Former members label Brethren a controlling sect ahead of parliamentary inquiry

“Comparable practices exist in many faiths, including excommunication in the Catholic Church. Singling out one church for practices shared by many is not fair reporting. We ask that our members be treated with the same respect afforded to any other faith community.”

Jacomb’s excommunication made her persona-non-grata including with her own family. So when she started emailing her brother Braden Simmons in 2014, and his Brethren boss read those emails and informed the church elders, Simmons too was punished for breaching the “doctrine of separation”.

The following year, Hales took to the pulpit. Simmons’ contact with “opposers” – his sister – was “rotten poison,” he preached.

“He might as well get a shot of ... arsenic. How do you get arsenic into you?” Hales asked his flock. “He’d be better to take arsenic, or go and get some rat poison or something, take a bottle of it.”

“That would be better, to finish yourself off that way [rather] than having to do with the opponents of the truth.”

After Hales’ comments were printed and distributed globally to the 56,000-strong Brethren flock, Simmons says, “People treated me with kid gloves. I think they worried I was a mass murderer, that if they spoke to me I might cut their head off … You’re left with this enormous, quite bizarre stigma.”

Simmons insisted on meeting Hales face to face. When he did, he found the spiritual leader had nothing useful to say to him. In conversations with his friends, Simmons strongly criticised Hales.

“It took me 48 hours to get shunned.”

On Friday, the electoral matters committee will ask hard questions of Hales – unprecedented for a man who for decades has answered only the inquiries of his own acolytes. He tried to get out of the grilling but failed.

At stake is not just his church’s reputation, but millions of dollars in tax exemptions.

Charities in Australia are prohibited from campaigning for political parties, and Hales’ church runs a dozen charities with hundreds of millions in assets. Research in the UK reveals the Brethren use these riches almost entirely for their own benefit. A finding that the church was involved in electioneering could seriously imperil these generous concessions.

A number of right-wing groups have leapt to Hales’ defence. Holding him to account is a threat to religious freedom, they say.

Turning Point USA, the controversial US right-wing organisation, called on the Trump government to lobby Australia over Hales’ questioning, with pastor Lucas Miles worried that, “If this approach succeeds against one church, it becomes a precedent of intimidation for all”.

The Coalition members of the committee have labelled Hales’ grilling a “witch-hunt”. The Anglican Bishop of South Sydney, Michael Stead, and his organisation, Freedom for Faith, say the Brethren is a simple “mainstream Christian denomination,” whose members “have as much right as any other Australian to participate in the electoral process”.

“Religious leaders (are not) automatically responsible for the political choices, associations or conduct” of their members, Freedom for Faith told members of the committee in an email. (Neither they nor the Coalition responded to recent questions about Hales’ long history of antisemitic comments.)

Experts who know the Brethren better say these defences are wrong-headed. Reverend Tim Costello, a senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity and former president of the Baptist Union of Australia, said Hales’ church “regard the rest of us Christians as so unfaithful that they will not worship, fellowship or even eat or drink with us.

“And the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren break up families … this is not freedom of conscience or freedom of religion.”

International expert on religious sects Steve Hassan said freedom of religion also meant the freedom to leave without reprisal. Groups with harsh practices such as the Brethren, he said, had become adept at “hiding in plain sight”.

The alleged stunts organised by the Brethren with neo-Nazi associates were “straight out of the MAGA playbook,” Hassan said, and part of a growing trend of “authoritarian cults pushing extremist agendas and mixing with the far-right”.

Extremism expert Josh Roose has called for the Brethren’s alleged use of neo-Nazi associates to tail and heckle politicians on the campaign trail to be investigated, and teal donor Climate 200 has referred the church to the charity regulator for investigation.

In comments to The Australian this week, Hales said, “The truth will prevail”. A group of 12 former church members, including Simmons, hope so.

Two signatories to the letter have already given evidence to the electoral matters committee. Ben Woodbury agreed everyone should have the right to support a political party, but, “the level of coercion behind it … isn’t accounted for”. Cassie Davies said, “this was not typical individual political participation; it was structured and directed”.

In their letter this week, the group wrote there was no chance Hales’ sons and their acolytes brought thousands of Brethren members together to campaign without his assent. This was a church endeavour, they say, and the fate of one young Brethren man proves it.

The man, who this masthead has chosen not to name to protect his privacy, was in Australia from the United Kingdom last year and was involved on the Brethren campaign trail. Shocked at what he was hearing, he secretly recorded a co-ordinating meeting, then leaked the audio to former church members. The recording found its way to this masthead.

The man was immediately put on a flight back to England, where his local priests passed an assembly judgment to have him kicked out of his family home and separated from his parents. He told this masthead at the time this was “because of the audio I recorded”. Church elders called him a “traitor”.

Eighteen months later, the ex-members say in their letter, the young man is still living in a small caravan in his parents’ backyard. He has limited contact with them or anyone else.

The former members ask if this man’s transgression was election-related and the election had nothing to do with the church, why is he being punished under church religious law?

“The PBCC continues to hold him in that position today,” the ex-members wrote, “even as it proclaims no involvement in the activities he revealed.”

Asked about this, the church spokesman provided no answer.

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