Plymouth Brethren Public Relations

Antisocial Social Media

7/29/2025

Over the last few months the Plymouth Brethren appear to have been on a PR campaign. Their website and social media accounts have been actively pushing a narrative of how 'nice' brethren members are to live and work alongside. On their Facebook account they are paying to promote videos from 'Worldly' people that portray the Plymouth Brethren in a more positive light.

Brethren Exposed decided to investigate further and we uncovered an antisocial and unchristian element to their social media, where questions are ignored, critics are silenced, comments deleted and users blocked.

The Plymouth Brethren website is similar to other corporate websites, it is focused on highlighting the positive impact they make to the local community and explains about their way of life, with a focus on charity work, education and business. They use videos to portray family life and content from neighbours and business colleagues to emphasis their 'normality'. There is a whole section on the brethren 'way of life', including subsections on their beliefs, networks, marriage and funerals. Unusually for a 'Christian Sect' there are subsections on dining and alcohol.

The Alcohol section in particular is somewhat strange as drinking is permitted within the brethren, in fact it would suggest to some that Alcohol may be an issue, sadly in the last few years there have been a number of casualties in road traffic accidents where brethren members have been driving under the influence of alcohol. Incidents in New Zealand, Australia, USA and the UK have all made the headlines. The website doesn't mention that UBT, the central business operation for brethren members, runs a company called Vendimia which supplies luxury whisky brands, other spirits and wines. The website doesn't mention the reported stocking up of alcohol by Qantas when the brethren charter A380's to ship them around the world.

The Dining section is an explanation of a key part of the doctrine of separation, that the brethren will only 'break bread' with those in fellowship. They spend some time justifying that they are no different from other religions who have traditions around not eating certain foods. Though not eating a Bacon Sandwich, or a Roast Dinner on a Good Friday, or eating during daylight in Ramadan, is quite a leap from not eating with your children or parents because they questioned Mr Bruce Hales! We smiled a little at the admittance that eating on planes for practical reasons is allowed, as for some that have a fear of flying, it would be the one time they were religious!

There is also a link to the brethren school system called OneSchool Global, though we were unable to find a section to explain why those in fellowship were unable to become a Doctor, Nurse, Firefighter, Professional Sportsman, Lawyer, Civil Servant, Teacher, Politician or join a Police Force. Instead they focus on the impact of their charity work via the Rapid Relief Team, again not mentioning how less than 2% of their charitable income goes to support RRT and non-brethren charities.

Overall it is a well designed and crafted piece of PR, that virtue signals throughout. If the website is a well designed promotional tool, then the social media PR takes it to whole new level!

When investigating the Plymouth Brethren Social Media, one word constantly sprang to mind, the word being 'Hypocrisy'! This is due to Social Media usage by brethren members being distinctly frowned upon, even whilst we were investigating a 'Head Office' communication was issued reminding members not to use Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and even Pinterest! So we have members that can't use these platforms but the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church actively use as a PR tool to promote and virtue signal.

The PBCC have a presence on Facebook and YouTube, OneSchool Global and the Rapid Relief Team have multiple social media accounts. The PBCC Facebook and YouTube accounts have been pushing a strategy since the end of May 2025 called 'Our Neighbours', a series of videos where neighbours and business partners record a 30-45 second video explaining how nice the brethren are as neighbours. It is a well designed and a clever PR strategy.

However the Facebook strategy has it's risks. During our investigation the PBCC Facebook Admin (we believe likely to be a 3rd party), shared a video post from a former member. The video that appeared to be professionally done and scripted, sang the praises of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. At the time it was shared the post was open to comments, a comment was added by Open & Candid.

However once a number of comments had been added by various users, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church switched off the function to comment on the shared post. It also switched of the function for Open & Candid to reply to their response. How very Christian!

The lack of values, integrity and Christian spirit didn't stop at switching off the ability for others to comment and reply. Another comment that was added by Damian Hastie, prior to switching off comments was deleted by the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, it then blocked Damian Hastie and others from viewing their page. So let's look at the comment they deleted.

"It is very Christian of you to pay someone 18k. Then thank them for their kind comments after they cheated on their wife with multiple men, and had involvement with drugs and alcohol.

Would your Christian values stretch to sharing stories of other leavers, maybe ones who haven't received financial support and have lived with more values and morals in their life?

The first paragraph is repeating what was shared by the former brethren member in the video. Following the second paragraph Damian also offered to help get videos for them to share. However the antisocial, social media team for the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church decided best to just delete the comment.

Over the period of our investigation we also witnessed posts and comments being deleted by the Rapid Relief Team and OneSchool Global. It would appear that the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church do not want to engage with any questions that may not fit their PR strategy or maybe a little challenging to answer.

If they are a "Christian Church" with nothing to hide why would they not engage with the general public? It backs up the findings from our investigation that this is purely PR and that they are antisocial on social media.

Finally Open & Candid have emailed the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church.

They ask the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, if they thought Anthony's post would be of interest to others and thought they would share, then why they don't share video posts from others who are no longer in fellowship? They also ask if as a 'Christian Church' is it their aim to mislead the wider public by only posting and sharing content that shows them in a more positive light?

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