Former members of the Gloriavale Christian community have filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit claiming its leaders treated them as slaves. They say the community’s protocols were designed to entrap them in a “master/slave” relationship which “held them as property and deprived them of free will”.
Denying their brethren ownership of assets or access to money, Gloriavale’s leaders are accused of controlling where and how they lived, the long and hard hours they had to work, without pay, and also with denying them access to “a proper education”.
The lawsuit claims that Gloriavale’s structures exposed them to abuse and that girls were assigned to work on domestic teams, preparing and cooking food, cleaning, and laundering and sewing clothes.
They say they were severely disciplined for failing to follow the leaders’ directions, forbidden from going to the police and threatened with damnation if they ever left.
But here’s the thing; – these awful outcomes, a consequence of Gloriavale’s twisted interpretation of Christian doctrine, seem tragically similar to the ravages wrought on our society by the doctrine of Neo-Liberalism – the twisted contortions of end-game Capitalism.
On the charge that slavery at Gloriavale is the norm, how is that any different to the experience of those in our society who at the end of a week’s work, having paid their living costs, have nothing left to show for their labours?
That’s slavery – isn’t it?
If Gloriavale’s leaders used faith to control the lives of their brethren, “from cradle to grave”, how is that any different from the principals of Neo-Liberal ideology, also premised on a “master/worker” relationship requiring only the “manufactured consent” of its community?
If Gloriavale is said to deny its members “a proper education”, how is that any different to the poor outcomes which our chronically underfunded education system delivers, and the crippling cost which bar all but the wealthy from higher academic achievement?
And if the Gloriavale community can be said to have been brainwashed to believe in its particular dogma, how is that any different from our daily media brainwashing, which, despite it having delivered the biggest catastrophe of our times, still promotes Neo-Liberalism as the only path to prosperity?
And what’s the difference between Gloriavale’s leaders threatening its brethren with eternal damnation if they resist their authority and our so-called Christian religions preaching that if the poor will only accept their lot in life, as being “God’s will”, they will be rewarded in the next?
How any less oppressive, exploitative and evil is that than the promises Gloriavale’s leaders use to control their flock?
Still, if comparing Gloriavale’s hegemony over its brethren with the ravages wrought by Neo Liberalism on our society seems a stretch, consider the apology our government has just had to deliver for the horrific abuse suffered by those in our care institutions over these past many years.
That utterly horrendous, and long-denied tragic abuse did not happen in a vacuum.
Every bit as much as Gloriavale’s brutal dogmatism is said to have destroyed the lives of its brethren so too has Neo-Liberalism’s cruel ideology destroyed the lives of many more thousands.
The fact is, just as Gloriavale’s leaders contrived a system to preserve their power, so too, as Gramsci wrote, has “our society allowed its beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, and mores to be shaped by the ruling elite so that their worldview becomes the accepted norm”.
If Gloriavale is guilty of exercising “absolute control” over its people, with the promise of a rewards which ultimately only its leaders enjoy, then so too is our society guilty of promoting Neo-Liberalism’s illusory falsehoods which only profit its prophets.
Reading the first few paragraphs I thought it sounded fairly standard for any collective farm then you wrote it was actually modern capitalism.
Gloriavale’s problem seems really to be the lack of choice of those people under 18 born into the community without choice. The state’s social welfare departments should have taken a much greater interest in their welfare through the past decades.
Apart from the kids, Gloriavale is run along the lines of many closed religious communities (such as monasteries and nunneries) that have all goods in common.
I wonder how much weight should be attached to the moans of those who have left the community and clearly have a grudge against it.
There are still many members of the community who have not left, and as far as we know are happy to be there.
Suggestions that the community should be broken up by the state are repugnant. Let those who want to stay, stay; let those who want to leave, leave, and shut up.
Agree with your comment.
The central issue is the children growing up in that community who don’t get to have a choice, or even know there are alternatives.
Gloriavale is the combination of communism with Christianity.
Most of the complaints stem from the way the all powerful leaders used their control of the economic aspects of peoples lives to abuse them.
BS. Communism is such a ragged red rag to wave at everything wrong. Communism is only one way of humans gathering and working and living together but trying to do this without using money. Money is such a good tool for exchange and advance but as we humans tend to take everything to excess it becomes similar to a useful car being driven too fast, with strong negative emotions and running into pedestrians, killing or injuring.
Christianity is similar, the message gets warped by aiming for purity and sainthood and veneration, also power and money. No easy answers can be spat out Condorcat. But Christianity has a basic message of love and caring for each other and aiming for higher levels of living. So not bad to cling on to; it’s just the low human factor entering into things, and refusing to recognise in itself the innate potential we all have both for grace and being fully realised in life, and the slyness that creeps in and smothers the goodness at times.
This very insightful article describes how life is barely an existence for many in our society. The illusion of choice that we are told exists for most people only consists of doing what they are told or starving yet the idiot class still can’t understand why society is breaking down as people turn to crime as an answer to their problems. If people just followed this old advice “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” there would be a far better society but peoples greed makes that impossible.
“Comparing Gloriavale’s hegemony over its brethren with the ravages wrought by Neo Liberalism on our society” does not seem at all like a stretch to me. The “whole of government” approach being taken towards Gloriavale (where MBIE, IRD, WINZ, NZTA, Ministry of Health, New Zealand Police etc have all been instructed to work together to find ways to initiate legal action against it) is all the proof we need that the community is being hounded by the state. Why is Gloriavale singled out for such special attention? Because it provides a model of social organisation which in many important ways stands in stark contrast to the neo-liberalism of secular society. We don’t have to accept either model, Gloriavale or neo-liberalism, and we can raise no objection to Gloriavale leaders being charged with serious offences against the people in their care. However we do have to ask questions when the state tries to criminalize people for living in community and not subscribing to the norms of a system based on personal property and individual wealth or lack thereof. Recent court judgements relating to Gloriavale have raised questions about the lawfulness of work freely undertaken without monetary reward anywhere in New Zealand. In the eyes of the state it is legitimate for a person to be made to work for $24 an hour, $960 a week, be forced to pay $114 a week to the state in tax, pay $650 a week to the landlord in rent and have $196 left over to keep a family fed, clothed and warmed. Sure, there are places to which such families can turn for assistance, including agencies of state, but basically they are no better off materially than families at Gloriavale who are given nothing more than pocket money but have all their other needs met. Unlike those of us living within neo-liberal secular society, families at Gloriavale have the added advantage of security and a coherent reason for living they way they do. So of course the state sees Gloriavale as a threat and would like to have it destroyed. Gloriavale appeared on the scene because of the failings of secular society. It will fade into obscurity when those failings are corrected. Pressure from the state will not assist that process in the slightest.
I don’t think that ‘hounded by the state’ is a right way of describing the situation.
The state would be happy I think to leave them entirely alone to carry out their practices of setting rules of hard work and controlled sexual morality and no personal goals or money savings or anything personally desired.
If the state took “a whole of government” approach to investigating your own affairs, you would know for sure that you were being hounded. The whole of government is cooperating to find offences with which the people at Gloriavale can be charged.
If a council team descended on your home to see whether your compost bin was emitting smells, vermin were living under your house, noxious weeds were growing in your garden, your fireplace was emitting excess smoke, you had an unconsented firewood shed, your chicken coop was too close to the boundary, and you had your sprinkler running in breach of water conservation rules, all while ignoring every other house in the street, then you would know that you were being targeted in a “whole of council” campaign. And you would feel miffed even if you accepted that these are all legitimate council concerns.
The “whole of government” targeting of a particular individual or entity is actually in breach of the basic principles of democracy and a free society. Some people say “If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear from a whole of government scrutiny”. That may be right, but the rest of us have a lot to fear. If the state can do this to one of us, it can do it to any of us.
The state certainly wants to discourage the concept of voluntary collective labour, a principle which is central to my own community. It would be ridiculous to suggest that the ringa wera at the marae must be paid a wage. They have been brought up in the notion of service to others and that is how they live their lives. If they want “money of their own” then they go to live and work in the city, as many do. But I have never known one to think of suing the marae for the years of selfless effort that they put in for the good of all.
The Gloriavale leavers may have legitimate grievances, but on the outside two things happen. First, they realize how vulnerable they are in neo-liberal New Zealand society where they do not have sizeable financial assets. Second, all sorts of people will be advising them to find a way out of their predicament by extracting money from their former friends and family at Gloriavale.
A more positive approach is for them to join in community and solidarity with others in their situation, that is, the working poor who, for better or for worse, have no one that they can sue.
Sure Geoff you speak truth. But my point I think, is that the state is arbitrary and maybe that’s the worst aspect. If th\\it chooses it can inspect you and dun you with a lot of arbitrary rules, some of them contradictory, or impractical, or impossible to maintain and also not of any value in the short or long term in practical or human considerations. It doesn’t care, it does what it wants to do now. Our democracy is in tatters and our nation is not run well. Did you watch Babylon 5 the tv series. It was interesting version of the communities living in space genre, They had similar problems. As living gets more hazardous things become more convoluted. I think many would agree with me that we need simpler lives with clear guidelines and to both monitor ourselves against those and have meetings where we see how we are going as a community.
And of course Gloriavale is a money-making entity, one of those so-called ‘charities’ with a nice little feeder tube from the state.
More about Gloriavale and religious groups/cults,
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-02/new-zealand-secretive-gloriavale-christian-community/101569708
Yet TV journalists have been ‘invited’ into Gloriavale in recent years and came out saying it’s not really all that bad.
Journalists would have had no interest in going there, had there not been suspicion about how things were done. But the elites managed to pull the wool over their eyes, very recently.
Elites are the same everywhere. It all sounds good until you dig very deep and see what goes on in the background. It wasn’t until escapees from GV were helped into the outside world and properly supported to live, that we heard the truth.
However, Gloriavale still exists therefore there’s still plenty of tacit support from other elites to not interfere with their business.
Elites always support other elites. Just as we have a compromised government now, bought and paid for by other wealthy, influential people who are expecting to be rewarded for their support.
This ties in to almost every article the Daily Blog produces. Somebody, somewhere will be rewarded if this govt. can keep the police, nurses, teachers and all other unionists gnashing their teeth in frustration and finally giving up exhausted, with trying to hold their ground, not even expecting to make improvements in their pay and conditions.
This govt. and all elites are playing a very dangerous game as more people become aware of their two-faced antics. Paying lip-service to abused children while planning the next lot, as the boot camps deteriorate into bully-boy camps. Paying lip-service to health aims while undermining health with their policies. Paying lip-service to law and order while undermining the police and welfare agencies.
Eventually, the smarter elites will realise, this govt. is paying lip-service to them too. They aren’t really able to deliver on their promises to them either.
The only difference between these people and many other religious communities is that they all live together in a commune. Fundamentalist Christianity in its many forms is simply controlling – or tries to be. They don’t go quite so far usually as specifying what work people have to do, but they will tithe, and they would tell you pretty much what you can and cannot do in your private and public lives. The SBC in the US just fired someone for writing that Pres Biden did the right thing for the country in stepping down – they reinstated him but only after a bit of a fuss. Try to leave JW’s and they will shun you, which means you cannot so much as talk to any members of your family, including parents and siblings. It’s all a big con, with the aim of putting power and money in the hands of those at the top. It’s just a pity so many people seem to fall for it.
The image reminds me of the awful effect of the Belgian King on the people of Congo and how he got agreement for exclusive control from other advanced civilised, probably Christian countries.
How did King Leopold get control of the Congo?
Congo Free State – Wikipedia
The Congo Free State was not a part of, nor did it belong to Belgium. Leopold was able to seize the region by convincing other European states at the Berlin Conference on Africa that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work and would not tax trade.
Congo Free State – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Congo_Free_State
This was a dreadful display of callous usage of people who were living simple lives by those from more advanced countries, allying themselves with Belgium. It has been done before in various ways and still is happening (Papua New Guinea with copper mines – have I got that right) and could happen to us or is now, to some extent. Try to keep up for your and our safety.
On the orders of King Leopold, thousands of Congolese were either hung, their hands amputated for failure to meet the daily ratio of sap collection for rubber making. King Leopold took over about 905,000 square miles of African rain forest with the vast mineral resources for his personal use.
King Leopold of Belgium in Congo | AWA – Atrocities Watch Africa
Atrocities Watch Africa https://atrocitieswatch.org › publications › king-leopold-…
An appalling example of one lot of elites backing up other elites who are making lots of money for themselves.
Not much thought went into the illegality, injustice, racism and just plain greedy spite that made them think they were entitled to take part in such disgraceful activities.
The churches have behaved as badly.
Your use of the words ‘callous usage’ describes these people very well.
Great stuff @ Malcolm Evans.
Sorry. One more thing. That image made me cry and I’m a tough old cunt.
It’s the Gloriavale leavers making a stand that has anything being done, the government departments were all too happy to leave it alone.It was always put in the too hard basket.It is only now that the leavers are getting more awareness of how wronged they were in the slave camp that anything is being done .The next case of them taking the associated government departments to court has the powers that be scrambling for cover . This has the potential to really change things especially if the government is going to have to start paying for their neglect
I’m thinking that the authorities trying to dissolve GV don’t have to laws to do so.
Such laws will never be enacted. If they were it would play havoc to the actions of corporates and their political minions
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