The photo that has the Brethren flock all atwitter

David Estcourt and Kishor Napier-Raman

The Age

April 9, 2024

Our friends at the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, once known as the Exclusive Brethren, have always had an elevated estimation of the value of their leader.

Bruce Hales is a businessman who once sold office furniture before realising how much more lucrative it was just to sell religion.

His followers have a bunch of names for him: the Man of God, the Elect Vessel, the Paul of Our Day. They say of him that he is “so close to the Lord Jesus that he can feel his heartbeat”.

As such an ethereal being, Hales takes great pains to avoid being photographed. So it caused huge agitation within his little sect when, in the wake of an ATO raid on a company run by some of the church members, our colleagues recently published the first fresh photograph of Hales seen in decades.

There he is, preaching, surrounded by his white-shirted colleagues – all blokes, not a woman in sight. They refer to themselves as the “saints”, but if that’s what heaven looks like, we at CBD are delighted to be going to another place.

Anyway, the appearance of the pic has generated feverish discussion within the Brethren about how it came to be in the hands of reporter Michael Bachelard. Text messages obtained from one such internal debate suggest we offered – wait for it – $1 million for it.

Now, Hales might well be, as the Brethren believe, the Minister of the Lord in the Recovery of the Truth, but he’s worth nothing like that. We can reveal exclusively that the photo came to us from a disgruntled member of his flock. Gratis.

And we wouldn’t have paid a cent for it.

https://www.watoday.com.au/cbd/the-photo-that-has-the-brethren-flock-all-atwitter-20240408-p5fi8i.html