Behind the Brotherhood: Former member in despair

Miles Deck has turned his back on the sect despite being a descendent of founder James Deck.

James Deck helped to bring the Exclusive Brethren to New Zealand's shores and nurtured it among the back country Christians of the late 1800s.

But despite being one of his direct descendants, Miles Deck doesn't want anything to do with the sect as it is today. And he doesn't think his great-great-grandfather James would either.

"I despair for the Exclusive Brethren, I really do," says Miles Deck. "They need to get back to what they really represent."

When James Deck arrived in New Zealand in 1853, he found Christians were happy to abandon the formal leadership and structure of the high churches of England in favour of the more egalitarian Brethren movement that had emerged in Dublin and spread to England amid widespread discontent with the clergy and the one-man leader.

Which is why Miles - who still believes in Exclusive Brethren principles, despite being excommunicated - cannot understand their present-day devotion to the Elect Vessel, Bruce Hales.

"It used to be about letting the spirit rather than an official minister run the show. They have reverted to exactly what they got away from.

"James G. Deck would be shocked. And so would [early Exclusive Brethren leader] John Nelson Darby and all the other great leaders they profess to associate themselves with."

James Deck, with a long white beard and so-called "mystical temperament", wrote some of the early hymns and verses for the Brethren and was a popular leader of the movement from his base near Nelson, as it slowly divided into the hardline Exclusive and more relaxed Open factions.

A deep thinker, he was not afraid to run his own line, and reports of his open attitude to other Christians prompted a visit from Darby to quell any dissent in 1875.

Miles Deck was excommunicated in 1974 after what he says were "utterly false" accusations.

He had five children, one just a month old, who never saw their grandparents again. He has a brother still in the Exclusive Brethren and since leaving the sect he has seen him just once.

"I was fully with the Exclusive Brethren when I was kicked out, that's why it was so terrible. They have been very unjust to a lot of their members. They have replaced a King in heaven with one on earth and lost their values.

"Now, money and politics have come into it and the saddest thing to me is that the credibility of what was a great movement is being lost. To me that's a tragedy."

Now 70, Miles Deck has kept the Christian faith within his family.

"We lost a part of our life, and that hurt. But in a very thankful way we are glad to not be a part of what's going on in the Exclusive Brethren today. It has turned out to be a kind of deliverance."