The Exclusive Brethren love spending money – after all they have very little else to do with it! They don’t take vacations, there is no TV or radio and only highly filtered Internet access. The job for the young men is to make money and the task of the young women is to breed. They aren’t a very attractive group to join and so their only form of growth is from within.
This then explains their growing network of Exclusive Brethren only schools and the long-standing university education bans – ‘we make them and we need to keep them’.
As communities begin to understand the true nature of their ‘shy’, ‘retiring’, but vaguely unfriendly neighbors and begin to see how little they offer or care about the wider communities in which they take up residence, a very understandable backlash is developing.
It is difficult to encourage a group of people (described by Australian Premier Kevin Rudd as “an extremist cult and sect”) who treat others with such disdain and yet have the audacity to call themselves ‘Christian’!
Objections to church
The Daily Advertiser, Australiu
by Ken Grimson
30/03/2009
Australian residents in Stirling Boulevard object to Exclusive Brethren plans
Residents in Stirling Boulevard at Tatton are objecting to plans for an Exclusive Brethren meeting hall to be built in their street, arguing it will devalue properties and create traffic dangers.
“We are not against the Exclusive Brethren, we just don’t think this is the right location for their meeting place,” said neighbouring resident, Eileen Steel.
Spokesman for the Exclusive Brethren, Tim Pridham, said yesterday the planned place of public worship would be designed to look like any other house in the street and his church would work with residents to overcome any concerns they had about the development.
“We have tried to design it like a house so it fits in with other buildings. It will not look like a church,” Mr Pridham said.
Another Stirling Boulevard resident, Barry Bloodworth said everyone who bought land in the street had done so in the belief the street would be for residential purposes only.
“The subdivision has been promoted and sold to residents on the basis of it being a high-class residential area,” said Barry Brown, who has built two home units across the road from the proposed church.
“Residents may well feel they have been misled in their purchase.”
Residents are worried that church services will include a 6am Sunday service at which up to 50 people are expected to attend.
The Exclusive Brethren’s development application now before council includes parking spaces for 10 vehicles.
The church says, however, that about 20 to 30 per cent of people are expected to walk to services from within the local neighbourhood and that vehicles driven by congregation members tend to carry about five people each, meaning there will not be a lot of traffic.
“The location of the site was specifically selected to allow people to walk to the site, as some members of the congregation live nearby,” the application says.
Mr Bloodworth doubts most people will be prepared to walk to church at 6am in the middle of a Wagga winter, but Mr Pridham said that was his experience.
