Cult of no personality

A New Zealand MP has incurred the wrath of the Exclusive Brethren Church with his revelations concerning its involvement in family breakups and alleged intimidations of wayward former members.

Nick Smith’s tale of a Nelson couple deprived of their three children for three years has resulted in a flood of letters and phone calls from former Exclusive Brethren members, now excommunicated, in Australia and New Zealand.

Support: Former Australian church leader (1976-84) Ron Fawkes went to New Zealand over Christmas to gather support from the Kiwi contingent. Fawkes was once involved in breaking up Brethren families in which a member (often the father) was believed to be acting outside the church’s teachings. However, he was cast out of the church in 1984 after criticising the increasing power of the Brethren’s international leader, US-based Jim Symington.

"I believed the world leader was coming between the brethren and Christ," Fawkes told The Bulletin. "He has the final say on everything – from whom you will marry to decreeing the amount of milk girls must drink every day. The control he had over people’s lives was becoming too extreme."

Current Exclusive Brethren world leader John Hales lives in Sydney. It is almost impossible to get accurate statistics on the number of Exclusive Brethren because they refuse to fill in census forms. Estimates differ wildly but according to Smith, there are about 250,000 Exclusive Brethren around the world – 30,000 in Australia, 10,000 in New Zealand and most of the remainder in the US and Britain. (Fawkes’ estimate is 50,000 worldwide, 10,000 in Australia and 6,000 in New Zealand.) Members may be recognised by their plain, sombre dress – bright colours and denim are out, females have long hair and wear headscarves – and by their regular Friday night preaching in town centres.

For eight years Fawkes pleaded to be readmitted, knowing he would forfeit any chance of seeing his wife and six children if he remained outside the sect. But privately his reservations were growing, particularly, he says, in view of his own Bible readings during this period.

"Brethren tend to read the ministry of their world leaders (question-and-answer style discussion papers based on leaders’ interpretations of the Bible) rather than the Bible," Fawkes says.

Despair: After years of despair in which he passionately tried to persuade his wife to join him and having received letters from his children stating they believed their father to be "wicked" and that they did not want him to visit them, Fawkes gave up and changed tack. He remarried in mid-1992 and started talking openly about questionable aspects of the church’s activities and providing support for other excommunicated members. This breakaway group now has an informal network bridging the Tasman and Fawkes believes it can help Smith fight a $100,000 defamation suit threatened by a Nelson church leader, Edward Malcolm.

Smith and Malcolm crossed swords over an Exclusive Brethren couple in Smith’s constituency who had been separated, allegedly by the church, from their children for the last three years. There had been virtually no contact between parents and offspring aged 10, nine and eight. The children lived with their maternal grandparents during this time and attempts by the parents to reclaim them failed.

A large part of the problem in the Nelson case was the couple’s ignorance – having been brought up within the church – of their rights as parents. But the couple was also intimidated on one occasion when they drove to pick up their children – a massive Brethren blockade of cars and people at the grandparents’ house forced them to abandon their mission.

Afraid: On another occasion, the couple drove to their children’s school and demanded they be released to them. The principal allowed them 90 minutes with the children but phoned the Ministry of Education for advice. He was told to contact the grandparents, who allegedly came and stopped the children from leaving. During the time spent with the parents, one of the boys allegedly admitted: "I want to love you, but I’m afraid to."

A full Family Court hearing to resolve the children’s custody was scheduled for November 1992 but, at the last minute, the Brethren insisted on having their own psychologist prepare a report (delaying the hearing till early February 1993). Meanwhile, a court-appointed psychologist’s report favours the parents resuming custody, according to Smith.

In parliament Smith has detailed numerous cases of Brethren punishment of former members. Most involve men who lose not only their wives and families but often their businesses, as the Brethren rely on networking. They also refuse to work alongside excommunicated members, effectively turning these people into pariahs and putting even non-Brethren employers’ businesses at risk if they agree to employ them.

The situation is exacerbated in parochial communities like Nelson and Smith’s adjoining Tasman/Motueka constituency, which are Brethren strongholds.

Smith told parliament that in one case, a Nelson pilot, Murray Turley, was excommunicated for wanting to get a job in another part of the country. Eleven years later he was recognised by a church member aboard the Air Nelson plane he was flying; representations were made to the company management by Brethren members and Turley was forced to resign. Smith said Air Nelson confirmed these facts to him. He said the alternative regional airline, Tranzair, also confirmed to Smith that it would never employ Turley for fear of losing a group of wealthy Brethren air travellers.

"The church has become progressively more extreme since its 1960s revolution," Smith told The Bulletin. "Up to that point it was a fundamentalist movement, but not exclusive. Members could associate with others until then."

Rulings laid down by then world leader "Big Jim" Taylor are often harsh and sometimes plain odd. The consumption of white spirits was banned but whisky, which Big Jim was fond of, was allowed, according to Smith. Household pets, garden flowers, voting, television, computers, faxes and radio telephones are all prohibited. Schoolchildren are not allowed to play competitive sports or go on overnight camps, day trips or enjoy other forms of entertainment. Mixed swimming is out after primary school. Tertiary education – particularly at university – has been discouraged since the 1960s and at the same time, dairy farmers (who had to work on Sundays, breaking a Brethren Sabbath rule) sold up their farms and chose other occupations.

Members are bound to inform on others who break rules, and confession at meetings – in explicit, embarrassing detail to all who attend (children included) – is expected. Smith says, "Some former members have admitted to me that they used to confess and repent, regardless of whether or not they had done the crime, otherwise they would have to suffer intimidation and being ‘withdrawn from’." (Erring members are isolated completely, to give them time to repent – or be excommunicated.)

Men – who are because of their work more involved in the outside community than women – are usually the ones who suffer the most pressure to suppress doubts or misgivings, Smith says. Suicides by Brethren males have hit the headlines in New Zealand tabloids in recent years, with excommunicated family members citing church pressure and intimidation as likely reasons for the deaths.

Lie: Only one practising Brethren member contacted Smith’s office following his disclosures about the Nelson couple. "He was an elderly man who said that everything I had said was correct, and that every day of his life he lived a lie for the sake of keeping his family together," Smith says. "Once a man reveals his doubts, the church gathers around his wife, visiting her whenever he is away, reminding her of the need to resist evil thoughts and save her children. Once he leaves, the wife is upheld as a heroine and an example for others to follow. And she is looked after financially."

Smith told parliament that the cases he has uncovered are just the beginning. He is now working on a private members’ bill to prevent any group from breaking down marital and family ties under the guise of religion. "Getting the balance right will be difficult…but it may save a future generation of New Zealand families from the scars of religious extremism," he told The Bulletin.