Are Jackson Wells now writing Exclusive Brethren advertisements for teachers in their schools? Surely we are not alone in recognising certain phrases and the old familiar half-truths and hidden meanings. Below is a July 2nd advert for a teacher in an Exclusive Brethren school in Australia. The EB are looking for a ‘teacher of Business and VET based Accountancy’ (a highly honored profession among the Brethren).
It is quite striking how impossible it is to tell that this is an Exclusive Brethren ad! This brings back memories of those notorious political smear leaflets – possibly the main difference between those and the advertisment below is that the address here is probably real!
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June 30th, 2009
Wagga City Council in Australia have granted planning permission for a new Exclusive Brethren Meeting Room but with some unprecedented conditions and stipulations.
There are components of humor in some of the terms, particularly to ex-members of the cult. For example, the Exclusive Brethren are only allowed to have 6:00 am Sunday communion services for a trial period and following the trial, the earliest allowed time of service will then be 8:00 am. The ridiculously early Sunday morning communion service was invented by the American James Taylor Junior, cult leader from 1960 until his death from alcohol-related illness in 1970. Needless to say, a 6:00 am Sunday meeting was unpopular to most. It will be most interesting to see if the Exclusive Brethren succeed in lifting the condition after 6 months.
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Many have been outraged at the recent Australian Family Court decision to separate an ex-member of the cult from his children. Most will look squarely at the Judge responsible and ask how this could happen? But this is only the latest case in a series of similar lawsuits.
The Exclusive Brethren do not recruit; they do not evangelise in order to increase membership. They increase from within. Great pressure is brought to bear on the young to marry and produce offspring. The resulting children are their future – estimated to be approximately 17,000 strong following the 1970 Aberdeen Incident, the cult today numbers in excess of 46,000 worldwide in over 10 countries.
The Exclusive Brethren protect their young with survivalist intensity. Putting their (and tax-payer) money where their mouth is, they have created a large international network of fiercely private schools that are there for one sole purpose – to keep their children separate from the outside ‘evil’ world. It is more than ironic that the Exclusive Brethren have to recruit non-member teachers to operate their growing number of schools as there is a worldwide ban on attending university for all children. The cult’s educational trusts are monitored closely by Exclusive Brethren ‘volunteers’ to ensure that there is no deviation from a carefully constructed EB-approved syllabus.
It is therefore vital to protect the young assets, those whom the Exclusive Brethren are raising protectively within themselves, behind intentionally closed doors. With this in mind, they weed out the troublemakers (normally young men) and do their utmost to prevent any further contamination of the cult’s ideas and doctrinal restrictions.
Dated January 2005, the following submission was made to Australian Parliament’s Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs by the Exclusive Brethren following a request by then Senator Evans. ((See original submission at http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/legcon_ctte/estimates/add_0607/ag/qon_18.pdf)
It lays out clearly their tactical approach to Family Court cases.
COMMENTS ON ASPECTS OF THE GOVERNMENT’S 10 NOVEMBER 2003 DISCUSSION PAPER
– A NEW APPROACH TO THE FAMILY LAW SYSTEM
– IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORMS
Key Points:
The key points made in this submission are:
• The importance of the institution of marriage must be paramount in family law issues;
• The concept of a child’s rights is wider than assumed in the discussion paper;
• The time a parenting agreement can be entered into must be examined;
• The age at which a child’s wishes should be seriously considered must be reviewed and a younger child should not be subjected to radical lifestyle changes without compelling reasons.
June 28th, 2009
In Australia’s The Age today, Michael Bachelard author of the acclaimed ‘Behind the Exclusive Brethren‘, presents a heartbreaking report that proves beyond doubt that the Exclusive Brethren cult will go to any length to rip families apart.
In an astonishing judgement in Melbourne, Justice Brown allowed the cult to legally prevent their excommunicated father from having anything further to do with his two children. As is usual in these cases, the Exclusive Brethren spared no effort or cost in their legal campaign:
“… The Exclusive Brethren paid for the mother, Elspeth, to hire one of Melbourne’s top family court QCs, Noel Ackman, as well as a junior barrister and a solicitor… “
Read the full article in todays Sunday Age:
Ex-Brethren father loses battle for children
The Age
Michael Bachelard
June 28, 2009 – 12:00AM
A grieving father’s only contact with his Exclusive Brethren children will be permission to buy their photographs from the sect’s school, as long as they are not there at the time, a Family Court judge has ruled.
Justice Sally Brown has comprehensively ruled against the father, who can be known only as Peter, denying him any contact with his son, 15, and daughter, 10, after a five-year court battle, waged mostly in their home state of Tasmania.
After spending $100,000 winning court orders in 2006 for access, then trying unsuccessfully to enforce them, Peter could only afford to represent himself in the most recent retrial.
The Exclusive Brethren paid for the mother, Elspeth, to hire one of Melbourne’s top family court QCs, Noel Ackman, as well as a junior barrister and a solicitor.
The church’s “doctrine of separation” prevents people who have left the fold having any relationship with those still inside, including their own children.
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The Exclusive Brethren were formed when they broke away from the Plymouth Brethren in 1848 – not the other way round. It is estimated that there are approximately 1.5 million Plymouth Brethren meeting around the world today. They were once the main force behind missionary activity in many parts of the world. The Plymouth Brethren – often called Open Brethren to ensure their distinction from the notorious Exclusives – are easily distinguished by their friendly welcome, their evangelical bias, the windows in their Gospel Halls, the sound of a piano or organ accompanying their hymns and their sincere ‘All are welcome’ signs outside their indisputably tax-exempt premises.
There has been much confusion in various parts of the world between the Exclusive Brethren cult and the truly evangelical Plymouth Brethren. The Exclusives have encouraged this confusion, often calling themselves ‘Christian Brethren’ or the ‘Exclusive Brethren Christian Fellowship’ ! They also have started referring to their Meeting Rooms as ‘Prayer Halls’ and ’Gospel Halls’ – a blatant attempt to mislead the Planning Authorities into thinking that this is to be the prime purpose of the sought permissions. Indeed, there has been a trend in physically renaming the legal names of their Meeting Rooms to Gospel Halls – even though tradition and legal documentation has historically always referred to the premises as a ‘Meeting Room’.
Probably the best way to ensure who you are dealing with is to simply look at the Trust Deed for the Meeting Room in question.
All Exclusive Brethren Meeting Rooms are owned by a Trust.
All Exclusive Brethren Meeting Room Trusts follow an identical template.
It is therefore entirely possible to recognize an Exclusive Brethren Meeting Room by checking the clauses within the Trust document. You will discover they are unlike any ‘church’ or ‘Christian organization’ you have ever seen:
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The Allbrook Education Trust (UK 1056053) is a Hampshire, UK Exclusive Brethren charitable trust, connected to the UK’s huge Exclusive Brethren Focus Learning Trust (UK 1099725). Allbrook has had a difficult couple of years in finding suitable alternative accomodation for its growing educational needs.
Since the cult realized that its only future asset was their children in the 1980′s, the Exclusive Brethren have been implementing a home-school operation which evolved into an impressive world-wide chain of EB-only schools and educational trusts.
There is a component of desperation involved in the EB educational structure. Their current worldwide leader, Australian Bruce Hales is quoted as admitting the Exclusive Brethren do not evangelize in order to recruit. As far as they are concerned, growth will come from within – and that means the children must be protected from The Enemy. By careful shifting of the limited genetic pool components, the EB have seemingly slowed a high tendency toward Downs Syndrome but still suffer from a very high incidence of Autism judging by their frequent Special Ed advertisements in various teaching journals.
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Reproduced with permission from:
Breakout: How I escaped from the Exclusive Brethren
by David Tchappat (2009)
The following chapter was written by a former Exclusive Brethren member who wishes to remain anonymous.
A Short History of the Exclusive Brethren
There are many Christians known as “brethren” who trace the origins of their movement to John Nelson Darby who lived just over 200 years ago in Dublin. Schism and division has been a consistent feature of the movement almost from the start. The following summary relates to the Taylor-Symington-Hales Branch of the Exclusive Brethren (signified by the more recent leaders of this group); arguably the most radical and perhaps controversial of all the groups in the Brethren movement.
The Brethren trace the origins of the movement to John Nelson Darby who was born in London in 1800 into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family. Lord Nelson, a friend of his uncle, Admiral Sir Henry Darby, was a sponsor at young Darby’s christening.
Darby’s mother died when he was five years old and at the age of 15 his family moved to the ancestral estate in Ireland. He took an honours degree at Dublin University and studied law for three years at the Dublin Chancery Bar. But he never practiced law. To the annoyance of his family, he abandoned his legal career and became a priest in the Irish Church of England in 1826, serving in the parish of Calary in the mountains of County Wicklow.
Almost immediately John Darby fell out with church leaders over matters of doctrine and by 1827-28 he was meeting to “break bread” in the home of one of four other dissenting young men in Dublin. The group believed that the existence of an established church and ordained clergy was contrary to scripture. “I can find no such thing as a national church in Scripture”, Darby wrote at the time. In 1832, he had a major disagreement with Archbishop Magee about a requirement for converted Catholics to swear allegiance to King George IV and, in the same year, disagreed with Archbishop Whately about matters of church doctrine.
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June 4th, 2009
In a hoped-for but unexpected reversal, the Exclusive Brethren have given up their fight to build a significantly large compound on the outskirts of Stow in rural England. Despite using their tactics of intentionally appearing to be part of the comparatively harmless ‘open’ Plymouth Brethren, over 400 members of the small Cotswold community objected fiercely to having the cult build one of their windowless fortresses in ground adjacent to a grocery supermarket.
The Exclusive Brethren have increasingly been trying to obfuscate their planning applications by referring to their Meeting Rooms as ‘gospel halls’ and even forming ‘gospel hall’ Trusts to add credence to their self-description of being an ‘evangelical christian’ movement. As the citizens of Stow came to realize, the planned development would not benefit anyone in the community due to the Exclusive Brethren doctrine of ‘Separation’ where anyone not a cult member is deemed ‘unclean’.
Their decision to withdraw a threatened appeal against the Stow Planning Committee’s refusal of their planning application is a welcome sign that municipalities are starting to understand the true nature of the group who have been accurately described as “an extremist cult and sect … who break up families“.
From the Tewkesbury Admag:
Brethren withdraw appeal against Stow gospel hall refusal
Tewksbury Admag, UK
Thursday 4th June 2009
by Simon Crump
A religious group has withdrawn its appeal against a refusal to approve its controversial proposal to build a gospel hall at Stow.
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The Elusive, Exclusive and now – Exclusion Brethren
July 11th, 2009
Victory . . . Brethren elders Daniel Hales, left, and Athol Greene. "You're probably not in a position to realise the happy lives our children have." Photo: Kate Geraghty
You would be forgiven for assuming the toothy smile of Daniel Hales and the self-satisfied smirk on the face of Athol Greene (Father-in-law to Daniel’s brother Bruce Hales) was as result of some joyous moment in their spiritual lives. In fact, their good humor comes from the fact they have gained an outrageous ruling in Australia’s Family Court that prevents an excommunicated member from seeing his eight children.
We reproduce a David Marr article from the Australian press that sums up the anger resulting from the Family Court ruling. The intransigence and arrogance of the group that Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister accurately described as “an extremist cult and sect” comes out in a quote from Athol Greene below:
“You won’t change us,” he says, fixing me with his old eyes.
“You. Won’t. Change. Us.”