Behind Closed Doors Summary

Behind Closed Doors is an inside look at what goes on behind the doors of the Exclusive Brethren. It 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 an 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

Even beloved pets are deemed to be idols, and are destroyed, given away or just disappear. There are 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 forced to confess to sins real and imagined, and encouraged to drink whiskey to prove 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 They are “shut up” (in effect placed under house arrest) or “withdrawn from”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 Almost inevitably, Ngaire (who has now had four children) and her family are withdrawn from.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 a reduced sentence they choose to stay instead.) Denis dies of liver cancer, and Ngaire goes to

University. Readers, especially those familiar with