Brethren Exposed reveals

​The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren is a controversial sect with circa 56,000 members across the world. At Brethren Exposed we have pulled together a list of the 25 most important points that you should know about the Brethren.

​Mainstream media coverage often focuses on some of the common doctrine, such as not watching TV, not listening to the Radio, living in detached properties and how they practice separation, which means they can't eat with non-brethren members. Brethren Exposed provide you with what really matters. 

1. A ‘Church’ where the leader Bruce Hales and the wider Hales family have likely amassed a combined wealth of over $1 billion. 
2. A 'Church' that you are born into, you can't just decide to join. 
3. A ‘Church’ where brethren members have their own schools for children from the age of around six. They can’t attend University in person to complete their education. 
4. A ‘Church’ where members can only work for other members businesses or start their own business, heavily restricting 'career choice'.
5. A 'Church' where if you decide to leave or are ex-communicated, then you are likely to have to give up your family, children, your job and your home. 
6. A 'Church' with hundreds of millions in assets, with all their meeting rooms owned by charities called Gospel Trusts. 
7. A ‘Church’ where you can only be a trustee of a gospel trust if you are in fellowship with church leader Bruce Hales. He has the final decision if you are in fellowship and therefore if you are a member of the ‘church’ or not. 
8. A ‘Church’ with over 600 registered charities, including the Gospel Trusts. across the world, and with not one female trustee.
9. A 'Church' where members operate their own central business operation called the Universal Business Team (UBT), a business advisory that has global revenue of circa £300 million, heavily influenced by the Hales family, for brethren member companies only.
10. A 'Church' where approximately for every eight working age members, there is a member owned trading business.
11. A 'Church' that benefits from charitable status on so many levels, it is extremely difficult to ascertain the value, a conservative estimate is £50 million per year. It is likely that the brethren spend less than 10% of the charitable benefit in supporting charities outside of the 'Church', and it's own connected charities.
12. A 'Church' where not one member works as a Doctor, Nurse, Firefighter, Teacher, Lawyer, Banker, Politician, Professional Sportsman or serves in the Police or the Armed Forces. There are simply no public servants.
13. A 'Church' where you must make an appointment to attend a meeting if you are not a member.
14. A 'Church' where member businesses have profited from Covid Contracts, the war in Ukraine, floods in New Zealand, fires in Australia and Grenfell Tower regulatory changes.
15. A 'Church' that claims it didn't coordinate thousands of their members in the Australian Election to support the Liberal party campaign, despite their own members saying that it was highly organised from the top of the 'Church'. 
16. A “Church’ where members have donated AUD $2 million to Political and Third parties to the right of centre. In Australia, New Zealand, UK, Sweden, Canada and the USA. This doesn’t include tele-campaigning or leaflet drops or donations below the reporting threshold.
17. A ‘Church’ where they don't vote in elections, relying on Gods will. 
18. A ‘Church’ where LGBT members have been given Gay conversion therapy and Gay ‘cure’ drugs, the only option for a gay person to live their life as an openly gay person is outside of the church, this means giving up family and friends and being told it would be easier if they were dead by their own family. 
19. A ‘Church’ that offered to pay a victim of sexual abuse on the agreement of their silence. 
20. A ‘Church’ where members have paid for surveillance of former members. 
21. A ‘Church’ that has seen thousands of families broken up due to their doctrine of separation. 
22. A ‘Church’ where hundreds of members have broken the law and requested leniency on the grounds of their ‘Christianity’ and ‘Church’ work. Drink driving offences being common. 
23. A ‘Church’ where the travel of its members is controlled. 
24. A ‘Church’ where membership costs approx. $25,000 per year for a couple, not including School Fees or year funding drives. 
25. A ‘Church’ where leavers are removed from all local community WhatsApp groups and their LinkedIn friends quickly disappear. 

A remarkable 'church', one where the four sons of church leader Bruce Hales have recently recorded a series of four podcasts, where they deny pretty much all the above and claim they are misunderstood and that they are basically an orthodox Christian church. Hiding their scripts under the table and providing answers that trigger both ex-members and those still stuck inside. The podcasts are hosted by Brethren spokesman and member Lloyd Grimshaw. In out next list we will show ten things that Mr Grimshaw has denied about the Plymouth Brethren.

It is important to quantify that the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church appears almost non-existent based on answers provided to questions from the media, it is almost a label or a brand. The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church just being a collection of 56,000 like minded individuals with similar values, that break bread in fellowship together.

We are told their is no hierarchy, no real leader, and yet, somehow these like minded individuals have built the Universal Business team, a global £300 million business empire that works with over 3,000 brethren member businesses, created OneSchool Global, one of the largest private global education systems in the world, developed a global charity in the Rapid Relief Team, created 'mirror' charities in all the countries where they have members, all with the same or similar names. They have even managed between them to arrange a charter flight from one state in Australia to another, all to campaign for the same political party. I mean who hasn't boarded a flight to find it full of friends from the same church, all away from work, all going doing the same activity at the same time in another state?

They claim similarities to other mainstream religions, though, we are not aware of any other religion that requires 100% attendance for their annual Global Funding seminar, or one that provides a whole business department dedicated to managing the household and associated costs or one that holds monthly special meeting to donate vast amounts of money to the leader and his family.

There are many groups formed on social media by hundreds, if not thousands of ex-members, these groups paint a very different picture to the one painted by the sons of the leaders in their selective podcasts discussions. As one recent leaver very succinctly said "I will stop calling it a cult, when it stops ticking the boxes of a cult".

At Brethren Exposed we see a highly commercial operation, with incredible organisation, one which seems to have moved steadily away from anything similar to Christianity and appears more driven by profits than prophets. It is our belief that the claims made by the 'Hales Boys' in the podcast are laughable. 

*An evidence support pack for the 25 points is available at a small charge for all journalists, please contact us.