practices of the first-century Christian congregation,” and Witnesses believe they have returned to them.

Witnesses honor Jesus as Savior and Son of God, but their site says “we do not worship Jesus, as we do not believe that he is Almighty God.” They quote his words at the Last Supper, “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).

Witnesses teach that Jesus had a beginning: he was “God’s first creation and the only one created directly by him,” and through him God made everything else. When Colossians 1:15 calls Christ “the firstborn of all creation,” they take it to mean the first thing God created. Before he was born as a man, they say, he lived in heaven as a spirit creature, and the archangel Michael “is evidently a name given to Jesus before and after his life on earth.” For that they point to 1 Thessalonians 4:16, where the Lord descends “with the voice of an archangel.”

You can see the difference in the first verse of John’s Gospel. The English Standard Version reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Witnesses’ New World Translation ends the verse “and the Word was a god.” Its study note explains that the Greek word for God appears there without the article and so, in their reading, describes a godlike quality rather than naming Almighty God.

The historic churches read the same verses and conclude that the Son is eternal and equal with the Father. The Catechism of the Catholic Church records that the Council of Nicaea in 325 confessed the Son to be “begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father,” and condemned Arius, who had taught that the Son “came to be from things that were not” (paragraph 465). In the Orthodox Church in America’s text of the Creed the Son is “true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father.” So when Witnesses teach that the Son was created, the historic churches hear in it the view the council rejected, and they worship Jesus as God.

The historic churches read “firstborn” differently too. Albert Barnes’s nineteenth-century Protestant commentary says the word in Colossians 1:15 is “used to denote one who is chief, or who is highly distinguished and pre-eminent,” so that it speaks of Christ’s rank over creation, and it “does not fairly imply that he was a creature.”

Witnesses answer that the Trinity is a later doctrine. Their article on it quotes the Encyclopædia Britannica, “Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament.” Their summary of beliefs says “there is no Scriptural basis for the Trinity doctrine.”

For most churches the line is drawn at belief in the Trinity, which the Nicene Creed states in its classic form, and Protestant confessions say the same in their own words. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message (2000) reads, “The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being,” and adds, “Christ is the eternal Son of God.”

The World Council of Churches, whose 356 member churches include most of the world’s Orthodox churches and scores of Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Reformed ones, describes itself as a fellowship of churches that “confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the scriptures.” A church that denies Jesus is God does not fit that description.

In practice, Catholic tribunals do not treat a Witness baptism as valid; the tribunal of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, for example, lists Jehovah’s Witnesses under “Baptisms NOT Considered Valid.” So a former Witness who becomes Catholic is baptized, and is not received on the strength of the earlier baptism.

Witnesses, for their part, keep apart from other churches. Their statement of beliefs says they “avoid affiliation with other religions,” while adding, “we respect the choices that others make in such matters.”

When the churches say that Witnesses are not Christian in this sense, they are making a judgment about doctrine, and it says nothing about their sincerity or their conduct. Witnesses reject that judgment, because by their own definition a Christian is a follower of Christ, and they believe they follow him more closely than the churches do.

Witnesses worship the Father by the name Jehovah. Their site explains that “The name Jehovah is an English translation of the Hebrew name for God,” the four letters YHWH, and that the form was first used in English in “William Tyndale’s Bible translation of 1530.” It grants, though, that “The exact pronunciation of the divine name in ancient Hebrew is not known.” Most English Bibles put the title LORD in its place.

Witnesses do not count the holy spirit as a person. They call it “God’s power in action, his active force,” and write it without capitals, while the historic churches worship the Spirit as the third person of the Trinity.

On death, Witnesses teach that “People who die pass out of existence” and that “They do not suffer in a fiery hell of torment.” God, they believe, will raise billions in a resurrection. A small number, 144,000, “will be resurrected to life in heaven to rule with Jesus,” a number they take from Revelation 7:4, where John hears “the number of the sealed, 144,000.” Everyone else who is faithful can hope for “perfect health and everlasting life in an earthly paradise.” They believe God’s Kingdom is a real government in heaven, and that Jesus “began ruling in 1914.”

Most other churches teach that the soul survives death and faces judgment, and that the lost are punished forever. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity” (paragraph 1035). The Baptist Faith and Message says, “The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment,” and that the righteous “will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.” Neither divides the saved into a heavenly group and an earthly one.

Witnesses read many translations, but they prefer their own, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. They value it because it “restores the divine name in the thousands of places where it existed in the original text.” Its translators are not named, for “the committee that produced the translation remains anonymous.” What other churches object to most is the way it renders verses about Christ’s deity, John 1:1 among them. The New World Translation and the King James Version differ in other places too.

In daily life three practices set Witnesses apart, and the first concerns blood. They refuse transfusions of whole blood, which they take to be covered by the apostles’ instruction “that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood” (Acts 15:29). Their site calls it “a religious issue rather than a medical one,” and says Witnesses seek good medical care: “We do not practice faith healing.” Blood fractions were already a matter of conscience, and on March 20, 2026, Governing Body Update #2 addressed “the use of a patient’s own blood in medical and surgical care.” Then on September 18, 2026, the Governing Body extended the same rule of conscience to the main components. Under that rule the decision to accept red cells, white cells, plasma or platelets from another person’s blood “is a matter of personal conscience,” and each Witness also decides whether to donate blood for components or fractions to be used by someone else. The refusal of whole-blood transfusions, the announcement said, “is unchanged.” The details are in our article on why Witnesses refuse blood transfusions.

As for holidays, Witnesses “do not celebrate Christmas, Easter, or May Day, since these holidays are rooted in the worship of gods other than Jehovah.” Their one yearly commemoration is the Memorial: “Once each year, Jehovah’s Witnesses commemorate the death of Jesus,” following his words at the Last Supper.

They do not celebrate birthdays either, “because we believe that such celebrations displease God.” Their site grants that the Bible “does not explicitly forbid celebrating birthdays,” and gives four reasons: the customs have pagan roots, the early Christians did not keep them, the only commemoration Christians are commanded to keep is Jesus’ death, and the only two birthday celebrations in the Bible were held by people who did not serve God.

A Witness is taught to marry only another Witness, and the teaching comes from 1 Corinthians 7:39, where Paul says a widow may marry “to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” Witnesses take this to mean marrying a fellow believer, “that is, to marry a person who shares their faith,” and a 2015 Watchtower article says God “has directed us to marry only true worshippers.” For a Witness that means another Witness, so a Witness who follows the teaching will not marry a Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant Christian.

The same teaching shapes dating. The 2015 article urges single Witnesses to “marry only a suitable mate from among his worshippers,” and praises a man who, when he felt attracted to women outside the congregation, “strictly avoided getting too friendly with them.”

Some Witnesses are married to non-Witnesses, for example when one spouse became a Witness after the wedding. Witnesses do not tell the believing spouse to leave: they “do not encourage those who belong to their faith to separate from a marriage mate who is not a Witness.”

The other churches have rules of their own, and Catholic canon law says that a marriage between a Catholic and an unbaptized person “is invalid” unless the Church grants a dispensation (canon 1086). Since Catholic tribunals do not recognize Witness baptism, a Catholic who wants to marry a Witness needs that dispensation.

For the ways Witnesses differ from another group that rejects the Trinity, see Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons compared.

In 2025, 20,635,015 people came to the Witnesses’ Memorial to remember the death of Jesus. The churches that cannot call them Christian in the historic sense remember the same death, and they confess with John who it was that died for us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

• What Do Jehovah’s Witnesses Believe About Jesus?
• Jehovah’s Witnesses vs Protestant
• Jehovah’s Witnesses vs Catholic
• Is Jesus Eternal? What the Bible and the Nicene Creed Say
• Are Mormons Christian?

More from this seriesUnderstanding Jehovah’s WitnessesSee all 44 articles