How did The Brethren get to Guatemala?

The Plymouth Brethren first set up shop in Guatemala in 1924, courtesy of Carlos William Kramer. Through sheer will, aggression and intimidation, he established and ruled over 100 Gospel Halls as his own personal fiefdom, until the arrival in 1953 of Gray E. Russell from New Zealand. 

Carlos William Kramer was the uncle of Francisco Villagrán Kramer, who became the Vice-President of Guatemala in 1978. He established more than one hundred Gospel Halls during a 30 year period and ruled them as his own fiefdom until the arrival from New Zealand of my father Gray Ewing Russell in 1953.

Investigation © J. Russell – March 27, 2016
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Known throughout Guatemala as the Kramerist Brethren, their practices, structure and theology are those of the Exclusive Brethren, particularly those of the Darbyite faction which refuse to have fellowship with anyone outside their own group and claim to be; “The sole representatives of the true Church of Christ”.

In Guatemala, they passed themselves off as Plymouth Brethren to the churches and assemblies that supported them financially in New Zealand, Britain, Canada and the US. No one was ever sent to check on what was really going on, as they did so diligently and viciously with Watchman Nee in China.

Carlos W. Kramer, was born in Guatemala on April 26, 1894, in the town of San Felipe, near the city of Quetzaltenango, close to the Mexican border. His father, Charles William Kramer was a devout Lutheran, who had been sent from Germany to construct and install the city’s first electricity service.

There he met and married Adelina Delfina Dorát Sandoval, a former Catholic nun from the town of Santa Ana in El Salvador, who became one of the first converts to Presbyterianism in Quetzaltenengo. They had 6 children, Magdalena (Magda), Carlos, Rigoberta (Berta), Mercedes (Meches), Guillermo (William) and Delfina.

Author’s Note; As a teenager, I was puzzled as to why the Brethren churches in Guatemala were so different to those I attended in the US, Canada and New Zealand. As a result, I decided to systematically research their founders, leaders, theological differences, splits, divisions, factions, scandals, vendettas and feuds, from their beginnings in the 1830s to the present day. Their 180 year story is extraordinary.

Someone who observed them first hand was Charles H. Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, who in 1869 wrote numerous hilarious comments about the Darbyites, as he called them; “To any earnest workers for Jesus who want to take ease without compunction, to shut their hearts and pockets to the cries of those who seek their compassion, to shirk the responsibilities God has laid upon them as Christian men and citizens, to shut up the genial sympathy they now feel to all who love the Savior, and to sneak into heaven without having a jewel to deck their crown — I would say join the Darbyites”.

Having been raised in the Brethren in Guatemala, when I retired to this country in 2005, I decided to write a factual History of the Brethren in Guatemala, as little had been documented about them, except for some anecdotes in obscure pamphlets, unflattering comments in documents belonging to other Evangelical groups and a small chapter in the History of Evangelical Work in Guatemala (Historia de la obra evangélica en Guatemala, Virgilio Zapata Arceyuz, 1982).

The glowing reports sent by the missionaries to their commending Assemblies back home about their glorious achievements in Guatemala, are less than credible and mostly downright lies, as their reports were set against the backdrop of the five Brethren missionaries who were blow-piped to death by the Auca Indians in Ecuador, in 1956.

Emotionally described by Elisabeth Elliot in; “Through Gates of Splendor”, her book became required reading for every Brethren on the planet. To those in the Assemblies back home, Guatemala was viewed the same as the jungles of Ecuador.

Having been raised to become the next Guatemalan Brethren Vessel of the Lord, I was in a unique position to document the facts from the inside, having been privy to most of the internal machinations and goings on, traveled constantly with my father to places in Guatemala that no foreigners would ever go to, and most importantly, I knew all the players personally, from the lowest peasant to the Vice-President.

Over the next six years, I conducted numerous formal interviews, gathered mountains of documents, visited many churches and recorded hours of anecdotal information. My own memories and observations were invaluable for this project, as I could weigh much of the research, against my own knowledge of the inner workings of the Brethren, as their headquarters were located in my home.

By 2011 I had completed my research and and wrote the “Secret files of the Brethren Cult in Guatemala 1924-1987” in Spanish, which took eight months and is self published. It has been reasonably successful with Believers, but of greater interest to academic researchers, looking for accurate historical data and the cult’s complicity in many of the country’s tumultuous political events of the period.

I recognize that some of my phrasing, may show some disdain for Brethren behavior in Guatemala, however, every effort has been made to present the facts objectively and accurately. The English language version of the book is now completed and this article is an edited extract of the chapter entitled; The conversion of Carlos W. Kramer. – John L. Russell. End of note.

Following the 1902 volcanic eruption and earthquake that all but destroyed the city of Quetzaltenango, all the European missionaries fled for their lives, never to return, but Adelina stayed on. A wealthy and very well respected woman, she personally paid for electricity to be installed in the church building and covered the salary of Anastasio Samayoa, whom she invited to become the Pastor of the first Presbyterian church in the city.

During his youth, when Carlos W. Kramer, Adelina’s oldest son decided to do something, he usually became obsessed with it and was certainly NOT a likely candidate to establish the Brethren in Guatemala. He constantly jeered at the church, the preachers and their religious teachings, refusing to be part of any of it.

However, just after turning 18 in 1912, he had a dramatic change of heart and was suddenly converted to Christ. Overnight, he began to study preaching and just like Saul’s conversion to Paul, soon had his first religious job as a Presbyterian Pastor in the small town of San Juan Ostuncalco just outside Quetzaltenango, but that didn’t last very long.

By 1914, Carlos W. Kramer had become a colporteur (a seller of Bibles) for the American Bible Society and the Presbyterians. Trekking on foot through the mountains, all the way from Guatemala to Panama, he was accompanied by his mule laden with Bibles, on one of his sojorns he suddenly met Alfred Hopkins, an eccentric English Brethren missionary, who lived like a hermit deep in the Guatemalan mountains of Huehuetenango.

Hopkins hated Catholics more than he hated Presbyterians, and as such, hated everybody and at the time, Guatemala’s 3 million inhabitants were 100% Catholic, with only a smattering of maybe three thousand Protestants sprinkled around the country, in total. In the firelight outside his shack and over many late nights, Hopkins convinced Kramer, that the Presbyterians had taught him a corrupted version of Christianity, second only to that of the Catholics.

In 1919, Kramer arrived in Venezuela, where he met 3 more eccentric English Brethren, John Lamb, George Frazer and James Ford in the city of Caracas. They baptized him (by immersion) and incorporated him into fellowship with full rights and for a time he regularly held services in Petare, Los Palos Grandes and Los Dos Caminos. Years later, the faithful in Venezuela would laud Kramer as a legendary man, for his spectacular achievements in Guatemala.

On his arrival back in Guatemala, Kramer met and soon fell under the influence of Dr. Clayton Forsythe-Secord, (1874-1955), an independent American Brethren born in Nebraska of Canadian parents, who had established a couple of small congregations in the back mountains of Totonicapán.

However, Forsythe-Secord was more interested in being the personal physician of the Dictator Manuel José Estrada Cabrera (1857-1924), one of Guatemala’s most notable despots who created Latin America’s first secret police, plundered the treasury, assassinated his opponents, built Greek Pantheons in most cities and introduced the cult of Minerva to Guatemala.

Forsythe-Secord, also had close links to the Pentecostal missionaries Thomas A. Pullin and C. Albert Hines, and to Charles Truman Furman (1876-1947) of the Primitive Methodists. However, in 1934, Furman had a fight with his church and decide in revenge to affiliated himself with the Church of God, taking 14 of the congregations with him. When Furman died in Guatemala, he was hailed as the Patriarch of the Churches of God with 80 churches and more than 3,000 members.

Based in the Guatemalan town of Chichicastenango, Forsythe-Secord soon became Kramer’s mentor and religious guru. Sitting at his feet, the young Kramer absorbed all his anarchistic and ultra-conservative theology, virulent anti-Catholicism, endless anti-clericalism and the stream of primitivist rhetoric, that spewed from his mouth. Next, Forsythe-Secord convinced Kramer that to be able preach the true word of God effectively, he needed to attend one of the Brethren’s indoctrination centers, in the USA.

Thinking this advice was wonderful, Kramer immediately traveled to the USA and enrolled in the Missionary Training School in Brooklyn, New York, operated by Richard Hill, a former Brethren missionary who had worked in Persia and Turkestan, which he had set up to teach Brethren missionaries how to preach a rabid Gospel.

Meanwhile, back in Guatemala in 1920, the country was fed up with Estrada Cabrera’s 28 year dictatorship, so the National Assembly (Congress) declared the dictator mentally incompetent, removed him from power and sent him to prison for the rest of his life.

As a result, Forsythe-Secord was immediately arrested, accused of espionage and spying for foreign powers and deported from Guatemala.(He most likely spied for the British, who were looking to collect the £1.7 million pounds they were owed by the Guatemalan State since 1847) 

Now leaderless, Forsythe-Secord’s followers then decided to join the Primitive Methodists, another group of unorthodox Evangelicals, who had similar ideas and beliefs, to those promoted by Forsythe-Secord.

Carlos W. Kramer, didn’t speak English very well, but at the Missionary School in the USA he like to have fun with the other students and specially liked singing at the top of his voice in Spanish.

When his neighbors complained to the Brooklyn Police, they told him to keep the noise down or at least try and sing more quietly. His behavior must have seduced fellow student Margaret (Peggy) Fleming, as he eventually married her.

Margaret (Peggy) Dalrymple Fleming was born in 1898 to George Fleming and Catherine Gourlay McLeod, who had emigrated from Scotland to the US when she was a child. She and Kramer had 4 children; Peggy who died at birth, Charles who became a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Hugh who worked for IBM (Latin America) during 45 years and Eleanor who died in 1937 when she was 4 years old.

Eleanor’s death, seriously affected Kramer’s beliefs and teachings, as he wrote about it at length in a special issue of his monthly doctrinal magazine, The Contender of the Faith (El Contendor por la Fé).

Having finished Missionary School in the US and now just 30 years of age, Kramer returned to Quetzaltenango in 1924 and immediately declared himself the first Vessel of the Lord in Guatemala. Yes the self appointed leaders in the Brethren cult are all known as “Vessels”.

Kramer had crystalized his beliefs as a result of the indoctrination he had received from Alfred Hopkins, Clayton Forsythe-Secord, John Lamb, George Frazer, James Ford and the Missionary School in the US and was now armed to the teeth with the Brethren theologies of; Dispensations, the Secret Rapture, Shunning, Christian Zionism, anti-Clericalism, anti-Heretics, anti-Catholicism and Exclusivity. He alone understood the Word of God and would interpret it from now on, as Guatemala’s only Vessel.

Within months of returning from the USA there was notimeto waste and Kramer had established his first church in Quetzaltenango with four ex-Presbyterian women, his mother, his sister Magdalena and himself. He now began to immediately issue various decrees, claiming that true Christianity forbade the use of labels, titles and rank. Kramer called his new church an assembly, and invited other people to come to his Gospel Hall.

As he saw it, he had won the theological lottery and was now ready to wage war against whomever, whatever, wherever and however. Nothing would stop him, from now on.

To Kramer, all other Evangelical groups immediately became his enemies and heretics. So, he went after them. First he publicly denounced Paul Burgess, the harmless Pastor and head of the Presbyterian Church in Quetzaltenango, as a heretic because of his teachings and declared him a mercenary for receiving a salary. He attacked their lack of full immersion baptism, lack of discipline in the church and accused them of being false prophets who had corrupted and altered the teachings of the New Testament. The Presbyterians unceremoniously, expelled him immediately.

The Presbyterians had other ideas about Kramer and began to call his followers Kramerists (Kramerístas, in Spanish), and declared that he had; “founded a cult based on his personality that was NOT a true church”. And, they were right.

The brawl was so public, that their nickname stuck and all Brethren in Guatemala, up to this day, are known as or referred to as Kramerists or the Kramerist Brethren (Hermanos Kramerístas).

Paul Burgess and his wife Dora, had arrived in Quetzaltenango as missionaries in 1913. They had translated the New Testament into the Quiché language, founded the magazine Evangelical News in 1915 and in 1940 and established the Quiché Bible Institute.

From the moment Kramer opened the doors of his new Gospel Hall, he became the Presbyterian’s worst nightmare, focusing his attacks on them without mercy. Adopting an aggressive and superior posture towards anyone who didn’t agree with him theologically, he was emulating John Nelson Darby, the founder of the Brethren, all over again, exactly as it had been in England in the 1830s.

Kramer would arrive at Presbyterian churches without notice or invitation and set about stealing their membership, convincing them to leave that church and join his own. He would visit other towns and villages where there were small groups of Presbyterians and harangue them until he managed to persuade them to desert their church and join his Assembly. Then he would obligate them to open a Gospel Hall in their village, so that the true Gospel would finally be available to everyone.

He preached that true believers didn’t permit women to cut their hair, that women should be silent at all times, and that the Communion Cup should be a single cup and not the multiple little cups as used by the Presbyterians, as that was heresy. He introduced a multitude of rules, designed to control his members. On various occasions he tried to forcibly take control of Presbyterian buildings.

Dora Burgess was physically scared of him and feared for her safety because of the aggressive manner in which he acted and behaved. A letter she wrote to her board in 1924, said; “He speaks constantly about how what he preaches is the truth and that what we teach isn’t . . . that he obeys the word of God exactly . . . he says we sell books . . . and that the only reason we are here is to make money”.

As the Burgess were quite autocratic, condescending and paternalistic anyway, many of their followers defected easily to Kramer. As a result, they were suspended from communion by the Presbyterians, for what they quaintly called “disorder in their faith”.

Meanwhile, Kramer powered on . . . Wherever he went, he caused arguments, fights, divisions and disorder in the Presbyterian churches. His strategy was intentional and designed to attract more followers, while at the same time devastating and debilitating what he called the heretical church, meaning the Presbyterians.

Reveling in his new role as a subversive and Guatemala’s Anointed Messenger, he saw how easy it was to steal followers from the Presbyterians so he decided to attack the other denominations, such as the Seventh Day Adventists, the Quakers, the Pentecostals, the Central American Mission, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Baptists and the Catholics. After a bit of experimenting, he discovered that the Catholics were the easiest to steal and convert to Brethrenism.

To Kramer, all others were wrong and worth the hunt, because all without exception, would confront the wrath of God and would end up in the Eternal Lake of Fire, which according to the Brethren is a place worse than Hell, unless they followed his true Gospel.

Soon . . . Kramer started taking his message outside the city of Quetzaltenango. He wrote, printed and distributed tracts, denouncing all other denominations, claiming they taught false doctrines and accusing their leaders of being heretics.

Kramer was a fiery preacher . . . Well over six foot tall with striking Germanic looks and blue eyes. He would start his sermons explaining that even though he had white skin and blond hair, he was born in Guatemala and that his church was autonomous and native to Guatemala and that the only alliance he had was to God and that he had no connection with foreign missionaries, which he regarded with contempt.

In 1951, Kramer decided to visit Honduras and interfere in the Brethren Assemblies which caused such a terrible rift that it is known historically there as “The year of darkness”, as Kramer wanted all the “foreign” missionaries expelled and a more “nacionalist” type of ministry practised.

“The Indians loved Carlos W. Kramer . . .”. Here was a man, who spoke their language and a fellow countryman. He was part of the upper class, the ruling class, an Aryan who strutted about like a conquistador, with the authority only a man with money, breeding and secret knowledge, can exude. The Indians believed that Kramer had taken the trouble to travel to far off lands where “God touched down from time to time to chat with Kramer”, and that he had brought them back a personal message “from Him, just for them”. It was pure Brethren theater.

On a number of occasions during my childhood and youth, I was taken aside by Elders of the Brethren churches in remote areas of Guatemala and thanked profusely for being part of a family that had taken the trouble to “come to their wretched country”, just to bring them “the Word of God”.

In the next article, I will provide a blow by blow description of how Carlos W. Kramer and my father Gray E. Russell, scared the living daylights out of the Guatemalan Catholic Indians preaching the Gospel and converted thousands to their cult.

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