Jehovah's Witnesses originated as a branch of the Bible Student movement, which developed in the United States in the 1870s among followers of Christian restorationist minister Charles Taze Russell.
The 2008 US Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey found a low retention rate among members of the denomination: about 37% of people raised in the group continued to identify as Jehovah's Witnesses.
[9] During the late 1930s and the 1940s, Jehovah's Witnesses attacked the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian denominations so vigorously that many states and municipalities passed laws against their inflammatory preaching.
[13] In 1984, authors Merlin Brinkerhoff and Marlene Mackie concluded that after the so-called new cults, Jehovah's Witnesses were among the least accepted religious groups in the United States.
[14] Legal challenges by Jehovah's Witnesses prompted a series of state and federal court rulings that reinforced judicial protections for civil liberties.
The Witnesses' apparent lack of patriotism angered local authorities, the American Legion, and others, resulting in vigilante violence during World War II.
The US Supreme Court ruled in an 8–1 decision that a school district's interest in creating national unity was sufficient to allow them to require that students salute the flag.
At Klamath Falls, Oregon, members of the American Legion harassed Witnesses assembled for worship with requests to salute the flag and buy war bonds.
They then attacked the Witnesses and besieged the meeting place, breaking windows, throwing in stink bombs, ammonia and burning kerosene rags.