Rational View

Before I move on from this deep and depressing area of consideration, psychoanalysing the brethren mindset, it would be fair to ask the question "what should the outsider make of all this?"

In one way, brethren doctrine is a minority interest, a trivial issue hardly worth the mental energy to understand, and of little significance to the wider world. Yet the effects touch many people very deeply, so it isn't just academic. For that reason, I think it's worth the effort I've put into explaining how the brethren think, even at the risk of appearing to excuse it. I'd like, though, to point out that reaching an understanding doesn't mean approving of the thing so painfully understood.

It has been a fascinating experience, disentangling myself from the group. Some things have slipped easily from my mind, and I think the time has passed when I could write feelingly about them from a present perspective. Others have become more starkly clear.

For example, I have been convinced for a long time that the brethren, as a group, can be usefully seen as a kind of living entity with a mind of its own and - more to the point - its own will to survive. It looks even more like that from the outside. Against my better judgement, I said as much to some brethren. It was quite revealing that they didn't object to that view, but thought it was reasonable.

So the question of whether their focus on purity is a reason or a rationale for separation has a nuanced answer. The important thing is that the group survives, from their point of view, and they'll acknowledge that. If you ask why, you'll get the purity answer, and if you ask how, you'll get the separation answer. Viewed from the outside, I think the reality is that survival is an end in itself, but I also think that survival is only possible with a reason they can believe in, and purity serves that purpose.

Separation is also a necessity for survival. The Exclusive Brethren beast is a highly specialised one, adapted to an environment that doesn't exist except in theory. It's a bit like one of those children born with no immune system, and consequently has to live in a sealed bubble. Does anyone really believe that the group could continue to exist in a recogniseable form if they dismantled their wall of isolation? The system is so allergic to modern ideas and values that it would die of shock. That, too, they will themselves admit, although they prefer to think of it as the fragility of precious fine art than sickliness.

Viewed that way, it doesn't look like a coincidence that the brethren built the metaphorical walls around their community so much higher and thicker just as the western world was turning so decidedly against Victorian values. The more the outside world becomes accepting of differences, and ethics takes over from traditional morals, the more they must emphasise their difference, and the more the stakes must be raised, to ensure their survival.

Obviously, then, the brethren have a very definite cause to indoctrinate their members to believe that anything and anybody not specifically approved by the system is harmful and dangerous. The sheer number of things that could undermine confidence in their beliefs and way of life is so enormous that it's sensible to cover the outside world with a a blanket ban.

None of this has anything much to do with religion, let alone Christianity. I think of it as social engineering, as I've said before, and I told some brethren that. Individual lives are shaped for a wider purpose which is officially religious, but it works the same with or without religion. Odd groups with unjustifiable ideas will only thrive by promoting fear of alternatives.

So nobody should feel picked-upon because of the brethren's attitude to them. They cannot afford to understand or like outsiders, because that understanding would imply acceptance of an alternative way of life. And if there was an alternative, who of them would settle for the life they have? When they call non-brethren "unclean", they mean that their thought patterns are vulnerable to infection by humane sanity. Any of us should be proud to be unclean by that definition. Of course they will rail against perversion and immoraility, but it's rationality they fear most.

All this may mark me out as a pessimist. I don't believe the brethren can change as much as I'd like without falling apart, and I am too aware of the vast trauma that would cause to sincerely wish for it. But seeing the brethren's attitudes as a trap they've fallen into rather than a choice they've made does let me see them as pitiable rather than as enemies.