Inside this issue of Religion News Briefs: items on Scientology, the International Cultic Studies Association, the Plymouth Brethren (which you know as the Exclusive Brethren), and more.
Also: the Book of Mormon vs DNA. And Saudi Arabia’s religious police. As always we include a modicum of opinion, as well as links to research resources.
In today’s brief edition of Religion News Briefs: the death of cult leader and self-proclaimed ‘Messiah’ Sun Myung Moon brings out cult defenders.
An Amish bishop testifies against the cult-like group that attacked him. Plus, an Australian doctor — a member of the extremist Exclusive Brethren sect — has been banned from practicing medicine after prescribing a ‘gay cure.’
An Exclusive Brethren school in Bendigo (Australia) with just 53 students has received $1.2 million in federal funding in order to build a new library. A second school run by the controversial sect in Swan Hill in Victoria’s north-west has been given $800,000 to build a school hall, despite having just 16 primary school students, The Age reported.
Despite evidence of abusive acts by cults, the Senate rejected Nick Xenophon’s request for an inquiry into Scientology when both major parties voted against it. We’ve been down this road before. Through much of 2006 and 2007, the Greens tried to get a Senate inquiry into the Exclusive Brethren, and the major parties vetoed it.
This means that, in Australia, cults are thriving under the protection of politicians, the police and the courts.
The Australian Government is handing more than $70 million to schools run by the Exclusive Brethren, a religious sect Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described as an “extremist cult” that breaks up families.
Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said these sums were outrageous and the funding system had to be urgently replaced.
Cult-like groups are on the rise in New Zealand. Now the two-part Inside New Zealand: How To Spot A Cult documentary uncovers what really goes on inside these often controversial groups.
The two-part documentary consists of ex-believers’ stories, and investigates the similarities they say exist between groups including the Exclusive Brethren, Scientology, Centrepoint, Gloriavale, Avatar and the International Church of Christ.
Two Tasmanian members of the reclusive religious sect, the Exclusive Brethren, have publicly apologised for ads published in the lead- up to the last state election.
The apology, published today in Tasmania’s three daily newspapers, followed a conciliation suggested by the state’s anti-discrimination tribunal following a complaint by Martine Delaney.
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd famously labelled the Exclusive Brethren (EB) a “cult” while in Opposition.
But it seems that, in Government, he is more generous to the Christian sect.
Figures obtained by The Greens in Senate Estimates reveal that funding to schools run by the controversial Christian sect have increased by 50 per cent under the Rudd Government.
Timothy Twinam of Williston says he just wants to tell the truth about what’s really going on inside the Exclusive Brethren, a well-heeled, reclusive evangelical Christian group with 43,000 members around the world.
The Exclusive Brethren says Twinam is a malcontent, a former church member who stole confidential documents to display them on www.Peebs.net, a Web site Twinam admits he created to encourage people to abandon the organization.
A father of eight has told a court that the Exclusive Brethren sect “brainwashed” and “pressured” his young son to turn against him.
The Exclusive Brethren, a secretive Christian sect that seeks a life for its followers separate to that of the general community, prevents followers from socialising or even eating with non-members.