I've been thinking and writing a lot lately about that thing I grew up with, where there were "us normal Christians at our proper church" and "those other Christians at all the other weird churches." The arrogance of that. I've thought it was a very unchristian way to think and feel for some time, but I'm moved to have another crack at shedding some light on exactly what's up with it. What it might look like to God. How it might feel like to be on the wrong side of. What it might look like to other Christians, and dare I say it (of course) what kind of a "testimony" it is to people who are looking at how we respond to all "those Christians at all the other churches."
We know that originally, the Plymouth Brethren movement was meant to be a coming out from all the churches and trying to do the whole New Testament thing up right. People could be members in their churches, and go out Sunday morning to those churches, and Plymouth Brethren (not called that by their own people) halls would have worship services at separate times so as to allow people to go to both their own church stuff, and then also to what was meant to be a completely other thing, the Plymouth Brethren attempt at being "just Christians."
Much was made of the Plymouth Brethren (so called) not being a church. No name was taken, nor put up on the building or on a sign anywhere. They were "just brethren," or "just believers" or "just Christians." Their writings speak out strongly against doing or saying, thinking or feeling anything that would be "sectarian." They didn't enjoy sects at all.
But all of that changed in the first generation. As Anthony Norris Grove predicted, they became more about coming out and being against and separate from all the other Christian churches, and no longer about accepting any and all Christians to gather in the name of the Lord only. It was about what they were against, rather than what they were for. No longer gathering together with other Christians in the name of the Lord so much as gathering, as a correct group, away from the other Christians who were less correct.
Soon it was a human system. A sect. What they'd originally feared. The thing they'd started the whole thing to avoid to begin with. Soon it had us people who were "in" and other people who were "out." (Out of what, exactly, would have been J.N. Darby's question. If they were "just Christians" and were gathered in nothing less than the name of the Lord, part of nothing less than the Body of Christ, then what exactly were some Christians "in" and other Christians "out" of? If they weren't just another church, how did they have membership that didn't include the majority of the Body of Christ?)
Obviously, the Brethren movement now had a membership list and an admission process. Because it had lost all hope of claiming not to be another church, not a Christian sect. It soon too had a rigid structure, involving who had power, and these men's policies and procedures manuals, administrative decision-making, judgments as to doctrinal orthodoxy and even predictable sequences of (supposedly spontaneous, "Holy Spirit led") events that nevertheless played out without variation Sunday after Sunday during worship service. Every Sunday morning meeting followed basically the exact same schedule, yet the claim was that the Holy Spirit could and did do anything at all Sunday morning, unlike a church, with a structure planned out in advance.
By end of the 1800s, all this was in place. The concrete had well and truly set. No changes would be made to the human-made structure. No new hymns were added to the hymn book after 1881. No new translations of the bible were permitted. People had to sever all ties to their own church if they wanted to join ours, though we were uncomfortable saying they "joined" us, or that it was "ours," or even a "church/sect" in the first place. But of course it was. It was structured like one. It was run like one. It wasn't allowed to be any different from one. It quacked like that duck and looked like that duck because it was that duck. Yet it still carried itself as apart and better. As having been chosen and given a superior place. As being not just another church. As being something loftier and more doctrinally profound, more deeply rooted in scripture.
But it was actually rather like the American South in the early twentieth century. Only in our church system, you could lose your "Plymouth Brethren whiteness" fairly easily. And once lost, increasingly, you never got it back. I don't mean to demean the struggles of African Americans at all. But I'm trying to convey the serious spiritual nastiness of my birth culture in terms that just might be felt. And most of us are at least somewhat aware of American segregation, and it has been globally acknowledged as manifestly unjust, so here I go, claiming the same kind of narrow-minded, mean-spirited, Grinch-heartedness was afoot in the Plymouth Brethren as in the days of Jim Crow laws and segregated restaurants, bars, bus waiting areas and fountains:
There was that Lord's Supper being "partaken of" on Sunday mornings by those of us who were "white Christians," so to speak, and then there were all the "coloured Christians" who had to go worship somewhere else, at their admittedly rather colourful church services. If they came into our building, they were not allowed to eat that bread and drink that wine, nor sit with us, but had rather to sit in a separate, segregated minority section for "coloured Christians" in the back of the room. There was a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins alright, and it was a segregated, "whites only" fountain.
We didn't hate other Christians, we said, we just thought it was sad that we had the solemn scriptural responsibility not to mix with them. The birds of the air didn't integrate, and neither did the fishes of the sea, and we thought it only right to be the same about other species of Christians. We had to maintain the purity of our gathering and keep outside influences from it.
If "coloured Christians" came out to bible study, no matter how "learn'ed" they were, they were not permitted to speak at it. And just like in the American South before the end of segregation, none of us white Christians would have dreamed of going to a "coloured" church and eating the Lord's Supper with the people there, no matter what good singers they were. If we did, we knew we'd lose our "whiteness."
"Ecclesiastical connections defile us" said one of our most active missionaries. The doctrine of "separation" was one of the most integral to Brethren teaching, especially when I was growing up. There were no books by "other Christians" in our house. And "separation" was a favourite topic of my father's, and one he thought less traditional, modern Brethren people were "letting slip."
When we had those big stupid church divisions, as many as 60% of us were deemed "coloured Christians" and rather than sit in the segregated back of the room and see the communion stuff get passed right on by them, instead most went and formed what were then treated as "coloured churches" that we did not acknowledge in any way, and had nothing to do with. We did not believe in miscegenation, you see.
And now I know how it feels to be on the wrong end of that. I didn't know how wrong it was until I landed here, either. It seemed pretty normal until I lost my membership card. I was officially deemed "not a white Plymouth Brethren Christian" many years ago, and I now have that "black man in Georgia in 1952" kinda experience whenever I "visit the South," so to speak. If the Lord's Table is spread of a Sunday, I have to go to a "coloured church" rather than the one I was born into. If they are going to socialize and have meals and fun times at the churches of my youth, it's "whites only." It's not for me or for people like me. We don't belong. And heaven forfend I want to dance with one of their white daughters!
And I write things and speak out. Sorry to word it this way, but I am, to my church, the Christian equivalent of an "uppity nigger who ought to know better."
According to the Urban Dictionary, that hate-created term means:
We know that originally, the Plymouth Brethren movement was meant to be a coming out from all the churches and trying to do the whole New Testament thing up right. People could be members in their churches, and go out Sunday morning to those churches, and Plymouth Brethren (not called that by their own people) halls would have worship services at separate times so as to allow people to go to both their own church stuff, and then also to what was meant to be a completely other thing, the Plymouth Brethren attempt at being "just Christians."
Much was made of the Plymouth Brethren (so called) not being a church. No name was taken, nor put up on the building or on a sign anywhere. They were "just brethren," or "just believers" or "just Christians." Their writings speak out strongly against doing or saying, thinking or feeling anything that would be "sectarian." They didn't enjoy sects at all.
But all of that changed in the first generation. As Anthony Norris Grove predicted, they became more about coming out and being against and separate from all the other Christian churches, and no longer about accepting any and all Christians to gather in the name of the Lord only. It was about what they were against, rather than what they were for. No longer gathering together with other Christians in the name of the Lord so much as gathering, as a correct group, away from the other Christians who were less correct.
Soon it was a human system. A sect. What they'd originally feared. The thing they'd started the whole thing to avoid to begin with. Soon it had us people who were "in" and other people who were "out." (Out of what, exactly, would have been J.N. Darby's question. If they were "just Christians" and were gathered in nothing less than the name of the Lord, part of nothing less than the Body of Christ, then what exactly were some Christians "in" and other Christians "out" of? If they weren't just another church, how did they have membership that didn't include the majority of the Body of Christ?)
Obviously, the Brethren movement now had a membership list and an admission process. Because it had lost all hope of claiming not to be another church, not a Christian sect. It soon too had a rigid structure, involving who had power, and these men's policies and procedures manuals, administrative decision-making, judgments as to doctrinal orthodoxy and even predictable sequences of (supposedly spontaneous, "Holy Spirit led") events that nevertheless played out without variation Sunday after Sunday during worship service. Every Sunday morning meeting followed basically the exact same schedule, yet the claim was that the Holy Spirit could and did do anything at all Sunday morning, unlike a church, with a structure planned out in advance.
By end of the 1800s, all this was in place. The concrete had well and truly set. No changes would be made to the human-made structure. No new hymns were added to the hymn book after 1881. No new translations of the bible were permitted. People had to sever all ties to their own church if they wanted to join ours, though we were uncomfortable saying they "joined" us, or that it was "ours," or even a "church/sect" in the first place. But of course it was. It was structured like one. It was run like one. It wasn't allowed to be any different from one. It quacked like that duck and looked like that duck because it was that duck. Yet it still carried itself as apart and better. As having been chosen and given a superior place. As being not just another church. As being something loftier and more doctrinally profound, more deeply rooted in scripture.
But it was actually rather like the American South in the early twentieth century. Only in our church system, you could lose your "Plymouth Brethren whiteness" fairly easily. And once lost, increasingly, you never got it back. I don't mean to demean the struggles of African Americans at all. But I'm trying to convey the serious spiritual nastiness of my birth culture in terms that just might be felt. And most of us are at least somewhat aware of American segregation, and it has been globally acknowledged as manifestly unjust, so here I go, claiming the same kind of narrow-minded, mean-spirited, Grinch-heartedness was afoot in the Plymouth Brethren as in the days of Jim Crow laws and segregated restaurants, bars, bus waiting areas and fountains:
There was that Lord's Supper being "partaken of" on Sunday mornings by those of us who were "white Christians," so to speak, and then there were all the "coloured Christians" who had to go worship somewhere else, at their admittedly rather colourful church services. If they came into our building, they were not allowed to eat that bread and drink that wine, nor sit with us, but had rather to sit in a separate, segregated minority section for "coloured Christians" in the back of the room. There was a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins alright, and it was a segregated, "whites only" fountain.
We didn't hate other Christians, we said, we just thought it was sad that we had the solemn scriptural responsibility not to mix with them. The birds of the air didn't integrate, and neither did the fishes of the sea, and we thought it only right to be the same about other species of Christians. We had to maintain the purity of our gathering and keep outside influences from it.
If "coloured Christians" came out to bible study, no matter how "learn'ed" they were, they were not permitted to speak at it. And just like in the American South before the end of segregation, none of us white Christians would have dreamed of going to a "coloured" church and eating the Lord's Supper with the people there, no matter what good singers they were. If we did, we knew we'd lose our "whiteness."
"Ecclesiastical connections defile us" said one of our most active missionaries. The doctrine of "separation" was one of the most integral to Brethren teaching, especially when I was growing up. There were no books by "other Christians" in our house. And "separation" was a favourite topic of my father's, and one he thought less traditional, modern Brethren people were "letting slip."
When we had those big stupid church divisions, as many as 60% of us were deemed "coloured Christians" and rather than sit in the segregated back of the room and see the communion stuff get passed right on by them, instead most went and formed what were then treated as "coloured churches" that we did not acknowledge in any way, and had nothing to do with. We did not believe in miscegenation, you see.
And now I know how it feels to be on the wrong end of that. I didn't know how wrong it was until I landed here, either. It seemed pretty normal until I lost my membership card. I was officially deemed "not a white Plymouth Brethren Christian" many years ago, and I now have that "black man in Georgia in 1952" kinda experience whenever I "visit the South," so to speak. If the Lord's Table is spread of a Sunday, I have to go to a "coloured church" rather than the one I was born into. If they are going to socialize and have meals and fun times at the churches of my youth, it's "whites only." It's not for me or for people like me. We don't belong. And heaven forfend I want to dance with one of their white daughters!
And I write things and speak out. Sorry to word it this way, but I am, to my church, the Christian equivalent of an "uppity nigger who ought to know better."
According to the Urban Dictionary, that hate-created term means:
"An out of place black person who is out of line
and thinks they are as good as or better than the white person they are
standing next to."
Yup, that's me. I just don't know my place. Like Rosa Parks, I, and all of those other "coloured Christians," for some reason don't know to just shut up and move to the back of the church, to the segregated section. I mean, I know how it works, right?
Yes. Yes I do.
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