OUR ORIGINS
Many people misunderstand the origins of the Open Brethren. They think of it as a conservative or fundamentalist movement. The key factors are described in Roy Coad's book: A history of the Brethren movement: its origins, its worldwide development and its significance for the present day,(Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1968) and in Harold Rowdon's work: The Origins of the Brethren (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1967) and most recently, in Timothy Stunt's important book: From Awakening to Secession: Radical Evangelicals in Switzerland and Britain, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000).
In the 1820s, little groups, (later called Brethren), began to emerge in England and Ireland with a Dublin group emerging about 1827. It is generally reckoned as the beginning, although the strongest support came from the West of England (hence 'Plymouth Brethren'). Members of the Open Brethren arrived in New Zealand as early as 1852. The year 2002 marks the 175th anniversary of the Open Brethren worldwide and the 150th anniversary of their arrival in New Zealand. The features of these groups were in some respects an intensification of existing movements. Thus the Brethren were:
Within this approach, the Brethren had several radical ideas.
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Evangelical
- they held to the great emphases of the Evangelical Revival, committed to the conversion of people, rejecting the notion of Christendom.
Protestant
- with a strong emphasis on the sufficiency of scripture, of scripture as the basis of church life and with a Calvinist approach to doctrine.
Anti-establishment
- rejecting the notion of a state-controlled church or one responsible to fulfil state ideas. It inherited the anabaptist tradition and were in some respects congregationalist in form, although they disliked the formality of the church structures of the Nonconformist church bodies.
Radical ideas about the church
They wanted its structure to be based upon the patterns of the early church and rejected ordained ministry and formal structure and yet unlike other radical groups they followed the New Testament in expecting that the Lord's Supper was the primary church gathering.
Radical ideas about discipleship
They put a huge emphasis on the lordship of Christ and the absolute claims he made over his followers. Thus, they became a large scale missionary force.
Radical ideas about God's purposes
Although there was more variety in views on the Lord's coming in those early years than we might have thought, they were united in an emphasis that Christ was returning to earth in person; that this world would not gradually become the kingdom of God but rather the return of Christ would radically disrupt this world; that Israel's future should be distinguished from that of the church and precisely because of this, the church should be separate from the world.