An Exclusive Brethren Lipstick Special - Ben, Brad and Danny Boy

You know that sound that pennies make when they hit the floor after being in free-fall for a while? It just happened.

It all started with a surprisingly (one could say comradely, friendly, even nauseously) gentle article in yesterday’s The Australian that shone a whole new shade of pink over the Topic du Jour - the Exclusive Brethren and their outright panic over the about-to-be-launched ‘Behind The Exclusive Brethren’ by investigative journalist, Michael Bachelard.

For those with a strong stomach, we present:

Brethren lift veil on their exclusive lifestyle
The Australian
Brad Norington
September 20, 2008

Daniel Hales says talking to his neighbours would help dispel negative perceptions about the Exclusive Brethren straight away.

“If you went up and down our street,” Hales says, “they would say, ‘oh yeah, they’ve got some funny beliefs, but gee, they’re nice people, they’re good people’.”
Read all »

September 22, 2008

Brethren expresses regret over sister
The Age
September 22, 2008

An elder of the controversial Exclusive Brethren religious sect says he feels sorry for his 85-year-old sister, who did not see four of her sect children for 20 years after being excommunicated.

But he says animosity to the group has “blinded” his sister, who has described the sect as “grossly evil”.

Sydney man David Stewart said the Exclusive Brethren had apologised for its “harsh” treatment of his sister, Alison Alderton, and her late husband Bob when they were leading figures in the group at Bathurst in central western NSW in the early 1980s.

But she had refused invitations to rejoin the brethren, described last year by Labor leader Kevin Rudd as an “extremist cult” that broke up families.

“I feel sorry for her,” Mr Stewart told AAP. Read all »

September 21st, 2008

Sect attempted secret donations to Howard

WA Today / The Age

by Michael Bachelard

September 21st, 2008

Members of the Exclusive Brethren attempted to donate to John Howard’s re-election campaign last year in a way that meant the cash injection would never have been disclosed to the public.

Read all »

September 21st, 2008

Members of the Exclusive Brethren were actively attempting to donate to John Howard’s re-election campaign last year in a manner that meant the cash injection would not have been disclosed to the public, according to a new book about the secretive Christian sect.

Fairfax newspapers say a senior Liberal Party source has confirmed in the book, Behind The Exclusive Brethren, that in the weeks leading up to the November election he was approached by a group of Exclusive Brethren men in a Sydney hotel who offered him a large, anonymous financial donation.
Read all »

September 20th, 2008

The Exclusive Brethren sect has attempted to prevent a sick 85-year-old former member from revealing her terrible life story by saying that if she remained silent she could be reunited before she dies with the children she was separated from 28 years ago.

Alison Alderton’s family was torn apart at the order of the sect’s world leader in 1980, and she has barely had contact with her children, who are “in fellowship”, since.

Inside the sect, kept apart from Mrs Alderton by the Brethren’s founding doctrine of “separation,” are three daughters and a son, 18 grandchildren and a number of great-grandchildren she does not know and cannot count.
Read all »

September 19th, 2008

Extracts of the eagerly awaited book ‘Behind the Exclusive Brethren’ by premier Australian investigative reporter Michael Bachelard, are due to be published in the “Good Weekend” lift-out of the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age this weekend.

As anticipated, the Exclusive Brethren are not only worried, they’re petrified!  Their new PR spin-doctors (they’ve been through several) are now Jackson-Wells, an Australian firm, who have decided to use the name of Daniel Hales as the Exclusive Brethren spokesman.

Daniel Hales is the brother of the cult leader Bruce Hales and has been largely a background figure in the Hales dynasty, far more concerned with financial matters than the spiritual aspects of life.

Here is their media release, dated today - September 19th, 2008.

MEDIA STATEMENT

Brethren say Fairfax article outdated, inaccurate

Extracts from a new book by journalist Michael Bachelard that will appear in the Good Weekend magazine tomorrow are out of date and contain significant factual inaccuracies, says the Exclusive Brethren Church. Read all »

September 14th, 2008

Following the successful serialization of ‘Shut Up Sarah’ by Marion Field during 2007, the Peebs.Net Team have successfully negotiated with the publisher Highland Books and the author to bring her 1993/1998 autobiographical story of life in the Exclusive Brethren to a wider audience.

The serialization commenced today and is expected to run for about 6 months.

Access Peebs.Net to view the first episodes of Don’t Call Me SISTER!

We have been contacted by several media and other interested parties who are a little confused by the current row in Australia over a Christian Brethren decision not to allow a self-help gay/lesbian group to use a church-run summer camp facility.

A gay youth support group trying to meet to talk about homophobia has had its booking at a Phillip Island camp ground blocked because the resort owners, the Christian Brethren church, deplore their lifestyle.

See - Gay support group gets straight ‘no’ from Brethren

Also: Youth group challenges church stance

The confusion stems from a perceived relationship between the Christian Brethren and the Exclusive Brethren.

The Christian Brethren church is historically linked to the infamous Exclusive Brethren, but broke away in the mid-1800s.

See - Gay support group gets straight ‘no’ from Brethren

Read all »

August 27, 2008

What part of Senator Milne’s comments in Australian Parliament yesterday did the Exclusive Brethren not understand? Leaving aside the issue of the Hales-endorsed political smear campaigns, the false names and addresses on the various smear advertisements, the world-wide orchestrated political contributions, the sudden payments into tyre companies that then paid for the printing and/or advertising …

We could even leave aside the trail of broken families, the suicides and wrecked lives that are directly attributable to the Exclusive Brethren.

Senator Milne outlined some basic arithmetic for the Australian people.

It should be looked at by every tax-paying Australian. Read all »

August 27th, 2008

COMMITTEES

Community Affairs Committee Reference Debate
resumed from 26 August, on motion by Senator Bob Brown:

That the following matters be referred to the Community Affairs Committee for inquiry and report by 26 November 2008:

(a) exemptions for the Exclusive Brethren and its members from Australian laws or administrative decisions;

(b) public funding, tax or other arrangements which do or may advantage the Exclusive Brethren over other community organisations;

(c) the activities of the Exclusive Brethren or its members which threaten or harm families, in particular, the best interests of children;

(d) the covert, as against overt, activities of the Exclusive Brethren or its members in the political process in Australia; and (e) any related matters.

Senator MILNE (Tasmania) (6.14 pm)

—I rise in continuance of the debate on Senator Brown’s motion. Last night, in beginning my remarks, I was commenting on the fact that when I was teaching on the northwest coast of Tasmania many years ago I had a very bright and capable young woman in my class who was not allowed to go on to further education because the Exclusive Brethren prohibited it. They prohibit their young people from being able to go to university at all. As a former Meadowbank school principal, David Stewart, an Exclusive Brethren principal said:

We do not go in for higher learning. We gave up universities in the 1960s as the hotbed of atheism. They prove that everything is nothing to their own satisfaction. We have suffered no loss to our knowledge. We particularly recoil from novels and cinemas. Read all »