Almost Evangelicals: The Plymouth Brethren

https://deovicimundum.wordpress.com/2026/03/12/the-gospel-and-sacraments-a-visit-to-a-plymouth-brethren-assembly/

Immanuel offers some astute comments and helpful analysis with regard to the Brethren, their doctrines, ecclesiology, and soteriology. As I said to him, I am always torn by these groups. On the one hand there's so much that I appreciate about them or want to, and yet at the same time there are some glaring errors that seem to end up characterizing and dominating them, and one's experience among them.

Obviously there are problems with the Lutheran position mentioned in the piece - if in fact that Lutheran view is being accurately related, which I have my doubts.

The unique niche the Open Brethren inhabit also comes out in the narrative and commentary. They are on the one hand an exclusive and separatist group, but on the other hand (in many respects) and despite their idiosyncratic practices, they are simply put - Evangelicals. Historically this wouldn't have been the case but that's what they've become.

I am reminded of the Churches of Christ. They too administer the Supper every week but like the Brethren they treat it as an empty rite. It's strange though, because the Brethren certainly conduct their 'first' service with great reverence suggesting a higher view - but it's an illusion. The Stone-Campbell Churches of Christ revere baptism as sacramentally efficacious and yet treat the Supper as almost mundane and it is often seems rushed when I've attended their meetings - the administrators even partaking of it as they're walking down the aisle.

One might say these two camps demonstrate some of the problems (or rather potential problems) that arise with the employment of Biblicism - which they both claim. Such claims are well meaning and laudatory and yet they must be examined, and especially the epistemological and cultural context in which these groups were formed. It seems as if commitments are made that then define and haunt them for generations to come.

The Stone-Campbell movement is greatly affected and shaped by the Common Sense Realism so dominant in the days of their founding, and the Brethren are after all the authors of Dispensationalism, even though it is others who have pushed it with greater force into both politics and pop culture.

I suppose the great irony for me is that I will (and certainly have) attended both types of congregations while most confessional Reformed and Lutherans I know wouldn't dream of it and in many cases would consider these groups as heterodox. And though I embrace them (to some extent), they will not embrace me.

Of course I will also attend Reformed and Lutheran churches as well. All these groups are a mix of truth and error and while on the one hand readers and critics would probably condemn me for being so harsh and exacting, it is these groups that are most likely to denounce me and reckon my doctrines as falling outside the boundaries of acceptable orthodoxy.

I enjoyed reading Immanuel's account of the Brethren and heartily recommend it. We hold many views in common and thus the article particularly resonates with me.