About the author

I am very blessed to have been raised in a Christian family. Both my parents and siblings were seriously committed to Christ but throughout my formative years it appeared to me that they often equated this with commitment to the Exclusive Brethren. My father joined them as a young man seeking after deeper truth and a more biblical experience of the church following active affiliation with the Salvation Army, whereas my mother was born into an Exclusive Brethren family.

From my earliest memory I was taught a deep reverence for the Bible as being God’s infallible Word and in my younger years there were occasions when I benefited from some of the best gospel preaching and Bible teaching I have ever heard. Concurrently, and especially as the Exclusive Brethren moved further and further along a trajectory away from God’s truth, I saw serious contradictions enacted before me. I was perplexed by many wrong and cruel things being done in the name of the Lord. This was very distressing and highly confusing to me as a young person although I did not then realise the extent of the problem. Although themselves victims of the Exclusive Brethren system, those I trusted attributed these things to individuals rather than to the movement or the universal leader, in this way excusing and defending the movement and its highest leader.

I witnessed many disturbing events and lived through many sorrowful experiences. I witnessed marriages broken asunder because one spouse did not conform fully to the beliefs and the rules of the increasingly introspective Exclusive Brethren. I saw vulnerable people abandoned because they had the temerity to raise questions. I saw people I loved psychologically bludgeoned into submission. I saw people seriously damaged and then blamed for the consequential outworking of that damage as though it justified their mistreatment. I saw people with problems condemned and cruelly excluded from fellowship rather than helped with their problems.

It was not until later that I came to fully understand the wrong and cruel things that had been done against my family, as well as many others. So much so that it seems as though virtually everyone in the local church had suffered hurt at some stage. The wrong actions were based on reasoned but distorted interpretations of Scripture and the abuse of authority which created a very tangled web indeed.

There were also good times, for which I am truly very thankful, with opportunity to participate in bible study discussion etc. particularly when in my teens. The good gave apparent credence to the sect and made it more difficult to see the creeping deception and understand the incremental abuses.

Over the years I agonised about much that was clearly wrong. I was periodically conflicted: my inner spirit was troubled over things that were not right but I saw no solution. My family shared this disquiet but frequently blamed secondary causes, especially particular individuals and misrepresentations, rather than the system. Unknowingly, I was being assailed by ruling religious spirits of fear and deception and I imbibed the Exclusive Brethren teaching that notwithstanding the turbulence, stresses and problems, they were nevertheless the most right of all Christians.

As a young man I became deeply impacted by Paul’s words: “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”.1 I prayed that I would become such a person, in character a son of God, not tossed around by the opinions of men but led by the Spirit of God. I thrilled to the fact that this was an option God offered to me. I could be a ‘son of God’ living in the practical reality of being led by His Spirit. As I look back I believe that God implanted that desire and heard that prayer.

Eventually, I decided to put to the test the notion that it was local individuals who were at fault rather than the system. I wrote to the universal leader as to my concerns relating to activities in the local church and the behaviour of individuals claiming to be acting with his authority. Things quickly unravelled from there.

After some very stormy years, finally at age 32, I was ‘withdrawn from’ (that is, Exclusive Brethren terminology for being excommunicated) together with my dear wife, Anne, who was a very great strength to me, because we both refused to trust ‘implicitly’ in the universal leader of the Exclusive Brethren: we refused to give him the place of unquestioned authority and unconditional trust he demanded reserving them for only one man, Jesus Christ.

We were totally cut off from family, friends and lifelong acquaintances. We were put “outside the camp”2 as having active leprosy (sin). We were rejected as unfit for any Christian fellowship and told that God would no longer hear our prayers.

The experience was like that of the man born blind but healed by Jesus who said:

“One thing I know: that though I was born blind, now I see”.3

As he held to that “one thing” more revelation came to him. At that time, we did not have very clear understanding as to how far away from God’s truth the Exclusive Brethren had progressively strayed, but as we stood true to what we did know, more and more truth was revealed to us.

 

The Author


Ken Butcher

The Church – What On Earth Is It ?