Gathering to His Name


Book Description

What was it like to belong to a Brethren assembly? How and why did assemblies come into being? And what do they have to offer to the wider church today? This book traces the story of the Brethren movement in Britain and Ireland from its beginnings in the 1820s to the present day, with a primary focus on those gatherings known as Open Brethren.The overall aim is to provide a readable narrative of the movement’s development and distinctive ethos. The work explores where, when, how, and why assemblies grew and declined, and charts the development of a range of associated institutions. Distinctive ideas in Brethren theology and practice are also introduced. Illustrations bring the story to life and introduce the reader to some of the major figures in Brethren history, and the classified bibliography provides a starting-point for those wishing to takes things further.Throughout, developments among Brethren are related to the wider religious world, providing a background for consideration of what it means to belong to an assembly.







A History of the Brethren Movement


Book Description

Coad's work traces the history of the Brethren Movement, which began more than 170 years ago and has since spread throughout the world. The author considers some of the outstanding characters produced by the movement, as well as its signficance in relation to the whole Christian church.




The Growth of the Brethren Movement: National and International Experiences


Book Description

The essays in this book have been contributed in honour of Dr. H.H. Rowdon, a teacher of several generations of students at the London Bible College and a historian of the Brethren movement. The book includes reflections on the historiography of the Brethren, but it is their character and growth which form the principal focus. The writers make original contributions to national, regional, or local histories and at the same time raise wider themes and issues on topics such as revivalism in New Zealand and the Orkney Islands, or paternalism and missionary endeavor in Zambia. Leading features of the Brethren are discussed through papers on several seminal figures such as Anthony Norris Groves, John Eliot Howard, and George Mÿller. Above all, the opportunities and problems represented by the worldwide growth of the movement are looked at with reference to a number of countries, among them Britain, Germany, Jamaica, and Angola, or to individual congregations in places as diverse as Birmingham, Singapore, and Tasmania. 'Over the whole world...', concludes Prof. D.W. Bebbington in his contribution, 'Brethren played a distinctive role as evangelicals of the evangelicals.'




A History of the Brethren Movement


Book Description

"Coad's work traces the history of the Brethren Movement, which began more than 170 years ago and has since spread throughout the world. The author considers some of the outstanding characters produced by the movement, as well as its signficance in relation to the whole Christian church." -- Blackwells.




The Plymouth Brethren


Book Description

This is the first history of the Plymouth Brethren, a conservative, nonconformist evangelical Christian movement whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland in the late 1820s. The teachings of John Nelson Darby, an influential figure among the early Plymouth Brethren, have had a huge impact on modern evangelicalism. However, the credit for Darby's work went to some of the first generation of his students, and as evangelicalism has grown it has completely ignored its origins in Darby and the Brethren. In this book, Massimo Introvigne restores credit to John Nelson Darby and his movement, and places them in a contemporary sociological framework based on Introvigne's participant observation in Brethren communities. The modern-day Plymouth Brethren emphasize sola scriptura, the belief that the Bible is the supreme authority for church doctrine and practice. Brethren see themselves as a network of like-minded independent assemblies rather than as a church or a denomination. The movement has also refused to take any formal denominational name; the title "the Brethren" comes from the Biblical passage "one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren" (Matthew 23:8). The Plymouth Brethren offers a typology of differing branches of this reclusive movement, including a case study of the "exclusive" branch known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, and reveals the various ways in which Brethren ideas have permeated the modern Christian world.







The crisis of British Protestantism


Book Description

This book seeks to bring coherence to two of the most studied periods in British history, Caroline non-conformity (pre-1640) and the British revolution (post-1642). It does so by focusing on the pivotal years of 1638–44 where debates around non-conformity within the Church of England morphed into a revolution between Parliament and its king. Parliament, saddled with the responsibility of re-defining England’s church, called its Westminster assembly of divines to debate and define the content and boundaries of that new church. Typically this period has been studied as either an ecclesiastical power struggle between Presbyterians and independents, or as the harbinger of modern religious toleration. This book challenges those assumptions and provides an entirely new framework for understanding one of the most important moments in British history.




The Plymouth Brethren


Book Description

This is the first history of the Plymouth Brethren, a conservative, nonconformist evangelical Christian movement whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland in the late 1820s. The teachings of John Nelson Darby, an influential figure among the early Plymouth Brethren, have had a huge impact on modern evangelicalism. However, the credit for Darby's work went to some of the first generation of his students, and as evangelicalism has grown it has completely ignored its origins in Darby and the Brethren. In this book, Massimo Introvigne restores credit to John Nelson Darby and his movement, and places them in a contemporary sociological framework based on Introvigne's participant observation in Brethren communities. The modern-day Plymouth Brethren emphasize sola scriptura, the belief that the Bible is the supreme authority for church doctrine and practice. Brethren see themselves as a network of like-minded independent assemblies rather than as a church or a denomination. The movement has also refused to take any formal denominational name; the title "the Brethren" comes from the Biblical passage "one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren" (Matthew 23:8). The Plymouth Brethren offers a typology of differing branches of this reclusive movement, including a case study of the "exclusive" branch known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, and reveals the various ways in which Brethren ideas have permeated the modern Christian world.




Searching for the True Church


Book Description

Roger Shuff holds that the influence of the Brethren movement on wider evangelical life in England in the twentieth century is often underrated. This book records and accounts for the fact that Brethren reached the peak of their strength at the time when evangelicalism was at its lowest ebb, immediately before World War II. However, the movement then moved into persistent decline as evangelicalism regained ground in the postwar period. Accompanying this downward trend has been a sharp accentuation of the contrast between Brethren congregations who engage constructively with the non-Brethren scene and, at the other end of the spectrum, the isolationist group commonly referred to as Exclusive Brethren. Besides being the first scholarly study of Brethrenism in England for nearly forty years, the book will find a wider audience among present and former adherents of the Brethren movement in its various guises. It also offers useful insights for Christian leaders and other professionals who find themselves with pastoral care for people upon whom their encounter with the Brethren has had a profound psychological impact.