Last week, I met up with two members of the Plymouth Brethren, who came to talk to me about their religion. They are currently involved in a struggle with the Charity Commission to prove that their charities and meeting halls provide a public benefit, and were keen to show their usefulness to the community at large.
I don’t propose to repeat all their rules, which I wrote about here but I will say I found them absolutely fascinating.
I’m an atheist, and as a result, I think everything the brethren believe is untrue. But I found myself thinking that the brethren’s way of living was also extremely effective as a means of achieving the things people prize – security, wealth and happiness.
The religion seems to offer unshakeable certainty of purpose, while the closeness of their culture offers huge peer support. There is a ready-made structure that picks up anyone who falls down.
“Brethren businesses don’t go bust,” I was told. “There are no homeless brethren”. And “We will always look after our own”. If a brethren gets married, they’re bought a house. If one starts a business, he gets a loan.
But of course, I’ve seen only what the brethren want to show me. And I still have misgivings, not least about the strictness of their rules: no TV, no radio, limited contact with outsiders, separate roles for men and women. For a square peg, I think life could be very difficult indeed.
And you either follow their rules or you’re shown the door. And that puts enormous strain on someone who loses their faith or wants a lifestyle outside the rules, because they lose with it their family, their friends, and a livelihood working in a brethren business.
It is in part the strictness of these rules, with their strictures against mixing with unbelievers, which has led the commission to question whether the brethren’s religious services offer a public benefit.
But you can’t say that someone doesn’t offer a public benefit because you think they’re odd. And while the brethren don’t seem to go out of their way to advertise their services, nor do they appear to limit access more than many other religious groups. Nor, for that matter, are their rules more exclusive than charities for, say, Somalian families or the transgender community.
Bernard Jenkin, chair of the public administration select committee, has suggested that the commission has put this case forward because it wants to test the law on religions following the Charities Act 2006 – which, if it’s the case, seems unfair on brethren left fighting tooth and nail to protect their meeting halls – which they say is held as charitable property and which they fear would be given to another faith group if they lost their appeal.