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Four Years of Freedom – Diary of a Brethren Boy

https://diaryofabrethrenboy.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/four-years-of-freedom

Diary of a Brethren Boy. Four Years of Freedom. This post originally appeared on gaynz.com. Four years can seem like a lifetime. It’s enough time for someone to go to university and get a degree, travel the world, fall in love, and establish themselves in a career. It’s also enough time to deal with the grief and anger of past injustices. And, sadly, it’s enough time to forget the voices and faces of loved ones. I’ll never forget the pain I experienced when I said my final farewells. It took years to reb...

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Religious freedom, but at what price? – Diary of a Brethren Boy

https://diaryofabrethrenboy.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/religious-freedom-but-at-what-price

Diary of a Brethren Boy. Religious freedom, but at what price? This post originally appeared on gaynz.com. Pastor Logan Robertson wants all gay people dead. It may sound like something out of Africa, or perhaps the backward south of the United States, but it’s not. Logan Robertson lives right here in New Zealand. Logan Robertson is the self-styled leader of the Westcity Baptist Church in Auckland. Saying he believes the New Zealand government should be executing gay people. It would be easy enough to shr...

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Losing My Religion – Diary of a Brethren Boy

https://diaryofabrethrenboy.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/losing-my-religion

Diary of a Brethren Boy. This post originally appeared on gaynz.com. Are you still religious? I get asked this question a lot. I’m never sure how to reply, so usually give a vague answer that could be interpreted either way. As I was exposed to other cultures, other religions, other ways of thinking, I began to realise that many of the beliefs I had grown up were illogical and made no sense. I also became aware of the many terrible ways religion has been abused by mankind in order to achieve his own ...

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Feeling the Christian love (not) – Diary of a Brethren Boy

https://diaryofabrethrenboy.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/feeling-the-christian-love-not

Diary of a Brethren Boy. Feeling the Christian love (not). This post originally appeared on gaynz.com. After leaving the Exclusive Brethren, I made a series of videos with a teddy called Brucie Bea. R in which I talked about the sect and my experiences leaving. Brucie’s initials were BDH (Big Damn Hero), which coincidentally (ahem) were the same as those of the Brethren world leader (Bruce David Hales). While they’re fairly embarrassing to me now, (did my hair really used to be like that? You fuckn retar...

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Review: A Life of Unlearning – Diary of a Brethren Boy

https://diaryofabrethrenboy.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/review-a-life-of-unlearning

Diary of a Brethren Boy. Review: A Life of Unlearning. This post originally appeared on gaynz.com. A Life of Unlearning. Is the autobiography of Anthony Venn-Brown, a former pastor at Australian mega-churches such as Hillsong. It tells the story of his rise to prominence in the evangelical Christian movement, and then a realisation in middle age that his sexuality was something he could no longer suppress. A Life of Unlearning. Born in an era when homosexuality was still illegal, he went through the proc...

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Rebuilding Family Ties – Diary of a Brethren Boy

https://diaryofabrethrenboy.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/rebuilding-family-ties

Diary of a Brethren Boy. There’s a poignant silence as the elderly man pushes a McDonalds hash brown around on his plate. Neither of us really know what to say. Normally, I don’t share tables with strangers at fast-food restaurants. It takes a powerful belief system to divide families like this, and the Exclusive Brethren’s beliefs are among the most extreme. George, now 73, is one of many who have fallen foul of the church’s strict belief structure. Massey University history professor Peter Lineham ...

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Five years on, the scars remain – Diary of a Brethren Boy

https://diaryofabrethrenboy.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/five-years-on-the-scars-remain

Diary of a Brethren Boy. Five years on, the scars remain. This post originally appeared on gaynz.com. Recently I found myself back in an Exclusive Brethren meeting room. Everything was just as I remembered it. It’s hard to forget those windowless brick buildings, with their uniform green carpet and black arena-style seating. All my friends and family were there, and as I looked around the room I recognised dozens of faces from my past. Since then I’ve successfully rebuilt my life. I have a degree, a ...

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Withdrawn From – Diary of a Brethren Boy

https://diaryofabrethrenboy.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/withdrawn-from

Diary of a Brethren Boy. This post originally appeared on gaynz.com. Three years ago today my phone rang. It was one of the Exclusive Brethren priests. It was his duty, he said, to inform me that the Brethren had “sorrowfully decided they had no option but to accept my decision not to continue in the holy fellowship”. From that day forward, I would officially no longer be considered a member of the Exclusive Brethren Church. I had been withdrawn from the final stage of excommunication. Those were the days.

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Religion and Marriage Equality – Diary of a Brethren Boy

https://diaryofabrethrenboy.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/religion-and-marriage-equality

Diary of a Brethren Boy. Religion and Marriage Equality. This post originally appeared on gaynz.com. During the debate at the second reading of Louisa Wall’s bill last week, I was interested to hear several MPs use religion as their justification for voting against marriage equality. My personal view is that their understanding of the issue is based on a misinterpretation of both the origins of marriage and the extent to which faith systems should be imposed on society. Society has recognised that such p...