Talk:Exclusive Brethren

Archive 2

Ideally I would have archived all the previous talk when I split the page into the Exclusive Brethren and the Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren. But I didn't, sorry about that. As there haven't been any significant changes on this talk page for a few months, I hope you won't mind that I've finally gotten around to splitting it. If you felt there was a raging debate on-going; you are welcome to continue it here, or revert my changes.

Jarich (talk) 09:16, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

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Just a passing comment - this article is quite inaccessible to a non-specialist reader. It is filled with terms that are not defined or explained, including "communion", "lord's table" and so on. I suggest that it would benefit at the least from an introduction that explains what sort of religion this is a splinter of, when, how & why it splintered and so on. Liam Proven (talk) 13:05, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Dear Liam,You can go to any of the links of brethren mentioned on main page to understand this. I believe Wiki is not concerned with explaining the religeon. I would suggest "Plymouth Brethren Faqs" edited by Abigail Shwan. M Dairy (talk) 12:30, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Unexplained removal of Referenced text

A large amount of referenced text (≈38%) was removed from this article on 20-21 January 2010 by anon IPs, (173.87.21.21, 86.176.222.47, as their only Wikipedia edits). This included the entire " 'Cult' accusations" & "Political activities" sections. See Diff.

It appears this was done without any Edit Summary or Talk Page discussion to explain it's deletion. ie. was it moved to the Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren article? (it appears not, though here is same/similar material placed/moved there much earlier-February 2008)

I am therefore WP:BOLDLY reverting these edits. Any objections please discuss on the talk page. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 11:21, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Controversies section

It is ludicrous to have the controversies section at the beginning as this only has reference to a subset of E(xclusive)B(rethren)s. It should be moved to the end to allow a shape of the whole movement to be built up. That will allow the controversies thing to be seen more in context. I am afraid that there is little objective material and the quantative statements as to who have more or fewer adherents is rather weak. I think the figure for the Taylorites is about right as it there is photographic evidence of every family in every locality or group of meetings to back this up. Gregory Morris, Penymynydd, Flintshire (talk) 10:33, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

POV Material

There seems to be a lot of POV material on here that sounds informal PR information, perhaps from a website. For example:

"Whilst the Brethren's teaching has been attacked by a vocal minority, the overwhelming evidence is that the group represents one of the most successful Christian groups with statistically insignificant incidences of family breakdowns."

Perhaps this should be fixed. Jaysonwhelpley (talk) 03:47, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Mess

The article is a mess, and needs massive clean up. The Article should be "very brief" and should avoid great details.

Couldn't agree more. Details, especially ones lacking references, only serve to muddy the waters in this difficult and potentially divisive topic. Dwandelt (talk) 15:56, 23 January 2012 (UTC) D. Wandelt

Despite the lengthy nature of this article it lacks many of the basic layman facts about the subject. I myself worked for the Closed Bretheren in Australia as a school teacher. I found this article almost misleading by omission. I am considering contributing but stuggling with POV vs facts I can confirm from direct observation. rhizopus 28/05/12 M. Nielsen —Preceding undated comment added 01:01, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Neutrality

How can we have a neutral article if exclusive Brethren don't let their members use the net? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.69.47.65 (talk)

Neutrality is gained by "representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources." (See WP:NPOV). Neutrality does not depend on members of the religion editing, or contributing to, the article. Please note that new comments go at the bottom of th page, not the top. BlackCab (talk) 01:52, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I am adding material from a French language research publication which should help NPOV. Feel free to provide a more accurate translation.Veritan (talk) 14:28, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

This article is under serious review at Wikipeebia, hope to have a full definition done soon. Please watch this space. Most of the revieed article will be written by leavers of the EB cult from 1950 to date. This will be the most unbiased review written on the EB to date. (WikiPeebia (talk) 15:00, 11 March 2013 (UTC))

Neutrality doesn't mean balancing "pro" and "anti" contributions. For WP it means getting reliable sources for what is written and should not include personal experiences (see WP:SOURCE). For much of exclusive brethren history these are not hard to come by: Neatby, Noel, Ironside etc. The problem with more recent happenings is that it's mostly newspaper sources and these are rarely objective, thorough or reliable. Even the attempt by Wilson at a more objective appraisal has its limits. One should remember that the Raven/Taylor/Hales faction only accounts for about half the exclusive brethren: there is a large group in Germany which seems to be almost as big but it's hard to get a lot of information about them (www.bruederbewegung.de is a good source). I'll be interested to see what wikipeebia.com produces, but peebs.net already has a lot of useful material (though it's down for maintenance at this moment). Chris55 (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Complaints dismissed

The references to Wilton Park School should be deleted from this article. Government agencies found that anonymous allegations made against the school were baseless and dismissed all complaints. See www.thirdsector.co.uk/Governance/article/1175581/county-council-police-dismiss-complaints-against-brethren-school/