Talk:Brethren

Untitled
Is it appropriate to include the text of the "Brethren Card" here? Is it available for Fair Use? RickK 03:02 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Except in gnostic groups (which the Brethren are most emphatically not), a statement of faith is intended by virtue of its purpose to be public information, and redistribution is permitted (even, encouraged). I know that this is the view of the FGBC and CGBCI groups (and if it is wanted I can easily lay my hands on a statement of faith from either of those groups). Barring any objection from the Church of the Brethren, which seems very unlikely, I wouldn't worry about it. Additionally, I am almost sure that the included Brethren Card predates modern copyright law. --jonadab

I think it would be good to make this a more generic article about the various Brethren denominations, and merge most of the specific information on the history & beliefs of Alexander Mack and his followers into the Schwarzenau Brethren topic. I will do that in a few days if no one objects. Please give me any opinions you might have on this. Thanks. Rlvaughn 06:38, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * Seeing comments neither pro nor con, I have rearranged this article as mentioned above. I am moving the "Brethren Card" info to the Schwarzenau Brethren topic. - Rlvaughn 20:46, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * I think this was a good idea, and in fact I think it would be good to go further. This article could usefully be a short general index article about the tradition of churches called 'Brethren', with slightly less information here about the Schwarzenau Brethren, and slightly more on the principal other churches such as Moravian Brethren, Plymouth Brethren, etc. Myopic Bookworm 23:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

The Brethren
The article The Brethren is about a book by John Grisham. It has one link from this article, about a US group founded in 1966. I have created The Brethren (disambiguation) to separate the Grisham book from another book and from The Brethren (cult). Perhaps an article should be created about the 1966 group as well, by someone with knowledge about the group. I'm not sure what the article should be named, though, as The Brethren is alrady taken. But if someone creates the article, please add a link to it at The Brethren (disambiguation). (Entheta 11:50, 10 May 2006 (UTC))

External link cleanup
The external link section is becoming excessive for this article. There are dupiclates of preferable internal links, blogs, forums and other items specifically discouraged by WP:EL. I think the easiest would be to remove the whole section and start fresh, evaluating additions against MOS:L and WP:EL for possible inclusion. Other thoughts? JonHarder 00:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Paragraph removed
The following paragraph, added here, is not sourced and could not be confirmed by me. Please restore if it turns out to be correct.
 * The Brethren, a Central U.S. group founded in 1966 as an iconoclastic response to the Vietnam War and to question the burgeoning feminist movement. Members are now active from coast to coast and in Canada.  All members are college educated.  Most marry, have children, and pursue lives which express fundamental gender differences, as researched by Simon Baron-Cohen.

Maybe this is a really convoluted, misleading and false reference to The Brethren (cult); in any event, Baron-Cohen does not seem to be involved at all. AxelBoldt 00:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, Baron-Cohen (Simon, not Sacha!) is a pretty reliable source, and founding in 1966 is not 1971; don't rule out follow-up research. But the 2-edit IP contributor, the accompanying URL (presently an ad for an alarmist book), and a careful reading of the Baron-Cohen sentence ( reserached researched diffs, not group?) are discouraging. --Jerzy•t 23:49, 3 & 01:41, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

What a mess!
I did an edit that fixed some of the fundamental affronts to WP's purpose and style, but it needs more serious work. Much of that work is related to the clear differences among the kinds of pages in the main namespace: I'm aware of these needs: (BTW, while coverage should not be mathematically proportional mathematically proportional to notability, significantly more coverage requires significantly more notability, and membership of denominations is an important contributing factor to notability. So such a table on the talk page summarizing membership estimates could also make it easier at least to motivate editors to work on the most important parts of this topic jumble of topics.) --Jerzy•t 23:49, 3 & 02:27, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Rdrs provide navigation where multiple names apply to the same topic;
 * 2) Dabs provide navigation where separate topics share the same name;
 * 3) each Article deals with a single topic, e.g.,
 * 4) facts that are part of a single network of cause and effect, or
 * 5) phenomena that are dealt with by methods more similar among them than the methods for dealing with phenomena left outside the scope of the article.
 * 1) The 6 entries under "Other" are apparently related to the others only by being Protestant and using the word "brethren". They should move to Brethren (disambiguation) (unless Brethren becomes the Dab).
 * 2) The 2 entries under "Fundamental Bible Churches", until shown otherwise, are equally unrelated, and deserve the same. (If they have a common history, they at most should perhaps share a common heading in the same Dab. If they do belong together, then either
 * 3) "fundamental" is PoV, or
 * 4) it should be lk'd to Fundamentalism in which case that article may need a slight enhancement about earlier moves twd its early-20th-century heyday, or
 * 5) it should be lk'd to some article related to another historical focus on fundamentals.)
 * 6) Those plans help one focus on the biggest two problems:
 * 7) It's at least burdensome to reach a point where one can form a reasonable opinion about whether there is a contradiction between "The following [Anabaptist and/or Pietist] Brethren bodies are not related historically to the Schwarzenau groups descended from Alexander Mack." (the article and  "The  [ Schwarzenau] Brethren movement began as a melding of Pietist and Anabaptist ideas." (Ch of B'n)
 * 8) In either case, it's important to settle whether these two separately treated groups of denominations should be treated in one article (or article section), in two, or even in three (of which . My treatment of this is obnoxiously abstract -- bcz i have no grasp of the facts, just glimmers of the shape of the histories, which make it obvious the current treatment in Brethren is disastrous. (In the "three" case, two would focus on events in denominations of one group or the other, that insignificantly affected the other, and the third would be describe Interaction between Schwarzenau and Anabaptist/Pietist Brethren histories or /). A variation on that approach, if there are multiple periods of interaction, would be a single chronology covering both, divided into periods of isolation from each other, chronologically intermingled with periods of intense interaction. Each period of interaction would be an article or section; each period of isolation would be a pair of articles or sections, one on each group's history during the period of isolation. And of course you'd end up having to tweak that, e.g. backing up: "while the XYZ was taking place, QRS had begun", where one of XYZ and QRS affected only one of the two denominations and one affected both.)
 * 9) Once all that reaches at least a working approach, a decision will be needed about what topic should be covered by Brethren. FWIW, i'll be surprised unless the answer is "a dab" : either . A table on the talk page summarizing membership estimates is probably necessary to support any other claim -- -- even tho fertility in spawning significant offshoots also enters in. Actually, now that i think about it, could it be that this whole existing article is a product of a claim that coverage of the Schwarzenau Brethren is the overwhelmingly most notable sense of "Brethren", and counterclaims that that shortchanged the others? If so, 3.1 and 3.2 above may be crucial to have clarified, even more urgently on this page than in the articles.

Removed "See also"
A "see also" section, outside a Dab, is often a warning sign. In this case, we deserve for each lk an explanation on talk of why (I'm really not saying this just for the pleasure of the sarcasm, tho this pushes the limits of any obligation to be careful against deleting useful material.) These are the removed lks: --Jerzy•t 23:49, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) the following lks are necessary to an understanding of each of the denominations discussed here, and
 * 2) those lks can't be embedded (ever heard of the wiki concept?) in sentences on this page or pages about the individual denominations.
 * Christian anarchism
 * Peace church
 * Simple living


 * "A "see also" section, outside a Dab, is often a warning sign"


 * What? A see also section is perfectly normal. They're for links that should be added to the body of the article in future, or links that can't be included in said body but are still related. Richard001 (talk) 09:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

These links aren't appropriate for a disambiguation page; they are more fitting attached to a particular denomination page, or a grouping like Schwarzenau Brethren that is historically or theologically related, not a collection like this related only by having similar names. I support Jerzy. Sondra.kinsey (talk) 03:40, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Cleanup
I've been watching this article for a while and believe it needs a major cleanup. The material is quite confusing as it stands. Because "Brethren" can refer to numerous groups which are historically and doctrinally unrelated, I think that Brethren would best be a disambiguation page, with detail contained in separate specific articles. Tonicthebrown (talk) 03:11, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

An explanation of my recent revision: Prior to my revisions this article gave undue weight to the German Brethren. Unnecessary historical detail was given, that belongs in the main articles for these groups (see WP:CFORK). The third section "Other Brethren groups" was very disorganised and inaccurate. For example Anabaptist and Pietist bodies were grouped together even though these are historically unrelated (anabaptism was a 16th century movement, pietism was a 17th and 18th century movement). "Fundamental Bible Churches" is a strange and inaccurate characterisation of the Plymouth Brethren and the Social Brethren (which are unrelated).

My revision cleaned up all these issues. It grouped the bodies according to historical associations. Because "Brethren" refers to numerous disparate groups, it was not appropriate to weight the article disproportionately in favour of one single group. Please do not revert my work without providing adequate justification. Tonicthebrown (talk) 13:00, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Clean-up and dab I think that you are largely correct and I have no problem with your idea of cleaning up this page to make it a more reasonable disambiguation. My only issues are: 1.) there are still incoming links to this page and 2.) It has valuable material that needs to be incorporated into German Baptist or Schwarzenau Brethren rather than simply being deleted. I am reverting only for those purposes and once someone incorporates any relevant material into those articles and gets rid of incoming links to this page, I will happily support your attempt to make this a proper disambiguation page. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:35, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Justin, I will merge some of that material into appropriate articles as suggested so that it is not lost. Tonicthebrown (talk) 08:31, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, material relevant to the German Brethren has been merged to the appropriate article, and links relevant to Plymouth Brethren have been moved there. This article has now been replaced with a disambiguation page. I will have a look at the incoming links. Tonicthebrown (talk) 10:11, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

The Brethren - Loyalist Tory Uprising of North Carolina
Re: https://time.com/6101251/the-brethren-loyalist-tory-uprising/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

I came here to find out more but haven't identified a relevant page.

94.126.214.30 (talk) 05:57, 10 October 2021 (UTC)