Authority is concentrated more tightly here than in almost any other religious body, and the structure is public and undisguised.
A Governing Body of a small number of men at the headquarters in Warwick, New York, determines doctrine and practice for the whole organisation, and its determinations are published rather than debated. Below it sit branch offices, circuits and local congregations run by appointed elders, who are unpaid. There is no clergy in the ordinary sense, no collection taken at meetings, and every baptised member is expected to preach; the movement reports its activity in hours of field service, which is a measure of participation no other denomination collects.
The obligations are demanding and they are enforced. Members refuse blood transfusions, on a reading of biblical prohibitions on eating blood, and the practice has generated a substantial body of medical ethics and case law, particularly where children are involved. Members refuse military service, voting, and national ceremonies as matters of political neutrality, which brought imprisonment in the United States and Britain and death in Nazi Germany, where Witnesses were held in concentration camps under a distinct marking and were among the few groups who could have secured release by signing a renunciation.
The sanction for serious wrongdoing or for rejecting the organisation's teaching is disfellowshipping, and until a partial softening announced in 2024 it entailed the complete cessation of social contact by relatives and friends who remain members. Former members describe the practice as coercive; the organisation describes it as scriptural discipline intended to prompt return. Both descriptions can be found in the movement's own literature and in the testimony given to state inquiries.