Sharon Ready has lived in the Gloriavale community for 50 years, first entering as a 15-year-old when the community was based in Springbank, Rangiora.
“It’s my turangawaewae,” she says. “This is where I stand because my faith, I started there as a Christian and myself, my husband, my children, we have worked very hard to build that community.”
Ready still lives in the community as do five of her children – three daughters and two sons, along with 35 grandchildren – but are no longer active members.
A new documentary follows her family as they mount a ground-breaking legal case against the community's powerful leaders, known as the shepherds.
Directed by Fergus Grady and Noel Smyth, Gloriavale provides astonishing insight into the lives of Ready and her family members as they fight to expose widespread abuse and institutional failures.
Gloriavale these days, Ready says, is very different from the "happy, carefree” community she joined in the 1970s.
“In 1988/1989 they rewrote the New Testament; their interpretation of the New Testament was written in a book called ‘What We Believe’ and that was more like rules for how the people were supposed to live a Christian life.”
It was the work of two men in authority positions, including founder and convicted sex offender Hopeful Christian.
“They backed it up with a lot of scripture and the people had to live by that.”
Community members were asked to sign a legally binding commitment declaration – declaring they would give all their contents, their life and money over to the leaders, she says.
Ready wasn’t so sure she wanted to sign it, but says she felt pressured into it by her husband.
“I was worried about it and I signed the first one at Springbank because my husband was wanting me to do that but deep down I said to him I don’t want to do it because the very first sentence of the book says I have read...everything in the book and it’s about 118 pages plus and I said look, I haven’t read it and studied it and thought about it.”
Later, a second commitment was brought out at Gloriavale. “And then I said no, I'm not signing that because I don’t want to give away my contents, I want to exercise my own faith towards God. Yes, I want to listen to what the preacher says but I don’t want him to take away my whole life and I don’t want him to take away my conscience.”
Liz Gregory of the Gloriavale Leavers’ Support Trust says giving the leaders control was a concern for those who had left the community – 220 people over the years.
“Women and children quite often stay in there because they say, ‘I signed that commitment vow and I take myself seriously’.”
The last line of the commitment says if the person breaks any of the vows they do so to the peril of their soul, Gregory says.
“[It’s] very hard to break a vow that’s psychologically kept you there."
You’re expected to follow the teachings of the leaders, Ready says, and women are to keep silent.
“So you never go around and question anyone. I just kept my head down, did my own work, I never interfered with other people’s issues, it wasn’t my issue, I left it alone, I wasn’t there to stir up the mud of somebody else, I was just there to do my work, listen, be in subjection and then I'd know I’d get on well living in the community.”
A series of turning points led Ready to decide this didn’t suit her anymore, beginning in 2008 with her 18-year-old son leaving the community. Seven years later, Ready’s daughter Prayer passed away and in 2017 and 2018, three of her children were ‘put out’.
When someone is ‘put out’ - or excommunicated - it’s like an interrogation, Ready says. “There’s just so many people telling you how wrong you are about what you are doing.”
In 2019 Ready’s husband also decided to leave, after having issues with some leaders in the community. Three of her daughters, their husbands and children, followed.
“I’m thinking, what’s happening with my family, it’s just falling apart.”
When people are put out or leave, community members are directed not to have communication with them. Ready has at least 35 grandchildren outside of Gloriavale with whom she has no communication.
She isn't looking to blame anyone for her family leaving but rather thinks the leadership “don’t care about people’s souls, they care more about building their economy, their businesses, their name...they’ve done very very well from the labour of the people – but what about the people themselves?”
You can’t take someone’s faith away from them, Ready says, but better outcomes for people are needed in the Gloriavale community.
“I’m overwhelmed at having committed my life to do God’s will right from the very start I was just holding on to the promises of God all the way and feeling, yes this is a church, yes this is the leaders that are leading us to heaven...and I just carried on doing it until one day I began to think.
“I’m hoping, Lord willing, that I can remain there with better changes for the families and the people –like to be together and to worship God together and to lead a Christian life together is a wonderful thing but the people in Gloriavale at the moment, they need more freedom.”
Gloriavale is screening as part of the NZ International Film Festival, premiering in Dunedin and Wellington on Saturday 13 August. The film will be opening in cinemas around the country on 18 August.
