Editor’s note: In 1960 the largest surviving branch of the Exclusive Brethren lost many members, who split off to form several other fellowships. The main reason was that they disagreed with new rules introduced by a leader called James Taylor Junior. Two rules in particular caused widespread dissent and are referred to by Roger below. One was that members of the sect were barred from memberships of professional associations such as the Pharmaceutical Society or the Law Society, which were legally required for some of them to practise their professions. The other was that members of the sect were not allowed to have a meal with non-members, or socialise with them, even if these non-members were their own spouses or close family members.
Dates
Date: 21.02.2005
Subject: dates
During the past few months several people have referred to the 'eating issue' on peebs.net (which was the first major legislation of JT Jr's reign over the ebs) as taking place in 1959. In doing this they may have been following Dick Wyman's EB Timeline where that year is given.
The eating issue was referred to several times in mid 1960 but it was not insisted upon as mandatory until the meetings in Horsham, Sussex from July 30 to August 1, 1960. The confrontation between JT Jr and Gerald Cowell happened in July 1959 but Gerald Cowell was not actually withdrawn from (according to my records) until July 1960. JT Jr's 'leadership' was not really established until early 1960 - many people date it to his giving an address at Park Street called 'The King and his Men'. I don't have a date for that but I would guess that it was around March/April 1960. I was there.
The real persecutions began with the application of the eating ministry and this began the creation of the Exclusive Brethren SS. (My first wife used to call them 'the hatchet men'.) But it all got much worse (and more organized) in 1963 when the Hales brothers burst on the scene. Anybody's memories/records conflict with this or confirm it?
Love to all
Roger
Date: 21.02.2005
Subject: dates
That is partly my point. The confrontation was in 1959 but the decisive events happened during 1960. A lot of people are muddled about this.
My own memory is that things hung in the balance through at least Spring 1960. A lot of us still felt that things could go either way.
Of course I am speaking from a UK perspective. But as my father was a trustee of the Stow Hill Depot we got a pretty complete picture.
Roger
Editor’s note: the Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot was a publisher run by a trust, which published and distributed bibles, hymnbooks, tracts and books of ministry for the Brethren.
Date: 21.02.2005
Subject: dates
Hi Gordon
The idea that ebs couldn't eat with people 'under discipline' (ie withdrawn from) goes back a long way before 1959. But the 'separate tables' ministry (that ebs couldn't eat a meal with ANYONE that they didn't 'break bread' with) was a new doctrine in the mid 1960s. There isn't any doubt about this. It had a vital (and destructive) effect on the new job I had just been appointed to. In early 1960 I was taken out to a meal by my prospective new employers. (3M Co - Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing). When - later in the year- I had to refuse to join in any socialising, they accused me of hypocrisy -'it was OK when you were trying to get the job, why not now?' Trying to explain that it was 'new ministry' was pretty damn difficult.
Love to all
Roger
Date: 21.02.2005
Subject: dates
There was a general tightening up of 'separation' from about 1957/8 onwards (in which one of the main ingredients was the leaving of professional associations, but it also included a clamp down on 'worldly activity'). Gerald Cowell (who has gone down in history as the good, gentle guy who was rudely confronted by JTJnr at Central Hall in July 1959) was one of the main leaders in this increased severity.
But my central point is that the 'eating issue' (sometimes referred to as 'separate tables') did not come up until well into 1960 and was not fully established for some months. The arguments about it went on well into 1961. (As Jill's comments seem to confirm.) The notes that I have from Horsham (July 1960) make it quite clear that what was being said about 'eating' was a considerable advance on anything that had been said before. Many orthodox brethren could not get over the fact that Paul said 'If one of the unbelievers invite you, and ye be minded to go, all that is set before you eat . . ' (I Corinthians 10.27) -for them this made the new rule unscriptural. (JTJr's fatuous reply was simply 'why would you be minded to go?') But this was the sticking point for many in the second half of 1960 and early 1961 and quite significant numbers left the ebs over this specific point (including the Myttons). One of the main practical problems was that salesmen in fellowship were used to taking clients out to lunch and couldn't see how they could keep their jobs if they didn't.
It was the first 'big issue' in the new JTJr government and it began to establish the pattern: 'if he says it it must be right and you'd better just do it even if it seems to you to be against scripture'. In that sense it was an important turning point.
From one point of view as Gordon says none of this 'matters one wit'. That's the Henry Ford school of thought - 'history is bunk'. But another point of view is that if we are talking about specific events in our past we may as well get them right and not be sloppy about them.
Love to all
Roger
Date: 21.02.2005
Subject: dates
Hi Jill
You must have left during 1960. At the end of 1959 JTJr was still not firmly in the saddle and the issue of 'not eating with anyone not in fellowship' hadn't come up. The big issue in the latter part of 1959 was professional associations. When 'the eating issue' did come up it was definitely a new idea and a shock, with far-reaching implications for many in business or a profession, esp salesmen.
It didn't become mandatory until the latter part of 1960 and even then it remained blurred for a while. We were still a bit independent then and hadn't quite got used to the idea that we had to do everything that JTJr said pronto.
Love to all
Roger
Date: 21.02.2005
Subject: Dates
Deb said
What gives? - why did JTjr decide to make them concentrate so much on eating? Roger can you help on this one?
It seems so daft looking back now. At the time it was the first of many JT Jr edicts. His line was that 'eating with someone is an act of fellowship' and as the Lord's Supper is the symbol of our fellowship, it is wrong to have a meal with someone you don't break bread with. He made a lot out of the fact that the Book of Psalms begins with 'Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked, and standeth not in the way of sinners, and sitteth not in the seat of scorners.'
The simple answer to what he was saying is (as I said earlier) in 1 Corinthians 10.27 where Paul clearly regards it as OK to go and have a meal with an 'unbeliever'. This was quoted incessantly but JTJr over-rode it. A lot of people went out of fellowship in late 1960 and early 1961 over that verse.
I have a list of the JTJr edicts from a diary that someone kept at the time. Other issues in 1960/61 were:
Scottish fishermen forbidden to take part in 'fishing pools'
Membership of most pension schemes and building societies forbidden
Young boys encouraged to take part in meetings
Married sisters forbidden to go out to work
Chairs in meeting rooms to be arranged in circles
Collection box at the Supper to be open
Brethren Cambridge undergraduates told to leave the university. (There were five: Philip Spink of Blackburn, Denys Leflaive and Michael Nunn from Bristol, Neil Purdom from Croydon and Robert Record from Luton. I had graduated the year before so I was the last of the ebs to get a Cambridge degree.)
All children to break bread by the age of 12
Only those in fellowship to attend wedding meetings and fellowship meetings Hymnbook revised to exclude hymns by any who had been withdrawn from
And so it went on. It gives me the creeps to go over it again.
Love to all
Roger
Demographics
Date: 03.03.2007
Subject: Guestimate time
Hi Jill
If you take ex-ebs to mean 'those who left after the JTJr coup d'etat in 1960' I very much doubt whether the total number exceeds 16,000 and that is probably on the high side. The world wide total in the months following Aberdeen (which dwarfed all the other exits) was somewhere around 8-9000. Subsequent exits have been tiny by comparison and even a fairly constant flow of a few dozen wouldn't add to up to all that much.
That's the best I can guess at with the evidence I've gathered over the last 35 years.
Love to all
Roger
Date: 03.03.2007 02:13 pm
Subject: Guestimate time
But I was counting from 1960. Otherwise you would have to go back to at least another 8 or 9 divisions stretching back to the 1880s. There certainly were not thousands who left in the early 1960s. I was closely in touch with all that and the numbers were relatively small. There may have been the odd smaller meeting who left as a whole but mainly it was just famlies who left. Otherwise the disruption would have been much greater. And it wasn't.
This does often get exaggerated but I think you will find that my 16,000 figure is pretty close.
Love
Roger
Date: 03.03.2007 02:19 pm
Subject:
Hi my dear old Phil
Thanks for the hug. The 'Exclusive' tag was first used at the massive Bethesda split in 1848. But they used the word 'Close' as well. As far as I can make out the pairing of
'Open' and Close' brethren and 'Open' and 'Exclusive' Brethren were used more or less equally but the use of the word 'Close' gradually receded (except among the Open Brethren). They still use both. (But they came to call themselves 'Christian Brethren' for many years rather than 'Open Brethren'.
Love to all
Roger
Date: 03.03.2007 02:45 pm
Subject: Guestimate time
While this subject is up I do want to reassert one aspect of this history that still seems to be drifting into wrong definitions. To talk as if there was a REAL continuity between the exclusive brethren of the the 1950s and the JTJr barbarism of 1960/1 onwards is to completely misunderstand brethren history. There was a bewildering, tectonic change at that point. (I am just writing this part in my novel at the moment and I call the new section of the book 'The Bewitching of the Brethren'. )
Before 1960 there was plenty wrong with the brethren, small-minded, legalistic, humanly stunted and still clinging to the stupid idea that 'there can only be one right collective Christian position and we are it'. But in human terms they were not very different to quite a few other strict protestant companies. If you were at ease with the set of beliefs life was quite comfortable and there was a lot of kindness and a reasonable amount of tolerance. And JT Snr was about as different from JT Jr as it is possible to be. He was a sensitive and gifted teacher who almost never interfered in administrative matters and always asserted that the truth is in the body of the brethren.
The bullying vulgarity that took over the brethren with the JT Jr years was completely new. And meetings in those earlier years were about the bible and Christian teaching
(boring to many of us maybe but focussed and pious) and JT Snr used to say that if the brethren laughed in the meeting 'the power went out of the meeting'.
To give the impression that there was continuity (rather than abrupt and catastrophic change) between the 50s and 60s is to lose the whole point of the story of the exclusives.
Love to all
Roger
One slight modification: in the two or so years before 1959 there was a bit up of a tightening up on the rules of separation (mainly to do with professional associations). But this was still happening in the 'old atmosphere' of ebness and was led more by Gerald Cowell and Stanley McCallum than JT Jr. And it wasn't violent or bullying.
Date: 04.03.2007 08:36 am
Subject: Guestimate time
Frustratingly, I lost my email connection again (completely) on Saturday morning first thing and have only just been able to reconnect (0800 Sunday morning).
I was going to add one fairly hard piece of evidence about numbers who left 1960-1971. My father was a trustee of the Stow Hill Depot (eb publishing house) and in 1960 he and and I were involved directly in discussions with the Charity Commission about the division of the assets of the Depot between the Taylorites and those who left. We always took the line that the Taylorites had defected from the orthodox teaching of the ebs and contradicted many of the founding principles of the movement. But in the end the Charity Commission said they had no basis to take this into consideration and they divided the assets (stock of books, value of buildings, capital etc) entirely on the basis of numbers. In doing this they did take into account that others had left during the 60s and it was not just the outflux at Aberdeen. The division of assets was massively in the Taylorites favour. I can't be sure of the exact proportion but it was roughly 3.7: 1 (which would represent approx numbers of 37,000 Taylorites and approx 10,000 leavers) My father and John Welch then set up a smaller publishing depot for the leavers in Worthing with the smaller share of the assets.
As to what Jill says, about unhappiness in the brethren during the 60s, I don't discount it, I was unhappy and oppressed myself. But for me the vast majority of the brethren where I lived (and moved about quite a bit) were a relatively settled and harmonious group and as someone said going out of fellowship was a huge thing and very few people contemplated it voluntarily until the immense provocations and bullying began in 1960-1.
What happened after the Mytton family left was immeasurably worse and more frightening (unless you had managed to allign yourself with the new thinking and behaviour -which a very surprising number did) than anything that happened up to then.
Incidentally that 'allignment' I refer to -the way that ordinary decent kind brethren suddenly developed a new toughness and ruthlessness and joined in the 'revolution' (and who may have some difficulty in admitting to it now) is one of the fundamental mysteries of that period.
Don't think for a moment that I am trying to turn the pre-JT Jr years into a golden period. It's just that most people (having accepted the crushing of the human aspiration and imagination and gone along with the 'life-denying' -as opposed to 'life-celebrating'- ethos of Darbyism) did have quite a warm and kindly way of life within it. Those who were at odds with it (pre-60) did tend to stand out a bit and there weren't very many.
I went out and looked at the eclipsed moon at 2330 last night. Above the Old Mill the sky was unbelievable. The stars were brighter than I have ever seen them and the moon, brushed half golden, was in the constellation of Leo with Venus and Saturn standing beside it with the bright star Arcturus. It was like looking into the heart of an ancient myth. Matthew and I just stood together with our arms round each other and gaped and wondered. I wouldn't have missed that for anything.
Love to all
Roger
05.03.2007 04:16 pm
[Feeb] The Jt Jr 'eating issue'
Once again we were cut off from the landline yesterday (a recurring underground fault) very convenient at a time like this so I am just getting back on emails this morning.
Let me try to clear up the eating issue once and for all. It is often referred to as if it were introduced in 1959, but in fact it was a year later.
When JT Jr challenged Gerald Cowell at the Central Hall meetings in Westminster in July 1959 the issue was professional associations - ie brethren having to leave their jobs as lawyers, engineers, pharmacists etc because to practise they had to belong to the relevant society. This continued to be the main preoccupation through the first half of 1960. There were certainly other references to a general tightening up of the rules of separation but 'eating with outsiders' was not an issue at that point. And JT Jr was by no means established in power. Gerald Cowell was still in fellowship until July 1960.
What happened in July 1960 was an entirely new development. Whatever the practice in the past about eating with those withdrawn from (absolute no no), eating with relatives (varied, some did, some didn't), eating with ordinary people outside the fellowship (not common but it happened, especially in a schoolchildren setting), eating with business people in the course of business and going to company meals etc (very common and widespread with brethren business and professional men), now there was a total blanket ban introduced on the basis that if you didn't break bread on Sunday morning with them, you couldn't eat a meal with them because eating is 'an act of fellowship'.
The meetings in question were at Horsham in Sussex, July 30 -August 1. This was a critical turning point because it gave JT Jr the opportunity to insist on something that really did stir up a dust. To a huge number of brethren what he was saying was contradicted by scripture 'If one of the unbelievers invite you and ye be minded to go...' When this was brought up, all he said was 'why would you be minded to go?' So his peculiar style of confrontational government began. Instead of engaging reasonably with discussion he simply asserted. It was an ideal issue for this purpose and it is not entirely fanciful to say that the infamous concept of the MOG began over this issue. Henceforth the MOG would assert and his growing gestapo would enforce and all those reasonable people who wanted to reason the matter out were dismissed as 'religious' and 'natural-minded'. Previous brethren leaders had never behaved remotely like that.
Not having a terribly good day today. Very weary and listless and am now going for a sleep.
Love to all
Roger
06.03.2007 05:49 am
The Jt Jr 'eating issue'
I think we are missing the point. Of course there were painful rulings about eating with relatives etc before 1960. My point was that the meetings in Horsham at the end of July 1960 first laid down the absolute principle that you could not eat a meal with ANYONE who was not breaking bread with you. The principal impact of this was on those in business and it led to a lot of people losing their jobs. (It also had a huge impact on fisher brethren, many of whom sold their boats because it was impossible to eat separately from 'worldly crew'.) And to a great deal of argument and opposition on the grounds of 'If one of the unbelievers invite you and ye be minded to go, everything set before you eat, making no enquiry for conscience sake/' which seemed to directly contradict this blanket new ruling.
When the 'eating issue' is referred to in the context of JT Jr history it is that new departure at Horsham which is designated and not all the fragmentary (and variable) previous rulings. And it was a huge turning point because it unleashed all that extremist unreason that became so characteristic of the new regime.
I have some detailed notes of the Horsham meetings in July 1960 and it is clear that it was a new move and that it created a bit of a storm straight away.
Love to all
Roger
06.03.2007 05:49 am
The Jt Jr 'eating issue'
I think we are missing the point. Of course there were painful rulings about eating with relatives etc before 1960. My point was that the meetings in Horsham at the end of July 1960 first laid down the absolute principle that you could not eat a meal with ANYONE who was not breaking bread with you. The principal impact of this was on those in business and it led to a lot of people losing their jobs. (It also had a huge impact on fisher brethren, many of whom sold their boats because it was impossible to eat separately from 'worldly crew'.) And to a great deal of argument and opposition on the grounds of 'If one of the unbelievers invite you and ye be minded to go, everything set before you eat, making no enquiry for conscience sake/' which seemed to directly contradict this blanket new ruling.
When the 'eating issue' is referred to in the context of JT Jr history it is that new departure at Horsham which is designated and not all the fragmentary (and variable) previous rulings. And it was a huge turning point because it unleashed all that extremist unreason that became so characteristic of the new regime.
I have some detailed notes of the Horsham meetings in July 1960 and it is clear that it was a new move and that it created a bit of a storm straight away.
Love to all
Roger
