I had thought I had left all this stuff behind, but I have had a reminder of a key part of brethrenism. Pause for swooping strings and a drum roll ... it's the Aberdeen issue!
Apparently some people think that ferreting out undeniable facts about this historical affair is the best hope of bringing the EB edifice crashing down. They may be right, and logic would say they are, but something doesn't feel too promising to me. It has taken a bit of thought to see why.
After all, it is true that the morality of the brethren's leaders is all-important. From the early days of brethrenism, when the key doctrine that led to their existence was that clergy were an offence to God, a key has come to be that the perfectibility of Mankind is proved at all times by the perfection of one man on Earth - who of course must be in the only perfect position. And that person comes to be leader by mysterious means that can only be traced back to God's ways. So, for brethren, all morality can be tested against an easily-seen marker, and the compulsory progress towards God's plan for them is measured the same way. After all, the reasoning goes, God couldn't be satisfied with less than perfection, and wouldn't be so unreasonable as to ask for the impossible, so the result must be there to see for the enlightened.
So it seems equally reasonable to suppose that if that perfection could be proved to be illusory or, better, totally fake, the foundations of the brethren's thought would so weakened as to be unable to support what has grown up on them.
There's no doubt that, on the face of it, James Taylor Jr is an easy target for such an effort. I recall listening to a set of recordings of meetings late on in his life with increasing discomfort and distaste. He rambled and slurred, and spouted such self-centred content-free verbiage that I was embarrassed on his behalf, and thought it would be a good thing for everybody if such recordings were kept under lock and key to preserve his good memory. That's without considering the many people who claim to have firm proof of activities up to and including adultery, culminating in scandal at Aberdeen in 1970.
Yet there is a big problem, and that is that the whole affair has moved beyond facts and history for the brethren and become a matter of ideology.
All brethren are brought up from birth with the assumption that their leaders are and have been pure. For example, even as I was cringing at what I heard on those ancient recordings, I could see looks of admiration all around me as though everybody else was hearing something entirely different. If you start with the assumption that a man is God's example to us all, then anything and everything can be twisted to fit that narrative. My companions were spellbound by the genius of the man in skilfully leading the ignorant astray so that only God's elect could see his true worth. I think everybody has had enough practice in mental contortions that there isn't a fact that they couldn't make fit somehow.
But more to the point, all brethren consider the whole affair to be among the top dividing lines between the sheep and the goats. That's the brilliant thing about it from their point of view. If somebody provides "facts" that reflect badly on JTjr, that's all you need to know - they're on the wrong side and you mustn't listen. So those facts won't get very far because they're greeted with instant deafness.
What's more, I have many times heard ex-brethren disparaged just because they can't move on from the issue: the feeling is "is that all they've got to harp on about?" So that combination - indifference, closed minds and sense of superiority - makes the job harder than it first appears. Some may think it's merely a tricky lock to pick, and worth a lot of effort if it provides a way in, but I suspect it's more like trying to pick a concrete wall.
Still, I'll watch with interest in case I'm proved wrong.
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10 comments:
Interesting thoughts. When I recently asked a leaver of some years back what opinion they held of JTjr (naturally expecting them to have a more informed viewpoint) the bristles stood firmly on end and I was told " We won't go there, he was a pure man."
One would naturally assume someone who has left would have accepted the Aberdeen evidence, but such an entrenched mindset indicates a very big hurdle in convincing those those still in.
I had a similar experience when I mentioned 'Aberdeen' to a small group of brethren. The first question was 'were you there?', as if should my information be second-hand it was suspect.
I think it is human nature to look for things that bolster a favored point of view and to look for weaknesses in arguments against that point of view. I see it all the time when people try to explain their political inclinations. It takes a great deal of integrity to investigate contrary arguments and to be willing to accept the conclusions to which the evidence leads. That's what skeptics (and serious scientists) do and that is probably why so many 'religious' people speak so disparagingly about skeptics. Somehow clinging to a belief, even when it can be proved invalid, is seen as courageous, while the person who adapts to reality is seen as wishy-washy.
The negative side of such a belief system is when the old teachings become inconvenient, as with computers. Jim Symington thought hexadecimal numbers were the sign of the devil, but who hears that argument these days? It reminds me of the line from the "Wizard of Oz"; "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."
The sexual abuse of a child, a young person or an adult is a criminal offence which is detested by most people.
I'm a bit puzzled by the leap of logic from the content of the posting to the last comment, but I can't argue with the statement.
It doesn't alter the central point, though - if two thoughts clash, a cherished belief and new information from someone known to be misguided or evil, which one is going to win the battle? What I am saying is that the Aberdeen affair has gone way beyond the point where facts can make a difference. What's more, I think the leap from God's chosen man to sexual abuser is too big for people to take in, and I don't think there's any proof sturdy enough to stand up to the sheer force of denial it would encounter within the brethren, however many others it convinced.
I have thought about this blog entry for several days. The ability to hold fast to a cherished belief in the face of any amount of contrary evidence has been discussed at length, not only in the context of cults, political systems and religions, but even in the context of science, notably by Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine. You can find their ideas on the subject discussed under the heading of underdetermination.
Duhem and Quine’s main point was that sheer dogged determination to stick to a belief or a disbelief in defiance of contrary evidence is usually possible without having to defy logic, because the contrary evidence can always be explained away in one way or another. The explanation that disposes of the evidence may be wildly implausible to most observers, but not totally impossible.
Partly for this reason, partly for psychological reasons, and partly from experience, I share Survivor’s view that facts and reasoning, operating on their own, have very little chance of subverting someone’s firm commitment to Exclusive Brethrenism.
By contrast, pragmatic and emotional considerations could do the trick, perhaps with facts and reasoning playing a part quite late in the subversive process.
Ignorance contributes to complacency too.
Explaining why the Brethren didn’t refer a recent case of child sexual abuse to the police, Albury (Australia) Exclusive Brethren leader, Chris Shore, said “I didn’t even know that was the way to proceed - we’d never heard of these child sex news cases before. Never ever”.
Ian puts the educated version of my thoughts! I'll look the detail up.
I must confess to ignorance myself, though, because I still can't see the specific relevance of sexual abuse to the posting. It feels like I've stumbled into somebody else's conversation having missed the start of it.
Survivors thoughts are always interesting to me for the intelligent analysis of Brethren attitude and mindset.
Anonymous 2 is correct to say that people find abuse detestable and the known events of Aberdeen have proved many would not and did not tolerate it.
Has Survivors thoughts been misconstrued? I didn't see reference to any current case, the discussion has been about Aberdeen. I don't believe Survivor has defended JTjr; merely offered thoughts and explanations about the ideology of the 'line of purity,' what it means to Brethren and how difficult it is to convince them otherwise.
Apologies, Survivor. In no way was I intending to imply that you were ignorant. Rather, I hoped that the Albury quotation would place my comment in the context of Brethren institutional ignorance of what constitutes sexual abuse.
A Brethren person said to me not long ago: “Mr Jim was a pure man. Everything he did was pure. If the women in the house [at Aberdeen] didn’t like the way he treated them, it was their fault. To him all things were pure”.
Brethren Aberdeen ideology takes no account of the victims, and that is light years away from the teaching of the Old Testament prophets and of Jesus.
The late Mr Darby is a prime example of underdeterminism, only he called it Dispensationalism. Loosly defined, it is the practice of inventing new ways of interpreting the Holy Writ to account for what would otherwise be contradictions.
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