Reproduced with permission from:
Breakout: How I escaped from the Exclusive Brethren
by David Tchappat (2009)
The following chapter was written by a former Exclusive Brethren member who wishes to remain anonymous.
A Short History of the Exclusive Brethren
There are many Christians known as “brethren” who trace the origins of their movement to John Nelson Darby who lived just over 200 years ago in Dublin. Schism and division has been a consistent feature of the movement almost from the start. The following summary relates to the Taylor-Symington-Hales Branch of the Exclusive Brethren (signified by the more recent leaders of this group); arguably the most radical and perhaps controversial of all the groups in the Brethren movement.
The Brethren trace the origins of the movement to John Nelson Darby who was born in London in 1800 into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family. Lord Nelson, a friend of his uncle, Admiral Sir Henry Darby, was a sponsor at young Darby’s christening.
Darby’s mother died when he was five years old and at the age of 15 his family moved to the ancestral estate in Ireland. He took an honours degree at Dublin University and studied law for three years at the Dublin Chancery Bar. But he never practiced law. To the annoyance of his family, he abandoned his legal career and became a priest in the Irish Church of England in 1826, serving in the parish of Calary in the mountains of County Wicklow.
Almost immediately John Darby fell out with church leaders over matters of doctrine and by 1827-28 he was meeting to “break bread” in the home of one of four other dissenting young men in Dublin. The group believed that the existence of an established church and ordained clergy was contrary to scripture. “I can find no such thing as a national church in Scripture”, Darby wrote at the time. In 1832, he had a major disagreement with Archbishop Magee about a requirement for converted Catholics to swear allegiance to King George IV and, in the same year, disagreed with Archbishop Whately about matters of church doctrine.
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The Exclusive Brethren – a spiral into decay
Two news items from different sides of the world today, highlight the Exclusive Brethren. An almost throw-away comment in New Zealand Parliament a few days ago and a commentary in UK’s The Observer.
New Zealand Parliament
Questions And Answers – Thursday, 31 July 2008Extract
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The Prime Minister has been assured by the Rt Hon Winston Peters that he has committed no illegality, and the member has yet to demonstrate anything to the reverse.
Sue Bradford: Does the Prime Minister see any similarity between the advertising campaign paid for by leading bloodstock breeder Patrick Hogan, overtly supporting New Zealand First during the 2005 election campaign, and the covert campaign run by the Exclusive Brethren Church in that year, and does she have any concerns about the connection between that campaign and the fact that Mr Winston Peters subsequently became the Minister for Racing?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I think it would be absolutely apparent to everybody that there was no covert campaign on behalf of the racing industry in 2005. There was a very overt campaign; it was overtly against the Labour Party at that time, including signs on horses at racetracks. The Exclusive Brethren, however, decided to follow a biblical injunction, and hide their lights well under any large number of bushels.
New Zealand Parliament Questions And Answers – Thursday, 31 July 2008
A cast-iron case for a secular society
The Observer,
by Nick Cohen
Sunday August 3 2008Extract
So imbued with discriminatory thinking have politicians and judges become that they are shocked when citizens ask for equality before the law. When the hapless Ed Balls was at the Treasury, the Plymouth Brethren told him that they and their more fundamentalist offshoot – the Exclusive Brethren – were the victims of religious prejudice at the hands of that unlikely source of bigotry, the tax authorities.
Both sects believed that God decides when you died. To their members, compliance with the state’s requirement to take out an annuity at 75 forced them to second-guess God by blasphemously betting on the date of their deaths.
The obliging Balls created an alternative pension scheme and then spluttered when pensioners of all faiths and none saw his generous loophole and shifted large sums of money through it. He seemed to think he could legislate for one group without the law applying equally to everyone.
If he did not have the strength of principle to stand up for equality, he ought to have had the wit to realise that the Plymouth Brethren may not have been as devout as they appeared. If you sincerely believe that an omnipotent God controls every aspect of your life, you place your fate in his hands. You do not ask accountants to lobby ministers for tax-efficient changes to pension law.
The UK press is starting to improve both their history and their accuracy regarding the Exclusive Brethren. Their confusion is understandable of course. The UK has known of the Plymouth Brethren since inception in the late 1820′s, or rather when they started to gather together in greater numbers during the 1830′s. The Exclusive Brethren offshoot commenced in the late 1840′s when J.N. Darby was instrumental in forcing a division.
To call the Exclusive Brethren ‘Plymouth’ is a genus/species error that insults the far larger and evangelically successful Plymouth Brethren. Indeed, many Plymouth Brethren websites carry a ‘We are not Exclusive Brethren’ disclaimer!
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