"It was about obedience not faith."
That is dead right Giordano. .Even more so so today the whole thing is about obedience to the central leadership. Faith? Yes but faith to follow not to think or reason.
My history is nowhere near as accomplished as your own but when I resigned the B of E , the others did not want to know be , although I was for a while a normal cong member.
Anyway, must not hijack SBlackwell's thread,
NB... No, I never Knew a Bro Sartin... there were some pretty good speakers around in the old days. Sadly all the individuality seems to have been knocked out of them these days