May 16th, 2008

It is a unique experience. A young thirty-something fireman called David is participating in Australian TV’s ‘Big Brother’. Described as a cult-survivor, David has walked a road that not many people have known. In leaving the Exclusive Brethren, David left the first 19 years of his life completely behind him. It is gone. And as many of us know, it is a deeply damaging experience.

A cult survivor called David.

You see David looks like your average well-muscled fireman. But at the age of 32 he’s only been living in the real world for 13 years. He had to start from scratch after escaping an extreme religious sect at 19. Before then he’d never seen a movie, kissed a girl, listened to the radio or eaten at a restaurant. The group was called the Exclusive Brethren and they have some kooky folks. They live apart from the rest of us in their own isolated communities. And get this: they don’t vote in elections because it interferes with God’s right to ordain who rules – but they do fund the Liberal Party. You tell me the logic there and I’ll buy you lunch. Speaking of lunch – Exclusive Brethren can’t even share a meal with people outside their sect. David will never be able to break bread with his family ever again. And there are 15,000 in Australia. Bet you didn’t know about these guys… but you know Big Brother is boring.

Cults, racism and man-children: Big Brother’s far from bland

Perhaps the Exclusive Brethren are finding their true role in the scheme of things? The journey from oddity to cause célèbre is sometimes far shorter than anticipated. Admittedly the Exclusive Brethren are different. By erecting their high-fenced and steel-gated compounds, they are highlighting their belief that they are ‘not of us’. But if you suggest that by locking their doors and refusing casual visitors to their ‘meeting rooms’ they should not receive tax-exemption as a ‘public place of worship’, they will immediately cry ‘foul!’.

In their dealings with Governments they present themselves as unique arbiters of Christianity, deep-thinking and sober members of a cloistered group who are ‘not of this world’. Most politicians have traditionally been scared of the ‘religious discrimination’ accusation that would follow a refusal to meet such representatives. However, one of the side-effects of such self-labeling is that the spotlight of Truth can sometimes publicly showcase hypocrisy – and a publicly uncovered Hypocrite is a particularly uncomfortable position to be found in.

For all its faults, the democratic west has an instinctive moral knowledge of some issues, particularly those that deal with children and families. The arrogance of the Exclusive Brethren extends to splitting families apart over doctrinal differences and then in negatively influencing the children who remain against the normally departed father. The harshness and indifference that the EB display in such situations is breathtaking.

When you finally realize that the Exclusive Brethren do not actively recruit new members and that their international growth is entirely from within, their concentration upon the creation of new Exclusive school campuses takes on a new and sinister significance. By carefully controlling the education of their young and then refusing them the opportunity to go to universities, the Exclusive Brethren are indoctrinating a new generation and preventing their individual growth – and it is you, the tax-payer, who is assisting this process!

It is a sad indictment of a religious movement that spontaneously arose in early 19th century Europe. The Taylorite-Hales Exclusive Brethren could not be further from the original simplicity sought by the their Plymouth Brethren forefathers. The moment the doors first slammed shut against ‘outsiders’ in the late 1840′s, a form of spiritual xenophobia started to take root. We are today watching a cult that judges its success in materialist terms rather than by the souls it saves. Perhaps society should be grateful they do not wish us to join their ‘business’, but those who have family members physically and psychologically trapped behind their barred gates must continue to ensure they are not forgotten.

For further information, see Peebs.Net.