Experiencing the Exclusive Brethren

In this talk, Rebecca Stott will tell of her family’s experiences within the Exclusive Brethren sect in the 1960s, and the decades-long aftermath of their breaking away.

Founded as an egalitarian dissenting group in Dublin in the 1830s, the Exclusive Brethren have since become the most reclusive and secretive of Britain’s puritan sects. They practice an extreme separation from the world, their lives controlled by hundreds of rules. The price of even mild non-compliance is expulsion, members shunned by everyone they have ever known.

In this talk, Rebecca Stott will tell of her family’s experiences within the sect in the 1960s, and the decades-long aftermath of their breaking away. She will use her family story to consider the psychology of cults and totalitarian systems and the effects on second and even third generation survivors.

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Rebecca Stott is a historian and novelist, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at UEA. She is the author of the novels Ghostwalk and The Coral Thief and two books on Darwin: Darwin’s Ghosts and Darwin and the Barnacle. Her recent memoir of living in the Brethren, In the Days of Rain, has just been published in America, Australia, Britain and is about to be translated into German. She lives in Norwich.

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