Showing posts with label Brethren. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brethren. Show all posts
Mar 29, 2022
Veracity: Breaking Brethren
CityNews
March 28, 2022
Five former members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church come forward to tell the story of how the sects' extreme fundamentalist practices divides families and leaves countless live shattered.
https://youtu.be/10eNfQJvsrg
Aug 27, 2017
Sex and the sect: the infamous Brethren
Mary Wakefield
Spectator
August 19, 2017
In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, A Father, A Cult
Rebecca Stott
Fourth Estate, pp.391, £16.99
You can never completely leave a religious cult, as this strange and touching memoir demonstrates. Patterns of thinking, turns of mind, will linger with and haunt former members long after they escape.
Rebecca Stott was born in 1964 into the Brethren, a low-church sect that had broken away from the Anglican church in the early 19th century and then broken away from itself, bifurcating into factions as movements set on purity and unity usually do.
Cult is a strong word, but Stott’s branch of the Brethren really earned it. Her great grandfather, a sail-maker, joined the Brethren in Eyemouth, a fishing village not far from where I grew up in Northumberland. Back then the Brethren there was founded on frustration with the tax-collecting Kirk.
By the time Rebecca was born, down south in Hove, it was no longer a righteous protest movement. Any brotherly Brethren love had evaporated and the elders, among them Rebecca’s charismatic father, Roger, had taken to shunning and persecuting. It had become, says Stott: ‘One of the most reclusive and savage Protestant sects in history.’ Inevitably, its leader was a sex pest.
When Rebecca was eight, JT Jr, the then head of the church, indulged in a little spree that became known as ‘the Aberdeen episode’. On the eve of some great church council, he drunk himself into a stupor, then demanded that any attractive Brethren wives be delivered to him in bed. Some women went willingly. Some elders offered up their wives.
For Roger Stott, the Aberdeen episode was a deal-breaker. ‘It was like waking up from a prolonged bad dream,’ he told his daughter. He left the church and, though it cost him his job and his friends, exposed JT’s hypocrisy to as many members as would listen. Oh, for Scientologists in the mould of Roger Stott.
Roger celebrated his freedom by listening to the Beatles. His wife joined the Anglican church. For Rebecca, eight, and her siblings the break wasn’t as clean. No one had thought to tell young Rebecca, after they left the Brethren, that the End Times were no longer on their way. So:
Rebecca Stott
Fourth Estate, pp.391, £16.99
You can never completely leave a religious cult, as this strange and touching memoir demonstrates. Patterns of thinking, turns of mind, will linger with and haunt former members long after they escape.
Rebecca Stott was born in 1964 into the Brethren, a low-church sect that had broken away from the Anglican church in the early 19th century and then broken away from itself, bifurcating into factions as movements set on purity and unity usually do.
Cult is a strong word, but Stott’s branch of the Brethren really earned it. Her great grandfather, a sail-maker, joined the Brethren in Eyemouth, a fishing village not far from where I grew up in Northumberland. Back then the Brethren there was founded on frustration with the tax-collecting Kirk.
By the time Rebecca was born, down south in Hove, it was no longer a righteous protest movement. Any brotherly Brethren love had evaporated and the elders, among them Rebecca’s charismatic father, Roger, had taken to shunning and persecuting. It had become, says Stott: ‘One of the most reclusive and savage Protestant sects in history.’ Inevitably, its leader was a sex pest.
When Rebecca was eight, JT Jr, the then head of the church, indulged in a little spree that became known as ‘the Aberdeen episode’. On the eve of some great church council, he drunk himself into a stupor, then demanded that any attractive Brethren wives be delivered to him in bed. Some women went willingly. Some elders offered up their wives.
For Roger Stott, the Aberdeen episode was a deal-breaker. ‘It was like waking up from a prolonged bad dream,’ he told his daughter. He left the church and, though it cost him his job and his friends, exposed JT’s hypocrisy to as many members as would listen. Oh, for Scientologists in the mould of Roger Stott.
Roger celebrated his freedom by listening to the Beatles. His wife joined the Anglican church. For Rebecca, eight, and her siblings the break wasn’t as clean. No one had thought to tell young Rebecca, after they left the Brethren, that the End Times were no longer on their way. So:
I’d stand with my back to the wall in the playground watching the children [in her new, normal school] skipping rope, singing their complicated rhymes, and I’d be conjuring Tribulation scenarios, imagining tidal waves sweeping across the tarmac, storms tearing down the playground walls and trees, the four horsemen galloping across the rooftops, lights out and sea levels rising.
In the Days of Rain is a double memoir: it describes both Rebecca’s own childhood and her father Roger’s life. It is not, though, in any way a misery memoir and that’s what makes it such an attractive and interesting book. Perhaps the publisher longed for a fashionable denunciation of faith. Instead In the Days of Rain feels almost nostalgic for the original, raw, faith of her forefathers.
As she tells their tale, Stott hears the ghostly chorus of dead Brethren aunts:
I hear them gathering in the wings…They’re telling me to look at the pornography, the internet, the self-harm, the levels of depression and the empty churches. These are all signs of Satan’s dominion, sure signs of his evil working in the world. These women have my big bones and wild hair; they are serene gracious dignified…They’d tell a different story if I let them.
My feeling is that in a soft, barely audible way, she has let them. Their different story is a whispered counterpoint.
Stott, though an atheist now, seems almost fey, otherworldly. As her father lies dying she says, ‘It’s coming’ without knowing quite what:
I opened the window and we each picked up one of my father’s great gnarled hands, just as the owl passed by the front door, just as my father took his last breath.
After Roger’s death, she feels his spectral presence, urging her to write their shared story. She sees him in a swarm of wasps that pursues her through his garden.
She has me seeing signs too. A pair of Stott twins were my dearest childhood friends. We grew up just down the road from the bones of Rebecca’s Stott ancestors. It makes me feel oddly close to this lovely book.
In the Days of Rain is a double memoir: it describes both Rebecca’s own childhood and her father Roger’s life. It is not, though, in any way a misery memoir and that’s what makes it such an attractive and interesting book. Perhaps the publisher longed for a fashionable denunciation of faith. Instead In the Days of Rain feels almost nostalgic for the original, raw, faith of her forefathers.
As she tells their tale, Stott hears the ghostly chorus of dead Brethren aunts:
I hear them gathering in the wings…They’re telling me to look at the pornography, the internet, the self-harm, the levels of depression and the empty churches. These are all signs of Satan’s dominion, sure signs of his evil working in the world. These women have my big bones and wild hair; they are serene gracious dignified…They’d tell a different story if I let them.
My feeling is that in a soft, barely audible way, she has let them. Their different story is a whispered counterpoint.
Stott, though an atheist now, seems almost fey, otherworldly. As her father lies dying she says, ‘It’s coming’ without knowing quite what:
I opened the window and we each picked up one of my father’s great gnarled hands, just as the owl passed by the front door, just as my father took his last breath.
After Roger’s death, she feels his spectral presence, urging her to write their shared story. She sees him in a swarm of wasps that pursues her through his garden.
She has me seeing signs too. A pair of Stott twins were my dearest childhood friends. We grew up just down the road from the bones of Rebecca’s Stott ancestors. It makes me feel oddly close to this lovely book.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/08/sex-and-the-sect-the-infamous-brethren/
Mar 3, 2016
The Roberts Group
MISSING: OUR CHILDREN HAVE DISAPPEARED, AND WE DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY ARE
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| The Roberts Group |
We are "The Roberts Parents Group". We are the families of children who have disappeared in the last twenty-five years, and we don't know where they are. We do know they've been lured away from us by a nomadic, bible based cult , who forsake their families, possessions, and all of society, to wander the streets of our cities and states, witnessing to other unsuspecting children, and recruiting them to their group. If your child has disappeared, and you don't know where to start, or you suspect cult activity, you might find them in:
- THE ROBERTS GROUP, aka
- THE BRETHREN, aka
- THE GARBAGE EATERS, aka
- THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS
Since this group goes by many names, for simplicity sake, we will refer to them in this document as, "the Roberts group. We will refer to the parents of the children as "The Roberts parents group."
This document will address three major issues. Number one, what our children were like before they entered the cult. Number two, a general discussion and description of cult life. And number three, the unknown brothers and sisters.
We will also provide resources for any of you who recognize any of the unknown brothers and sisters, or suspect your child or loved one is a member of the cult.
If you recognize a child or a loved one on these pages, or if you suspect your child or loved one is a part of this cult, we empathize with you. We know the pain you feel, and deeply regret you are a part of our group. On the other hand, we'd like to welcome you to our fellowship. We've been brought together from all parts of the country by an unfortunate twist of fate. Our sorrow is the same. Our common sorrow taken in total, has given us a new strength to make it through the day, one day at a time, and given us the hope that we'll be reunited with the loved ones that were snatched out of our lives.
We hope this page serves many purposes. First and foremost, we hope to be an aid to the families of the Roberts Group who don't know where there children are. Second, we hope to expose Jim Roberts for what he is. Third, we hope this might be an aid in helping us find our children. And finally, we hope readers of this page might be forewarned of the group.
http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/roberts/index.html
Mar 22, 2015
Charity Commission chair calls for evidence about Plymouth Brethren congregations
Third Sector
The chair of the Charity Commission has invited anyone with evidence about Plymouth Brethren congregations to present it to the regulator as part of its ongoing monitoring of Brethren charities.
In a letter to The Times published today, William Shawcross says that the regulator’s 2014 decision to register as a charity the Preston Down Trust, a Devon-based congregation of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, had been "independent and robust".
His letter comes in response to an article in the Tuesday edition of the newspaper that documented the campaigning efforts of the church in the five-year legal battle that led to the PDT being registered.
In response to the article, the commission confirmed that its officials had been followed by members of the church, which adheres to a doctrine of separation and has been accused of breaking up families and using harsh disciplinary practices. The commission said it was sent letters by more than 3,000 of the church’s members and 200 MPs after initially refusing to register the PDT.
Shawcross’s Times letter says: "Anyone reading our published decision will see it was independent and robust. We were the first public authority to put on record the ‘detriment and harm’ caused by the doctrines and practices of the brethren.
"We recognised the Preston Down Trust as charitable only after it satisfied us that it met the public benefit requirement by accepting a new deed setting out its core religious doctrines and practices, acknowledged past mistakes and agreed to greater engagement with the wider public.
"We will make public the conclusions of our monitoring of those Brethren halls that we registered as charities. If any member of the public has evidence relating to these charities, we would be glad to receive it."
Since the registration of the PDT, a further 69 Plymouth Brethren congregations have been granted charitable status by the commission. When it registered the PDT, the commission said it would monitor the new charity’s compliance with its governing documents and that the commission "regularly monitors charities that were the subject of a complex or high-risk registration process to ensure that they are operating in line with their trusts and charity law".
Two further letters on the subject of the Brethren are also published in The Times today. Harry Adam of Atworth in Wiltshire says that the church’s practices "do not reflect any generally accepted view of ‘Christian’ behaviour". Another, from Jake Whiteside, a spokesman for the PBCC, says that the PDT decision "was taken after extensive examination of evidence, lasting more than 12 months". He responds to criticism of Brethren schools made in Tuesday’s Times story by saying: "They are unusual in one area: they are particularly successful."
Jan 12, 2013
Christian group makes legal appeal for charity status
James Gray
Guardian
January 3, 2013
January 3, 2013
A legal appeal will decide if the Charity Commission was right to deny charitable status to the Brethren movement – the case hinges on whether its doctrine and practices are compatible with public benefit
Last month saw the formal start of a charity tribunal appeal that could redefine the place of religion in the charity sector. The case – which has been the subject of increasingly acrimonious debate in parliament and the media – concerns the Charity Commission's decision not to grant charitable status to the Preston Down Trust, which runs a meeting hall for south Devon's Plymouth Brethren community.
Founded in the 19th century, the Brethren are a Christian movement whose lifestyle is characterised by daily bible study, an emphasis on traditional family roles and a rejection of radio, TV and cinema. Their doctrine of "separation" limits time spent with outsiders, but adherents say the popular perception that the community lives in isolation, severing all ties with those who choose to leave – hence the "Exclusive Brethren" epithet – is an outdated stereotype.
The case hinges on whether the doctrine and practices of the Brethren are compatible with the public benefit requirement of charity law. Until the Charities Act 2006 there was a presumption that "advancement of religion" was in itself a public benefit, but the act removed that presumption and required religious charities – just like those with other legally defined charitable purposes – to demonstrate explicitly how their activities made a positive contribution to the community.
In a recent letter to the Commons public administration select committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the regulation of the charity sector and the 2006 act, the commission was forced to explain why the Druid Network had charitable status while the Brethren did not. The commission said this was because the former did not support events or organisations that were "exclusive".
The commission has previously drawn on case law developed before 2006 to resolve such questions. But in its letter to the trust, the regulator said the act's introduction – and the tribunal's recent assessment of public benefit in relation to private schools – meant this aspect of charity law was now unclear. "The evidence is relation to any beneficial impact on the wider public is perhaps marginal and insufficient to satisfy us as to the benefit to the community," it said.
The letter outlined two specific concerns: first, that the trust may not provide "meaningful access to participate in public worship" and secondly, that the supposedly rigid disciplinary practices of the Brethren, and the "effects of the doctrine and practice of separation on family, social and working life", may negate potential public benefit. The letter stresses, however, that the latter is based on "public criticism" rather than solid evidence.
The commission considered referring the matter to the charity tribunal for clarification but decided not to. And as it deemed an internal decision review to be "inappropriate", the trust's only option – apart from accepting the decision – was to appeal to the tribunal and become a test case for other Brethren congregations, and potentially for other religious groups too.
When parliamentarians and parts of the media found out about its decision, they were quick to accuse the commission of "anti-Christian" bias. Brethren elders were invited to give evidence to the public administration select committee, during which Charlie Elphicke MP claimed the regulator was "committed to the suppression of religion". The case also dominated last month's Westminster Hall debate on charity registration, with some MPs calling for a full parliamentary inquiry.
To the surprise of many, the Brethren have run a tight public relations campaign – not that they're relishing the attention. "It's a feeling of puzzlement and great sorrow to us that we're having to go through this battle," says Rod Buckley, a member of the Preston Down congregation. "I don't quite understand it. We do a lot in the community and people that know us, know that."
Buckley points to the Brethren's soup kitchens, food parcel collections and the help they gave to those affected by the recent floods as clear examples of their positive impact on the community. He adds that while holy communion – the "Lord's supper" in Brethren parlance – is accessible only to members, other events are open to all. No different, he says, to many mainstream religious groups.
The commission stresses that it does not have general concerns about religious charities, but those following the case have warned it could have wider ramifications. "It does potentially impact on other organisations, particularly where they restrict access to participation in religious services, meetings or activities, or where there's an emphasis on an enclosed community," says Stephanie Biden, a senior associate at charity solicitors Bates Wells & Braithwaite.
In an unprecedented move, the tribunal has allowed the commission to file anonymous witness statements and for witness protection measures to be put in place. The decision is in response to evidence received by the commission from former Brethren members, whose relationships with family members still in the group are particularly sensitive.
If these witnesses do testify at the full hearing in March 2013, the tribunal may have to answer a question that could have far-reaching consequences: when do allegations of harm against a particular religion or denomination outweigh potential public benefit? There is no shortage of controversial religious groups on the register, after all.
Despite the commission's protestations, the case is unlikely to be seen merely as a clarification of charity law. The regulator has found itself at the centre of a row about religious freedom – and with the Brethren vowing to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary, it's a row that's likely to get even more heated in the coming months.
James Gray is an independent campaigns adviser and writer with a particular interest in education. His Twitter username is @james_gray_
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