ABSTRACT
The Brethren concept of the church was built around a number of principles: the priesthood of all believers, liberty of ministry, diversity of gifts and the sovereignty of the Spirit. There were, however, a number of ways in which Brethren practice undercut these principles. It might be expected, given the radical way in which the Brethren stressed, in the words of J.L. Harris, the ‘equal nearness, equal liberty of access’ of all believers, that their practice would be democratic.91 In addition, it was maintained that judgement of a teacher’s doctrinal correctness should be made by the whole church. Groves went as far as to argue that in John’s Second Epistle it was a lady and her children who were to be the judges. He concluded, ‘we are all responsible – men, women and children – for the exercise of our judgment’.92 Yet the Brethren were politically conservative. In 1844 Darby replied with evident pleasure to a Swiss detractor, who felt that religious radicalism led to social and political radicalism, that it was being reported in England that the new movement was attracting the aristocracy by way of reaction to the extreme democracy of English Dissent.93 Darby disliked political democracy, deploring the effects of the 1832 Reform Bill,94 and other Brethren shared his aversion. Newton accused Dissenters of self-will which was seen ‘in the earnestness with which they contend[ed] for the democratic principle of elective and controlling power being vested in those who should be governed’.95 Groves, recalling the church to poverty, stressed that in doing so he did not want to join those who would strip the established church of its power and wealth and encourage the spirit of insubordination.96 What is perhaps surprising is that even after the mid-century revivals, when the Brethren became largely working and lowermiddle class, the disapproval of democracy continued. Mainstream Brethren opinion represented a nineteenth-century conservative counterculture, which in the movement also meant an intense social and political conservatism.
