Read an Excerpt
Behind the Exclusive Brethren
By Michael Bachelard Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Copyright © 2008 Michael Bachelard
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-921753-84-8
CHAPTER 1
The Making of a Cult
The sect that we now call the Exclusive Brethren was 141 years old when its world leader travelled to the picturesque Scottish town of Aberdeen in July 1970 to address the faithful.
In those meetings, which lasted for three days, the fatal weaknesses that had been built into the sect from its earliest days suddenly came together and split the Brethren in two. What became known as the 'Aberdeen Incident' cost the exclusive branch of Brethrenism about 8000 members worldwide, one-fifth of the total flock, and starkly illustrated how the ambitions of their founder to return to a simpler, Bible-based life had, by the latter third of the twentieth century, become hopelessly corrupted.
In the view of Robert Stott, one of the senior members who quit at the time, those who stayed attached themselves to 'a system where man had replaced Christ, where persons took precedence over principles, and where conscience had become valueless'. Some believe it remains as bad today.
James Taylor Junior, called 'Mr Jim', or JT Junior, had, by 1970, been the sect's 'Elect Vessel', or 'Man of God', for 11 years. He was the fourth of what the Brethren call the 'unbroken line' of 'Ministers of the Lord in the Recovery' of the truth, who claim direct spiritual descendance from the Apostle Paul, and whose founder was the dour Irish intellectual John Nelson Darby. Taylor presided over a flock that, during its history, had already split a dozen times over issues of theology and church administration, over power and politics. With each division, its followers had become more isolated from the rest of society, and more power had been conferred on the leader of the day. In Taylor they had a leader who was an alcoholic, and whose affliction had gained a firm grip on his mind.
The cardinal rule of this church, its founding principle, is the doctrine of separation. Under this doctrine, the wider world and its system is considered morally corrupt and to be avoided as much as possible. The separation doctrine rests on an idiosyncratic application of Darby's own translation of some Bible verses in the Second Letter of the Apostle Paul to his protege Timothy.
The central verse, the Exclusive Brethren 'charter', is the sentence in Darby's translation, 'Let everyone who names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity.' (In the King James' version, it is 'depart from iniquity'.) In the years leading up to 1970, this separation had become vastly stricter and more fanatically adhered to. Taylor Junior had already alienated thousands when he first came to power in 1959. He began by excommunicating rival leaders, discrediting them as 'compromisers', and then he introduced his own hard-line edicts that banned all members of the Brethren from eating or socialising with outsiders.
James Taylor Junior himself was charismatic and entertaining. His meetings attracted attention and devotion from younger members whose faith, until then, had been entirely joyless. But he was also erratic, cruel, and unpredictable, and by 1970 he had pushed the limits of what his long-suffering flock could tolerate, by introducing hundreds of new rules for living.
Under his regime, families were always under the threat of being excommunicated, or 'withdrawn from', for some infraction or other. This carried with it the threat for individuals of being removed from their families, their belief systems, and their hope of salvation, instantly and irrevocably. According to psychologist and writer Louise Samways, 'Cults often have large numbers of rules, so there can be plenty of opportunity to punish members who break them inadvertently.' There is little doubt that, at this point in Brethren history at least, it was indistinguishable from a cult.
In this God-fearing group, the most important theological events were three-day meetings, where local leaders from around the world gathered together to receive both their spiritual nourishment and their marching orders. The transcripts of the Aberdeen meeting never made it to the official Brethren record because of the scandal that immediately followed. But the recording itself is available, from which an unofficial 14-page transcript of the afternoon session on 25 July has been made. This is a small excerpt:
(Loud laughter)
James Taylor Junior: What the 'ell are we doing here? You so and so, what are you saying?
Thomas Matthew Bennett: This will get us somewhere, this will get us somewhere, I don't know where.
JT Junior: George, what do you think of this here? George Brown, what do you think of this here?
George Strang: I'm sorry I didn't hear your question.
JT Junior: I wasn't talking to you, boob. George!
George W. Brown: Yes, Mr Taylor?
JT Junior: What was the answer?
George Brown: I don't quite know, Mr Taylor, what to make of it.
JT Junior: Anybody know that. Is your wife here?
George Brown: Yes, she is.
JT Junior: And she's mad.
George Brown: No, she isn't, Mr Taylor.
JT Junior: She is so. All going to have a good time here. Oh, yes. We're going to ... you nut! ... we're going to have a good time here. And you, you dear, dear, dear, dear, dear boob, what do you want to say?'
For almost an hour, the Elect Vessel carried on in this vein as he drank periodically from his customary glass of Scotch whisky. The meeting was in uproar. The recording reveals loud laughter, stamping, and hooting. Taylor Junior harangued people, called them 'stinking bum' and 'sons of bitches', asked, 'Why didn't you bring some toilet paper with you?', and constantly repeated an apparent pun on the word 'ell (hell) or El (God). He gesticulated, thumbed his nose, and made the sign of the Cross – which, in Brethren terms, is Papist blasphemy.
Amongst all this, his constant refrain was, 'You never had it so good', apparently referring to the spiritual nourishment he was providing. It appears from later correspondence among the Brethren that this kind of behaviour had become Taylor's norm in meetings of his home assembly in New York, as his slide into alcoholism worsened. A letter from Brethren man William T. Petersen later related that, in the lead-up to Aberdeen and afterwards, 'filthy, blasphemous speaking proceeded in the assembly almost daily'. But this bitter reality was, until the events in Aberdeen, not well known elsewhere in the Brethren world.
What transpired in the meeting hall might have been shocking to his flock, but what was going on at the house where Taylor was staying that weekend was as bad. The doctrine of separation means that travelling Brethren do not stay in hotel rooms. Instead, visiting Brethren are billeted with locals. Well-regarded leaders in a locality ('the approved') host the leaders. On this trip to Aberdeen, Taylor was put up by James Alec Gardner, a high-ranking man in the local Brethren assembly. A number of others were also staying at the house, including a young couple, Alan and Madeline Ker, whom Taylor had specifically requested be accommodated there.
A long letter about the incident written later by Gardner reveals that, for much of the three days of his sojourn, Taylor stayed in his room, alone with Mrs Ker, with the door shut, after she had been led there by her husband. After Madeline Ker had spent the Thursday and Friday nights in Taylor's bedroom, Gardner writes that he tried on Saturday morning to barricade the route to the room, because 'we were disturbed and unhappy as to the length of time they were spending together'.
But the Kers were not satisfied at being kept from the Man of God. According to Gardner's letter:
Mr and Mrs Ker tried to break down the door so that she could reach Mr Taylor's bedroom. In the process a large glass panel in the door entrance was cracked. When our other visitors left for the meetings Mrs Ker managed to slip through to Mr Taylor's bedroom, staying there alone with him for some time, so that we were again late for the afternoon meetings. When she came out of the room she said that she had been told to tell me that I was a 'son of a bitch and a bastard'.
The afternoon meeting referred to is the one partially transcribed above. On Saturday evening after dinner, Gardner wrote:
[I] felt I had to find out what was happening in my house. I went through to Mr Taylor's bedroom and found Mrs Ker undressed and in bed with Mr Taylor. He only had on his pyjama top, which was open down the front ... I remonstrated with Mr Ker and asked him to get his wife out of there.
Gardner called in a witness, Stanley McCallum, from Detroit, who was at the house for dinner. McCallum told Taylor what he was doing was 'unsuitable, uncomely and not morally right', and asked what his wife would think. 'I suppose you would tell her!' countered Taylor. Gardner then turned the Kers out of his house, prompting the insistence from Taylor: 'She is my woman.' Taylor's son, James the Third, was called for, as was his doctor, a Brethren man, Bill Thomson, who had been treating him for his alcohol-related illnesses. Gardner relates Thomson saying that 'medically he was a sick man, but the moral side is a matter for the priests'.
On Sunday 26 July, Taylor left Aberdeen, abandoning the final day of the meeting, and was led back to his New York home by his son, who had flown into the city from the south of England in the early hours of Sunday morning. The following Tuesday night, Gardner and others revealed what they had witnessed in their home to the Aberdeen assembly. All but two families from the entire congregation of that town – over 200 people – accepted his account. They collectively confessed that they should have protested against Taylor at the meeting, and then they repudiated him.
Following normal Brethren procedure, Gardner and the other leaders of the Aberdeen church then sent the account of events to Taylor's home church in Nostrand Avenue, New York. In doing so they were suggesting that New York should discipline Taylor himself, almost certainly to excommunicate or 'withdraw from' him, and the church continue on without him. In the Brethren, to withdraw from someone is to put them outside the church globally, but the 'judgment' is always carried out by the individual's local Brethren assembly.
For a sect that emphasised high moral standards, no charge could have been clearer cut: it was a case of sexual misbehaviour, 'corrupt language', and treating the assembly with contempt. There were credible witnesses by the hundred, even tape recordings available.
In the days following the events at Aberdeen, Taylor attempted to mount a defence by taking the argument public in the English tabloids. 'We are not ashamed, says Big Jim', the London Daily Express shouted from its front page. The story was accompanied by a picture of him with his arm draped over Mrs Ker's shoulder, his hand hovering over her left breast, and a glass of whisky in his other hand. But if the Aberdeen leaders believed they could win this battle, they underestimated the power that the 'Man of God' had come to assume in their own church, and what he and his supporters were prepared to do to keep it.
At stake was what, in the Exclusive Brethren, is known as 'the position'. This is simultaneously a theological and administrative concept, which refers to both the theological state of 'walking in the path of separation' from the world, as well as the structure of the church itself, including the ownership of property, and how the various meeting halls around the world interact and are kept together under one supreme leader.
The events at Aberdeen quickly became a power struggle over what really was the 'position': would Taylor be the one excommunicated and would the Exclusive Brethren continue under a new leader? Or would his supporters close ranks around him and retain control?
It was a momentous choice for a church that had spent the previous decade building their leader up into 'the Paul of our day', a man whose power and purity were supposed to rival that of Christ, and whose leadership was considered to be the only way to prepare for the second coming.
Taylor's camp moved quickly to provide a cover story. Taylor denied the accuracy of the tapes of the meeting, claiming they had been tampered with. He said in a letter of7 August that Mrs Ker had merely been washing his feet, rubbing his head and massaging him, at the suggestion of her husband.8 He instructed the Detroit Brethren to withdraw from witness Stanley McCallum – so that, by the time McCallum got home, he was locked out of his own assembly meeting, and could not officially inform them of what he had seen. McCallum was then accused by four members in Detroit of trumped-up charges of homosexual molestation – charges that were never brought to a court, despite several attempts by his enemies who stayed within the Brethren.
Taylor told his followers in a letter in August 1970 that Gardner's house was 'leprous', and his testimony therefore unreliable, and that the Aberdeen Brethren were 'criminals'. 'The charge made by that bastard [F. David] Waterfall [leader in the Brethren stronghold of Birmingham] that I was in bed with another man's wife is a dastardly lie,' Taylor wrote in a letter about the incident. 'If I wanted to sleep with another man's wife would I go to Aberdeen – costing about $1000? Brooklyn would be cheaper. Some brethren have shown themselves to be boobs.'
Brethren around the world were required, under threat of excommunication, to swear 100 per cent loyalty to Taylor. Members were told in meetings that they had to affirm that he was a pure man. In some assemblies, married men were asked to declare publicly that they would allow their wives to 'administer comfort to Mr Taylor'.
In Scotland, the upheaval cost the Exclusive Brethren all but about 200 of its 3000-strong flock. In England, the effect was more diluted, but the large and influential London meeting split in half. In New York, Taylor himself was eventually forced to walk out of the meeting after one of his hitherto strongest supporters, Billy Petersen, challenged him and then refused to leave. When Taylor quit the meeting he took only about half its attendees with him, and even one of his own sons and both of his daughters-in-law initially refused to stand by him.
But still Taylor's supporters refused to relinquish 'the position'. It took them a month after the original events to come up with the final version of the cover story. It emerged in a letter dated 21 August 1970 from Magnus Dawson. The letter, which was circulated widely, claimed that Taylor's actions in Aberdeen were a cunningly devised test of loyalty, an ambush to identify those who were insufficiently faithful, and to root them out. The church was now 'rid of the drag' of those people. 'Dear George, It is too near the rapture to turn back', the letter begins:
It is nearly a month nearer than it was at the time of the incident you write about and the revival goes on in vigour. What a change to have the Supper in conditions purified from conflicting spirits, silent opposition and rivalry ... Many a time we have admitted to each other that some drastic test would need to be applied, especially in Scotland – it surely has come! ... He [Taylor] ... drew all into the one ambush. There, to demonstrate purity and to expose every kind of impurity, he put himself into a position which jeopardized the honour of his manhood (and what it cost him to do it). It was a test no one could possibly understand save those who had kept close to him in incorruption. There was no immorality, it was all done so openly.
Despite the importance invested in the Man of God, in 1970 thousands of traumatised people did leave Taylor's branch of the Brethren. They emerged from their separate lives questioning their entire belief system, wondering if their lives had been lived in the service of a lie at the hands of an erratic alcoholic. The suddenness and ferocity of the split was unprecedented, and it caused untold trauma, splitting families forever.
Just three months after the 'Aberdeen Incident', on 14 October, Taylor Junior, still defiant and unapologetic, died of an alcohol-related disease. His loyalists continued to prosecute his case. But those who opposed what had happened also had their voice. Robert Stott of Brighton, who was also a trustee of the Brethren publishing house the Stow Hill Depot, gathered the facts from witnesses, collated the evidence, and then, in November, printed and disseminated them. His document, If We Walk In the Light, included a transcript of the meeting and letters to and from disgruntled members. Stott pointed out that, 'JT Junior and those who supported him violated almost every principle governing assembly action in an attempt to prevent the true facts from reaching the brethren.'
'Those who supported JT Junior justify his behaviour on the ground that the man of God is pure and can do things which would be corrupt for us to do,' Stott wrote. This was 'heresy'. The Brethren, whose forebears had themselves withdrawn from the established church because they had become corrupted by Popery, were now victim to precisely the same kind of personality cult, Stott wrote.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Behind the Exclusive Brethren by Michael Bachelard. Copyright © 2008 Michael Bachelard. Excerpted by permission of Scribe Publications Pty Ltd.
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