Bruce Hales, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church’s “Man of God”, has launched a crackdown on his 50,000-strong flock as the sect faces mounting scrutiny of its unsuccessful campaign effort for the Coalition at the last federal election.
Audio recordings of Hales’ “ministry” played to church members in recent weeks show the multi-millionaire sect leader belligerently trying to reinforce rules about how his followers dress and act, where they can go and who they can associate with.
A spokesman for the separatist church formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren said the recordings, which were made in 2003 before being freshly distributed, were merely “helpful ministry”.
Hales’ voice has rarely been heard outside the Brethren, and the leaking of the audio suggests deep discomfort among some of his followers at the direction the church is heading.
Coming after his orders that ordinary Brethren members get rid of their pets, his fresh attack on “looseness and lawlessness” was part of a broader crackdown, according to messages from church members seen by this masthead.
One member, speaking anonymously for fear of recrimination from the church, said replaying the old, hardline recordings was Hales’ attempt to ensure “everyone listening to it gets fearful and remains compliant”.
“It is literally to scare the crap out of anyone who doesn’t conform,” said another. “With the 2003 rules coming back into place, they really are cutting the cloth,” said a third.
Former members say the recordings also provide further proof that the Brethren’s thousands-strong turnout at polling booths at the last Australian federal election was overseen from the top.
“What really struck me with the recent recordings was the prohibition on ‘barracking with the crowd’,” said former church member Richard Marsh. “That’s exactly what they were doing during the election: they were barracking with the crowd.”
Hales would never have permitted his followers to make a mass effort in breach of all usual standards unless he himself – the church’s “Elect Vessel” – had approved it, Marsh said.
“Any collective political activity by multiple households under some kind of leadership can only be under the direct control of BDH [Hales].”
The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church’s submission to a parliamentary committee inquiry into the election insists “our church did not participate in the election nor co-ordinate the political involvement” of its members.
It paints itself in the submission as a “mainstream Christian church”. But its strict “doctrine of separation”, reiterated in the leaked recordings, orders Brethren not to go to pubs, restaurants, skating rinks, car races and other places of “worldly entertainment”.
“If I go along and stand there and join with other people, shoulder to shoulder with the world, enjoying what they’re enjoying, that’s compromise … it’s an involvement,” Hales says in the recordings. “And it’s a rejection of the cross of Christ, that’s how clear cut it is.”
The prohibition also extends to voting, though the church claimed last year that its members had voted in the election.
In one recording played in late May, Hales reads out a letter he originally wrote to his flock in 2003. In it, he rails against women wearing short skirts or jeans, showing their thighs. They should also not wear T-shirts, he says, particularly shirts with slogans (“signs”) on them.
Of that letter, Hales said in ministry, “I got it direct from the Lord, so I have no doubt about it.”
During the election campaign, thousands of Brethren women nationwide wore short netball skirts and leggings the men wore shorts, and all wore T-shirts emblazoned with the names of the candidate they were supporting. They also worked alongside “worldly” people from the Liberal and National parties.
According to Marsh, wearing slogans on a shirt had for decades been considered a mark of the “man of sin, or the beast, who would put his name on those he had deceived”. The ministry of Bruce Hales’ late father, John, also says partisan politics is “God’s matter” and the Brethren had no business interfering in it.
But Marsh said the breach of the female dress code was “the smoking gun”.
“That rule is enforced in the strongest terms by both John [Hales, Bruce’s father and a former church leader] and Bruce Hales [but] was magically suspended for the duration of the campaign.
“It’s utterly impossible that anyone other than church leadership could have issued a hall pass on moral rules and principles that had been enforced for 200 years for all the Brethren in Australia.”
The church insists motivated Brethren individuals came together because they freely decided to be involved in the campaign. But another iron rule spelled out by Hales prevents a “fellowship within a fellowship”, Marsh said, meaning a group of members acting together without permission from the leadership would be seen as an “instrument of Satan”.
“Brethren members have a certain autonomy individually to do things, but they have very little autonomy to do things in groups,” said Marsh, who left the church in 2015.
Breaking rules is a sin and a “rejection of the cross of Christ”, preaches Hales, who claims to have a direct line to God. Breaking the fellowship rule is particularly serious and can mean being “withdrawn from” (excommunicated).
Church spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw confirmed that no member involved in the election campaign had faced assembly discipline. “The church does not discipline its members for their clothing choices … the church does not discipline its members for ‘rubbing shoulders with the world’.”
Asked if the leaked recordings were further evidence that those who campaigned had permission from the top, Grimshaw, said: “At this point you are able to twist anything, even 23-year-old audio recordings, to keep padding your bizarre narrative out.”
“Over the decades since the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church was founded, its practices and norms have evolved … Every week historical recordings of gospel preachings and Bible readings are reshared online so the Brethren can listen to them in their own time.”
In the church’s theology, the world will end imminently in the “Rapture” and Brethren members are “saints” who must remain entirely separate from the “defilement” of the world to remain first in line for heaven.
The latest leaks hand more ammunition to the federal parliament’s electoral matters committee, which is investigating the conduct of the election, including whether the Brethren should be forced to declare itself a “significant third party” over its massive, undisclosed human and financial effort.
Michael Bachelard is a senior writer and former deputy editor and investigations editor of The Age. He has worked in Canberra, Melbourne and Jakarta, has written two books and won multiple awards for journalism, including the Gold Walkley.Connect via X or email.