What is the history of the Open Brethren movement?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 2003.

I am afraid that I myself cannot help you in this regard. I am an Englishman, and though I have been living in Northern Ireland now for over forty years, I have never delved into the history of the 'Open Brethren'.

I readily own my large debt to believers in what are generally known as 'Open Brethren', but do not regard myself as 'belonging' to a denomination that might rightly be called 'the Open Brethren'.

As I understand it, the origin in recent times of the so-called Brethren Movement was a protest against all denominationalism, and placed its emphasis on the autonomy of each assembly. In this, of course, it follows a very long historical tradition, which is in contrast to the tradition advocated by Cyprian and St. Augustine. The name 'brethren' has been chosen time and time again by believers down the centuries as a convenient shorthand to denote movements that have protested against the concept of a state church, and oftentimes it has been accompanied by an emphasis on the autonomy of each church.

All down the centuries, however, there has been a contrary movement that has argued for and concentrated on constructing denominational groups, great and small, with their accompanying centralist organizations. So, in Reformation times, the people known as Congregationalists were divided between those who wished to maintain the plain autonomy of each congregation, and those who wanted to join these autonomous congregations into an organized denomination.

In more recent times, I suppose from the 1950s onwards, there arose a similar movement, which the late great scholar F. F. Bruce encouraged, known as the Christian Brethren Research Fellowship (CBRF). It had the express intention of establishing what it regarded as the fact that the brethren churches were a denomination, and it used to organize conferences for those like-minded that attempted to establish and define what brethren doctrine was and should be.

In more recent years one has not heard very much about this organization. For all I know, it may have ceased to exist. I myself, on principle, was never a member of CBRF; and though there are many true and godly believers in Northern Ireland who hold different ecclesiastical views from mine, very few of them, as far as I know, would have any sympathy with the aims and objectives of CBRF.

Yours sincerely,