The Reviews

of

Behind Closed Doors

Hilary 29th July 2004

I have read Behind Closed Doors several times and found it to be very easy to read.  The explanations along the way made it easy to follow as opposed to having them at the end.  The first two chapters set the scene and explain the need for such a tale to be told.
 

The rest of the book is written in such detail, that the reader feels the depth of emotion in the story.
Although the content is so 'unreal' and at times so far removed from what we deem to be 'normal', the reader is always aware of how honest the author is when recounting some of the more emotional moments.
 

As the author says, this is a love story but it is also a fascinating tale of a lifestyle so vastly different from the 'norm' that it makes an extremely interesting piece of writing.
 

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to preview this book.

Fear, Family & Finance

By Alister Browne Manawatu Evening Standard Friday 1st October 2004

Few insider accounts have been written about the Exclusive Brethren church; but Palmerston North grandmother Ngaire Thomas has just published one, which she describes as an unlikely combination of love story, documentary and textbook.
 

Ngaire Thomas is fascinated by how small groups of people behave and evolve.  So much so that she went to three universities to study different sides of the subject.  And now she has written a book about it.  But this is no ordinary book, and hers was no ordinary study.  That’s because the “small group” was the Exclusive Brethren church, and she was a member of it for almost half her life.
 

Her privately published account of her life and times in the church, called Behind Closed Doors, has been out for about a month now (22nd August).  But that emergence is, in itself, a story, says the 61 year-old mother of five.  For she didn’t find a publisher – despite the praise some heaped on the book.  So, in the end, Mrs Thomas accepted a loan from another former member of the church.
 

She’d had a hankering for a long time to write – a longing encouraged by husband Denis, who asked her, however, not to try to have anything published (in his lifetime) about their life in the church for fear of “repercussions”.   She agreed to wait, until after he died nearly ten years ago, about 20 years after the church “withdrew” from them.
 

The book she finally wrote in 1999 she describes as part love story, part textbook.  She wanted to explain the rituals and lifestyle of the church – provide a sort of essay in social anthropology, if you like – but she also wanted people to know what a wrench it was to leave, especially for Denis, who gave it up, Mrs Thomas says, for his family.
 

And she has three “audiences” in mind for the book: the curious public, who wonder what members get up to in those windowless buildings and who might have seen, for example, women wearing the church “uniform” of scarves and long denim skirts around town; former members of the church; and people who still belong to it.  Mrs Thomas says she hopes the latter group will be allowed “by the people at the top” to read it.  Having been born into the church and seen it at close quarters for decades, she’s unsure how it will react to someone writing about it.
 

“They’re unpredictable,” she says of the church leaders (who are of course all male).
 

“Up to two years ago, I would have said they would take legal action against anyone writing about them.  They have a reputation for suing people.  But I’m not sure about that now.”
 

Mrs Thomas says she has written in a “kindly” fashion about the church, partly because of an ingrained fear of the church moving against her in some legal way and partly because the beliefs instilled in her still linger.  Fear, family and finance is how she sums up life in the church.  The fear arises because life in the “fellowship” is self-contained, which means that people worry about the outside world – especially after they’re taught all their lives that there’s not much good about it.  Furthermore, their leaders are powerful, or think they are.
 

“They visited my husband every six months for 20 years to try to bring us back,” Mrs Thomas said.
Then there’s the issue of family.  There have been well-publicised cases, over the years, of families broken up by the church because some have left while others have stayed in and not been allowed, unless under pain of court order, to visit. 
 

And for many years the church – which has very deep pockets – would run the financial affairs of members, though not so much these days, Mrs Thomas says.  But in the end, she says, it is the Orwellian kind of mind control that the church exerts over its members that is the biggest influence.
 

There is a use of language, for example, that is unique to members.  All decisions regarding beliefs, lifestyle and behaviour are dictated by the church, as set down and modified by each successive “Man of God” (the bloke at the op).  Thus, you’re not flung out of the church, but withdrawn from, for example.  And you can be “shut up” – that is, isolated – for some infraction.
 

But Mrs Thomas wants to make it clear she’s not on an anti-Exclusive Brethren crusade in writing her book.  She wants it known simply that the transition for those who leave is “cruel”, not necessarily because of their treatment by the church but because of the amount of normal life they have missed out on.
 

There is an impressive list of do’s and don’ts – one of the latest don’ts is use of a computer – and Mrs Thomas worries that church children these days go to church-run schools, not state schools, even though the teachers are regular folk.  She remembers a “relatively normal” childhood, at least until she went to school and was told she couldn’t hang out with the non-church kids, or that, if she did, she would face reprimand.
 

So the isolating process begins early – Mrs Thomas doesn’t call it brainwashing – and the cumulative effect of it is to render the church a safe haven surrounded by hostile, if not threatening, outside forces.
The “Why join?” question is easily enough answered.  Most of the church’s members are born into it, which is one of the reasons why large families are encouraged – it’s a matter of self-sustaining recruitment.  Needless to say, marriage outside the church is a no-no.
 

But the answer to the “Why don’t you leave if it’s really that bad?” question is more complex, Mrs Thomas says.  At bottom, she says, leaving is a painful thing to do – possibly for all kinds of reasons.  For example, she has a brother who is still a member, and she has seen him only a couple of times in the past thirty years.  More broadly, you leave people who have been there for you all your life for a world of strangers and strange things.
 

Mrs Thomas, who is now a Quaker, likens the process to that of a refugee or immigrant trying to come to terms with life in New Zealand.  They do things differently here.  That is possibly why she’s into teaching English as a second language to such people nowadays. 
 

She knows how they feel, she’s been there.
 

By Heather Kavan, Religious studies dept of Massey University

Ngaire Thomas. Privately published, 2 Alaska Court, Palmerston North, New Zealand,  www.behind-closed-doors.org 2004. 294pp. ISBN 0 646 49910 6. NZ $34.

Behind Closed Doors is an inside look at what goes on behind the doors of the Exclusive Brethren. The book answers the question of what it is like to be a member of a select group, who believe they are chosen to maintain the only pure path of Christianity. The author, Ngaire Thomas, was born into the church in the 1940s and left in the 1970s.

It is probably just coincidence that this book was launched at roughly the same time that sociologist Bryan Wilson died.  Wilson published the definitive study on the Exclusive Brethren in 1967, and was expert witness in their court cases. Wilson’s conclusions were based on information the religion provided about itself, he dismissed ex members’ accounts as suspect atrocity stories, and warned courts not to give any credence to their testimony.  Today, after outbreaks of violence in other religions have repeatedly demonstrated that ex-members accounts are often more accurate than academic ones, we may be more welcoming of their insights.

As one such ex-member account, Ngaire Thomas’s book is compelling. Her style is non-judgemental; she describes her experiences while acknowledging the Exclusive Brethren’s right to follow a religious path in which they find meaning. 

The book begins with Ngaire’s childhood. She is different from other children with her long dresses and strict upbringing. She loves school because it is the only place that she can be her real self. Worldly things are forbidden: there are no radios (because Satan rules the airwaves) or non-Brethren books. Life revolves around the Bible, and when Ngaire brings friends home from school her mother preaches to them about the end times in Revelation.  Other Christians are also deemed suspect, and Ngaire recalls getting the razor strap when she is caught secretly attending Bible in School classes.

A Salem-like undercurrent of holy surveillance pervades the scenes, and this
undercurrent surfaces in Chapter 10, when Ngaire is pressured into falsely admitting that she has “committed fornication” with her cousin (she has no idea what ‘fornication’ means). Her case is taken to the Auckland assembly, and after a hearing in which she is found guilty, she is forced to confess, sobbing, before 500-600 solemn faces. But the story has a strange twist - which I won’t spoil for the reader.

In the next chapter, Ngaire meets her future husband, Denis. They marry in the 1960s, during the church’s notorious ‘no compromise’ era in which the rules are tightened. Members are not allowed to eat and drink with outsiders, and can not be part of another association, such as a library. Even beloved pets are deemed to be idols, and are destroyed, given away, or just disappear.  There are special rules for Ngaire too: she must limit her conversation to 10% of her husband’s (which proves difficult as he is generally silent). 

Of value is Ngaire’s account of the bouts of ‘confession madness’ that swept through the church at this time. The priests take on the role of religious police, examining people’s lives like forensic investigators, dragging up rumours from decades past. Members are pressured to confess to sins, real and imagined, and encouraged to drink whiskey to prove that they have nothing to hide. Those who confess pay heavily. They are ‘shut up’ (in effect placed under house arrest) or ‘withdrawn from’ (excommunicated), and lose access to loved ones. Almost inevitably, Ngaire (who has now had four children) and her family are withdrawn from. 

The family’s adjustment is massive.  They are unused to their new freedom and do not know how to act in normal society. The two eldest sons end up in prison. (The boys love the prison discipline, and when they earn reduced sentences they choose to stay instead.) Denis dies of liver cancer, and Ngaire goes to University.  Readers, especially those familiar with Fowler’s stages of faith, will be interested in following Ngaire’s shifts of faith throughout, as she ultimately finds the kingdom of heaven within. 

It is difficult not to like the author with her unpretentious, forgiving style. To be sure, there are some weaknesses in the book. The structure is a little unpolished (some later sections would perhaps be better as appendices), and there is a small printing error on the inside cover.  Also, while the author answers many questions, she invites even more. Why, for example, is the most serious abuse limited to only a few passing sentences?  Nevertheless, the book provides a valuable and absorbing window into a religion that is for most of us inaccessible. As religious autobiographies go, Behind Closed Doors may not have the theological complexities of St Augustine’s Confessions, or the mystical insights of Teresa of Avila’s Life, but there is something almost archetypal about one woman’s courage to speak her own truth.