In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult

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A lovely, fascinating book, with a tremendous lead character and some powerful glimpses into the life of an idiosyncratic UK cult - I am actually staying at the writing residency where the beginning is set! In the process, Roger Stott lost his faith, and transferred his energy towards amateur dramatics and roulette. Because closed, rule-bound, discipline-focused totalist systems like the one we lived through made dissent virtually impossible. This should have been a fabulously interesting book, but was a deadly dull history of the Exclusive Brethren.

As the sect grew more separatist in the 1960s under extremist leader Jim Taylor Jr, interrogations, denouncements and excommunications (“witch hunts”) led to intimidation, broken families, PTSD, sexual exploitation, suicide and murder. Suffice it to say that it's sad that, in a world where autocrats like Vladimir Putin can run roughshod over his own countrymen and those of neighboring countries, some people willingly allow themselves and their loved ones to be treated in a similar way, i. Ask of Yahweh rain in the spring time, Yahweh who makes storm clouds, and he gives rain showers to everyone for the plants in the field.Even though it might not seem that light out, you’ll still get some exposure to UV rays, which can help regulate your body’s circadian rhythm and boost your mood. Rebecca was born into the sect, yet, as an intelligent, inquiring child she was always asking dangerous questions.

Like so much in the world that it affects to despise, The Exclusive Brethren has since undergone a PR rebranding. A marvelous, strange, terrifying book, somehow finding words both for the intensity of a childhood locked in a tyrannical secret world, and for the lifelong aftershocks of being liberated from it. Many of their practices reminded me of Scientology, based on memoirs like Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology and Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape. The book conveys a huge amount of information about Brethren and family history but never loses sight of what is most important: what it was actually like to be in a cult and have your life defined by its rules and its paranoia about the outside world.The Exclusive Brethren are a closed community who believe the world is ruled by Satan: non-sect books are banned; contact with non-Brethren is banned; troublemakers are expelled and their families forced to shun them or risk being expelled too; women are made to wear headscarves and not allowed to question the authority of their fathers and husbands and those who disobey the rules are punished by being 'shut up' (forced isolation) for weeks on end. She gradually grows to embrace her freedom, but her father finds it hard to fill the vacuum, becoming a gambling addict and criminal.