Category Archives: Freedom from Religion

Left Right Out by Labor

I was just 14 years old when Whitlam’s Labor Government stormed into office in 1972, but I still remember the feeling of excitement and anticipation that ‘something big’ had just happened and that Australia would never be the same again.

Once in office, Whitlam set to implementing his policies with iron resolve and an almost unseemly haste. Well may we question the fiscal responsibility of the Whitlam government but we still live with the benefits of their brave, take no prisoners reforms: multiculturalism, Medicare, free university education and the first moves towards Aboriginal reconciliation to name just a few.

I felt the same sense of breathless anticipation when Rudd was elected. He was young, energetic, ambitious and seemed intent on sweeping aside the crushing conservatism of the Howard years, just as Whitlam had done thirty-five years before. He started boldly with an apology to the Stolen Generation – surely this foreshadowed a commitment to other social justice issues? He followed with the 2020 summit, giving ordinary Australians input into building a vision for Australia’s future. We dared to hope for an inclusive, representative government that would actually listen to what the ordinary citizens of Australia really wanted.

Sold a Pup

Do you know the feeling when you see a trailer for a movie and think ‘that’s going to be amazing’, but when you actually see the film you realize the only good bits were in the preview and even they don’t move the story along much? That’s how I feel about the Rudd government. We were sold a pup. Up front we got a big, glossy, exciting bells-and-whistles wind-up, but the whole thing just turned out to be a disappointing flop that failed for want of good direction.

Rudd may have patiently listened to your views at the 2020 summit but he has since rejected all of your silly ideas and just gone on his own merry, conservative, non-consultative way. He may have apologised to the Stolen Generation, but what has he done for indigenous people since?

The Rudd government is not the reformist government we expected. Rudd is not the alternative to Howard we were promised. Rudd is just Howard in a blonde wig. He has sold out the Labor left. Indeed, there are even some of us who considered ourselves more centrists than lefties – and even we are left feeling that the political rug has been pulled out from under our feet.

The overwhelming feeling of those who have been hung out to dry by a party many have supported all their lives is anger, betrayal and dismay.

Prior to his election, Rudd claimed to be a Christian socialist. He now claims he has never been a socialist. (I’m just waiting for the day he concedes he’s never been a Christian either!) Citing Bonhoeffer as his inspiration, Rudd had us believing that his was a religionless Christianity steeped in a commitment to social justice rather than religious dogma. We expected a liberal Christian – what we got was a new best friend for the arch-conservative extreme right-wing religious nutters at the Australian Christian Lobby.

The Exclusive Brethren and Other Cults

Prior to his election, Rudd denounced the Exclusive Brethren as a ‘dangerous cult’. After his election Rudd’s government continued to provide millions of dollars to the cult enabling them to keep their children isolated from the general population and actively dissuade them from pursuing tertiary studies. Further, Labor has refused to support the inquiry into the tax status of Scientology proposed by Senator Nick Xenophon, frightened that it may open a Pandora’s Box regarding the tax-exempt status of more mainstream religious institutions. Neatly brushing the issue aside, Senator Ludwig said that the government preferred to wait for the results of the Henry Tax Review – the recommendations of which have since been substantially rejected.

Bill of Rights

In more sleight of hand, Rudd agreed to a public inquiry into an Australian Bill of Rights. Ignoring the blatant conflict of interest, he appointed Father Frank Brennan to head the inquiry, despite the Catholic Church’s official opposition to the concept. Reflecting the strength of feeling encountered in the public consultations, Brennan’s National Human Rights Consultation committee recommended the adoption of a Human Rights Act but Rudd’s government refused to accept the recommendation of its own inquiry. Adding salt to the wound, the Liberal Party controlled Menzies Research Centre claimed the defeat of the Bill of Rights as ‘a significant victory for the Menzies Research Centre and the Coalition’. Just remind me, who is Rudd supposed to be representing – the Labor party, the majority of Australians or the Liberal conservatives?

Asylum Seekers

With a self-confessed Christian socialist in charge, we may well have hoped that the Rudd Government would foster a kinder, more understanding public response to refugees rather than pandering to ill-informed populist scare-mongering. Perhaps they might launch an education campaign to explain why asylum seekers are neither ‘illegal’ nor ‘queue jumpers’. But no. Rudd’s approach to refugees has ceded to the same conservative populism which fed Howard’s policies. In fact, more and more, the Rudd solution leans towards the Howard government’s inhumane position of indefinite mandatory detention.

Gay Marriage

And so to homosexuals. In his article, “Faith in Politics”, Rudd said: “I see very little evidence that this pre-occupation with sexual morality is consistent with the spirit and content of the Gospels. For example, there is no evidence of Jesus of Nazareth expressly preaching against homosexuality.” But, when Rudd’s liberal views on homosexuality were put to the test, he folded. Rather than support the ACT’s move to allow gay marriage as a positive reform, Rudd’s government overturned it.

Climate Change

On climate change Rudd came out with all guns blazing. Climate change, he said, striking a statesmanlike pose, is ‘the great moral and economic challenge of our time’. His government’s Emissions Trading Scheme, he assured us, was one of the ‘most important structural reforms to our economy in a generation’. When getting the ETS through became too hard, however, Rudd did a Scarlett O’Hara – “Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, I’ll think about that tomorrow” – and stuck his climate change reforms in a drawer marked 2013. I have a vision of Rudd in a Scarlett O’Hara bonnet, driving his carriage out of town lickety-split as Atlanta … er … Australia burns behind him.

Internet Censorship

The Rudd government’s $43 billion National Broadband Network is already being criticized as an outdated white elephant – even before the scheme has been introduced. Further, Senator Stephen Conroy, Rudd’s Minister for Communications is pushing a hugely unpopular, $125.8 million mandatory internet filter which will put Australians’ freedom of information on par with countries like China and Iran – and, if the IT experts are correct, substantially slow internet speeds. And it’s not just a few computer geeks grumbling about the assault on Australians’ freedom. In January, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that internet freedom was central to American foreign policy and that the US would actively resist efforts by governments seeking to censor the internet. Subsequently, the Obama government has raised its concerns about the plan with the Australian Government while child protection agencies have noted that the filter will have no effect whatsoever in protecting children from sexual predators or abuse.

Many rank and file Labor voters are astounded that a Labor government would even consider a policy that undermines Australians’ basic freedoms and dismayed to find that Rudd and Conroy are working, hand in glove, with the right-wing Australian Christian Lobby on the implementation of the scheme. In fact, in December it was revealed that the results of Conroy’s internet filtering trial had been shared exclusively with the Australian Christian Lobby – leaving other stakeholders out in the cold.

One has to ask what backroom deals have been done between the Rudd Government, Conroy, Family First Party Senator Fielding and the Australian Christian Lobby to make Labor ignore the advice of IT experts and child welfare agencies and risk the ire, not only of the vast majority of internet users but the American government? Is the Labor government selling us out to the right-wing conservatives for 30 pieces of electoral silver?

National School Chaplaincy Program

And then we have the National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP). This ridiculous scheme was instituted by the Howard Government. According to the Australian Secular Lobby, even the Coalition never intended it as a long-term policy. But, to the dismay of Labor voters, it has not only been continued, but expanded under Rudd. I am sure I’m not the only one who shudders to think what the evangelical chaplains provided by the Scripture Union are telling young people who confide in them about same-sex attraction, pre-marital sex, or unwanted pregnancies. If our children need support and advice within the school system surely this should come from qualified, unbiased counselors – not from largely unqualified people with a clear religious agenda? The NSCP is yet more evidence that Rudd has sold out the Labor party to the conservative right.

As the Australian Secular Lobby rightly says:

“The question for ordinary tax-paying Australians must be, “Do we elect politicians to make decisions in the openness of parliament and in the full glare of the media, or are we happy to have secretive evangelical groups undertaking ‘quiet work’ to determine what is, or is not, in Australia’s ‘national interest’?”

Left Right Out

In the Sunday Age today, national political reporter, Josh Gordon writes:

“Understandably, the left today might be feeling a tad disillusioned and disenfranchised … One prominent Labor backbencher said there was a growing perception that Rudd had sacrificed the aspirations of traditional rank-and-file supporters in a Howard-esque pitch to swinging voters.
”We are getting quite a lot of emails which are critical of the positions that have been taken about carbon trading and asylum seekers,” the MP said. ”If you show up at ALP branch meetings you do see a certain amount of frowns and folded arms and so on. I think there is some concern among the leadership base about those things.”

The MP is right and I have some inside information that an internal Labor Party poll shows that Rudd’s overt religiosity and pandering to the religious right is a matter of considerable concern within the party. Traditional Labor voters are disillusioned, disenfranchised, angry and betrayed. Rudd has left the left right out. He promised a Labor government and delivered a Liberal conservative government in all but name.

Further, Rudd’s efforts to woo the ‘moral majority’ for Labor doesn’t seem to be doing him much good. This week’s Newspoll results show the Rudd government trailing the Coalition on a two-party basis (49-51 per cent) with an 11-point drop in the PM’s satisfaction rating to 39 per cent. Fifty per cent of voters, it appears, are dissatisfied with Rudd’s performance. Seems those votes the Australian Christian Lobby promised you just weren’t worth the price, Kev!

A vote for the Greens may well be a vote for Labor – for now – but the Greens are gaining in strength, attracting a broader base and, at the next election, it is highly likely that Labor’s left will desert in large numbers. Rudd and his cronies would do well to look at the UK election results in which the Liberal Democrats now hold the balance of power and will largely determine who leads the country. The left may be disenfranchised, Kevin, but we don’t necessarily need you to win.

Chrys Stevenson

First-time comments on this blog are moderated but will be approved and published as soon as possible.

Read Also

Abbott’s Contrasting Role Revealed in Black and White by Leslie Cannold for a similar analysis of the Opposition leader.

Sources

The Legacy of the Whitlam Government – Modia Minotaur – Friday, November 11, 2005

Are Asylum Seekers Illegal? – Asylum Seeker Project – Hotham Mission

Politics and religion: crossed paths – David Marr, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 December 2009

A matter of church and state, Amanda Davey, Mosman Daily, 5 April 2010

Faith in Politics, Kevin Rudd, The Monthly, October 2006

Rudd’s dangerous climate retreat, Paul Kelly, The Australian, 29 April 2010

US reveals concerns over Conroy’s net filter plan, Paul Colgan, The Punch, 29 March 2010

Conroy will be censoring people, not the internet, Nina Funnell, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 December 2009

Rudd praises ‘quiet work’ of evangelicals: evangelicals undermine Liberal Party and ‘national interest’, Australian Secular Lobby

Figures prove hard for PM to swallow, Michelle Grattan – The Age, 5 May 2010

Policies Overboard, Josh Gordon – Sunday Age, 9 May 2010

Further Action

1. Consider supporting the Australian Greens at the next election – particularly in the Senate. It is not a ‘wasted’ vote, if your Green candidate fails to win, your full vote will go to your next preference. You do not have to preference according to the Green’s ‘how to vote’ card – you may choose your preferences according to your own wishes. If Labor only wins because of Green’s preferences that sends a strong message to them about where their support is coming from.

2. Write to your local Federal Labor representative stating your dissatisfaction at the direction the Rudd Labor Government has taken.

3. Donate to the High Court Challenge which seeks to expose the government’s National School Chaplaincy Scheme as unconstitutional. (Paypal now available.)

4. Electronic Frontiers provides a list of ten things you can do to stop Conroy’s internet censorship scheme.

5. Write to Senator Nick Xenophon stating your support for an inquiry into Scientology and other similar organizations.
Senator.Xenophon@aph.gov.au
Level 2, 31 Ebenezer Place, Adelaide 5000

6. Collect signatures on a petition for Equal Marriage Rights in Australia

7. Join the Facebook Group Kevin Rudd’s Lies and Broken Promises and invite your friends to join.

Gladly’s Book Recommendations

Gladly reckons his crossed eyes make him lean towards the left. He wonders if Kevin’s lurch toward the right and apparent short-sightedness might be corrected with a visit to a good optometrist. If you liked this article you might be interested in reading further from Gladly’s favourite online bookstore, Embiggen Books.

A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam’s Life in Politics by Graham Freudenberg
It’s Time Again: Whitlam and Modern Labor by Colleen Lewis and Jenny Hocking
Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia by Robert Manne
Exit Right: The Unravelling of John Howard by Judy Brett
God Under Howard: The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics by Marion Maddox
Beautiful Lies: Australia from Menzies to Howard by Tony Griffiths
Behind the Exclusive Brethen by Michael Bachelard
The Statute of Liberty: How Australians can take back their human rights by Geoffrey Robertson
The Purple Economy: Supernatural Charities, Tax and the State by Max Wallace
Realizing Secularism: Australia and New Zealand by Max Wallace
Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change by Clive Hamilton

The Brisbane Christian Fellowship – A Government Sponsored Cult

46 Replies

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal French mathematician, physicist (1623 – 1662)

For it is humility – the complete abasement of our own assessments and thought processes – that opens the way to freedom.

Tim Maurice, Highlands Christian Fellowship – June 2008

You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.

William Wilberforce, 1789

Helen Pomery is a typical, upper-middle class woman – the absolute epitome of a well-to-do doctor’s wife. Tonight, well-dressed, immaculately made-up and hair carefully coiffed she stands in front of an audience of seventy people in the meeting room of a slightly shabby Brisbane pub.

“I was married for 30 years,” she explains. “My husband was a doctor – a gynaecologist and an obstetrician. I was his practice manager. I can’t prove it to you, but we had a normal, happy marriage. We had three children. We had a close and loving family. My husband was a good man.”

Helen’s nightmare began after they moved from South Australia to Maryborough in the 1990s and began attending a normal looking church, full of normal looking, middle-class people. Some time after, the couple moved to Brisbane after Helen’s husband expressed a wish to become more involved in his leadership work with the church – which is based at Samford, in Brisbane, but has satellite churches throughout the country.

“There were no alarm bells,” says Helen. “The church presents so well – it doesn’t look like a cult. No-one knowingly joins a cult.”

What Helen wasn’t told when she innocently joined the Brisbane Christian Fellowship (BCF) was that her husband would be persuaded to transfer his loyalty from his family to the church hierarchy and that she would be required to submit, unquestioningly, to him. If this chain of command was not honoured, they were told, their entire family would suffer eternal damnation. The responsibility of keeping his family under the submission of the Church falls to the husband. Helen was not to know when she joined the BCF, beguiled by smiling, welcoming people and ‘wonderful music’, that the Church leaders would later subject her family to an ‘acid test’, setting husband against wife and parent against child, to ensure that their loyalty lay, not with each other, but with the Church and its supreme leader, Vic Hall.

“The dynamic wears you down,” Helen explains. “They screw with your mind. They practice poisoning in small doses.”

During her 15 years with the BCF, Helen was forced to submit, without question, to her husband and the male elders of the church and she was punished arbitrarily when they deemed that she was not ‘on board’. She was routinely instructed to produce written confessions to trumped up charges of disloyalty and threatened with various forms of exclusion if she did not comply. She was told that she must not think for herself. The Church, she says, calls for the ‘complete abasement of thought processes’. Her role in the ‘divinely appointed’ order was to act only under the instructions of her husband, and his, to act only under the instructions of Vic Hall and the other church elders.

The BCF teaches that ‘an unsubmitted woman walks into insanity and then she walks into death’. Worn down, psychologically abused, and on the brink of suicide, Helen wrote in her journal, “The men want me to come to an end of myself – do they want me dead?”

“My life at that time was sheer survival,” she says. But what was the price of self-preservation? To fail to submit, she was told, was to condemn her entire family to eternal damnation. Meekly invalidating herself, giving up her free will, her intelligence, her autonomy was, she was led to believe, the ultimate act of selfless love.

Cruelly, her misery was exacerbated by the fact that, “The more I was victimised, the more my husband was esteemed.”

Helen’s second daughter was the first to be excommunicated from the BCF and estranged from the family. At 26 years old she wanted to date a man from outside the church. Her father, in concert with Hall and the church elders, refused his permission. She insisted on being free to make her own decision, and was evicted. Helen was told she was to have no further contact with her daughter – ever.

“It’s not like coping with a loved-one’s death,” says Helen, who lost her father at around the same time. “Death is normal.”

“To be asked to treat my daughter ‘as if’ she were dead, but knowing that she wasn’t, was torture – nobody understands the horror of being trapped inside a cult.”

Now Helen’s marriage is over. She was evicted from her family home and left destitute and alone for the ‘sin’ of phoning her daughter to tell her she loved her. When Helen confessed to her ‘crime’, she was given seven days to leave the house, excommunicated from her church, and prevented from seeing, or having contact with her two children and three grandchildren still trapped inside the cult.

As her husband informed her of this decision, he assured her, “I have never loved you more than I love you now.”

“He meant it,” Helen explains. “He was convinced that the only way to save his family was to force us to submit.” The church rules by fear. Fear is the ultimate tool of control.

It has taken nine years, a stint in a USA deprogramming centre and long-term, on-going psychological counselling for Helen to reach the point where she is tonight – standing up and telling her story to a room full of strangers.

Helen now works with the Queensland Cult Information and Family Support network. Since meeting with other cult survivors she has realized that her story is not unique.

“We have all lived through the same nightmare,” she says. “The names of the victims, the institutions and their ideologies may differ but they all operate the same way.”

And there are thousands of victims here in Australia. At the recent Cult Information and Family Support (CIFS) conference, survivors from more than twenty different cults were represented. Not all cults are religious, but many are. And what should outrage ordinary Australians is that our government supports this abuse through tax exemptions and grants.

Indeed, the BCF is widely known as an abusive cult. It has long since been exposed by its victims, on television, in a book, and on an internet forum where survivors tell their stories. According to Helen, the BCF offers no charitable or welfare services or any other kind of community benefit. And yet, their multi-million dollar income and property holdings are untaxed, simply because they are a ‘religious institution’ and, in accordance with a four hundred year old law, the state deems that the ‘advancement of religion’ is a charitable act in, and of, itself. Further, our government supplies the BCF with grants to operate a ‘Bible School’ which reportedly runs only four ‘classes’ a year – has any government officer asked what is taught at this ‘institution’ or do they just blithely hand the money over, no questions asked?

And, what is the response of our esteemed politicians to this blatant abuse of tax-payer’s largesse, not to mention the psychological abuse of women and children within the cult? They tell Helen they can’t get involved because they have to honour the ‘separation of church and state’ and people’s ‘freedom of religion’.

As Helen says, “Nobody chooses to join a cult.” It is not a free choice. The people who join such organizations are the victims of a ‘bait and switch’. They may enter the ‘shop front’ of their own free will, but they don’t know that, ultimately, their ‘free will’ is the price of admission. Being drawn into a cult and being kept there by coercive persuasion and mind-control techniques has nothing to do with ‘freedom of religion’ – it is state-sponsored slavery, abuse and imprisonment.

The fact that our politicians turn a blind-eye to this abuse and pretend that there is nothing they can do is both despicable and inexcusable.

The French Government, does not subsidise any religion, either with grants or exemptions, so that they are not implicated in allowing religious cults to fleece their members, tax-free. The British Government has recently introduced a ‘public benefit’ test for religious institutions seeking tax exemptions. Why is this not being done in Australia?

Further, in 2001, the French Government instituted laws to guard against cultic abuse. The French anti-cult law established the new crime of mental manipulation, defined as any activity or activities undertaken with the goal or the effect to create or to exploit the state of mental or physical dependence of people who are participating in the group’s activities and to infringe upon their human rights and fundamental liberties; to exert repeated pressures in order to create or exploit this state of dependence and to drive the person, against their will or not, to act (or abstain from acting) in a way which is heavily prejudicial to them. Importantly, the French law allows for the criminal culpability and dissolution of a corporation or association whose members or leaders have been found engaging in such activities.

If such laws and protections can be enacted in other Western countries, they can be enacted here. The defence that the state must allow ‘freedom of religion’ is a smokescreen for cowardice. These religious institutions are about money and power – not religion – and religious institutions which actively seek to deny freedom of will and action to their adherents should not be protected by laws enacted to safeguard such freedoms.

Currently, the Australian federal and state governments not only fail to protect the interests of cult victims, they negligently enable cults like the BCF, the Exclusive Brethren and Scientology through tax-exemptions and grants.

In her quest to have the BCF’s abuses stopped, Helen Pomery has written letters to all politicians – state, federal and senators – three or four times, with minimal response. Not only are they not interested in taking action, they seem intent on preventing action from being taken! Just last month, Senator Nick Xenophon’s request for a Senate inquiry into the tax status of the Church of Scientology, following numerous claims of cultic abuse, was defeated by both major parties. Xenophon has since vowed to continue his campaign and return to the Senate with a re-worded motion which may include a push for police to take criminal action against cults and allow for the prosecution of cult leaders whose actions cause psychological harm to their adherents.

Recently, a small glimmer of hope has been offered by Queensland Senator Sue Boyce, who would not support a ‘public benefit’ test for religious organizations but has forwarded a letter to the Federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, asking him to consider introducing legislation against psychological abuse. CIFS Queensland has drafted a petition [downloadable here as a word document] aiming to persuade the Attorney-General that such legislation would receive popular support.

Generally, however, our politicians remain apathetic to and disinterested in the fate of Australians innocently entrapped in abusive cults. Helen despairs that despite the personal testimonies of hundreds of people, the CIFS is still only achieving small, incremental changes. But she will keep fighting – for herself, her family, and for the many others who have suffered as she has. As Helen says, “I bear witness to the reality and the power of coercive persuasion and mind control, because I live with its impact every day of my life.”

Chrys Stevenson

Comments on this post are moderated but will be approved and published as soon as possible.

For an account of what cult survivors go through, please read Helen and David’s stories on this blog or on the campaign website – David’s Story;Helen’s Story.

Support for Victims and Survivors of the BCF & Similar Cults

2023 update: There is a new group, the Olive Leaf Network – https://oliveleaf.network/ – to support people leaving closed cults like BCF. You can read more about them in this article – https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/486996/former-exclusive-brethren-church-member-sets-up-support-network-to-help-other-leavers

Streetcar Forum – a place for people who have left or are looking to leave EB or RFI type organisations and need support. With nearly 100 families from CF Groups around the Country, what is being said can no longer be ignored. If you chose to leave a CF you will have a voice and support here.

Cult Information and Family Support – a network for families, friends, former members and concerned individuals working together towards a common goal, to provide support and develop awareness for those affected by high demand groups or cultic relationships

Further Action

1. Send a link to this story to your local, state and federal political representatives and ask if they have taken any action whatsoever to support people in Helen’s situation and, if not, why not?

2. Disseminate Helen’s and David’s stories as widely as possible – either by writing about them yourself or linking to this page. If you are writing about this subject, please link to the Streetcar forum and CIFS so that people within the BCF (or similar organizations), or planning to join it, can read the truth and seek support.

3. Write to Nick Xenophon and support his efforts to make cults legally accountable for their actions.

Senator.Xenophon@aph.gov.au

Senator Nick Xenophon, Level 2, 31 Ebenezer Place, Adelaide 5000

4. If you are willing to collect signatures for the petition to the Attorney-General, please download this petition form and return the signed form/s to: CIFS, PO Box 4002, St Lucia South Q 4067.

You may also wish to print up Senator Sue Boyce’s letter to the Attorney General as supporting information for your signatories. (Please note, the letter has two pages, click the thumbnail under the first page for page two, or see here.)

5. Write to your political representatives (state, federal and senate) asking them to:

a) support any future motions regarding an inquiry into organizations like Scientology, the Exclusive Brethren and the BCF

b) support a ‘public benefit’ test for religious exemptions or, ideally

c) call for the removal of all ‘as of right’ exemptions for religious institutions.