Are Jehovah's Witnesses Christians?

Jehovah's Witnesses sincerely see themselves as the most faithful Christians, restoring what they believe original Christianity actually looked like.

But their core teaching about Jesus differs sharply from what Christians have believed since the earliest centuries of the church. Jehovah's Witnesses teach Jesus isn't eternally God—he's a created being, originally the archangel Michael, made "a god" but not God himself. Their own Bible translation reflects this, rendering John 1:1 as the Word being "a god," a rendering nearly every credentialed Greek scholar outside the organization rejects as inaccurate.

Historic Christianity—across Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions—has treated Jesus's full, eternal deity as one of its most settled convictions since the earliest creeds.

Because that specific belief sits so close to the center of what "Christian" has always meant, most Christian traditions consider Jehovah's Witnesses a related but separate religious movement, not a Christian denomination.