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.
