Excommunicated

A heart-wrenching multigenerational family memoir by an excommunicated member of the
Exclusive Brethren

After coming out as gay as a teenager, Craig Hoyle was excommunicated from the New Zealand
Exclusive Brethren. The conservative sect was everything he'd ever known – a childhood where
television, pop music, sports and even pets were against the rules. Cast out for wickedness,
Craig said goodbye to his family forever.
Joining public society – the 'worldlies' – for the first time, Craig sets out to meet his grandfather
who was excommunicated in the 1980s without the chance to say goodbye to his children. Using
his grandfather's records, diaries and letters, Craig uncovers two centuries and seven
generations of the family's cruel and tangled relationship with the Brethren, and discovers that
he is not as much of a black sheep as he had been made to think.
Weaving the family's past with Craig's own upbringing and rebellion in one of New Zealand's
most secretive and oppressive religious sects, this book charts the story of the Exclusive
Brethren in New Zealand and the heart-wrenching lives of a family torn apart by it.