Book review: 'In the Days of Rain' by Rebecca Stott

By Phynnodderee

Prowling round the religion section at my local library, I came across this book by a former member of the Exclusive Brethren and was instantly curious, as I wondered if this group had any similarities to the Christadelphians. I devoured it that evening in a single sitting.

The author

Rebecca Stott was brought up in the fundamentalist Protestant sect known as the Exclusive Brethren, in Britain, in the 1960s and 70s. Her family left the sect after a scandal involving its leader. She is now a novelist, historian and Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing.

The book

In the Days of Rain is the story of one family’s experience in the Exclusive Brethren, how they came to leave the group and how they adapted to an outside world they had always been told was ruled by Satan. Rebecca Stott wrote this book in fulfilment of a promise to her dying father, who was desperate to complete his memoirs but struggled to write about the most painful aspects of his past. Consequently, it is largely her father’s story, a sympathetic but unvarnished portrait of his life and also of their relationship. In telling this story she also provides a first-hand insight into the lives of Exclusive Brethren, the extremely strict rules imposed on them and the terrible consequences of this tight control.

For ex-Christadelphians, there is much that will be familiar here: breaking bread in sombre meeting rooms (known as Iron Rooms as they are usually constructed of corrugated iron), a rigid and ascetic approach to faith, having ‘the Truth’, the absence of clergy, male authority, an instilled fear of the outside world, a sense of superiority to outsiders, hats and headscarves, and puritanism – though most of these are more extreme in the Brethren than in any Christadelphian ecclesia I have heard of.

Like the Christadelphians, the Exclusive Brethren also have 19^th century origins and began with a desire to offload the unnecessary baggage and baubles of the established churches and return to a purer form of Christianity. Like the Christadelphians, they appear to have developed from an originally reforming sect to a rigid, controlling one – though the level of control is much, much higher. The main practical difference between the Exclusive Brethren and the Christadelphians is the fact that the Brethren have a single leader who dictates policy and must be obeyed, whereas Christadelphians have to muddle through by a kind of loose consensus process (which nonetheless is quite successful at imposing group cohesion through the suppression of dissent).

Stott investigates how her ancestors first became involved with the Brethren and gives a glimpse of the grinding Victorian poverty that provided such fertile ground for dissenting religious groups in 19^th century Britain, including the Christadelphians.

On a personal level I could very much identify with the author’s father, an “aesthete born amongst puritans”, with regard to his love of English literature – an aesthetic sensibility which sat uneasily with his austere faith. I too remember struggling with the dichotomy between my Christadelphian faith, in all its cold and rigid intellectualism, and the pleasure I took in the beauty of poetry and music.

The most shocking aspect of the community described by Stott – which apparently became much stricter with the installation of a new leader in the 1960s, who transformed it from ‘sect’ to ‘cult’ – is the suicides and murders brought about by the strict control and discipline of its members. As in Christadelphia, there are stories of broken families – but it’s all much, much worse. Loyalty to the leader comes before loyalty to family. One is left with the impression of lives hijacked and used without scruple.

The book provides a good example of how totalitarian systems work and raises the question of how far religious tolerance should go. Professionals such as teachers, doctors and lawyers who came into contact with Brethren glimpsed the wrongs in the community, but did nothing. Perhaps this leave-well-alone attitude has changed somewhat with the current awareness of the dangers of religious fundamentalism.

In the Days of Rain left me even more convinced of the importance of secular education, gender equality, freedom of speech and inquiry, and exposure to multiple points of view; the dangers of indoctrination and allowing one person too much power; and the superiority of believing the evidence of one’s own eyes and experience over unverifiable ‘revelation’.

Although the book gets off to a rather slow start (for one who is primarily interested in the sect itself), Rebecca Stott’s prose is compelling and readable and the story she tells is important and thought-provoking.

Notable quotes

Reflecting on the origins of the Brethren and revealing some parallels with Christadelphianism:

“There was something brave and bold, I thought, about these people refusing to kowtow to the Church authorities, rejecting the incense, the idolatry, the angels-on-a-pinhead High Church nonsense of it all... But the trouble is that if you persuade people that this world is a mere waiting room for the next, they’ll come to despise it; if you teach people to believe that Satan is using all of the people outside your Meeting Room to try to stop you from going up in the Rapture, they’ll come to think that all those people are tricksters and devils, or infected with evil; and if the promised Rapture doesn’t come, pretty soon they’ll become paranoid, impatient and obsessive, and they’ll be looking for ways to separate harder.” (pp46-47)

Quoting the words of her father on life in the 1940s and 50s; this will sound familiar to ex-Christadelphians:

“Life in the Brethren was a good way of life, provided you were prepared to accept the privations. Very few people came in from outside. We’d all grown up as Brethren. It was the only life we knew. Brethren looked after you and were supportive if people were in trouble. The idea of being out in the world was frightening. You had the feeling that if you went outside the Brethren there’d be no morals at all.” (pp127-128)

On moving on from high-commitment religion:

“There are counsellors now who specialise in treating ex-cult members after they’ve experienced long periods of mind control… They used to call this process ‘deprogramming’… I wouldn’t call it ‘deprogramming’, I’d call it ‘decompression’. We’d been a very long way down to the bottom of some kind of sea. There was no easy way back up without getting the bends.” (pp301-302)

Commenting on an Ingmar Bergman film watched with her father:

“…The priest stands looking out at the snow falling across the fields, his face lit up. This is all there is, Bergman seemed to be saying, just the light on the snow. But look how beautiful it is. We are too busy fretting about the next world to see this one in all its strange beauty.” (p357)