The Plymouth Brethren

Movement·Founded 1827 CE·Unknowable by design. The Open Brethren keep no central roll — assemblies are autonomous and many list themselves as no more than a Gospel Hall — and the various Exclusive connexions publish nothing except the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, which reports just over 55,000. Estimates for the whole movement run to well over a million worldwide, heavily weighted toward India, Africa and Latin America, and none of them is from a source that counts.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The Plymouth Brethren → 1 branch

Branch
Story of The Plymouth Brethren

Bethesda, 1848 — the division that ended the unity project.

Benjamin Newton's errors about Christ at Plymouth were the trigger; Bethesda Chapel in Bristol, under George Muller, received two men from Plymouth after satisfying itself they held nothing wrong. Darby issued a circular refusing fellowship with Bethesda and with anyone receiving from it, and the movement has been in two pieces ever since.

Where it is toldBrethren histories on both sides, which do not agree
Who appearsJ. N. Darby; George Muller and Henry Craik at Bethesda; Benjamin Wills Newton
What it teachesThat the movement against division divided in twenty years
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The 1848 division is the movement's permanent scar. Benjamin Wills Newton, the leading teacher at Plymouth, was found in 1847 to have taught that Christ, as a man born under the law, stood under God's judgement on Israel in a way that touched his person; Newton retracted, but the assembly at Plymouth had already been broken up by Darby. When two men from Plymouth applied to break bread at Bethesda Chapel in Bristol, where George Muller and Henry Craik led, Bethesda examined them, found they held nothing wrong, and received them. Darby issued the Bethesda Circular in August 1848 declaring that any assembly receiving from Bethesda was itself out of fellowship. Muller and Darby, who had been friends, did not speak again for decades. Muller went on to run orphanages in Bristol that cared for more than ten thousand children without soliciting funds, on principle; his side of the movement became the Open Brethren, and the missionary sending that flowed from it — Anthony Norris Groves to Baghdad and India, and hundreds after him — is the Brethren's largest positive footprint in the world.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The Yellow Turbans. Taoism Read it in full →
The vultures are gone. Zoroastrianism · community Go deeper →
Guard the tongue and the brothers. The Druze Faith · precept Go deeper →
The Great Crisis — when the community expelled most of itself. The Bruderhof · community Go deeper →
A changed heart and a disciplined church — neither alone. The Brethren in Christ · core tenet Go deeper →
The doorway, the tulsi, and the kitchen. Hinduism · rite Go deeper →

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