An unhappy future in store? A building earmarked for 'conversion' to an Exclusive Brethren Meeting Room
Yet more neighborhood rumblings from Australia. The Exclusive Brethren are trying to elbow their way into yet another quiet neighborhood, this time in Happy Valley, a suburb of Adelaide.
The Exclusive Brethren religious group is continuing its southern suburbs expansion with plans to add a second Happy Valley development to its property portfolio by converting a home on the corner of Romney and Chandlers Hill roads.
The group has lodged plans with Onkaparinga Council for the centre, which include a foyer, toilets, storage and meeting rooms, to be used by up to eight families on Sunday mornings and Monday nights for a maximum of 90 minutes at a time.
Some nearby residents were concerned about the on parking and traffic.
One, who declined to be named, letterboxed 145 residents and encouraged them to contact the council.
“Romney Rd is our only escape if there’s a fire or the area needs to be evacuated, so if the Brethren happen to be having a meeting and they’re parked down Romney Rd, it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” she said.
The neighbour also was worried the Brethren would expand the centre by buying two neighbouring properties that were for sale.
“If the Brethren decided to buy those two houses, plus the council park (behind one of the properties), it’s only a matter of time before they squeeze out that other property in between and have that whole area.”
Brethren spokesman Bob Lawrence said the group did not have any plans to expand to neighbouring properties and the development would not cause traffic disruptions.
“There won’t be streets cluttered with parking, they’ll be driving up the street and on to the property,” he said.
Another neighbour, who also declined to be named, said he would “kick up a big stink” if the group parked their cars on the street.
The development application, lodged by the Laught Avenue and Leader Avenue Gospel Trust, said the development would be “strategically positioned” and would not result in “any significant impact on the adjacent road network”.
“The Brethren have a long history of conducting quiet and respectful worship activities in intensely developed inner residential areas,” the trust said.
The application will be reviewed by council’s development assessment panel in December or January.
In 2007, the Hills & Valley Messenger reported the group was undergoing a massive expansion in the south, buying up millions of dollars worth of property, including a $2.2 million complex, in nearby Education Rd.
Mr Lawrence, meanwhile, said work on a $2 million Aberfoyle Park school, reported in the Hills & Valley Messenger last year, was on track to finish next year.
Read the full article: http://hills-and-valley-messenger.whereilive.com.au/news/story/brethren-to-expand-in-happy-valley/
It’s quite a remarkable science – the borrowing of Plymouth Brethren terminology, the deliberate omitting of the 6:00am Sunday meeting times, the playing down of the fortress-style of Exclusive Brethren Meeting Rooms.
Here is a currently fiercely-contested application extract from Liphook in UK.
Exclusive Brethren - Liphook - page 1
Some of the Liphook locals can be seen here debating the planning application:
http://www.liphook.co.uk/?section=interactive&page=talkback_thread_wide&id=2515
We wish them well!
Despite continued attempts by the Exclusive Brethren to describe themselves as ‘evangelical christians’, they are finding that the truth behind their carefully obfuscated planning applications are increasingly being questioned.
Many see this as important progress in ensuring that the public become increasingly aware of the real nature of this modern day cult.
Christian hall plan for field turned down
Worcester News, UK
October 12th, 2009Plans to build a Christian gospel hall on a field at the city boundary have again been thrown out.
Worcester City Council planning committee were “minded to refuse” permission by a majority vote for the large hall which would be used by the evangelical Christian group the Brethren. Planning officers had recommended approval of the application on the 1.1 hectare site.
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Sometimes the Exclusive Brethren publicly demonstrate why they need a Public Relations firm. There can be no other ‘church’ that offers only one form of contact on their official website – a telephone number to their official Spin Doctors – Jackson Wells.
In UK today, the Wolverhampton-based Express And Star newspaper published a strange little side-show that involves the Exclusive Brethren. It is no secret that the Exclusive Brethren love their booze – but their involvement in the possible purchase of an English pub is unprecedented.
The regulars at the pub in Lynton Avenue, Stafford have realized that if the Exclusive Brethren succeed in purchasing their community meeting place, that community access to the building will change forever. The locals have formed the ‘Save The Lynton Tavern Association’ and are even supported by Father Broun from the local Roman Catholic church. This is obviously a serious matter if it concerns both Holy See’s. (‘Both?’ Ah yes, the Australian leader of the Exclusive Brethren uses the term in almost every sentence.)
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It is a remarkable moment – an Exclusive Brethren submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission is a newsworthy event indeed! The following submission was published a few hours ago on the Human Rights Commission website.
The three names shown as signatories: Daniel Hales, John Myhill and David Stewart, are representative elders of the cult in Australia. (Daniel Hales is the passed-over older brother to the current reclusive leader, Bruce D. Hales.)
There is little hint of the Jackson Wells ‘turn of phrase’ in this tangled document – some comments border on Incitement to Discriminate and the general appeal seems to be little more than a ‘self-pity party‘.
Submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission Continue reading »
on
Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st Century
by
Daniel Hales, John Myhill and David Stewart
[2009]
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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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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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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New EB HQ planned for Diamond Creek
The Leader, Australia
by Engel Schmidl
March 11, 2009
A controversial Christian church is planning to make a proposed prayer hall in Diamond Creek, for up to 2000 people, its new Melbourne headquarters.
The Exclusive Brethren, which has built five smaller meeting halls in the north-eastern suburbs in recent years, has been accused by former members and critics of being cult-like and secretive.
The proposed hall in Diamond Creek Rd will replace the church’s main hall in Glenroy.
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Q: When is a public house no longer a public house? A: When the Exclusive Brethren own it.
Now watch for security fences, steel padlocked gates, CCTV and blocked-out windows.
Exactly what persuaded Staffordshire’s Development Control Committee to grant approval for the conversion of a local pub to a very non-public house last week remains unclear. It seems, in a highly controversial decision, that the Lynton Tavern, Bodmin Avenue, Stafford, UK has now passed into the hands of a local cell of the Exclusive Brethren.
The Development Control Committee members cannot complain that they have no idea whom they are dealing with! There has been excellently-organized community support in attempting to prevent this example of community self-mutilation. As always with the Exclusive Brethren, there are ‘wheels within wheels’ and only time will tell whether the town officials maintain their ‘ostrich-in-the-sand’ posture.