Editorial by David Lange (former prime minister of New Zealand 1984-1989)
Auckland University Publication (Craccum Column) 21/7/93
The following editorial appeared in 1993. Mr. Lange got his facts a little mixed
up when describing events outside of New Zealand ( e.g. World Leader in bed with a bottle and two woman)
but he seems to have observed the New Zealand brethren rather closely.
Some things my electorate could do without. There is the airport and the sewage farm. But less appealing still is the presence among us of a large number of Exclusive Brethren.
They are known to you perhaps by squads of woman wearing scarves and long dresses sometimes sighted at airports. The menfolk may be seen in short back and sides denouncing the world, the flesh and the devil on street corners. Both groups avoid eye contact.
In Mangere they have two chapels both of which enjoy rates relief. Both have substantial security systems. Non-members are excluded from the properties. If you think no one ever uses them it is because the Brethren meet on Sundays at 6am and then have a succession of meetings in the homes of fellow adherents.
While most religions have elements of wackiness in them, the incongruity of the rules by which the Brethren live is more than usually abnormal.
Their sewer pipes must go straight to the mains. They eschew shared driveways and prohibit cross-leased property ownership. Their cars must not be turbo-charged. The closest they come to sense is banning television. Computers are out, as are radiotelephones, cell-phones, record players and barcoders.
All this newfangled stuff is the work of Lucifer, although aircraft conveniently are accepted.
To engage in swimming, team sports, entertainment or friendship outside the membership brings swift exclusion from the sect. It goes without saying that their views on the status and role of woman make Saint Paul look like a feminist.
Why does anyone belong? The simple answer is that its members are totally absorbed in the sect. Their lives consist of a tedious round of fellowship meetings and the building of barriers to social contacts outside the fellowship. The battle lines have been drawn, they develop an enduring bunker mentality, relieved only by the adventure of street corner preaching or the consumption of whisky. (The latter pastime, which is of recent development, arose from the exhortations of a leader who became addicted to it. The discovery of this man in Aberdeen in bed with a bottle and two women caused the collapse of the Cult in Britain.)
Perhaps because it happened in Scotland, their leaders fall was not regarded as terminal to the Exclusive Brethren in the Southern Hemisphere. An Australian became world leader. His fiat from Sydney is infallible. Pilgrims visit him regularly. He runs his New Zealand flock by telephone (cable only) and decides the future of New Zealand marriages, church membership and litigation.
The callousness of the faith is mortifying. A constituent who belonged to the Brethren had a son who was somewhat retarded and he, perhaps unwittingly, breached one of their codes. He was driven from the home and sought refuge in an emergency shelter. His parents totally disowned him. He was killed riding his bike. The parents didn’t attend his funeral. A photograph was sent to the parents by a man who had befriended this 19-year-old outcast. It was returned with the observation that the son’s face showed that he had passed from Gods grace.
The sect is relentless in its pursuit of defaulters. Air Nelson employed a pilot who had been dismissed from the church years before. When the local adherents (and there are a lot of them down there) found out, they said they wouldn’t fly on any airline which employed him. He lost his job.
Recently the sect lost a case the world leader masterminded over the custody of three children. Far from accepting the judgement of the court, the devotees have kept up their harassment of the successful litigants, the natural parents, former adherents. Most recently there has been the early morning rattling of windows.
The Brethren have the right to believe or disbelieve and behave as they choose, within the limits of the law, but there is an issue here.
These people are bringing up children who have no concept of the alternatives to the rigidity of their dreadful dogma. Should our education system allow nutters to stop their children using computers? Should the schools be helpless in the face of parents who refuse to allow their children any contact with other children outside the classroom? Why can’t these poor kids play netball? Should we tolerate the nurturing of tunnel- visioned children because of the absurd conviction of their parents?
The answer of course is that we allow all this to happen in the name of fundamental liberties. The tragedy is that the rights of the children have been subsumed in the rights of the parents, obscuring the Point that parents have rights over their children only in so far as they serve the interests of their children. The Brethren make tolerance seem wrongheaded.
I used to be heavied by the Mangere faithful who would harangue me from ambush. Then the world leader decided that the better strategy would be to have prayer meetings and seek relief through my death. I can understand why the faithful find it easier to stay than to leave. The only thing that can be said for them is that they don’t vote.
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