On this episode of five minutes in church history we are talking about Robert Brown.

He was an English separatist.

He was born in 1550 and he died in 1633, but we've titled this episode Trouble Church Brown because that's what he was

known as by those who didn't agree with him and those that he tangled with throughout

his life.

So I'm sure you're intrigued, let's jump right in.

He studied at Cambridge University

and there he fully aligned himself with the Puritans.

He came under a Puritan influence and he sided

with the Puritans against the Elizabethan forces in the Church of England at that time.

Now the Puritans at in the Church of England at that time.

Now, the Puritans at that moment were attempting to reform the church from within,

and Robert Brown was part of that movement.

But by the end of the 1570s he began to realize or he

decided that that was not the right path to take and so he gave up on that

attempt to reform from within and he decided to separate.

In 1581 he is credited as founding what would be the first congregational church.

He was the first to officially secede,

and we need to realize that he's about 30 years old

at this time as he's doing this. Well he was arrested but he was very quickly

released and within a few months he left for the Netherlands. There in 1582 he

married he married Alice Allen and together they had nine children.

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