When I was a kid, I certainly had some Brethren heroes. Role models. The "labouring brothers." Travelling speakers. These guys came through town and spoke passionately, with humanity and warmth and humour. Our local speakers really lacked all of that, and I had to listen to them for hours each week, so hearing these out-of-town guys really perked things up.
The travelling speakers spoke in absolutes and pure idealism. They spoke as if it was all really very simple, and like they knew exactly what the deal was with everything. People asked them questions all the time. Never in my life did I hear one say "I don't know," "I'm not sure," "That's actually a bit complicated" or even "I'm going to have to get back to you on that." They spoke of what we should never do, what we should always do, and used words like whenEVER. They spoke passionately and strongly about how our church system was meant to work (and about it not being a church system, but The Only Right Way.) I thought they were serious. It never occurred to me that they were just making speeches.
When the 1991 division happened, I was 21, had given my childhood and adolescence up almost wholesale, to work "with" the system, and help it work. Therefore, I felt entitled to contact these guys about it, when it appeared to be having technical difficulties. Same thing ten years later when they had the next one. I did reach out. I wrote letters. I sent emails. I had phone conversations.
What I found was that these men utterly lacked principle. Suddenly they didn't want to know facts. Suddenly they were willing to try to deny things I saw happen right in front of me. And I could tell they knew better. (Everyone around here was poring endlessly over letters and remembering things that had been said and done, and arguing over who did and said what first. These travelling guys, whom we called "labouring brothers" were the spiritual leaders in our group, and when I spoke to them, it was clear that they sometimes didn't know the details, and were avoiding knowing the details, the better to take an easy side. Worse, often they knew exactly what had happened, and were describing the events in an utterly made up way. And I'd been at the brother's meetings here, I knew all the players, and I remembered everything. And they, from their comfortable vantage points in Chicago or New Jersey or British Columbia or Hamilton, would deign to try to tell me what had REALLY happened around here. When I'd been here and seen it, and they hadn't.)
I say they "utterly lacked principle" because they took a side, told everyone else to take that same side, and exactly how they chose that side bothered me. They did not choose a side based on who they felt was acting well, or who had the best attitude or spirit. Instead, they chose whichever side they felt was going to win. In a division, whichever side has the larger percentage of the people is thought to have "won." One side remains wired into the Brethren, worldwide, and the other is left out in the cold. Usually, the bit that's been cut off from the Brethren proper ("We have no need of thee") dissolves over the next decade.
But labouring brothers needed to have the largest number of Brethren groups with the largest number of people in them, donating money to the Cause, and lionizing them. Recording their talks. Distributing their pamphlets. So as soon as they figured out who was going to "have the greater numbers," they threw in with them and started doing damage control for that side. They started sending letters around, declaring which side was correct, and warning people against the trickery of the other side. Utterly lacking principle. Suddenly, idealism was being spoken, but you could see the very clear pragmatism behind it all, actually driving every word.
But labouring brothers needed to have the largest number of Brethren groups with the largest number of people in them, donating money to the Cause, and lionizing them. Recording their talks. Distributing their pamphlets. So as soon as they figured out who was going to "have the greater numbers," they threw in with them and started doing damage control for that side. They started sending letters around, declaring which side was correct, and warning people against the trickery of the other side. Utterly lacking principle. Suddenly, idealism was being spoken, but you could see the very clear pragmatism behind it all, actually driving every word.
I phoned these guys. I presented facts. I presented attitudes. I recalled actions. Including their actions. All in aid of trying to establish an understanding of what was really going down and an agreement as to what was really happening. To avoid simply whitewashing what was becoming a very bloody affair. They would not admit a thing. Not even that it was complicated. They made speeches, into the phone, or into their email. They could not discuss things. It was all rhetoric.
What I saw very quickly was that these men didn't want an understanding of the real situation. If they had one, they were fleeing it. It didn't help them. They didn't want "details." They wanted numbers. Congregants. Status. An audience. And they would pragmatically do whatever it took to keep their position of power, and the maximum number of followers. Well, they lost me when idealism and absolute statements suddenly got used to hide from the facts, rather than to pursue them. When they showed they wanted nothing to do with sanity and reality, I had to part ways with them in most ways.
Some people will still tell you that the divisions here were "simple." A simple matter of proper obedience to assembly decisions, or sinfully rebelling against assembly decisions. Well, I was here. It was a "simple" matter of:
-THESE guys are wrong, because they're not obeying THOSE other guys
What I saw very quickly was that these men didn't want an understanding of the real situation. If they had one, they were fleeing it. It didn't help them. They didn't want "details." They wanted numbers. Congregants. Status. An audience. And they would pragmatically do whatever it took to keep their position of power, and the maximum number of followers. Well, they lost me when idealism and absolute statements suddenly got used to hide from the facts, rather than to pursue them. When they showed they wanted nothing to do with sanity and reality, I had to part ways with them in most ways.
Some people will still tell you that the divisions here were "simple." A simple matter of proper obedience to assembly decisions, or sinfully rebelling against assembly decisions. Well, I was here. It was a "simple" matter of:
-THESE guys are wrong, because they're not obeying THOSE other guys
or
-THOSE guys are wrong because they're bossing everyone around about absolutely everything, intimidating and bullying people and kicking out anyone who complains, and then calling that an "assembly decision."
Most groups went with the first option. Because it's simple. You don't have to do anything. You just pretend nothing happened.
Of course, the third possibility is that the whole group was wrong and really needed to stop trying to drag everyone else in the Brethren world into their unChristian, petty little fights over who got to be the boss, all the while denying actually being that boss, but demanding the power anyway. Maybe it was wrong to throw in with either side of a fight like that one.
The most telling thing that happened to these labouring brothers with simple, clear opinions as to which side was "right" and which side could make "assembly decisions" against the will of the assembly and who could not, was that they clearly failed to impress the hardest of their audiences: their kids. Their own kids saw right through them. And over the years, scandals have been steadily coming to light about our "labouring brothers." About their kids, and about them.
Of course, the third possibility is that the whole group was wrong and really needed to stop trying to drag everyone else in the Brethren world into their unChristian, petty little fights over who got to be the boss, all the while denying actually being that boss, but demanding the power anyway. Maybe it was wrong to throw in with either side of a fight like that one.
The most telling thing that happened to these labouring brothers with simple, clear opinions as to which side was "right" and which side could make "assembly decisions" against the will of the assembly and who could not, was that they clearly failed to impress the hardest of their audiences: their kids. Their own kids saw right through them. And over the years, scandals have been steadily coming to light about our "labouring brothers." About their kids, and about them.
No one's perfect. These guys always told us they weren't. But I guess I believed that they'd stand by what they said, that they believed what they said, and that they meant what was coming out of their mouths, in those passionate, fiery messages we recorded and shared around and spent our weeks attending and driving and paying money to hear.
I guess in the end, they were just guys, and they had a good thing going, and they'd do whatever it took, and become whoever it took, to keep that territory, to hold that position.
Years later, we are pretty aware of exactly what happened during our local divisions, and we have copies of all the letters, and we know exactly what all of the labouring brothers said and did, and what positions they took, and in some notable cases, retracted if they found they'd not chosen the side that was "winning".
The "closed" Plymouth Brethren meets on the premise that we have no clergy, and no power hierarchy. We claim to have no bishops, lead pastors, elders, deacons, regional managers, popes or things. But what these divisions were/are, is in-fighting, jockeying for position, and outright spiritual war over who gets to wield that very, supposedly non-existent power. Because there is a clergy, and there is a power hierarchy. In other words, the reason for there being a Plymouth Brethren movement? Is revealed to be untrue. We have regional managers/popes. If you cross them, you get excommunicated. Even if you have the same family pedigree, years served and grew up in the same assembly as they did. In the divisions, some people won and others lost. The ones who won punished the losers. And the really telling point? If you "won," you stand as proof that you ARE the power you claim our group does not have. You forfeit that thing you feel provides the reason for our movement to exist. You can't occupy a position and deny that it exists. You can't wield power and say there isn't any. You can't say there are no clergy, and then insist that everyone obey you. You can't say an assembly "decided" something, and then excommunicate 60% of the assembly for saying they do not agree and want to discuss the matter further. Well, you can do all of those things, but we know what that makes you.
The most telling fact is that it is now pretty easy to discern what attitudes lost, and which attitudes won the power. The attitudes which lost included: "But we like those guys," "Can we talk about this?" "Let's pray about this," "Let's bring in some more people to help us," "Let's look at what Darby and Kelly had to say," "What can be learned from all the previous divisions?" "Why do we only have until Sunday to decide?" "Are we actually willing to divide over an issue of unity?" "Let's not play Capture the Flag with the Meeting Room as the flag," "I want to hear what Jeff has to say," and "Let's not go on a rampage, here."
One attitude won. It was "Shut up or get out. Now."
The way an "assembly decision" worked in Nepean, was that if you didn't decide what you were told the assembly had decided, this was evidence that you weren't part of the assembly. With time, this has all been made very manifest. None of it is hidden, though we are expected to forget it all.
Yet in my experience, the labouring brothers, the people speaking publicly, are the very last people I can get any admission of the clear facts from. They seem to live in la la land more than any. Can't look the real-life events, the real-life people's messed up church lives in the face at all. They won't even stand behind what I have them on cassette tapes, addressing hundreds, or on paper, ditto, saying.
And when they speak, it's still pure idealism, with absolute statements and no nod in the direction of what actually happened. I do not see a sign that they personally learned anything from the divisions, and much less, that they are imparting anything learned from them. I'm not seeing an admission of what happened. Of what we did. I'm seeing whitewash. I'm seeing politics. I'm hearing fancy, oversimplifying, idealistic speeches which do not come close to touching down anywhere near the ground upon which we walked each week, through these divisions. I'm seeing holding onto status. Revisionist history, unabashedly used to hold onto power.
Are we led by people with the Orwellian brain skills necessary to be the tyrants, and also honestly believe and preach that there aren't any? People who wound and drive away the sheep, and then honestly believe and preach proudly that that doesn't ever happen 'round these parts? People who are fighting each other to hold positions of status, and who then really, truly believe that those positions they themselves have proven they would do almost anything to keep, also somehow don't exist? Are we led by people with their double-think down that solidly?
I think we are.
The "closed" Plymouth Brethren meets on the premise that we have no clergy, and no power hierarchy. We claim to have no bishops, lead pastors, elders, deacons, regional managers, popes or things. But what these divisions were/are, is in-fighting, jockeying for position, and outright spiritual war over who gets to wield that very, supposedly non-existent power. Because there is a clergy, and there is a power hierarchy. In other words, the reason for there being a Plymouth Brethren movement? Is revealed to be untrue. We have regional managers/popes. If you cross them, you get excommunicated. Even if you have the same family pedigree, years served and grew up in the same assembly as they did. In the divisions, some people won and others lost. The ones who won punished the losers. And the really telling point? If you "won," you stand as proof that you ARE the power you claim our group does not have. You forfeit that thing you feel provides the reason for our movement to exist. You can't occupy a position and deny that it exists. You can't wield power and say there isn't any. You can't say there are no clergy, and then insist that everyone obey you. You can't say an assembly "decided" something, and then excommunicate 60% of the assembly for saying they do not agree and want to discuss the matter further. Well, you can do all of those things, but we know what that makes you.
The most telling fact is that it is now pretty easy to discern what attitudes lost, and which attitudes won the power. The attitudes which lost included: "But we like those guys," "Can we talk about this?" "Let's pray about this," "Let's bring in some more people to help us," "Let's look at what Darby and Kelly had to say," "What can be learned from all the previous divisions?" "Why do we only have until Sunday to decide?" "Are we actually willing to divide over an issue of unity?" "Let's not play Capture the Flag with the Meeting Room as the flag," "I want to hear what Jeff has to say," and "Let's not go on a rampage, here."
One attitude won. It was "Shut up or get out. Now."
The way an "assembly decision" worked in Nepean, was that if you didn't decide what you were told the assembly had decided, this was evidence that you weren't part of the assembly. With time, this has all been made very manifest. None of it is hidden, though we are expected to forget it all.
Yet in my experience, the labouring brothers, the people speaking publicly, are the very last people I can get any admission of the clear facts from. They seem to live in la la land more than any. Can't look the real-life events, the real-life people's messed up church lives in the face at all. They won't even stand behind what I have them on cassette tapes, addressing hundreds, or on paper, ditto, saying.
And when they speak, it's still pure idealism, with absolute statements and no nod in the direction of what actually happened. I do not see a sign that they personally learned anything from the divisions, and much less, that they are imparting anything learned from them. I'm not seeing an admission of what happened. Of what we did. I'm seeing whitewash. I'm seeing politics. I'm hearing fancy, oversimplifying, idealistic speeches which do not come close to touching down anywhere near the ground upon which we walked each week, through these divisions. I'm seeing holding onto status. Revisionist history, unabashedly used to hold onto power.
Are we led by people with the Orwellian brain skills necessary to be the tyrants, and also honestly believe and preach that there aren't any? People who wound and drive away the sheep, and then honestly believe and preach proudly that that doesn't ever happen 'round these parts? People who are fighting each other to hold positions of status, and who then really, truly believe that those positions they themselves have proven they would do almost anything to keep, also somehow don't exist? Are we led by people with their double-think down that solidly?
I think we are.
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