Scientology under attack – are the Exclusive Brethren next?
November 21st, 2009
The impact of Australian senator Nick Xenophon’s comments in Canberra this week regarding the Scientology ‘church’ should not be under-estimated.
First there is the man. Nick Xenophon is an independant and carries no party allegience. His 400BC namesake was also a soldier as well as a respected historian. Nick has a background in law and is a resourceful and intelligent political warrior. Several are noting that the modern-day Xenophon seems to have a strategy in his carefully worded attack against the ‘religion’ of Scientology.
“There are a couple of things to know about Nick Xenophon. The first is that the independent senator from Adelaide has a genius for publicity. He’s a hustler par excellence. The second is he’s rationing his tabloid impulses in Canberra. Xenophon’s record to date suggests he’s opting for strategy rather than sensation; picking his political fights, not going at everything like a bull at a gate.”
This is not a ‘flash in the pan’. Xenophon has been planning his attack for some time:
“The comments this week have been more than a year in gestation. He hooked into Scientology while doing a stint as a talk-back radio host in Adelaide before coming to Canberra. The trigger was a piece by Fairfax writer David Marr. The Marr piece prompted him to query whether the controversial organisation deserved its tax breaks.”
David Marr, a highly respected Australian investigative journalist, is no stranger to looking at certain ‘religions’ with a calculator handy:
“You don’t know these three Sydney suburban businessmen, but their sect has influenced politics in four countries. David Marr reports.
With an iron hand, West Ryde businessman Bruce D. Hales rules his world church. To his 40,000 followers in the Exclusive Brethren, this prosperous supplier of office equipment in the Sydney suburbs is known as the Elect Vessel, the Lord’s Representative on Earth, the Great Man, the Paul of Our Day, Minister of the Lord in Recovery and Mr Bruce.
…
They cover their tracks. The name of the sect is never mentioned. Their political demands are a seamless mix of business breaks and hard-line Christian morality. Under Hales, the Exclusive Brethren have become a new player in the right-wing politics of the world. And they have lots and lots and lots of money.”
David Marr goes deeper …
“The sect is having legal problems on other fronts. In June, the High Court confirmed a ruling that the Brethren’s fortress-like meeting halls in Brisbane are not “places of public worship” and it must therefore pay rates. These halls stand on prime real estate all over Australia. The Brethren are up for millions.
But the sect is rich and there is lots of money to pour into the fight against same sex unions. A delegation of Brethren warned Brown this year that gay marriage is completely and utterly wrong, shocking and perverted: “The world is rushing on to destruction.”
Even the Victorian Liberal leader, Ted Baillieu, is talking civil unions now. But with an election only weeks away, the Brethren are organising. They’ve been to see the Victorian Nationals leader, Peter Ryan, to complain about Baillieu and check out his own position. He was able to reassure them completely. “I do not support the principle of gay unions in any sense of it equating to marriage.”
Meanwhile, inside the sect, opponents of this heretical excursion into politics are biding their time. They are terrified of making a move. All they have is at risk: their wives, children and businesses. They say it’s all but impossible to explain what life is like in there: “You cannot understand the horrific mistreatment of people.”
And has there been improvement in the last three years? Well, hardly surprisingly the Exclusive Brethren have dropped below their famous ‘radar’ in politics. Their rightly ridiculed political foray was the ‘brain-child’ of the ‘Elect Vessel’ Bruce D. Hales and had the end result of the Exclusive Brethren being seen as political pariahs, untouchable smear-tacticians and brought a focus of international media attention – the one thing that any cult fears the most!
Their ‘help’ resulted in Donald Brash in New Zealand resigning, and John Howard losing his seat, his Prime Ministership and his party’s election. With George Bush (also Exclusive Brethren supported) long gone, the quality of Bruce Hales’s political campaign leadership in the Exclusive Brethren must be considered an unmitigated disaster. If he was not the leader of a cult and holding the temporal and eternal futures of his members in his hands, he would have been fired for pure incompetency!
Much of this era and the history of the cult has been captured brilliantly in Michael Bachelard’s Exclusive Brethren exposé: ‘Behind the Exclusive Brethren’. Of this October 2008 publication David Marr commented:
“Shocking and compelling. Michael Bachelard has written an eye-opening account of power and cruelty in a tiny Christian sect that enjoys a privileged existence in Australia.”
David Marr kept watching …
“A father’s price for quitting his marriage was to lose contact with eight children left behind in the Exclusive Brethren. David Marr caught up with sect defenders.
The Exclusive Brethren has enjoyed sweet victories in the Family Court before, but none sweeter than this. Despite all that is now known about the methods of the Brethren, the court has denied a father in Tasmania any access to his children for reasons that boil down, essentially, to this: he left the sect.”
Source – The Exclusion Brethren (July 2009)
Comment – THE ELUSIVE, EXCLUSIVE AND NOW – EXCLUSION BRETHREN
There have been a number of attempts to gain an official inquiry into the business workings of the Exclusive Brethren as well as an investigation into human rights abuses behind their security fences and locked doors.
Quite rightly people are asking questions about their tax-exempt status and the huge amounts of public money thrown into their ’schools’.
Then there is the matter of a vast international network of charitable trusts linking every Exclusive Brethren Meeting Room, every Exclusive Brethren ’school’, every Exclusive Brethren gathering, their ‘Watchtower-like’ Bible and Gospel Trust, ‘Poverty Funds’, Old People Homes, Land Developments, the National Office Assist network, the Wordex distribution, EB cell phones, digital cameras, travel organizations and medical insurance fund.
Tax-exempt money flows freely though the integrated charity network and when necessary couriers bring neatly packaged sums of cash (just under the $10k limit) across international borders.
Hopefully Nick Xenophon will get his wish – an investigation into the cult-like Scientology organization.
We then suggest that Nick Xenophon and fellow-senator Bob Brown spend a little time together. Bob has access to some really interesting information that some will consider demands an investigation into the cult known as the Exclusive Brethren.
“Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has called for an inquiry into the extent of the Exclusive Brethren’s influence in federal politics”
Go Nick! And get back in there Bob!
It is high time a full enquiry was done on the exclusive brethren cult, as well as scientology.
In some ways their strange religious practices are not really the issue. But as they are taking millions of dollars from goverments all around the world, a full enquiry into their finances, should be done especially in Australia. Also the fact that their churches are tax exempt, but are only for the benefit of the select brehtren membership, goes way beyond the original intention, and spirit of the tax exemption law.
If the situation continues unabated, it is only a matter of time before the entire considerable brethren business network, is brought under the operations of these tax free brethren trust network, which would mean the profits would be virtually tax free, if they are not already.
As christians we should want to be fully accountable, for our actions especially where public money is involved. We should welcome more scrutiny, not less, as our actions should be completely beyond reproach.
This lot though, want to be accountable to nobody.