Alan writes - This book [the title of which is above] is Ngaire Thomas’ record of growing up, marrying and raising a family within the Exclusive Brethren church in New Zealand. It is an honest, open and generous portrayal of life in a legalistic Christian community. A community where rules ruled and an ever increasing list of personal restrictions and observances was required of everyone. Today as evangelicalism appears to be splitting between the more fundamentalist/ legalistic and more generously orthodox approaches to faith this is a timely reminder of where fundamentalism and literalism lead.
For example when the MOG (Man of God) decreed that if a woman’s hair was her crowning glory then it should hang loose so men could see it and admire it and to ensure it was long enough to dry a man’s hair (taken from the incident where the woman dried Jesus feet in the gospels) women were expected and forced to wear their hair down. There was no choice.
Describing life in this community Ngaire writes:
“There was no personal choice about how we lived, just obedience. The strange part about it was the way we so compulsively followed the leader, without questioning. Asking challenging questions just wasn’t done because this would show us up as doubters. Most of the time we weren’t even told that we had to do things, we just did them at the mere suggestion, for fear of being put out of fellowship. The enemy gets the stragglers we were told…..all these little things were so small, petty and insignificant on their own, but they added up to power and control, particularly over the women (p119-120).”
Sadly in all the rules and drive to be outwardly ‘holy’ sexual abuse and particularly family sexual abuse of children seemed to be both common and poorly dealt with. What is it about such male dominated, rule based forms of Christianity that they harbour and protect such destructive behaviour?
Ngaire recalls “there were a lot of public confessions in the meetings, about a vast number of different things, especially sexual immorality. It was really sordid listening to public confessions about private things. It was a kind of legitimized voyeurism, producing a confused mixture of holy resentment, fear and excitement. But it wasn’t so amusing when it happened to our own family. (p112)”
This is a well written, easy to read account. It is also sobering and disturbing. Is it this approach to faith that a large [section] of the Christian community is heading towards again?
[You can buy the book online here]
That pretty much describes my life until recently. My ex-wife grew up as brethern. I know my parents were involved in a heavy shepherding thing from when I was 2 to about 6 or 7. Since then I've been Anglican and then Vineyard. Nobody and I repeat nobody has understood my concerns about religion. Your post is the first thing that I've read that remotely comes close to my prior existence that I am still in the process of escaping.
Vineyard has just been very happy with my conformance and has not had the awareness to recognise the fruits of that sort of religious abuse. Hopefully this will increase general awareness.
I'm through most of it now just trying to build a life worth living.
DM
Posted by: DangerMouse | Friday, 08 July 2005 at 01:54 AM
Hello DangerMouse,
Please feel free to contact me if you would like to talk. You will be treated with unjudgemental respect and cofidentiality.
Ngaire
behind-closed-doors@xtra.co.nz
Posted by: Ngaire Thomas | Monday, 11 July 2005 at 01:52 PM