Sunday, August 21, 2005

exclusive brethren

Update: For a political comment on the Election Pamphlet funding by Exclusive Brethren business leaders, go here.

Following the TV3 programme onThursday evening regarding the Exclusive Brethren, I’ve had a number of internet visitors to this post. I was stunned recently to discover that the Exclusive Brethren have a website. I was amazing at the irony of a group that professed to ignore technology seeming to have produced an information website about themselves.

Other web resources on the Exclusive Brethren include the following; an evaluation (and warning) of their cult status here (scroll down to “E”). There’s an overview of the group on the BBC website. There’s a Listener review of the just released; Behind Closed Doors: A startling story of Exclusive Brethren life by Ngaire Thomas. And New Zealand sociologist, Alan Jamieson provides another review of the same book here.

As we talk, let’s remember that this is not only about religion, it’s also about people. I talked to someone this morning, who recounted the pain of her being excluded from the Brethren, barred from her mother’s funeral, and the damage it did to her faith and that of her husband. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata — it is people, it is people, it is people.

Posted by steve at 02:42 PM

2 Comments

  1. I was stunned, as I watched the documentary, to discover that I had been to school with one of the women interviewed. I was blown away with the courage she must have had to leave the terrible farce that her marriage had become. I hope her children know a better life than she had, and that she will also know more freedom and happiness than she experienced growing up.

    Comment by Larraine — August 21, 2005 @ 7:57 pm

  2. Steve

    Regarding the Brethren having a website. That’s nothing, even the Amish are online!
    http://www.amish-heartland.com/
    http://www.amishnews.com/

    Just goes to show
    That emerging on the web
    Does not make one automatically pomo

    Comment by Matt Stone — August 23, 2005 @ 7:22 pm

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