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The Open Brethren: A Christian Sect in the Modern World
This book gives a personal insight into the hearts and minds of a fundamentalist Christian sect, the Open Brethren. Using Brethren magazine articles, obituaries, and testimonies, Peter Herriot argues that the Brethren constitute a perfect example of a fundamentalism. Their culture is entirely opposed to the beliefs, values, and norms of modernity. As a result, like other fundamentalisms they challenge modern Christianity and impede its efforts to engage with global society.
- GenresReligion
208 pages, Paperback
Published January 12, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 25, 2025
The only one of its kind. Essential reading if you are a survivor of, or interested in this particular apocalypse cult.
January 29, 2024
I was not reading this strictly as intended, as a textbook, but as someone still unpacking having grown up in the open brethren. This was an excellent, cogent outline of the theology and practice of the open brethren and just how differently it sits compared to the rest of modern christianity and even compared with other fundamentalist styles of christianity, such as in the refusal to vote and engage in politics or with unions, and the emphasis on biblical inerrancy and the doctrine of headship, both under God and women to men.
Parts 2 and 3 were most relevant to my reading, and I particularly appreciated the section on upbringing of children in the assemblies, and the brief but salient summary of the profound guilt, shame and terror that was instilled almost from birth, and the consideration of the psychological effects of this for those who remained in the assembly. Perhaps someday one of us will write about the effects on those of us who left - pleasingly apparently the majority.
Part 1 initially felt somewhat disorienting, and as I had attempted to skip around, I had to go back and read the introduction to understand how Part 1 was structured. In saying that, Chapter 2 felt extremely comforting to read, written in the style of brethren messaging, as this was what I grew up so immersed in and now is completely absent from my life. Reading and being read to daily from the KJV, hearing preaching in this style in the meeting and in the open-air, and reading this in all the tracts and ministry pamphlets and children's magazines etc, singing hymns from the Believer's Hymn Book... none of my peers, even my christian friends, has that shared understanding of these practices or this language or the highly specific terminology that I had half-forgotten, and it felt incredibly comforting and nostalgic to sink back into that familiarity, despite everything - like a country I had grown up in and left. And this book as a whole really did make clear how much it truly was like a foreign country to grow up in the assemblies, and how separated from the world we were.
It has been incredibly helpful to read this, rather than having to reconstruct these beliefs and experiences from memory, in attempting to understand my childhood. I think it has also really clarified the underlying firmness of my parents' foundational beliefs, although they would probably now fit more into the heretical "loose brethren" category rather than the "tight version" focused on in this book (they own a tv now, after all), and how that belief in inerrancy of Scripture and Scripture as the one and only source of truth means that their logic is completely safe from any attempts to challenge this. This is something I had perhaps forgotten in my years away from the church more broadly.
It is also quite hard to access much external documentation about the brethren anywhere for reasons described in this text. I am extremely grateful to have my childhood religious experiences so thoroughly described here and will no doubt continue to reference this in future. Highly recommended for anyone who happens to be curious about what the assemblies look like to this day, although not sure how engaging the text would be without the personal relevance. I look forward to tracking down the author's recommendation for a book by Tim Grass also.
Parts 2 and 3 were most relevant to my reading, and I particularly appreciated the section on upbringing of children in the assemblies, and the brief but salient summary of the profound guilt, shame and terror that was instilled almost from birth, and the consideration of the psychological effects of this for those who remained in the assembly. Perhaps someday one of us will write about the effects on those of us who left - pleasingly apparently the majority.
Part 1 initially felt somewhat disorienting, and as I had attempted to skip around, I had to go back and read the introduction to understand how Part 1 was structured. In saying that, Chapter 2 felt extremely comforting to read, written in the style of brethren messaging, as this was what I grew up so immersed in and now is completely absent from my life. Reading and being read to daily from the KJV, hearing preaching in this style in the meeting and in the open-air, and reading this in all the tracts and ministry pamphlets and children's magazines etc, singing hymns from the Believer's Hymn Book... none of my peers, even my christian friends, has that shared understanding of these practices or this language or the highly specific terminology that I had half-forgotten, and it felt incredibly comforting and nostalgic to sink back into that familiarity, despite everything - like a country I had grown up in and left. And this book as a whole really did make clear how much it truly was like a foreign country to grow up in the assemblies, and how separated from the world we were.
It has been incredibly helpful to read this, rather than having to reconstruct these beliefs and experiences from memory, in attempting to understand my childhood. I think it has also really clarified the underlying firmness of my parents' foundational beliefs, although they would probably now fit more into the heretical "loose brethren" category rather than the "tight version" focused on in this book (they own a tv now, after all), and how that belief in inerrancy of Scripture and Scripture as the one and only source of truth means that their logic is completely safe from any attempts to challenge this. This is something I had perhaps forgotten in my years away from the church more broadly.
It is also quite hard to access much external documentation about the brethren anywhere for reasons described in this text. I am extremely grateful to have my childhood religious experiences so thoroughly described here and will no doubt continue to reference this in future. Highly recommended for anyone who happens to be curious about what the assemblies look like to this day, although not sure how engaging the text would be without the personal relevance. I look forward to tracking down the author's recommendation for a book by Tim Grass also.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews