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Gathering to His Name: The Story of Open Brethren in Britain and Ireland. By Tim Grass. Studies in Evangelical History and Thought. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2006. xx + 593 pp. £29.95; $49.99 paper.
This nicely written and detailed survey of Open Brethren history from its beginnings in the late 1820s to the present is sympathetic enough to appeal to insiders, but also supplies balance, critical analysis, and solid scholarship. Noting that Brethren were a part of a significant and growing evangelical movement in the early nineteenth century, Grass characterizes them as radicals for whom even most other seceders from the Anglican Church seemed too worldly. After sketching the early leaders around whom the sect coalesced and analyzing the great division between Exclusive and Open Brethren in the late 1840s, the author presents mainly the history of the latter in three additional eras, whose story he tells in topically organized chapters.
Grass first analyzes the period of growth and identity clarification, 18501914, in which the movement generally maintained a definite separation from the surrounding world. He then turns to the next era concluding at the end of World War II, during which these Brethren shared in the pessimism of the fundamentalist movement, but edged toward greater participation in the political arena. Since 1945, Open Brethren have reduced their distance from other evangelicals, but since the 1960s they have been less fruitful evangelistically in an era of secularism and prosperity. Polarization has intensified conservatives who maintain distinctiveness even at the expense of...