The following letter was written by the peebs.net Community to Jackson Wells, Public Relations Consultants to the Exclusive Brethren. It summarizes the Exclusive Brethren today and provides many important insights into the cult. We reproduce it in full.
Jackson Wells recently signed up another group that many would consider fall into the same category as the Exclusive Brethren, The Church of Scientology in Australia.
The Exclusive Brethren and the Church of Scientology – like any other religious organisations, and especially those who are unjustly pursued by the more rabid elements of the mass media – are entitled to seek advice about how they should communicate. That’s what we offer, and that should be the end of the matter.
KEITH JACKSON, chairman, Jackson Wells
Mr Benjamin Haslem
Jackson Wells Pty Ltd
PO Box 1743
Neutral Bay NSW 2089
June 30th, 2009
Dear Mr Haslem
We wish to respond to your recent article in the web publication “The Well”, Issue 36, Autumn 2009, entitled “Into the Light: understanding the Exclusive Brethren”.
Whilst the above title implies that your brief is to shine some much-needed light onto the activities of the Exclusive Brethren, we believe that this is the last thing they would want. Until recently, they have always preferred to keep a low profile, with good reason. Instead, it appears that they wish to counteract their negative image from the public scrutiny they have attracted in recent times – purely through their own actions – by engaging your company to create a “positive spin”. Unfortunately, even a company of your stature will have great difficulty in achieving this objective.
We take issue with your assertion that “outrageous and false claims” have been leveled against the Brethren by “mostly tabloid” media outlets and a “handful of disaffected former Church members”. Firstly, we are surprised that you regard serious newspapers such as “The Age” and “The Australian” (your former employer) as tabloid. Secondly, the contemptuous term “handful” is nonsense, and sounds suspiciously like part of a previously reported statement of a Brethren spokesman.
We are a community of people, most of whom have intimate knowledge and personal experience of the Exclusive Brethren doctrine of extreme separation, which has caused many hundreds of families worldwide to be torn apart over the past 50 years. As a result, people have been forced to spend the rest of their lives apart from their families, with all the pain and trauma that that entails. Some have even been driven to suicide, as the following link shows:
Continue reading »
No, the Exclusive Brethren have not ‘taken over’ Peebs.Net! We are not writing this with loaded bound versions of Bruce Hales’s so-called ‘ministry’ held to our temples …
It is not often that we can point to something the Exclusive Brethren state publicly and agree with the statement. The statement we want to support as being the Truth was spoken by Mr. Athol Greene, the Father-in-Law to the current leader of the Exclusive Brethren, Bruce D. Hales.
David Marr writes this week from Australia’s The Age:
“You won’t change us,” he says, fixing me with his old eyes.
“You. Won’t. Change. Us.”
This statement by the self-described ‘spritual advisor’ to the reclusive Bruce Hales is historically accurate. Athol Greene is right that the Exclusive Brethren have been intransigent and steadfast in ripping apart families for almost 50 years.
Continue reading »
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.
Continue reading »
June 1st, 2009
We were sent a copy of David Tchappat’s ‘Breakout: My Escape from the Exclusive Brethren’ and have just finished reading this 278 page book – officially released today.
David has written an unique autobiography in that it represents the first published story of life in the Exclusive Brethren during the last 30 years. There have been a number of books written regarding life in the 1950′s and 1960′s, but David Tchappat was born after the Aberdeen Incident of 1970 and grew up in a brethren family in Australia under the iron-fisted rule of Neche, ND pig farmer James Symington and following his death, John Hales who is the father of Bruce Hales, the current Exclusive Brethren leader.
It is very much an Australian book – Aussie slang terms pepper the pages – non-Aussie readers will need to know the meaning of such words as ‘stoked‘, ‘bloke‘ and the visually effective ‘ropeable‘.
Written over a 5 year period, the autobiography covers the author’s upbringing in the Exclusive Brethren cult and his eventual departure as a 19 year old in the mid-1990′s. It is an important publication in that it is the most contemporary book detailing life within the EB.
Continue reading »
May 21, 2008
It seems that the Exclusive Brethren in New Zealand are feeling “superior”. In just 5 years, the number of Exclusive Brethren kids in Exclusive Brethren schools has more than trebled. Superficially, everything is wonderful, but if you dig between the lines in a news story like this one from The Press – Exclusive Brethren schools treble rolls a number of rather disturbing truths emerge.
We shall attempt to throw some light on this story – as always with the Exclusive Brethren, nothing is what it seems.
Continue reading »
Lee Wilson believed in the Exclusive Brethren. He was convinced that they were the only right position and if there were any faults, it was not the Exclusive Brethren that was wrong. Any faults belonged to certain people within the system rather than the system itself.
Lee came from a privileged Detroit USA Exclusive Brethren family. His father, Rick Wilson, was the grandson of James Taylor Jnr and was a protégé of the Neche pig farmer, James Symington. Under Symington’s leadership between 1970 and 1987, Rick Wilson prospered and was even slated as a possible world leader contender. Lee was his oldest son.
Like many young men, Lee decided to go his own way and left the Exclusive Brethren fellowship while in his late teens. He fell in love and fathered two boys who were his pride and joy.
His relationship with their mother eventually fell apart and subsequently Lee successfully applied for and was granted custody of his two boys. In 2003 Lee met and married a woman who also had 2 children from a previous relationship.
It is not clear what Lee was looking for or hoping to achieve, but he received a letter in late May / early June 2006 from James ‘Jim’ Joyce, his maternal Grandfather.(*)
A few days later, on the night of June 9th, 2006 Lee Wilson took his own life. He was 27 years old.
1970 was a dramatic year in the history of the Exclusive Brethren. The alcoholic James Taylor Jnr was still firmly in control as the undisputed leader of the Exclusive Brethren. The notorious Aberdeen Incident was only a few days away and, although Taylor himself would die in just a few months, public and private events were spiralling out of control.
Jack Reginald Wallis ran a farm in Dalwallinu, Western Australia. Jack’s son John recalls a tumultuous life leading up to this time:
“My recollections of my father’s life, was one of harassment and turmoil, caused by the Brethren.”
“He was accused of doing things he never did, saying things he never said, and even when he pleaded that ‘that if he had actually said what he was accused of, then he was sorry’ – his pleas were ignored.”
“He was persecuted by the then area leader C.W. ‘Bill’ Silverwright and the leadership of the local assembly in Dalwallinu. Their stern answer was always, ‘by a man’s words is he justified, and by his words is he condemned’.”
“Condemned he was, on many occasions. Growing up in an environment where we never knew if and when we would be “in fellowship” or “out of fellowship” was unsettling for the whole family.”
On July 8th, 1970 John Wallis heard a gunshot from inside the shearing shed on the family farm. He ran to investigate and found his father dead from a gunshot wound.
Although some questions remain even after nearly 40 years, the Coroner stated that the death of Jack Wallis was suicide.
“There is no doubt in my mind that my father’s death on July 8, 1970, was the result and culmination of many years of hardship inflicted on him and his family by the leaders of the “Exclusive Brethren cult, and this was my father’s way of saying, “enough is enough, you are not going to hurt me any more”.”
- John Wallis
We approach the story of the death of Mrs. Rose Waddell with the greatest respect for her family. We have received permission to tell the story of Rose through the use of a press article that appeared at the time. We reproduce it in full.
SECT ORDER LED TO WOMAN’S DEATH
The Sydney Morning Herald
November 30 1968
WOLLONGONG, Friday
An order by the Exclusive Brethren had culminated in the death of an Austinmer mother of five, the District Coroner, Mr W M Sherley, S.M. said today.
He said the harsh directive by the sect had broken up a family and caused the woman, a sect member, seven years of emotional distress.
Mr Sherley made the remarks at the conclusion of an inquest into the death of Rose Waddell, 49, of Wigram Road, Austinmer, in September.
He brought in a finding of suicide by strangulation.
Mrs Waddell had been found by her husband hanging from a rafter in an outside toilet near their home.
Mr Sherley said the woman had been in a state of depression before her death.
“She appeared to have no interest in the future.” He said.
Her condition had stemmed from the departure from the family home of three of her five daughters seven years ago.
A directive had been given to the daughters by a religious sect known as the Exclusive Brethren.
A doctrinal analysis of Exclusive Brethren ‘Separation’
Criticizing the doctrinal origins of the Exclusive Brethren can be a dangerous ambition. The history and objectives of this strange seclusionist cult are intentionally steeped in the mists of tradition, conscience and the horror of even suggesting that any existing, or former, ‘Man of God’ (one of the internal titles given to Exclusive Brethren leaders) could possibly do something wrong! Today, the very concept of criticism is in the process of being carefully bred-out of the group. One of the irrefutable symptoms of being a cult is this intolerance toward internal questioning and criticism.
The following December 2009 blog entry presents in a refreshingly clear and concise manner exactly what is wrong with the Exclusive Brethren interpretation of what it is to be ‘separate from the world’. The author Milt Rodriguez (never an Exclusive Brethren member) also portrays a perfect summary of why Brethren divide so many times – how many ex-Exclusive Brethren have heard the dread words: ‘I can no longer walk in fellowship with you… I therefore withdraw from iniquity‘ …
The Dominion of Opinion that follows is recommended as one of the better doctrinal explanations of where the Exclusive Brethren went wrong with their malformed hypothesis of what ‘Separation from Evil’ really entails.
Continue reading »