Exclusive Brethren - Accusations

Accusations

Critics of Raven/Taylor/Hales group have accused it of using cult techniques by controlling all aspects of its members' lives. The group's influence over its members is such that many who have left the group have had trouble adjusting to life outside. To help with this problem, several websites have been set up to assist people that have left the church to adjust back into mainstream society.

Among the various criticisms raised against the church are:

• Members who leave or who are expelled from the group have often been treated with what outsiders may regard as great cruelty.
• Leavers are shunned by members of the group because leavers are seen as having chosen the world and the devil against God, and because they could bring members into contact with the sinful world. The Brethren have been accused of using their considerable wealth and power to punish members who have decided to leave the church and to have allegedly actively used their influence to split families up in order to protect the organization's interests.
• For the most part, members who have left the Raven/Taylor/Hales group are completely ostracised. Members are not permitted to live with those who have left and this causes families to break up; remaining members do not speak, eat or otherwise socialize with those who have left the group's membership. To leave the group, either voluntarily or to be excommunicated, means to be asked to leave one's home, and the subsequent breaking of all normal family relationships with those who remain within the group.
• Since virtually all of the Raven/Taylor/Hales members work in other members' companies, to leave the group means also that they have to give up their jobs, in addition to their family and their home.
• Accusations by former teachers in Raven/Taylor/Hales group schools that the group "brainwashes" children in order to control everything that children do in life; a former teacher was quoted as saying "the children are told what jobs they will do and who they will marry. They were not being equipped to live in the outside world".

Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia, said in 2007: "I believe this is an extremist cult and sect," and "They split families and I am deeply concerned about their impact on communities across Australia.".

Later comments in 2009 appear to be at odds with Kevin Rudd's earlier statement. In the aftermath to the Black Saturday fires in Australia in February 2009, a book commemorating the response and sacrifice of the emergency services, was published by students from a Brethren school, and the profits from the sales of this book were given to CFA stations to help with the replacement of lost equipment. Kevin Rudd wrote the foreword for the book and described the Brethren school, as a 'resilient community coming together in response to this crisis'. Similarly in the recent Christchurch earthquake in February 2011, it was individual members of the Brethren who set up the first food tent for the Rescue teams in Latimer Square as nothing else was available in the first few frantic days following the devastating aftershock. This food tent proved to be vital in maintaining the operation and was manned day and night by Christian Brethren volunteers, attracting praise and appreciation from the authorities including John Key, the New Zealand Prime Minister, who sampled the excellent food while he chatted with volunteers.

David V Barrett in his Book on The New Believers expresses a counter to Rudd's earlier view, "Family life is important to the Exclusive Brethren: they devote a lot of care and attention to their children, who are brought up within a consistently sound moral code." He refers to the group as a sect but not a cult, which he shows is an unwarranted pejorative term when used in general parlance.

The Exclusive Brethren were accused of providing over half a million dollars to the campaign of George W. Bush, another half-million to the campaign of New Zealand National leader, Don Brash, and large amounts to the campaign of Australia's John Howard. The Brethren Church claims it has never engaged in political activity. Individual citizens, they claim, have the right to express their concerns and encourage principles which they support or believe are right, although Exclusive Brethren do not - as a matter of principle - vote.