A Feather in the Fog: One Woman's Escape from the Exclusive Brethren

By Pennie Wood

This biography examines The Exclusive Brethren (aka Plymouth Brethren), a cult religion that originated in England and Ireland around 1828, eventually spreading to nineteen countries with the largest populations in Australia, New Zealand, North America, and the United Kingdom.

 

Exclusive Brethren believe they are the chosen people who will go to heaven.  All others are  deemed unclean and live as contaminated Worldlies. The leader of the Brethren, The Man of God, is the supreme authority who maintains an incorrigible stranglehold over all areas of the members' lives including who to marry, where to live, and how to earn money.  Challenging the Man of God results in having children taken from parents and total ex-communication from the cult.   

 

Despite daily conditioning from birth, uncompromising rules, and abuse, one woman has the temerity to escape—fully aware of the foredoomed misery she will experience on the Outside.  This book follows her from birth to adulthood, portraying her escape and living on the Outside, near Portland, Oregon.  She experiences clashing, paradoxical feelings of joy associated with her newly discovered freedom only to battle obsessive urges to return to the cult from which she bravely fled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pennie Wood
• Release date: Oct 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223445517

Book preview

PROLOGUE

October, 2001

The plan had been something to cleave to. It had served as an invisible friend who walked beside her like a coach, and it confidently whispered encouragement in her ear and intimately shushed her paranoid thoughts. It continued working out details through the subconscious night shift while she slept. The plan promised escape one day, despite the fact that her first attempt had failed.

The twenty-three-year-old woman was woefully ignorant of the Outside world, yet she knew she would leave everyone and everything she had known since birth, and she was willing to pay the ultimate price: never seeing her loved ones again. Though she could not yet give it a name, there was something out there she had to find. It was waiting for her, mysterious and beckoning, with power overriding all her reasons for staying. Seven of those reasons were her precious younger siblings—Martha, Brian, Kyle, Jack, Tyler, Abby, and Harris.

This was the day she finalized her preparations. Tomorrow, she would go. The window for escape was opening, but she needed to act swiftly.

It was a warm, muggy Wednesday evening, and she was alone in the massive house. Her father, mother, and seven siblings were in the brick windowless building next door attending Meeting. She had darted out of Meeting just a few minutes earlier, knowing that her family would linger, casually engaging in conversation with other members, and a few stolen minutes would allow her to get the car loaded. She had run back to the house, sprinted upstairs, and grabbed the shopping bags (suitcases would have been too obvious) she had packed with essentials and had hidden in her bedroom. Had anyone noticed yet that she wasn’t in the Meeting Room? Her heart was rolling inside her chest like a bowling ball. Within minutes, her family would drift back over to the home and start placing the evening meal on the table. And there was a strong likelihood they would be bringing guests with them.

She heard voices outside. She hated to waste the time, but she slid over to the open bedroom window for a few seconds and glanced down at the adjacent Meeting building. People were spilling out into the yard now. She saw Sisters clustered in groups, politely fanning their faces for relief from the warmth, and she saw children beginning to stretch and move after enduring the lengthy time sitting in Meeting. Oh, Dear God! Let me get my things to the car before they get back to the house.

She snatched up as many bags as she could clutch and pushed herself down the stairs, nearly falling at the bottom when she missed the last step. Down another set of stairs, through the basement and out the sliding glass door to her partially loaded 1984 Mercedes was parked in the driveway, trunk lid up. Years later she would describe how hard she had fought to purchase the car with her own cash and how much ridicule her father had received from other members for having a daughter who thumbed her nose at them by boldly driving the ostentatious, disgraceful machine.

As she placed the bulging shopping bags into the trunk, she marked up a checklist in her mind. Clothes. Underwear, one coat, shoes, some clothes including the pants that everybody is clueless about. Photos. I won’t leave without a few photos of my friends and family. Paper with Alice’s phone number. I dug through Mom’s drawer and found a piece of paper with a phone number next to the name Alice. I hope I can find her one day on the Outside. Grandma Clark’s antique hairpins and watch. Screw it! I’m taking these little pieces of Grandma Clark with me. I know they’re just things, but they will be my only connection to her. Bank information and cash. Thank God for the past years of Y2K hysteria and the order from the Man of God for Members to take all their money out of banks and stash it in our home safes. When I asked Dad to open the safe so I could put more of my cash earnings into my envelope, he thought I was putting money in when I was actually taking my whole envelope out. He didn’t even notice me sliding the fat envelope of cash up my sleeve. Seven thousand dollars!

Jennifer?

She pivoted and came face-to-face with her best friend, and younger sister by only fourteen months, Martha. Apparently, her sister was the first of the family to walk back to the house, and this meant she was out of time for packing the car. She followed her sister’s eyes as they looked down into the open trunk, widening as they registered the significance of the bags in the car.

Without spoken words, the two sisters talked to each other through their tear-filled eyes. You’re leaving? She blinked hard once. Fat tears fell down her cheeks.

Yes.

Why?

I have to. I can’t live like this.

I’ll never see you again.

I love you so much. I’ll never forget you, Martha.

I’m so proud of you, but how will I live without you?

She could see the conflicting emotions swirl together in her younger sister like gasoline and honey. In later years, she would reveal that this was the moment she almost aborted the plan. Almost ran in to the house and told Martha that she changed her mind. Everything would be the same. Please, please don’t be sad. She watched her sister’s back as she turned and walked into the house like she was walking to a funeral.

As the remaining family members filed into the yard and then into the house, she recovered her wits and acted like she was actually cleaning out her car. She pulled out some of the bags she had just placed in the car, pretending they were bags of trash. While Mother got the evening meal on the table and the huge family seated, the bags continued to go up and down the stairs until everything was in the right place.

Jennifer took her seat at the dinner table and continued her performance by pretending to eat. Her insides were tense; there was no room for food. She and Martha looked at each other a few times and then quickly broke off the stare, each terrified of revealing something to their parents.

After an eternity had passed and she migrated to her own bedroom on the upper floor where her brothers were not allowed—all boys remained on the bottom floor—she changed into a tank top and men’s boxer shorts that she wasn’t allowed to be seen in outside of her bedroom. She brushed her teeth and then took a seat on her bed, back supported by the wall at the head of the bed, knees pulled up forming a desktop with the tops of her bare thighs. She placed a tablet of blank paper on her legs, a pen in her mouth. She was about to write her goodbye letter to her parents. So much to say. Where to begin? How does one truly say goodbye on a piece of paper to parents, siblings, and home, knowing they would be gone beginning the next day. Gone forever! It was absolutely surreal that she had made the decision to vanish. As she reviewed the plan in her mind, rays of doubt burned in through her skull. Nausea percolated in her stomach. She shivered. Was she hot or cold? Probably hot. The bedroom window was still open. A headache started up. Could she really pull this thing off? She had a million reasons to change her mind. She grasped the pen and began writing.

Dear Mom and Dad…she stopped writing and looked around her bedroom, everything vintage, items picked up from antique stores and secondhand stores, stacks and stacks of photographs on the bare floor, candles placed on all open surfaces, a few close friends’ faces in frames, the one trash can, all surrounding her like a threadbare comforter. This was the only place she had had any authority. The only place she made decisions. The room held her forbidden treasures in cleverly disguised hiding places. Her pants, her CD player, the magazines that had been mailed to her secret post office box, her precious, personally autographed firefighter calendar. I’m so very sorry, but I can’t do this anymore. I cannot live here with you. I’m done. I have to go see what you don’t want me to see. You have to let me go!! She looked down at the floor and stared at the leaf-shaped, odd-looking rug from the Pottery Barn. She knew she would miss that stupid rug. Words cannot express how much I love all of you, and I will miss you so much. But I will not hang around and cause you to be Shut Up and have my little brothers and sisters all sent away to live with other people because of me! Especially the poor babies! Her tears dripped from her chin and splashed on the page, so she brushed them away with the bottom of her open hand, immediately smearing ink. After three more pages of writing and smearing, she ended the letter. I love you. Goodbye. Jenny.

Sleep would not come that night. She sat until morning, hugging her legs. Her lack of appetite or the whole week leading up to this night had stripped away about eight pounds from her body. She felt small and afraid. Thoughts of how her father would be treated when the leaders heard that he had lost control of his daughter sickened her.

Morning. When the metronome of Exclusive Brethren life started beating again with the early morning light, she rose from her bed, tucked the goodbye letter under her pillow, and dressed like she would for any typical day at work. As per her plan, she would dress for work, prepare for work, and then leave the house at the time she normally left for work. Only this time, she would not drive to work. She would drive straight to where Sean was waiting for her.

She looked at herself in the full-length mirror. A rumble of excitement coursed through her mind. Today was the last time she would dress in the Comely way that was required of her. The long skirt. The proper headscarf. The itchy, hot stockings. After she left the house for the last time, she would find a place where she could strip off this uniform and put on the Worldly clothes she had packed in the car. Leaving her collection of over five hundred scarves and her wardrobe of prairie-woman skirts behind would mean leaving a version of herself behind. A brand-new woman would enter the world because she would be wearing Worldly clothing. She would look like regular people in the regular world for the first time in her life!

As she exited her bedroom door, she turned back briefly and took one last look. It’s okay. Just keep moving.

The main floor. Mother was efficiently moving about in the kitchen, starting breakfast for the huge family. Father had left the house much earlier for work. As her oldest child entered the kitchen to put together a typical lunch for a typical day at work, the telephone rang.

Hello? Yes, hold on, please. It’s for you. Mother stretched the phone out toward her oldest daughter.

Who in the world could it be? Had somebody found out about the escape plan? Her heartbeat sped up. Hello?

It was Loretta, her boss at the produce farm. They needed extra help today, and could she bring along a couple of those hard-working siblings to help out? Just one day. Please?

Uh, no. Loretta. I can’t do that today. Why? Uh, because they’re still sleeping. She offered up every excuse she could think of that early morning, but finally Mother interrupted.

Go wake up Jack and Martha. Sounds like Loretta needs help, and they can go work.

Oh, Dear God! This cannot be happening. My plan is being destroyed! Okay, think, think. She needed to get out of the house and get to Sean. If she had to take two younger siblings with her…well, she could go to work, begin working, and then somehow take off from there, leaving the siblings behind. It was a gambit she would employ in order to avoid causing any suspicion.

She woke up Martha and young Jack, instructing them to quickly get dressed. They had to go to work with her today. Obediently and without questions, they complied. They had both worked for Loretta in the past, so they knew what to expect.

A quick goodbye to her mother who was busy cooking. Then she headed downstairs, with Martha and Jack following behind. She told the siblings to go get in the car. She would be there soon. She turned and entered Mother and Father’s bedroom where new baby Harris was sleeping peacefully in his crib. She whispered goodbye to him. Then, in another crib, Abby—a toddler who could have been her own as she cared for her and loved her so much—was also sleeping peacefully. Again, she came close to aborting her plan. Am I really walking away from this sweet angel? I’ll never see her grow up. A sob threatened to roar out her mouth. She clamped it down. She bent down to softly and silently kiss Abby on her chubby face. Then she hustled out the door. If she looked back at those babies, she knew she would change her mind.

She felt like she had been gutted while she drove the car for the twenty-minute drive to work. She was so close to escaping. Now she had to endure the pain of abandoning her two siblings at her workplace. How long would it take for them to become alarmed and call Mom or Dad? Would she have enough time to get to Sean before they sent out a search party? The last time she escaped, they found her and swiftly brought her back.

If only she could get to work without having an emotional breakdown. She must get to work, park the car, go with Jack and Martha, start working, and then somehow—at just the right time—sneak out to her car and get away fast! If she could just get to Sean, all her problems and all her misery would be vanquished.

But Sean did not know that she was about to land in his lap like a frightened kitten, expecting to remain there forever. Expecting him to keep her safe and hidden from the Exclusive Brethren members. They would begin searching for her as soon as they became aware of her escape.

CHAPTER 1

BORN INTO A CULT

Definition of cult: a particular form or system of religious worship; in reference to its external rites and ceremonies, devotion, or homage to a particular person or thing; now as paid by a body of professed adherents or admirers… Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Volume IV

Jennifer Doe was born in October of 1979, to parents, Paul and Janet Doe, at a downtown hospital in Portland, Oregon. Janet had labored for twenty-one hours before she met and held her first baby in a series of what would become a total of eight births, a respectable number of children for the Brethren.

Baby Jennifer’s membership into the Exclusive Brethren was granted immediately because of the simple fact that she was born. Any baby born to Exclusive Brethren parents, according to the Brethren beliefs, is an individual chosen by God to be a part of the only people on Earth who would be blessed by God, loved by God, admitted to Heaven, and ultimately the exclusive Assembly that would be personally escorted to Heaven by Jesus himself when the Rapture occurred. Everyone outside of the Exclusive Brethren is deemed to be likely on the pathway to Hell because of light vs. darkness; Exclusive Brethren believe it is a simple matter of light—the immeasurable advantage—over darkness that cloaks non-members.

The new cult baby was born in 1979—a fact that would fascinate Jennifer in her adult life when she would discover that 1978 was the year in which a world-famous cult was convinced to commit mass suicide by their leader, Jim Jones, in the Jonestown Massacre. Just one year before Jennifer’s birth, more than 900 people in the middle of a South American jungle willingly committed mass suicide by drinking a deadly concoction of a purple-colored drink including cyanide and tranquilizers. After bodies of the dead cult members carpeted the grounds of the radical church compound, Jim Jones killed himself with a gunshot to his head. After discovering and studying this news story, Jennifer would feel a visceral connection and curious empathy for the deceased Jim Jones’ cult members because of her own experience growing up in a brainwashing worldwide cult controlled by one man referred to as the Man of God.

The Man of God is the esteemed title for the world leader of the highly secretive and covert cult which calls itself the Exclusive Brethren. Since the inception of the Exclusive Brethren in approximately 1828, only seven men have held the title, Man of God:

John Nelson Darby, 1828 – 1882

Frederick E. Raven, 1882 – 1903

James Taylor Senior, 1903 – 1953

James Taylor Junior, 1953 – 1970

James Symington, 1970 – 1987

John Hales Senior, 1987 – 2002

Bruce Hales Junior, 2002 to present day

These leaders were neither elected nor appointed. Instead, prospective leaders would have already traveled the highway of natural progression to the top. A new Man of God would have served as a Locality Leader in his home community. Then he would have served an area larger than his home community. Next, perhaps he served as West Coast United States leader. Later, he likely led all the United States and Canada. Finally, if he felt called by God to assume the position of Man of God, and he had spent time traveling with the previous Man of God in his inner circle, the new Man of God would naturally assume the position. Once the new Man of God is in place, he can create any rules he wants for the Exclusive Brethren, and they must obey without question. The Man of God’s period of rule can end only because of death. Two of the Men of God were sons of Men of God. The Men of God have ruled from Ireland, England, the United States, and Australia. To question a Man of God is certain banishment from the cult, one’s family, and the only way of life the cult member has known. Jennifer’s paternal grandfather would ultimately suffer such a fate by challenging the particularly brutal Man of God, James Symington, a.k.a. Big Jim Symington, the pig farmer in Neche, North Dakota, U.S.A.

Shortly after Jennifer’s birth, her mother was given the devastating news that her new baby girl was blind. The doctor explained in standard, dry, matter-of-fact medical language that the forceps that had to be used to pull Jennifer into the world had, very unfortunately, damaged her eyes, and the parents should expect to raise a blind child. This news, to a mother who already held disdain for Worldly doctors, was sickening. Her suffering further deepened as she acknowledged that her child’s affliction was her punishment directly from God. After all, it had taken three whole years for her to become pregnant, and Brethren women are expected to produce babies as quickly as possible after marriage to please God. Janet held her blind baby on her lap and wept until the baby’s clothing was soaked with her tears while the immediate family mourned for the baby’s defect and again revered God’s power to make a point.

But in Paul and Janet’s early 1900s Craftsman home that stood on Portland’s 1,000-foot-high West Hills, an area that was built and developed by Portland’s affluent during the Victorian era, the toddler surprised her parents by reaching for items as if she really could see. No, it could not be! The doctors had told them that their child was blind. True, her eyes were not normal looking. She appeared to be cross-eyed at the minimum, totally blind according to doctors’ assessments. Yet Jennifer continued to demonstrate abilities to see as she sat, chubby legs spread wide for balance, on the cool hardwood floor of the kitchen playing with her mother’s collection of food storage containers and lids. The original lighting in the 1903 home was less than bright, and the dark colors in the home further dimmed the available light, but Jennifer would later recall blissful hours on the cold wood floor stacking and crashing the storage containers. After subsequent testing and diagnoses from doctors, it was pronounced that Jennifer had sight, but she would need to wear very thick corrective glasses for her lazy eye. The family had received a miracle: their obedience to the cult was further legitimized.

Fourteen months after Jennifer was born, her mother gave birth to a second baby girl, Martha. The two girls grew to be as different as sandpaper and velvet. Jennifer was blonde, pale-skinned, assertive, and wildly verbose while Martha was quiet and passive with silky dark hair and darker skin. At the time of birth, their mother had not appreciated the look of her second daughter, and she flatly declared that she was very different. Why in the world, she implored, did her baby have nearly black hair and high cheekbones? Had there been a mistake? Had the hospital staff handed her the wrong baby