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(More customer reviews)It is no surprise, says investigative reporter, Michael Bachelard, that the Exclusive Brethren, a well-heeled and secretive Christian sect, should have been the apple of the eye of "conservative and authoritarian politicians such as John Howard", the former Australian Prime Minister. They are all clean-cut and straight-laced; big on `family values' and women staying home to tend children and husband; frowning on abortion and homosexuality; frothing at the mouth about trade unions and the Greens; venerating small business and private schooling; rooting for wars on Iraq and `terrorism'.
The sect's "doctrine of separation", which keeps the Brethren excluded from the spiritually `contaminated' material world, has resulted in a suite of bizarre rules and prohibitions, including banning shorts and facial hair for men, banning university for everyone, forbidding Brethren dwellings from having shared walls with non-Brethren dwellings and proscribing radio and TV, computers and mobile phones, and fax machines and automatic garage-door openers.
Sheltering behind the ramparts of `religious freedom' is the sect's enforcement of discriminatory gender roles. A Brethren woman can not "put herself in a position of authority over a man" and, once married, can not seek paid work. The only job available for Brethren girls is telemarketing until it is time to procreate.
Under the latest `Elect Vessel' to head the sect, Bruce Hales, a Sydney accountant and furniture-supplier, the Exclusive Brethren have modernised somewhat but only in financial and tax law which gets as close a scrutiny as scripture. Coupled with political lobbying to seek special exemptions and privileges as a Church/charity, the Brethren have become extremely wealthy.
Gross annual turnover of the thousand Brethren family businesses in Australia is A$2.2 billion, structured as family trusts to pay only the 30% corporate tax rate and not the top 48.5% individual tax rate. Hales is one of the biggest individual property-owners on the planet with holdings estimated by one former Brethren member at A$4 billion. Through family income-splitting and family trusts, the Brethren avoid tax and also rort the public purse by claiming a range of social security payments.
Openness and transparency is greatly feared by the Brethren which retains tight control of its members through instilling fear of the outside world, indoctrination, coercion and intimidating its members with being `shut up' (placed under household solitary confinement) or being excommunicated and losing family contact for ideological deviation or infractions of rules. Criticism of the sect by former members, or journalists, is met with defamation writs and threats of hugely expensive legal action.
The human and economic sins of this dark but dangerous little sect are many and Bachelard has done well to bring them to light.
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