A powerful high-quality and full-length 2006 Australian TV documentary about the Exclusive Brethren that explores the nature of the cult.
This Australian Broadcasting Company – Four Corners episode first aired Mon Sep 25 2006.
Further information and background interviews and details can be found on the Four Corners website:
Separate Lives explores the cult known as the Exclusive Brethren (2006)
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Nick Xenophon targets "Tax lurk of biblical proportions"
For once, there is little to add to what Micheal Bachelard reports today in Australia’s The Age.
The penchant that the Exclusive Brethren have for creating networks of interwoven international, private, charitable and family trusts may at last undergo the scrutiny of Australia’s Tax Office.
Formidable cult-battler Nick Xenophon has his sights set – as Bachelard indicates below, the evidence speaks for itself.
Nick is no stranger to calling for investigations into cults; he is fearless, smart, well-respected and carries a big gun.
The old adage used by criminal investigators – “Follow the money” has never been more apt…
Exclusive Brethren parents claim ‘tax lurk of biblical proportions’
Michael Bachelard
March 25, 2011Parents in the Exclusive Brethren avoid paying tax on the bulk of their children’s school fees in an arrangement that would be illegal if sought by other Australian parents.
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Alice Higgins writes in The Hills and Valley Messenger:
Happy Valley Brethren fight steps up
The Hills and Valley Messenger
Alice Higgins
February 28th, 2011WORRIED: Locals Bill Coady, Stewart Diggens and Lyle Thomson are concerned that a new development will cause traffic congestion in their high fire-risk neighbourhood. Pic: Keryn Stevens.
Happy Valley residents living in a high bushfire-risk area are ramping up their fight against plans to convert a Romney Rd home into a place of worship.
The residents fear the Exclusive Brethren development would bring more traffic into Romney Rd and block the only exit route out of the area in the case of emergency.
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Brethren church to open in Ipswich
The Queensland Times
AustraliaThe cult Meeting Room in Ipswich, Queensland
The Exclusive Brethren Christian Fellowship will open its doors in Ipswich at the weekend.
Labelled a cult by former prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2007, the Brethren will open its new church at the end of Windle Road, Brassall, on Saturday.
The move has outraged local residents, who say the church is a threat to their way of life.
“We didn’t know we’d end up with a stinking church down there,” said one long-term Windle Road resident, who wished to remain anonymous.
“We don’t need this in our street. I’m really cheesed off about it. The more you read about these people, the more you start to worry about what’s going on.
“I thought about putting my house on the market when I heard about it. You live here, you pay your bloody rates and now a church can come in and do whatever they want.
“It’s been built, it’s opening and that’s it. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
Workmen were putting the finishing touches on the rendered brick building yesterday.
It is surrounded by a black steel picket fence and has a sprawling car park and landscaped gardens.
…
… another concerned Brassall resident who contacted The QT said the Brethren should practice what it preached.
“How can you talk about inclusion when the church hides behind fences and concrete walls? This whole process was kept very quiet,” the resident said.
“You have to wonder what they’re hiding and why more people haven’t been asking questions about the building appearing out of nowhere.
“I don’t think this will go away very quietly.”
It is not clear whether the male residents of Manly West, Brisbane, Australia have succumbed to the Emmy-nominated Old Spice advertising. What is certain, is that an increasing number of communities around the world have had enough of the devious ways the Exclusive Brethren cult operate when it comes to their real estate dealings.
One of the classic symptoms of a cult are methods used in enforcing control of the flock. When a Leader says “Jump!”, the only safe response is “how high?”.
Exclusive Brethren cult members endure tightly-controlled lives that revolve entirely around their fellow members and their virtually daily gatherings. Being separate from the world is not only their primary doctrine, it is the main chain welded to each individual. Only by ensuring minimal contact with outsiders and the media can Bruce D. Hales keep his members from learning too much.
Manly residents rally against Exclusive Brethren plans to build churches in their suburbsCourier MailResidents are calling it a cult “invasion”. The secretive Exclusive Brethren Christian sect has been buying land and businesses at Manly West on Brisbane’s bayside and in Gympie and moving in.Continue reading »
It’s an unusual event for peebs.net to post an article that actually defends the Exclusive Brethren! Let’s get it over and done with, shall we?
Matthew Lindqvist (left) and Andrew Doven from the Exclusive Brethren stand opposite Wagga City Council and the corner they used for street preaching for years. Picture: Les Smith, Daily Advertiser
The Daily Advertiser today describes a battle in Wagga, Australia where the Exclusive Brethren are defending their right to free speech on the streets of their town.
In a nut-shell, Wagga City Council have implemented a ‘street activities policy’ that allows just one complaint to halt any street activity. In the case of the Exclusive Brethren, this affects their requirement for regular street preaching. Of course people are going to object to this and it most certainly would be wrong of any organization to attempt to muzzle another simply because they did not agree with their beliefs or what they said.
What Wagga City Council possibly doesn’t understand is that the Exclusive Brethren have to publicly be seen to preach even if this evangelical zeal doesn’t extend beyond the “bellowing“. Their Meeting Room is doubtlessly tax-exempt as a public place of worship and because they do not allow the public full access to their windowless, padlocked buildings, they have to ensure a little public presence somehow.
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Exclusive Brethren Schools
The following extracts are from Sect pupils in a class of their own, The New Zealand Herald, published on Sunday May 9th, 2010.
This furore commenced on May 2nd, 2010 when a former Exclusive Brethren school teacher was fired for using a non-approved textbook. The fired teacher spoke of clauses within her employment contract that includes proof that the cult attempts to prevent any of their children from going onto university education.
Why? They’re scared!
Imagine a school whose books had words blacked out or pages removed and large parts of the curriculum – particularly anything to do with puberty and sex – was simply not taught.
A school where teachers received unexpected late-night visits at home to check on their moral probity.
And where all aspects of school life are governed in every detail by a sacred text, but a committee has absolute discretion in deciding how to interpret it.
It may sound like the worst excesses of the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Iranian mullahs, but this is the prevailing orthodoxy in 15 Westmount schools across the country run by the Exclusive Brethren.
The Exclusive Brethren have replaced conscience with rules and directives. They do not practice faith, rather they separate themselves from society. They do not allow the strength of character that is built by learning right from wrong and the normal development of self-control – instead, they rip out pages from books!
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The story behind the following Today Tonight Australian news footage is even more dramatic than the high-speed car chases, mindless intimidation and the images of squirming cult members.
The underlying facts here involve the heart-wrenching story of an Exclusive Brethren teenager who is confused as to his sexual identity. In any tolerant and modern social environment, this is a topic for discussion, understanding and above all, caring. It is an opportunity to display love and compassion.
This would be the case in almost any community, Christian or not, but here we deal with the Exclusive Brethren …
Answer: these three politicians came into contact with the Exclusive Brethren and have suffered political damage as a result.
Don Brash and John Howard are now history, but Kevin Rudd currently remains the Prime Minister of Australia. Will Rudd manage to retain his role in the next Australian General Election? Time will tell, but the informed media are sharpening their swords over a mounting list of unfathomable decisions that simply do not add up. Of greater import perhaps is the ‘chatter’ from members of the Australian electorate who are the final arbiters in the future of any politician.
For example, consider the voices of those who have objected to the seeming duplicity in Keven Rudd’s decision to allow over $70 million to be paid to the Exclusive Brethren school system in Australia. It is almost mystifying to watch the man who had the courage in late 2007 to call the Exclusive Brethren what they are – “an extremist cult and sect … who break up families” – and then just two years later, to fork out an almost obscenely disproportionate contribution to the school system blatantly designed by the cult for the cult.
These are not schools aimed at producing well-rounded citizens of the countries and communities in which they are located. They serve one main purpose –
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‘Firestorm: Black Saturday’s Tragedy’ and the familiar sound of Exclusive Brethren silence
Frequently, it is what the Exclusive Brethren do not say that speaks loudest.
Many will recall the first cult smear advertising that first hit the streets in New Zealand in 2005. Later, Australia suffered the same influx of brochures, pamphlets and handouts. They all had one thing in common - the group behind the material was never mentioned.
Rather than provide any normal route to identity, the Exclusive Brethren intentionally obfuscate their publications. When you consider the way they hide their tracks, this is perhaps understandable: false addresses, misleading names, even the business premises of their unsuspecting tenants … One thing is constant, the name of the Taylorite / Symington / Hales Exclusive Brethren never appears.
9/11 and now 'Black Saturday'
And now, in perhaps their most cynical effort todate, they use their own children in an effort to extract money from a public for whom they care nothing and even seemingly entrap a Prime Minister who has publicly declared them an “extremist cult” to assist them. And their public relations lever? The killer bush fires that swept across Victoria in southern Australia during February, less than a year ago.
‘ Firestorm: Black Saturday’s Tragedy‘ is published by Dennis Jones & Associates of Byswater, Victoria, Australia and there is even a website dedicated to the PR cause: http://www.blacksaturdaysfirestorm.com.au
The Glenvale School is an Exclusive Brethren school – one of those campuses that is set to receive some of the over $70 million hand-out authorized by Kevin Rudd over the next two years:
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