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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Examples of media attention focused on the Exclusive Brethren are very hard to find in the United States. The ability of the group that Kevin Rudd, now the Australian Prime Minister, described as “an extremist cult and sect” to “fly under the radar” is well-known. Peebs.Net, has attempted to ‘pull back the covers’ since the site started in May 2004. As you might imagine, this process has not been encouraged!
Unlike the USA, most citizens of Australia and New Zealand know of the Exclusive Brethren and of their track record in recent years. Perhaps the closest the US press came to looking at this “dangerous group” in any detail was following the secretive activities surrounding the ‘Thanksgiving 2004 Committee’, a political 527 group that funded pro- G.W. Bush advertisements in various US papers during the last president’s second run for office in 2004.
Today in Burlington, Vermont a news article appears that shows signs that this lack of exposure might change. The Burlington Free Press describes what it calls a ‘Contentious Lawsuit’ that has been raging in the New England state since early 2007.
As far as Peebs.Net is concerned, it is vital to maintain Truth and therefore, it is interesting to note how quickly the Exclusive Brethren resort to the smear tactics that has brought them increasing negative press exposure in Australia and New Zealand.
It is estimated that there are now over 46,000 Exclusive Brethren members worldwide, with as many as 10,000 located in USA. The closest North American Exclusive Brethren gatherings to Vermont are Boston, MA and Montreal, Quebec.
Secretive worldwide sect battles Vermonter in court
The Burlington Free Press, USA
By Sam Hemingway
Free Press Staff Writer
April 5, 2009
Timothy Twinam of Williston says he just wants to tell the truth about what’s really going on inside the Exclusive Brethren, a well-heeled, reclusive evangelical Christian group with 43,000 members around the world.
“This is a very closed group,” said Twinam, 54, a native of Great Britain. “They don’t circulate much with people, and over the years they’ve become ever more exclusive and cultish.”
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