Category: The Fellowship (Australia)

The Presbyterian Church of Australia has declared heretical six principal teachings of a cult inside a Melbourne Presbyterian church, and ordered that the church’s findings against the cult be read at every Presbyterian congregation in Australia.

The declaration, to be released today, vindicates the church in its decade-long battle to expel the cult, headed by stockbroker Bruce Teele, that dominates Trinity Presbyterian Church, Camberwell.

Top-level tensions in the Presbyterian church over a cult inside its Camberwell church have deteriorated after the state authority defied a move that would end its attempts to excise the cult. Members of the Victorian assembly on Tuesday expressed outrage at a report from the national church group that in practice exonerates the cult, known as the Fellowship.

The 15 elders of a Presbyterian Church cult known as the Fellowship who were excommunicated last year have appealed to the church’s highest authority to reinstate them.

An elitist cult has successfully operated as a church within a church – until now. As a young man, Grant Lawry was invited to join the Fellowship, the secretive cult centred at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Camberwell. He spent 15 years on the fringes — then the past decade trying to root them out of the Presbyterian Church. Last Sunday provided a bitter-sweet moment of vindication. Lawry, now minister at the Canterbury church, stood beside the clerk of Melbourne East Presbytery, Kevin Childs, while Childs read a notice excommunicating Trinity’s 15 elders, all members of the cult. “It’s been a

Churchgoers were warned yesterday to reject a secretive group operating in their midst. The warning came after the excommunication of 15 elders of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Camberwell Victoria over their links to the Fellowship, a sect accused of wielding strong control over its followers. A statement read to the Trinity congregation by Presbytery of Melbourne East clerk Kevin Childs before yesterday morning’s service said the elders had been banished for their conduct as Fellowship members and their failure to address the situation. The statement said the presbytery of Melbourne East – which oversees the running of member churches –

The Presbyterian Church has excommunicated all 15 elders of one of its largest Melbourne congregations because of their conduct as members of a cult known as the Fellowship. At 2.15am on Thursday, the Presbytery of Melbourne East dismissed the session (group of elders) of Trinity, Camberwell, and removed them from membership of the Presbyterian Church in Australia. The Fellowship is a secretive cult operating inside the church, whose members usually deny it exists. Victims say it maintains strong control over members. A letter will be read to the Trinity congregation at the 10am service tomorrow explaining the action of the

Fractured Families: The Story of a Melbourne Cult, By Morag Zwartz, Parenesis Publishing, $19.95 In the public imagination, cults are usually associated with the wacky and the surreal: fortified compounds in isolated locales, flying saucers, suicide pacts, children with dyed blond hair or leaders commanding sex from vulnerable followers. Thus, the idea of a cult emerging in the moneyed, eternally verdant suburbs of Balwyn, Canterbury, Kew and Camberwell seems absurd. Even more so when the members are successful doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers and ordinary church folk. And yet, as Fractured Families reveals, cults can take root in and among the most