Raised in the Two by Twos Cult (2x2, The Truth) - Kari and Kyle Hanks Pt. 1 | Ep. 2008

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 155 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kari & Kyle Hanks share their journey of leaving the secretive 2x2 church, a religious group with no official name, written doctrine, or corporate structure. They discuss their upbringings, struggles with faith, the exclusivity of the religion, and the trauma they endured. From discovering the church’s hidden history to creating a support group for ex-members, they expose abuse scandals, strict doctrines on women, and emotional suppression within the group. Their deconstruction was influenced by the Mormon Stories Podcast, COVID-19, and personal revelations about belief, identity, and autonomy. Now, they advocate for informed consent and support those leaving high-control religions.

Show Notes

YouTube

00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:40 Kari & Kyle introduce themselves and the Two by Twos group
00:14:04 They do not have a written doctrine, it is all word of mouth
00:21:59 The founding of Two by Two - founded by William Irving
00:28:28 It wasn’t until 1905 that the group started preaching exclusivity
00:37:52 Irving is kicked out of the church, although some still stay loyal to him. Another splinter group.
00:49:50 Three meetings a week
01:00:46 Background of their theology/doctrine
01:09:02 Discussion of Heaven & Hell
01:17:04 Kari’s background in the church
01:23:17 Growing up as a 2x2 girl
01:30:30 How does the group refer to themselves?
01:38:43 Never having the language to describe her feelings or sexuality
01:42:09 Higher education was discouraged for many, especially women
01:54:17 Emotional manipulation in high demand religions
02:24:47 2x2s very politically conservative, but are not typically involved politically
02:27:08 When did she start to think she was in a cult?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Up until a couple years ago, I had never heard of the two by twos.
0:03.0	I mean, what I would have heard is like secretive Christian cult, child abuse scandal,
0:08.0	missionaries go around in twos.
0:11.0	They don't have a written doctrine, no written creeds or anything.
0:14.0	They successfully never had a name.
0:17.0	We have no church building.
0:18.0	We have no church organization at all, which is why you've never heard of us. That sounds so appealing. Because what's wrong with churches these days? It's the corporations. It's the greed. It's the power. It's the bureaucracy. But if you want to fly under the radar, if you want to have no accountability, if you want to avoid scrutiny, there's a brilliance in not having a corporate head. Right, you'll never
0:41.3	blame the system if you can not have a system. We were surrounded by violence in general as two-by-toes.
0:49.3	We had a lot of corporal punishment, so it was very normalized, and I never really saw that as being abnormal or unusual.
0:57.0	Growing up as a two by two girl, you're taught to be mature from a very young age.
1:03.0	Like your goal in life is to get married and have a family.
1:07.0	I often got the comment, you should smile more or also you're smiling too much.
1:12.6	You just have to have the exact right, which ends up just being kind of a flat line, no emotion.
1:18.6	Wow.
1:19.6	You do not cut your hair. No makeup, no jewelry, no piercings of any kind. No dyeing your hair. No TV.
1:26.6	There's a lot of disjointed rules that didn't make any sense that you held too religiously
1:31.2	because you just wanted to be as safe as possible. Right. The obedience is the point.
1:35.9	When you leave the two by twos, you're completely afloat. There was no support group. There was no
1:41.8	community. It's so underground that people when they leave will spend years not talking to anybody about it because they don't know how to find people.
1:47.8	And to foreshadow a little bit, the Mormon Stories podcast was motivational for us in setting up a support group and developing an ex-community.
1:59.4	What happens when one day you wake up, you're married with children, and you realize you might be an occult or a high-demand religion?
2:06.8	I'm John DeLyn, host of Mormon Stories podcast, and today we are going to be talking about an organization called the Two-by-Tos.
	...

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