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Political Involvement With a Bottle of Scotch but Without Voting

Friday, 24th March, 2006

The Exclusive Brethren crossed my path through marriage - father-in-law had been brought up as one before leaving because he liked playing sport - a banned past time for Brethren. While he never mentioned the subject, his daughters occasionally spoke of their rather strange cousins, uncles and aunts who lived nearby in north west Tasmania but who they rarely met.

The story they told that really stuck in my mind was the rift that occurred in the family when the order came down from 'Man of God' James Taylor Jr that whisky should play a part in life after Sunday worship. Brethren international head James, the family story went, had been exposed as a closet alcoholic but was fortunate enough to have a revelation that a tipple or two for everyone would be better than him giving up.While some relished the opportunity to brighten an otherwise pure and spartan life, others were shocked at the abandonment of almost 150 years of decreed abstinence while still others resented the cost of putting a bottle of Scotch on the table every weekend. The Tasmanian Brethren split and the drinking Ins stopped talking to the non-drinking Outs while both Ins and Outs continued to shun non Brethren members wherever possible.

I never did hear what happened within the Tasmanian Brethren following the famous Aberdeen incident of 1970. That was when JTJr began behaving erratically in meetings culminating at one in Aberdeen in Scotland where he called people "bums", bastards" and other offensive names during services. One evening, witnesses claim to have found JTJr in bed with a married Exclusive Brethren woman which was a bit of a shock to believers in the sanctity of marriage and family values. JTJr denied the charges as lies but whatever the truth of the matter the incident further divided the international flock.

These Brethren memories came to mind in the closing days of the Tasmanian election campaign when members of the religion produced newspapers ads campaigning against the Greens. Such an involvement in political life would surely have incurred the wrath of John Nelson Darby, the aristocratic Church of Ireland clergyman who left that Church when his bishop insisted that converts Darby had made from Roman Catholicism should swear allegiance to the British Crown. Darby rejected this as unscriptural and when he separated the Exclusive from the Open Brethren in the 1840s he was gloomy about the state of the world.

According to a summary of the religion on the BBC website, Darby thought the only way for believers to get right with God was to keep away from the sinful world and adopt a simple and straightforward relationship with Christ. Keeping away from the secular world was a serious business and among the forbidden "too wordly" activities for members are standing for political office, voting in elections and serving in the armed services.

Trevor Christian and Roger Unwin, the two Tasmanian members of the Exclusive Brethren congregation who authorised the anti-Green advertisements, see no conflict in their religious objections to directly participating in elections and trying to influence those people who do not have them. In a letter to the Launceston Examiner this week they put it this way:

We believe government to be of God and for this reason we respect it; consequently, although our conscience precludes us from voting, it equally creates a responsibility to testify to persons in government and the community to uphold right Christian principles on which our nation is founded.

Similar arguments have justified Exclusive Brethren intervention in election campaigns in the United States and New Zealand. In the US Brethren held prayer meetings and donated money for the re-election of George W. Bush as President. In the last NZ election some $NZ500,000 was spent producing and distributing to letter boxes at least eight pamphlets attacking the policies of the Labour and Green parties.

Back to the 2006 Tasmanian Election page.

Exclusive Brethren founder
J.N. Darby would never have
approved of the whisky!

The BBC website has the following description of the Exclusive Brethren:

The Brethren movement began in Dublin in the late 1820s with a group of men (John Nelson Darby, Anthony Norris Groves, John Bellet, Edward Cronin and Francis Hutchinson) who felt that the established Church had become too involved with the secular state and abandoned many of the basic truths of Christianity.

The first Brethren assembly in England was established at Plymouth in 1831 which is why Brethren are often called Plymouth Brethren.

In the late 1840s the Brethren split into the Open Brethren and the Exclusive Brethren. The split was the result of what Darby and his followers saw as the growth of 'clericalism' and "grave error as to Christ's persona and sufferings".

The Exclusive Brethren are an Evangelical Protestant Christian church related to the Christian or Open Brethren.

Members follow a rigid code of conduct based very strictly on Bible teaching, which provides a firm moral framework and is focussed on a strong family unit.

They keep themselves separate from other people (including other Christians) as far as possible, because they believe the world is a place of wickedness. They regard 'exclusiveness' as the only way to keep away from evil.

The main group of Exclusive Brethren are called 'Taylorites' after James Taylor Senior and Junior who led the church for much of the twentieth century.

This group is secretive so most of the information available about them comes from people who have left it. As a result the Exclusive Brethren often gets a bad press and is referred to using phrases like "an exclusive and secret religious sect" or "a secretive church".

There are thought to be approximately 27,000 in the Taylorite branch of the Exclusive Brethren worldwide.