Introducing the Two by Twos Cult

Kari Hanks [00:00:00] How do you hold accountable a group of people so good at not existing?

John Dehlin [00:00:04] If ever there was a church set up to explicitly avoid the pitfall of so many religions, which is their downfall due to sex, money and power, it was your church. It didn't even have a name. It didn't even have a legal organizational structure. It totally downplayed and then erased its founder. So like, how could anything go wrong?

Kari Hanks [00:00:27] It was hard to imagine existing outside of 2 by 2 ism. Like we couldn't picture what life outside would even look like. It was too hard to imagine. It was easier to imagine us just disappearing from life altogether. If it's so hard to leave this religion that death seems like a reasonable way out, it's a cult.

Kyle Hanks [00:00:50] I thought the fact that I'm even here feeling this right now is because I'm giving too much weight to something that's not giving me anything back. When I really, really need something to lean on, there's nothing. And that's not my fault. I can't say I was a doubting person that was always sinning all the time. All the things that you would say about somebody who left, like, oh, they never really had it. I did really have it. I based my life around it. It's not what you do, it's who you are on a molecular level.

John Dehlin [00:01:12] It's your identity, it's your marriage, it's your family relationships, it's your community, it's your worldview.

Kari Hanks [00:01:17] Then very well known, highly respected overseer was found dead in a hotel room. He was an abuser who abused women and children. It felt like the last good guy that we knew was going down. Like it felt like if. If he has allegations, who doesn't? Like the whole thing is corrupt. Right. That's how it felt to us at the time.

Kyle Hanks [00:01:40] We started having people flooding to us for information.

Kari Hanks [00:01:42] Our group was just absolutely exploding because people were hearing about it, because we were sharing public information and then word of mouth and everyone was like, where's the information coming from? It's coming from the support group. So we had a lot of ex members who had been out for a long time just hearing about the group. We had a mass exodus from the two by twos who were flocking to our group.

John Dehlin [00:02:03] You didn't just heal and ride off into the sunset. You decided to try and provide community for other people. Right. And support.

Kari Hanks [00:02:13] We gave the X community an identity. That was our goal in pushing the term two by two was this is our identity. This is the culture we came from. It has a name you're kind of

John Dehlin [00:02:23] like Leah Remini and Mike Rinder taking down a cult. What do you do when you wake up one day and realize that you may be in a cult or a high demand religion and you're married with three kids? Hi, I'm John Dehlin. This is Mormon stories podcast. It's March 12, 2025 and we're here in part two of our in depth interview with Kari and Kyle Hanks. Hey guys.

Kari Hanks [00:02:50] Hi, John.

John Dehlin [00:02:50] Welcome back.

Kyle Hanks [00:02:51] Hi again.

John Dehlin [00:02:52] We just spent two and a half hours in part one hearing all about the Christian tradition known as the two by Twos. They actually don't have a name or an organizational structure that is in any way legal or corporate. You'll have to go Back to Part 1 to learn all about that. But we learned about their history, their, their, you know, beliefs. And then we heard primarily from Kari and kind of her experience growing up as a two by two, kind of her lived experience all the way through marrying Kyle and having three children. And then we sort of ended with that cliffhanger of Kari

John Dehlin [00:03:35] as soon as Covid happens, having a little bit more time, stopping attending her two by two meetings, reading a bunch of books that no two by two, no self respecting faithful two by two should ever be reading, like Bart Ehrman or Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, which led to her wondering whether she was in a cult or a high demand religion. And that's where we left off. I'm here today again with Margi. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:01] Hello.

John Dehlin [00:04:02] Thanks for joining us. So what we're going to be covering this time is basically we want to hear Kyle kind of your. Anything you want to share about your upbringing in the two by twos or however you would describe it. And then what it was like once Covid hits and the wheels start coming off the wagon.

John Dehlin [00:04:24] And then we'll talk about how you both handled that as a married couple with kids. And then of course, a really important part of your story is finding Mormon stories. Why ex 2 by 2 members or questioning 2 by 2 members would be interested in Mormon stories at all? We love our never Mormon audiences and we can't get enough interviewing people who never been Mormon but find value in Mormon stories. And then we'll talk about not only your deconversion and leaving of the two by two faith, but also starting or helping start with others, a Facebook support group for people who have left or are leaving or questioning the two by two movement or organization or non organization organization, whatever you want to call it.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] That's my intro for this part two, I would ask everyone who to please, please, please take a second to like this episode, to comment on it, to subscribe to our YouTube channel or Facebook or wherever Spotify, and to share this episode with anyone who you think you might, who might value it because all of that really helps our growth. And we're also super thankful to our donors because we couldn't do this without our monthly donors. And if you want to become a donor, it's really simple. You just go to moremorestories.org, click on the donate button and. And become a monthly donor. That's all we have for any anything other than just to jump right back in your story.

Kari's Faith Crisis and Deconversion

John Dehlin [00:06:01] So Kari, when we left off you, it was 2020ish. You had read all these books and you were thinking about whether your church is true. You'd lost your faith in God and you were questioning whether you wanted to remain a two by two. Is that right?

Kari Hanks [00:06:15] That's right. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:06:16] Anything else either of you want to correct about the intro? Did I get anything fundamentally wrong?

Kyle Hanks [00:06:22] Sounds good.

John Dehlin [00:06:22] No, not at all. Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:25] All right.

John Dehlin [00:06:25] Margi, anything you want to add?

Margi Dehlin [00:06:27] I don't think so.

Kyle's Background and Upbringing in the Church

John Dehlin [00:06:28] Okay, well, let's jump back just a bit in the timeline because Kyle, we didn't kind of hear your founding story and mostly we're interested in anything you want to add about your lived experience as a two by two that you think would be interesting for our audience. The kind of highlights important aspects of the tradition, but also unhealthy aspects of your tradition. And even more specifically, as. As we mentioned, the items that started building up on your two by two shelf that ended up leading to the eventual collapse.

Kyle Hanks [00:07:01] Sure. Yeah. Well, so my history goes back three or four generations and for reasons I'll probably talk about in a bit, I actually, I don't know all of my family history in the two by twos, but I know a couple of the stories that are kind of interesting. One of them, we talked about those preachers that come to the or the workers, the early workers that came to the US and traveled around. One of my family members, one of my great grandparents, sat in one of those missions and knew immediately that it was amazing and wanted some more of that. And the workers at that time were doing mission style gospel meetings, we call them, once every night of the week at that time.

Kyle Hanks [00:07:44] They were really recruiting and my grandfather went and heard them. My great grandfather. I'm sorry, went and heard them. And after three nights, he knew he was. He was listening every night. He listened every night. For six weeks. And after the third night, he knew this was it. These guys are doing it just like the Bible says. And his whole family joined the two by twos. And so that was one of my grandparents. And that grandparent married a professing person as well. The other side of my family, actually, one was professing, was a two by two, and the other was not. Originally, my great grandfather on one side of my family was a minister.

Kyle Hanks [00:08:19] I believe it was Methodism, and even built a church at one point, which I visited, which is kind of neat. It's a coffee shop now. But he told his son, my grandfather, well, they had these discussions about, does anybody really go around like the Bible, and do it just like the Bible says, in pairs of ministers? And so he said, I think. Think it's possible. I think it can be done. I think you can go in faith. So be on the lookout for that. I don't know how to do it, but be on the lookout for that. So he was. And then he met my grandmother, and she brought him to a gospel meeting.

Kyle Hanks [00:08:52] And the rest is history. He understood it, saw it when he saw it, when he was ready to see it. And so both sides of my family professed. And I was born into that world. So, yeah, I was born in 1983 to goodly parents.

Kyle Hanks [00:09:09] We don't use that term. I've just started on here. Yeah. So my family, very similar to Kari's in a lot of ways. Very conservative, kind of a Rush Limbaugh conservative family. I was born, actually went home to Federal Way, but then we moved out to Enumclaw, Washington, a country, kind of a farming community in western Washington. And they wanted to raise us out there and in kind of a safe farming town. That's what they wanted for us. So we grew up out there. And there were a lot of two by two people in that area. Oddly enough, I think there were two or three different Sunday morning meetings, which each one would have had three or four, maybe five families in each one.

Kyle Hanks [00:09:47] So I grew up around a lot of. We call them professing kids, professing friends and family. And throughout my life, there was a sharp delineation between professing friends, professing family and everybody else. And it was the first time I remember that separation being notable was when I brought a friend home from school one time. We were allowed to have friends at school, but they were worldly, though. We didn't want to get too involved with any of them. So a friend came over from school after school, and we Played around. And then my mom said, okay, it's time for him to go home. And I said, what?

Kyle Hanks [00:10:21] Why can't he stay for dinner? My friends always stay for dinner. No, he needs to go home. And that's when I first realized, oh, we're completely separate. This is a different type of person. We're different people. And that I absorbed that as a responsibility from that point forward of upholding a standard, of being the good, professing, God fearing person in a family that had a lineage that went back several generations. I actually felt very compelled by that feeling for most of my childhood.

Kyle Hanks [00:10:56] And we'd get reminded about it a lot to remember to uphold the family's name. My parents would send me out the door every morning to school. Remember whose kid you are. This is important to not just carry the family name, but the family name was downstream of God.

Kyle Hanks [00:11:09] We're professing. We profess our love for Jesus every day. We are the light of the world. So I took that very seriously. I was a very serious professing. I was very. I took it as a responsibility to be an example to everybody. And I knew I was different from a very early age. And that was good. It was scary. Sometimes it was lonely at school knowing that I was a little different than everybody else. Maybe didn't celebrate the same holidays and didn't know about the TV shows, but that felt like the right thing. So I grew up as a very serious kid. I think of myself that way anyway.

Kyle Hanks [00:11:45] And when I was. Something I'm going to mention, because it'll come up a little later, is When I was eight years old, I became diabetic type 1 diabetes. I got fifth disease, which I don't think it's called fist disease anymore. I think there's a name for it, but it's one of those measles, mumps or Bellas type diseases, viruses. I guess I got that and I think it damaged my immune system or something. It ended up damaging my pancreas. And I got diabetes at 8 years old. So at 8 years old, I went from nothing one day to getting real thirsty one day. Next day I was in the hospital and I came out giving myself injections.

Kyle Hanks [00:12:25] And my parents gave me a lot of injections, gave me all of the injections at first. And then I learned how to do it. And being that kind of. I think that sort of plays into me being a real responsible, scrupulous kid. Serious kid. Like, this is a serious thing I have. I need to be careful with this. I need to be careful we always hear from the workers, be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful. Spiritually now I can be careful. Naturally. I was just a careful, cautious kid. Didn't like to take any risks. Becoming diabetic was a very serious thing, obviously. And I remember the emotional toll it was on my parents to have to take care of a very sick kid.

Kyle Hanks [00:13:01] And that meant a lot to me. Even at the time, I was very aware. At eight years old, I was very aware that they were working real hard to keep me alive sometimes as a young kid was very.

Kyle Hanks [00:13:14] At first I had a pretty good honeymoon phase for about six months after getting it. But I became. What's the word I'm looking for? Very volatile blood sugars, I guess you could say.

Kari Hanks [00:13:25] What do you mean by honeymoon phase?

Kyle Hanks [00:13:26] It was a phase where my pancreas kind of kicked back in for a few months after I got diabetes and sort of worked for a while and then went full on. And that's fairly typical from what I've heard. But I was very adamant.

Kari Hanks [00:13:38] I knew that, but I figured the audience might not.

Kyle Hanks [00:13:40] Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so that was just part of my upbringing too. So I had a lot of. And I bring that up because it was like a very serious time and a very serious thing and I had to be very careful. I remember my mom is in the medical field.

Kyle Hanks [00:13:54] My family didn't have the anti education vibe that some professing people do. My, my grandparents on one side were actually educators and my mom and my dad both have degrees. My dad has worked in manufacturing. My mom is in medical field and so she knew exactly what to do with a diabetic kid. And I remember my dad being a little bit nervous about having to put injections into a little kid and it affected him a lot. And I remember him practicing on potatoes. He would take a potato and practice first on that and then he would come do it on me because he was just so worried about hurting me.

Kyle Hanks [00:14:26] And that means a lot to me. And I'll talk about that more as I go. But I took that on as even more responsibility. It's like they're taking very good care of me. I need to even be more responsible. I need to never let them down on this. I need to be really strong and strong in whatever place I have professing kid, diabetic kid, whatever kid, light of the world kid. I need to be really.

Kyle Hanks [00:14:46] I need to take that very seriously. So I actually had a meeting at my home as well. We didn't have a Sunday morning meeting, we had a Wednesday night Bible study in our home. And that was a privilege.

John Dehlin [00:14:55] It's called an open home, right?

Kyle Hanks [00:14:56] Yeah, we had an open home.

John Dehlin [00:14:58] I'm learning.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:58] Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [00:15:00] Yep, we were open. And so for us, weekends wasn't as big a deal for us as far as Friday, Saturday. But on Wednesdays, I come home and I'd have about an hour to do my schoolwork, and then time to start cleaning up around the house. And I would vacuum, and I would set up the chairs and do some of the dusting and stuff and get the house all clean for.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:16] For.

Kyle Hanks [00:15:17] For people to come over and have a Bible study that evening. It was a very. My family was very serious as well. It was a very sacred duty to have this Bible study in the one true way.

John Dehlin [00:15:26] This probably goes without saying, but if you haven't watched part one of this interview, you'll get a lot more out of it if you pause, Go watch part one, where we explain the history of the two by twos and its structure. Because that joke I just made about, you know, being an open home, there's significance to that and other things of just being able to hold meetings in the house, that sort of thing. So we're not gonna retread all that history, go back and watch the part, and then come here for the second. Sorry, just had to make that explicit.

Kyle Hanks [00:15:56] Yeah, no, that's great. I won't repeat too much. Kari covered a lot of great stuff in that episode, so I won't cover too much of it again. But we had very similar upbringings in that way, just with maybe a little bit different emphasis in certain places, like education. Education was very important in my family. And, yeah, I guess I'll talk about education a little bit later, too. But I stood to my feet and professed in a gospel meeting when I was either 10 or 11. I can't actually remember which year. And we talked about emotions on the last episode. And, yeah, I cried, too, because I was making such a serious decision and everyone else around me felt emotional. And to this day, I'm not exactly sure why everyone feels so emotional when a kid who's too young to make any decisions joins a church, but they feel it.

John Dehlin [00:16:42] Can you give us an example of what's said when a kid professes?

Kyle Hanks [00:16:45] Just said to the kid or.

John Dehlin [00:16:47] No, what a kid says when he stands up and professes.

Kyle Hanks [00:16:50] So the kid doesn't actually say anything. So the way that typically is done is they'll have one of these gospel meetings, these mission meetings, and they'll announce a hymn and they'll sing the hymn. And they say if anybody wants to join, you can feel free to stand at the last verse or two or whatever. Whatever they decide.

Kari Hanks [00:17:06] Everyone during it.

Kyle Hanks [00:17:07] It's kind of.

Kari Hanks [00:17:08] Everyone's singing the hymn while you're standing there.

Kyle Hanks [00:17:11] So you just stand up and everybody looks at you.

Kari Hanks [00:17:13] And then when the hymn is over, the worker will come to the mic and say, please be seated. And so everyone who professed sits down. And then often after the meeting, they'll have whoever professed come up to talk to the workers, and they'll just be like, I don't even remember what they said to me. I think they gave me, like, a list of, like a study list to read or something or.

John Dehlin [00:17:31] So it's literally just an active statement.

Kari Hanks [00:17:33] You don't have to make a public proclamation verbally.

John Dehlin [00:17:36] Okay.

Church Practices, Hymns, and Testimony

Kyle Hanks [00:17:36] Now, you don't have to say much. I think of it kind of like an altar call. I've heard from other Christian churches, Protestant churches.

Kari Hanks [00:17:42] But from then on, you do speak in every single meeting. You give a prayer and a testimony in every meeting from then on.

Kyle Hanks [00:17:49] And so I, of course, felt even more responsibility, like, oh, now I'm. Now I'm part of this. Now I'm carrying this with me. I need to really be a good example to the kids at my school now and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] Are your hymns similar to normal Christian hymns?

Kyle Hanks [00:18:04] That's a really good question.

Kari Hanks [00:18:04] Borrow a lot of from other people.

Kyle Hanks [00:18:08] Every once in a while, we'll be watching a show or something that's religious, and we'll hear a hymn in the background. We'll recognize the tune. When my grandfather, who was a Methodist son of a Methodist preacher, he was actually a Methodist minister himself, but he never preached. He had gotten his ordination in the mail, and then he just threw it away because since then he'd found the one true way, the two by twos. And so he never actually preached as a Methodist minister. And in his hymnal, he actually had hymns, titles of Methodist hymns next to the titles of ours because it helped him remember the tune sung to the

John Dehlin [00:18:39] tune of that kind of thing. Our hymn law is the same thing,

Kari Hanks [00:18:42] but a lot of hymns are written by two by twos. I wrote a hymn when I was 15. It's not in the hymn book that they use in meetings, but it's in a supplemental hymn book that they published for people to have displayed in their home on the piano or whatever.

John Dehlin [00:18:56] Do y' all know if there are any hymns you sang that would have the same music as a traditional Christian hymn?

Kyle Hanks [00:19:01] Not off the Top of my head.

Kari Hanks [00:19:02] Like, what's that one that they play in the Titanic when the ship is sinking?

John Dehlin [00:19:06] Nearer my God to thee.

Kari Hanks [00:19:07] Yeah, that's one. Is it the same words, though? It's the same.

Kyle Hanks [00:19:10] I think it's the same words. I'm not sure. There is one to the tune of Aloha Oy by Elvis. There's a hymn that matches that tune. I think there's a lot, but we're not sure where the crossover is, to be completely honest.

Kari Hanks [00:19:22] Our hymn book has 412 hymns, so there's.

Kyle Hanks [00:19:24] Yeah, a lot of them, and they have retooled a lot of them over time. That's an interesting thing we've learned since leaving as well, is that they've actually redone some of the words to sort of match a slightly tweaked theology over time. Again, nothing's really written down, but we feel this way right now. So they retool the words just a little bit. It's only happened a couple times in.

Kari Hanks [00:19:41] The most recent hymn book was published in the 80s. We're still using that one, I think.

Kyle Hanks [00:19:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's see.

Kari Hanks [00:19:47] So.

Kyle Hanks [00:19:47] So we had the meetings in our homes. That was really important. We. We were a very serious family about professing. It was the most important thing in our family, period. We had hobbies. I played sports. I played basketball. I was very tall when I was young. I was actually about 6ft tall by the time I was in junior high, and I was coordinated. So I played basketball a lot, and I really liked it. But there was always that undertone, kind of like we heard in Kari's story of, well, make sure that you keep the most important thing first. Keep first things first. We'd hear that phrase a lot. Don't. If these hobbies start taking up too much time and they start taking up meeting time, and you miss a meeting here or there, that's not good. We don't want to do that.

Kari Hanks [00:20:23] So.

Kyle Hanks [00:20:24] So I always had that running in the back of my mind as well. And let's see, we didn't have a tv. I think we talked about that. That's important. But my hobbies. I really liked basketball when I was younger and being diabetic, I needed to have activity, and they were like, perfect. Join some basketball teams. And I played pretty well, and I was okay when I got to high school. When I got to junior high, the high school coaches were watching me and saying, hey, maybe come play for our team. And sometimes they'd invite me into practice with the varsity players. The seniors, because they're like, this guy's pretty coordinated and he might get taller.

Kyle Hanks [00:20:56] And when I became a. When I got to. I played freshman year of high school and then I quit because I started looking at the schedules and I realized there's going to be practices on Wednesday nights, when my family has a Bible study. There's going to be games maybe on Wednesday nights, or traveling on a Sunday morning.

Kyle Hanks [00:21:11] Especially when I wasn't old enough to drive myself. I can't make other people sacrifice their time in these professing meetings. I can't make them sacrifice that for me. So I quit. I just didn't do it. And I have a little bit of regret around that. I mean, I probably wouldn't have played pro, but that's just. I give that example as that is our view on it. It's meetings first, everything else second.

Kari Hanks [00:21:34] It's almost like when you start liking something to the point that it becomes a passion. The two by twos tell you at that point it's not healthy anymore. So you never really develop passions for things because it's dangerous. It's not healthy.

Kyle Hanks [00:21:49] Yeah, everything needs to. Everything in your life needs to be designed to pull you to the center of the fold. So that can be friendships. I had friends when I was younger that stepped aside from meetings. So I just didn't talk to them anymore. I didn't hate them, I didn't dislike them. If I'd have seen them, I would have been nice to them. But they weren't the best friends. The best friends are the ones in the meetings. And that just became my internal voice. That's just who I was until adulthood, Honestly, just whenever there's a fork in the road, take the one that takes you closer to the meetings.

Kyle Hanks [00:22:16] And don't be a stumbling block. Whatever you do, don't cause another person to stumble. I had things that I liked, I didn't. I wasn't bothered by music. My family didn't really like music. They didn't like it played in the house.

Kyle Hanks [00:22:26] I listened to rap music and headphones. I didn't see it as a problem. It was art to me. I liked it, but I knew not to play it out loud because I didn't want it to bother anybody else in the house and I didn't want them to. They'd go to pray at night and then they'd have this music going in their head that's kind of the devil working. And for some reason that worked. I was like, well, that's fine. I won't do it then I won't offend anybody else with my stuff. But I think a lot of my beliefs when I was younger, a lot of what I did was just based on let's try not to offend anybody, let's try not to pull anybody else away. Let's be really, really faithful. Be responsible. So that was most of my upbringing.

Kari Hanks [00:22:57] I think it's to the point that like even now you and I struggle with how do we have fun. Like life is always about responsibilities and being serious and like taking care of what needs to be taken care of. But when we have some free time, how do we enjoy ourselves? Like how do we have fun? That's actually been difficult to figure out.

Kyle Hanks [00:23:17] Yeah, yeah. That's why I say it becomes your internal voice on some level too. It's, it's, it's. I still battle it too. It's like, well, I could go do this hobby but I gotta do something important. I gotta go do, do the dishes or mow the yard or something. I still have a little bit of that in me.

John Dehlin [00:23:31] I actually have the answer for you. Do you want to know what it is?

Kyle Hanks [00:23:34] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] It's karaoke. That is the one true answer for how to have fun.

Kari Hanks [00:23:41] The one and only one for joy the correct way.

Kyle Hanks [00:23:43] That is the extrovert, right?

John Dehlin [00:23:46] No, I'm kidding. That's where I found joy. Along with lots of TV and puzzles,

Kyle Hanks [00:23:52] karaoke and sad buds.

Kari Hanks [00:23:55] We do like catching up on shows that we missed out on when we

John Dehlin [00:23:57] were Everyone see severance. Okay, back to you.

Kyle Hanks [00:24:01] Throwback to the previous episode.

John Dehlin [00:24:03] Yes.

Kyle Hanks [00:24:04] So the only other thing that I think is interesting about my upbringing is that being very serious, professing God fearing family, we that that was all the time we, if we went on a vacation, we found meetings. We would call around, you know, pre Internet days or even, you know, like pre social media and all that. We would get a phone number from someone who would give us a phone number to a worker, to a friend somewhere and we would find a Sunday morning meeting somewhere. And sometimes that meant shooting a whole Sunday of your vacation, driving an hour and a half to somebody's house.

Kyle Hanks [00:24:34] Because this is important. We need to go meet with these people. We may never see them again. We may never have seen them before, but it was an important part of our life. And in some ways that's kind of cool. It's a unique experience that I can't give my kids. I've been to Sunday morning meetings on islands in the Caribbean when we went on a cruise one time instead of Going to the beach, like the normal cast, the normal people on the boat. We went to a. A meeting with three people up on a hill, on an island somewhere.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:02] Can I ask you a question about that? So how do you find those meetings if it's secret, like, if it's not really.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] That's a great question.

Kyle Hanks [00:25:09] Yeah, well, it's. The two by twos aren't a great community, but they're a great network. People know people who know people. And similar to how we love to trace, everyone loves to sit around and trace back. When did the truth find us? Who is the first person to profess. They love to do that. They also love to find all the connections because invariably you're related to somebody. I mean, it's not that big of a group and everyone's born in. So there's a lot of people connected to a lot of people. And I think when we were in that example I just gave, I think somebody else had gone, had talked to a worker who had gotten him a hold of some.

Kyle Hanks [00:25:42] The overseer of the area that covered the Caribbean at that time, and he knew of somebody on this island and somebody else had had the same scenario. So they gave us the contact info.

Kari Hanks [00:25:51] You would often start by calling your Sunday morning elder, and then they would be like, hmm, well, I know someone who was there last year. Let me call and ask them. And then it's. Yeah, it's these connections. And just to clarify, everyone is born in. There are people who are.

Kyle Hanks [00:26:04] No, no, for sure, but I would say the vast majority. There's not a lot of converts. They're not. Like when.

Kari Hanks [00:26:10] I just don't want to dismiss people.

John Dehlin [00:26:11] We talked about that last time, for sure.

Kyle Hanks [00:26:13] Yeah. And. And when I hear Mormon stories, stories of people going on missions and baptizing 30 people, I just crack up because I'm sure there's workers right now who haven't converted that many.

John Dehlin [00:26:22] 30 in a month sometimes.

Kyle Hanks [00:26:23] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Kari Hanks [00:26:24] That's.

Kyle Hanks [00:26:25] That seems crazy to us because we don't have. I mean, it's ones and 1, 2. Ones and twos, basically.

John Dehlin [00:26:30] Yeah.

Family Culture and Home Life in the Two by Twos

Margi Dehlin [00:26:31] So can I ask a question about that? Do you feel like part of that is it. It lends to the belief of exclusivity? Like if, if you're, if you're not proselyting, does it add to kind of your. Your specialness and value? Do you think that's part of why, like, why that was. I know you're just.

Kyle Hanks [00:26:53] Yeah, no, that's. Good question. I think that there is. We've talked a lot about language and how language is manipulated. And the obvious problem with not many converts into the true way is, like, how true is it if nobody's getting saved? But there's things you can do with language that makes it okay. Like, well, we love our little meeting. We love our little group. We're just a simple people. We don't. We're not. You don't know any of us. We're not famous. We're not in politics. We're not celebrities. We're just a little. We're just a little group of people that meets in a. In a home and studies the Bible. And that becomes the value. Hidden in that is the fact that most of the people in that town don't know you exist. But you don't talk in those terms.

Kari Hanks [00:27:30] Well, I actually preach about it was frequently preached when we were young, especially, like, how fortunate and lucky we are out of all the people in the world to be born into this one true religion. And look at all the people out there who are unwilling or have hard hearts or don't want to hear God's true preachers. So it was used to compare and contrast, like how fortunate and, yes, special and lucky we were to be born into this. Just what are the chances? And then look at all those unwilling people out there.

Kyle Hanks [00:28:00] Yeah. And that worked on me, too, because they made me take it very seriously, too. I'm really, really lucky to have this. Now, if you would have asked me, even when I was younger, do you think everyone's going to a fiery hell except for you and a handful of people? I probably would have said, no, God's the judge. I'll leave the judge.

Kari Hanks [00:28:16] I would have said yes.

Kyle Hanks [00:28:18] Yeah, I don't know if I could have done that. I would have said, that doesn't make sense. You're right. But God will lead them, however. But I know for me, I have to stay as close to the center as I can. I was blessed and lucky to be here. I need to hang on to this. I need to hang on to the revelation. We talk about that. Don't lose your revelation of truth. So, yeah.

Kari Hanks [00:28:37] Yeah. I think most people believe everyone else is going to hell, though. I didn't like that idea. But that's how it was taught.

John Dehlin [00:28:43] Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [00:28:44] We've come to find out in adulthood that we had slightly different feelings about a lot of things. And mine was a little more.

Kari Hanks [00:28:49] Less literal.

Kyle Hanks [00:28:50] Yeah. Because it had to be for me. It's like. Because I pushed on it a couple times and realized it didn't quite hold. So let's then maybe I can loosen up on that idea a little bit. However, I need to do this. This is really important for me to do this. And of course, once we got married, now I have a family in this, so now I really need to stick with it.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:09] Got it. Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [00:29:11] So that's a. It's funny because that's not really an answer to your question, but it is kind of how we process, I think, a little bit. Again, nothing's ever written down, so everyone has to kind of work out their own salvation with fear and trembling.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:21] So you've mentioned a couple descriptors, I think, already of, like, your family culture, the culture, like, of your home life. What I heard was serious. Right. What are other descriptors that you would use to describe what your home felt like for you?

Kyle Hanks [00:29:45] That's a good question. I. I would say it was a loving home, loving upbringing. It's really. It's funny because I think, and you can clarify the question if you want to, but for me, I think that that question sounds like asking, like, how did we feel about it? If that makes sense.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:06] It's more like the values that you absorbed. Like, it sounds like also hard work.

Kari Hanks [00:30:11] Like, you.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:13] The setting up of the chairs and you were, like, very mindful around some of these regular kind of meetings and things that your family kind of helped out with. It's more like the values, the things that you. Oh, you mentioned education. So it's more like from that. Like what you absorbed from kind of your home life. And I'm kind of curious as a. Compare contrast a little bit to Kari's experience, just because you've mentioned that there were some differences.

Kyle Hanks [00:30:45] Yeah, education was important.

Kari Hanks [00:30:47] I think a lot of the differences that we had you sort of processed internally more in your later years, like college era, wouldn't you say, like where you started being less literal? Because I wouldn't say that your family wasn't very literal. I feel like they took it very literally and seriously and, like, word for word, it was true.

Kyle Hanks [00:31:09] Yeah. In a lot of ways, until you got to the point where that didn't make sense. Like, well, dinosaurs existed. Like, we don't know. We think it was young Earth. But then, I don't know. Question mark. God.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:20] So science and medicine.

Kyle Hanks [00:31:22] Science and medicine were important in my family.

John Dehlin [00:31:23] And education.

Kyle Hanks [00:31:25] Education was really important. Yeah.

Kari Hanks [00:31:26] But a lot of those things probably also just weren't talked about in your family.

Kyle Hanks [00:31:30] Yeah, we just didn't talk about that stuff. We didn't talk about. We didn't talk about any sort of Thing that would lead to any sort of.

Kari Hanks [00:31:35] Not a lot of, like, in. In depth.

Kyle Hanks [00:31:38] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:39] How about the emotion part?

Kari Hanks [00:31:40] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:41] So Kari was saying, and I know you've talked about this also within the. The system of belief. Right. Was that true in your family, too? Kind of. Emotion overall, very shut down. Okay.

Kyle Hanks [00:31:55] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Emotion was secondary to getting it right. Being right. The word right was spoken a lot in my family. We got to do the right thing. Be right, do right, do good. How you felt about it was far secondary to that. It was very. It was very rigid in that sense. So if I was uncomfortable with something, I shouldn't be uncomfortable with it. I should do the right thing.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:19] Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [00:32:19] So that's. That's. Does that answer that question? I don't.

John Dehlin [00:32:22] Okay. And remind me. No TV or tv.

Kyle Hanks [00:32:25] No tv. Absolutely not. To this day, they don't have one. Yeah. And no movie theaters. I went to my first movie theater when I was about 18 and saw about. Then I'd have to. I'd have to go back and look because the first movie I saw was Vertical Limit, which is too bad, because that movie's not good. I wish I would have.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:45] I haven't heard of it. Good.

Kyle Hanks [00:32:47] It's not. It's just a silly.

Kari Hanks [00:32:49] What a waste of my first movie theater.

Kyle Hanks [00:32:51] First movie I went and watched, and I was like, this is not even a good movie.

John Dehlin [00:32:53] It's like your movie virginity. It's like your movie virginity. You didn't even have a good experience.

Kyle Hanks [00:32:59] And I went with a bunch of kids who were professing. I don't know, we all talked ourselves into doing it or something, or maybe they didn't care.

John Dehlin [00:33:03] So it's like an active, grave rebellion a little bit.

Kyle Hanks [00:33:06] It was hesitant rebellion for me. My parents were not happy about it. But then they also were like, well, you're old enough to make your own decisions.

Rumspringa, Romance, and Marriage Within the Faith

John Dehlin [00:33:12] It's your Rum Springer.

Kyle Hanks [00:33:13] Yeah. Just one night of watching a terrible movie, then back to it.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:17] Oh, the loss.

John Dehlin [00:33:19] Lost your movie virtue.

Kyle Hanks [00:33:21] Yeah. I'll try to regain it. I'll watch Severance. So I mentioned traveling around. We traveled. One of the things I liked that we did when I was younger was travel to different conventions around the country. So I mentioned that there's a lot of different annual conventions, and they don't all run at the same time. They run. You might have one or two running, and then the workers will move to the next one and move to the next one. And I grew up going to a lot of them, especially before I had any responsibility in life. I was a, you know, 16 to, say, 20 range, where you can. Got a car or a friend with a car or something. And. And of course, that's where you meet professing girls who are good enough.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] Right.

Kyle Hanks [00:34:02] You know, I never. I was very scrupulous about that, too. I never. I've never dated well. I've never dated anybody but Kari. I don't know if I've ever said that publicly, but Kari's the first person I dated. I was too awkward anyway when I was younger. I just wasn't very good at that. But also.

Kari Hanks [00:34:17] But you should say why that is, like, why you had that standard of not dating.

Kyle Hanks [00:34:22] Yeah. Well, because I also. Yeah, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around. Exactly. Other than just being kind of awkward. But also I just really wanted a person who shared my values, which was professing and going to all the meetings and doing all the things. And also that I was attractive to. Well, it's not that big of a church. That's a real need needle to thread. So I'm glad I found Kari for sure. But finding somebody who matches all of the values that you have when it's a very small group is not easy to do.

Kari Hanks [00:34:53] And I think there's a lot of pressure on, like, finding someone good enough and, like, not letting down.

Kyle Hanks [00:34:58] Yeah. With a high standard. And of course, Kari, like, she mentioned, wrote a hymn. You can't get more professing than that. She wrote a hymn that's actually in a published book. It's not used in the meetings right now, and maybe it won't be if they hear about this.

Kari Hanks [00:35:10] Oh, the irony now.

Kyle Hanks [00:35:11] Yeah, it says Kari Hanks because they published it after we were married. But. But yeah. So when I was younger, teenage years, we would travel around, and I remember one year a friend and I went to. I think we came up with seven or eight different conventions, meaning we'd go to a different one every week for several months in a row. So, yeah, that's kind of my. My life up until, I guess, high school. And then I went to college at Western Washington up in Bellingham.

John Dehlin [00:35:43] Nice.

Kyle Hanks [00:35:44] It was where my dad went to school. It's basically the same degree he got. It was the safest thing. It was. I didn't even apply anywhere else, which was. What was the degree he was in? Manufacturing engineering.

John Dehlin [00:35:54] So nothing that would cause you to question or learn.

Kyle Hanks [00:35:57] Nothing at all. There's some science in there, but I could always. I had already done a pretty good job of. Of tabling that. It's Like, I can do science and maybe 6,000 years, maybe 6 million. I don't know. God's time's different than ours.

Kari Hanks [00:36:07] Safe in the sense of. Of how aware you were that you needed to take care of your health and, like, have good health insurance and, like, diabetes was always on your mind.

Kyle Hanks [00:36:19] Yeah, that. That was the main thing. I knew that by the time I left home, I'd have to have a good career because I needed good health insurance. So again, thinking ahead, being responsible. My goal in going to college at all was to get a job that could be a career. It could pay for health insurance and could raise a family and give the option for my wife to stay home if that's what she chose to do. Even though my own mom actually worked part time for all of my growing up years, I knew that I wanted a wife that had the option. That seemed like the best thing to do.

Kyle Hanks [00:36:47] So I went to a school that didn't have very many professing kids. It had a few. And I chose my roommate by someone. Someone someone knew. Someone who knew my family who knew that another professing kid was going to be going to that school that year. And they contacted us and said, hey, you're both going to meetings.

Kyle Hanks [00:37:07] Do you guys want a room together? And I said, of course, we're both professing. That's the best way to do. And so we. So we agreed to room with each other. We went to the college dorms and lived in the same unit for a couple of years. We lived together for a couple years. I didn't meet him until after we'd agreed to live together. And we actually met at a church convention ahead of time. We just agreed to meet up at a church convention so that we could meet each other.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:30] That's wild.

Kyle Hanks [00:37:31] Yeah, it's kind of interesting to look back on now and then. I spent my four years in college not partying or not doing anything interesting, just going to meetings. They called me the church bus because I had a car. And I would go around and pick up whatever kids were going to the school at the time that were two by twos, which there were never more than maybe two or three, I think. But I would. I would go get them all and I would take them to the meetings, and if they weren't around, I'd go by myself. And there was a short time where there weren't actually any workers in our field. So on my Sunday afternoons, I drove about an hour down to the next field and went to their gospel meetings because it just felt like the right thing to do.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:13] So.

Kyle Hanks [00:38:13] And then it was toward the end of college that Kari and I started dating. And I guess my version of that is you and I just started talking. You were always my sister's friend, so I didn't think of you that way. And your cousins and cousin's friend.

John Dehlin [00:38:26] Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [00:38:27] And you. You broke up with somebody and I was the first person you talked to. And I was the first person he talked to as well, which is awkward.

Kari Hanks [00:38:38] That is really awkward.

Kyle Hanks [00:38:40] And I said. I said, I don't know, man. Go figure that out on your own. And then you.

Kari Hanks [00:38:46] And I said, but you didn't say that to me.

Kyle Hanks [00:38:47] Nope.

Kari Hanks [00:38:50] Let me help you with that.

Kyle Hanks [00:38:53] So, yeah, I don't think I wasn't being sneaky about it. It just kind of worked out that way. Then we met up and started dating.

Kari Hanks [00:38:58] Yeah, I went up to visit his cousin, who's still one of my best friends. She was living at home still. Was she living at home or was she.

Kyle Hanks [00:39:06] I don't remember.

Kari Hanks [00:39:07] But anyway, we met up at her parents house and Kyle drove down to their house, also his aunt and uncle, and we were all gonna go to a pizza place to watch the Seahawks game. And then his cousin caught on to, like, the vibes that were going on. She's like, I'm actually gonna go shopping. I don't care about the game. So he and I went and watched it at this pizza place by ourself and that was our first date.

Kyle Hanks [00:39:30] Yeah, we can watch TVs at restaurants, just. We can't have one.

Kari Hanks [00:39:33] Yeah, yeah, got it.

Kyle Hanks [00:39:35] So, yeah, we dated for six months. Long. Long distance. Never lived together, of course, and then got engaged for nine months, which in hindsight sounds crazy. That sounds like a quick. Especially being long distance that entire time.

Kari Hanks [00:39:47] Yeah. But we'd known each other our entire lives and our families all knew each other.

Kyle Hanks [00:39:52] And I think our families were both really happy that two professing kids had found each other.

Kari Hanks [00:39:55] Until we got engaged.

Kyle Hanks [00:39:57] Yeah, we got engaged. And I don't know, I think that. I don't know, I think my parents heard that you dated a lot and that couldn't possibly be good. So they didn't love that. But that's okay. We got married anyway.

John Dehlin [00:40:09] In the Mormon world, it's really hard to behave or stay worthy in that engagement time before you get married. And sometimes engagements and marriages are rushed, so you don't have sex. Similar for you guys.

Kyle Hanks [00:40:23] I don't think we rushed it, but we did, theoretically.

Kari Hanks [00:40:25] That's the idea. Yeah, you gotta check under the hood before you buy the car.

Kyle Hanks [00:40:29] Right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:30] Is that what most two by twos do?

Kari Hanks [00:40:33] I don't.

Kyle Hanks [00:40:34] I don't know what most people do, to be completely honest. I think that probably not.

Kari Hanks [00:40:38] Probably say it's probably pretty common but not talked about to have sex before marriage.

Kyle Hanks [00:40:44] Yeah, we were.

Kari Hanks [00:40:46] I mean, I've never had another partner, so like, we were good two by

Kyle Hanks [00:40:50] twos for most of the engagement.

Kari Hanks [00:40:53] For most things. You put it that way.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:55] Yeah. But it was a teaching that you. That you shouldn't have sex before marriage. But you think it's actually quite common.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] They're speculating, Speculating, speculating, speculating.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:05] Because a lot of people still did. Do you think?

Kari Hanks [00:41:08] I think so.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:09] Is it the type of thing that people would have felt really bad about?

Kari Hanks [00:41:14] Oh, I mean, unless they're kind of headed out, like if they're leaving, if they're on their way out of the church, then I don't know. But the problem with that also is because sex isn't talked about in general. There's not education on how to protect yourself and birth control and things like that. So there are occasionally teen pregnancies in the two by twos.

Kyle Hanks [00:41:37] Yeah, that type of stuff happens. Consent isn't talked about at all in the two by twos because. And my theory is because they don't view it as a choice. It's. You don't do it before you're married, and then after you get married, it's a duty. So it's not viewed through the lens of consent at all. It's viewed through the lens of doing the right thing and duty, essentially. But again, a lot of that stuff. It's like we mentioned in the last episode, sex is one of those things that's too far over the line. We don't even hardly talk about it at all, good or bad, which is unfortunate.

Kari Hanks [00:42:08] Similar to Mormonism, sex is very strictly defined. So there's a lot of loopholes that people can use to mess around but technically not have sex.

John Dehlin [00:42:18] So y' all do that too?

Kari Hanks [00:42:19] Yes.

Kyle Hanks [00:42:20] Yeah.

Kari Hanks [00:42:20] It's not like what we've heard about soaking. That's pretty extreme, what we've heard in Mormonism, but there's similar.

John Dehlin [00:42:28] Is that something teens or young adults

Kari Hanks [00:42:30] would talk about, like messing around but not having sex? No, it was just kind of common knowledge in the teen dating world. I think that there were loopholes that you could get away with doing other things.

Kyle Hanks [00:42:44] I had such a curated friend group, though, and I'm not saying that as a point of pride at all. I'm saying that as I was a little too. A little too tight fisted with my friend group, I tended to associate with people who were very, very much rule followers. So our conversations at worst were like, boy, it'll be great after we're married. So I would say that my experience might not have been average. My experience might have been on the extreme side of the. The do all the. Do all the right things, follow all the rules spectrum. So that's my own personal.

Kari Hanks [00:43:18] Yeah, I think there. I think there's a wide range of people who fall on all ends of the spectrum and in the middle, as far as who's having sex and who's not and how far they're going, and it's just not talked about. So.

Kyle Hanks [00:43:31] Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:43:32] And then marrying outside the faith is probably a big.

Kyle Hanks [00:43:35] No, no, huge. Yeah, it's a huge problem. You're very much looked down upon if you were to do that. It never.

Kari Hanks [00:43:41] Unless you convert them.

Kyle Hanks [00:43:42] Yeah, you can convert them, but that's a lot of work. I never want to do that. I never even dated because I just thought, no, marriage is such a. It's such a serious thing and you're making a lifetime commitment. I never, never entertained the idea even once of even dating somebody who wasn't professing. So neither did I. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:00] So that's very familiar to us. Minus. Y' all don't have the eternal marriage and we do.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:07] Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [00:44:08] Because you're always paranoid about somebody pulling you away, just like I was paranoid about pulling other people away if I. If I was a discouragement in any way or didn't uphold the standard in any way. I was also afraid of that myself. Like, I don't want to marry somebody who's questioning or who could pull me away or whatever.

Kari Hanks [00:44:23] For how much faith they have, they worry a lot about losing it.

Kyle Hanks [00:44:27] Yeah. They don't have a lot of emotion, they don't have a lot of emotions, but they have a lot of fear, so.

Expectations Around Faith, Marriage, and Family

John Dehlin [00:44:33] So would y' all have been married with the understanding that you would stay true to the faith till the end?

Kyle Hanks [00:44:38] Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah. At the time we were married, we were both severely, in very much two by twos for life. No chance of ever doing anything else. We both married very safely, but not safely in a bad way, just safely. Like, we were very happy to have found somebody that we were attracted to, but also had very high standards and wanted to raise a family in this. In this faith. If you would have told us that both of us would talk on An X podcast later, we would have been genuinely horrified. It would have terrified us.

Kari Hanks [00:45:09] It's to the point. The assumption of being in it forever in a marriage to me and for us was to the point that when we did have individual doubts or questions or like Kyle, even before COVID started having some questions, he was listening to certain things in podcasts. He didn't tell me at first because it's like scary to express that to your spouse that you were having doubts.

Kyle Hanks [00:45:32] Yeah, that's one of the weird things about being that much in is you're afraid to fall out. And so we didn't even talk about. We've talked more about our beliefs before since we've left because to do so before would be to open the door

Kari Hanks [00:45:45] for our communication got so much better after we left meetings.

John Dehlin [00:45:49] So.

Kyle Hanks [00:45:50] Yeah. So early married life. I think Kari's pretty much talked about most of it, but I think, yeah, I think you did talk about most of it. I think we just kind of. As Kari's health got worse and things like that, I was just, you know, just keep kicking till you hit shore kind of thing. I was just had my head down. I'm gonna keep working, keep helping and it'll work out somehow. And I think if I had to say there was anything on my shelf, it would be when we first started having kids and just realizing, oh, these kids are pre wired. They have their own thing going on.

Kyle Hanks [00:46:21] I remember distinctly having a thought when our oldest was about three or four months old. I saw her do something and I just had this fleeting thought in my head, oh, she did that on her own. I didn't teach her that. I had this idea, we were taught growing up that the good parents with the good professing, two by two kids, they raise them right. And if they raise them right, then the kids will never depart from the way and they'll just do it. You just do the right thing and your kids will do the right thing. And I had that first thought of, what if they don't though.

Kyle Hanks [00:46:53] What if I'd seen it, I'd seen lots of families good professing go to all the meetings families. But some of their kids didn't go anymore. Some of them did, some of them didn't. Maybe some of them had gone to different religions or become atheists or whatever. And I remember having this feeling with my first kid. My first shelf item that I remember specifically is, but what if they don't? Are you still going to love them?

Kyle Hanks [00:47:17] Well, of course. Why wouldn't I? Why would I Not talk to my kids. And the thought crossed my mind, why would I treat my kids like I see a lot of people treating their own non professing kids who've left. And I just shelved it, put that thought away.

Kari Hanks [00:47:28] I remember even having a conversation around that time like, what if one of our kids is gay? Or and I remember you saying something like, kids aren't just these empty buckets that you get to put your own ideas and beliefs and values into. They come with their own. They're their own people. You know, especially when we had multiple kids and they were so different from each other.

Kyle Hanks [00:47:49] Yeah. And that didn't seem like a profound idea, but it was to me at the time. It was. My whole life had been geared toward being responsible and doing the right thing. And then I saw my kids doing whatever they wanted when they were a few months old. They had their own little ideas. And so, yeah, I'd say that was like the first shelf item.

Kari Hanks [00:48:05] Well, not only did they have their own ideas, but you wanted to allow that.

Kyle Hanks [00:48:10] Yeah, I mean, I felt like the loving thing to do would be to let them be themselves. And the idea that we were supposed to spank that out of our kids, to be completely honest, didn't sit with me at all. We were told by several people when we had young kids, you need to make sure you break their will.

Kyle Hanks [00:48:27] That type of language was very popular. Corporal punishment was a big deal in the two by twos. I had a Wednesday night meeting in my home and we always kept open rooms in the home, quote unquote rooms that back rooms down the hall away from the meeting room, which was usually the living room. We would keep a few rooms down the hall in case there was a kid that was getting fussy and disrupting the meeting, the parent would take them out. And I was in a meeting one time where a kid got fussy and taken out of the room and then another kid got fussy and taken out of the room and then another kid got fussy, got taken out of the room because you need the kids to be quiet in meeting so you can take them out.

Kyle Hanks [00:49:02] Well, there were several kids. You could hear spankings going on down the hall and then another kid got fussy and everybody was doing the mental math in their heads. And that fourth kid got hauled out in the front yard and so spanked right in front of our house. And at the time we laughed about that for years. And looking back at that, I'm horrified. When I started having my own kids, I wasn't laughing at that time anymore. That wasn't a funny anecdote to me anymore. It was like, oh, you punished a whole bunch of kids. You altered their internal voice before they had one, because you're telling them whatever they were doing, regardless of what it was.

Kyle Hanks [00:49:34] They're being told to be quiet. And they're very little kids. You're rewiring that at a very early age. You're not letting them be themselves on some level and believing, true, believing, God fearing, Jesus, whatevering person. Me didn't like that, and I didn't know what to do with that feeling, so I shelved it.

Kari Hanks [00:49:51] I would say that was the first, like, really rebellious, I guess, if you want to call it, thing that we did while we were still two by twos was break that cycle of physical discipline for our children. Because even in our generation, it was very common. And we. I started reading and learning about gentle parenting, which is where I learned about unconditional love. And all of that made sense to me.

Kyle Hanks [00:50:17] Yeah. Having kids that could express their own

Kari Hanks [00:50:19] identity, that was like a big U turn. We took away from the two by two culture.

John Dehlin [00:50:25] Rebelling against corporal punishment of children, basically.

Kari Hanks [00:50:28] Yes.

Kyle Hanks [00:50:28] Yeah. And I think, to be fair, I think a lot of, say, millennials, older millennials like us having kids now probably maybe felt the same way. Even some that are still in. I think there was less corporal punishment in the meetings publicly as we got a little older. But when we were younger, when we were little kids, we all did this. Every little kid that grows up in the meetings plays meeting. Sometimes when they're getting together, they play. They mimic what they've seen, and they mimic by sitting around in a circle, maybe singing or something, and then hauling out a baby doll or a stuffed animal and spanking them.

Kari Hanks [00:51:00] Yeah. My girlfriends and I as little kids, my friends who were girls, would take our baby dolls, and all together, we had like 30 of them between the three of us or whatever, and we'd put them on a row on the couch and play meeting and playing. Meeting meant each baby had its turn going out of meeting, getting spanked or, you know, whatever else, however else we would be cracking our dolls. And we thought it was hilarious. It was almost like a virtuous thing if you were a parent and you could spank your kid loud enough that the whole meeting could hear it from the bedroom, you know, so that was

Kyle Hanks [00:51:32] a shelf item for us, I think. And then Kari talked last time about how we were kind of in a fog for several years. Having three kids close together, having a lot of Health issues come up trying, but not always making it out to meeting very well, not feeling particularly well supported. But then I kind of wasn't expecting it either. I was kind of like, well, they'll support us if we show up. We need to show up. And I was getting a little frustrated that we couldn't make it to the meetings and things.

John Dehlin [00:51:57] Meaning you were maybe frustrated at Kari?

Kyle Hanks [00:52:01] Indirectly, maybe indirectly, although I never blamed her for it. I mean, it's health, you know, what can you do? It's just that I think I had a little bit of building frustration with I lived the right way and it's not quite working out perfectly here. I thought we did all the right things. I thought we checked all the boxes.

Kyle Hanks [00:52:16] So that's just building a little bit in my head. Again, I didn't think of it as a shelf item, but I, looking back, I think it was. And so that kind of went on for a while. And then coming out of that, when our youngest was, I don't know, maybe four or so, the kids were a little older. Kari was working on her health. She hadn't got her diagnosis yet, but I think there was a period where you had done a little better. And I started realizing that my faith isn't something I can articulate very well, but my kids are going to start asking questions already.

Kyle Hanks [00:52:48] We had this young daughter who was critiquing what she'd heard the workers say and wanted some explanations for some of this stuff. And we didn't always have good explanations. And I actually started listening to bible believing people versus atheist debates on YouTube.

Kari Hanks [00:53:04] I would have freaked out if I'd

John Dehlin [00:53:05] known he was listening to Matt Dillahunty,

Kyle Hanks [00:53:07] that type of stuff, or even old, early, like Hitchcock, Hitchens versus whoever type debates and stuff. And it never affected my faith. I didn't think maybe it did, but at the time I was like, I was just looking for. I need to deepen my faith somehow. And we're just going to these meetings and we're saying the same thing over and over and all this stuff. But it's really important to me. I want to raise this family right. And I started listening to even Bible scholars. I don't think I got to Bart Ehrman. There was others, but. And yeah, I didn't. I wouldn't have told you. I don't think. I think I mentioned it one time and you got very upset.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:39] So

Kyle Hanks [00:53:42] I was building maybe even a little earlier than Kari. I was starting to build that kind of like trying to think critically about it to some degree.

Kari Hanks [00:53:49] And letting in some outside influences.

Kyle Hanks [00:53:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:52] And this is something very familiar. When two faithful Mormons get married, we talk about the triangle that they're really. There's a third. It's actually a throuple, and Jesus and the church are the third partner, but they kind of are most important. In other words, you're married to Jesus first and your partner second, or the church first and your partner second, such that you learn to hide things from your spouse.

John Dehlin [00:54:20] If there are things that you don't believe your spouse would, you know, if you were ever close friends to begin with, which oftentimes you weren't, it's just like, whoa, I found someone who's a member who. Who I'm attracted to, and they're willing, let's get married. You don't ever become best friends to begin with. But even if you were close, as soon as you're doing something that might not be approved of, that the church or Jesus wouldn't approve of, then you're not talking about it, you're hiding it. And it can build this wedge between the couple where you're hiding things, and that can be experienced as unfaithful, and it can be really toxic to the. To the relationship.

Kari Hanks [00:55:00] We were taught that same thing about the triangle, that God's at the top. And the closer you get to God, the closer you get to each other, and the farther away from God you get, the farther away you get from each other, because that's the shape of the triangle.

John Dehlin [00:55:10] Wow. You were literally taught that.

Kyle Hanks [00:55:13] Yeah, yeah, it was. That was the model for us. And, yeah, I didn't. Again, I was just doing it from my own deepening of faith. I wasn't trying to. And I wasn't trying to hide it from her either. I brought it out a couple times, and she was like, what are you doing? And I was like, oh, sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to. You know, I'm. I'm just working on myself here, I guess. And I didn't. And so we didn't talk about it that much. And.

Kari Hanks [00:55:31] Yeah, I don't think you intentionally were hiding things. I think it was more like he was concerned that he would hurt my faith if he talked about it too much or that I might interpret it the wrong way.

John Dehlin [00:55:40] Just like. Like with that rap music you were listening to.

Kyle Hanks [00:55:42] Yeah. Back to my own faith of just. I really. The worst thing I could think of was to be. To offend somebody else. I mean, that's biblical, right? The worst. The worst thing you can do is offend somebody. Yeah. And I think the verse says offend a child, but we. We're all children of God, so we'll just use the verse that way. And so. So, yeah, I think we pulled back on spiritual talk. And also your health at that point was starting to get worse. Like, we kind of went through a period where it was okay and then it was overwhelming. Yeah, it was an overwhelming thing.

Kyle Hanks [00:56:09] So. And I think that's kind of where we were as we got to Covid era. Covid for me, started out as healthcare concern. For me especially being. Or for both of us being diabetic, getting diabetes. After I'd caught a virus, I saw another virus coming, and I was like, I don't. I don't like this.

Kari Hanks [00:56:26] Well, they were saying early on how diabetics were particularly high risk. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:31] And in. In Utah and Arizona and Idaho, as I understand it, there are pockets of very conservative Mormons that were anti mask and anti Covid vax and were actually. Their faith in the church was challenged because the prophet came out saying, wear masks and get the vaccine. And it caused a lot of people to question the truthfulness of the church or maybe wonder if the church was following an apostasy. Were there similar dynamics with COVID and vaccines and masks?

Covid Cracks the Foundation of Belief

Kari Hanks [00:57:05] Yeah, 100%. With two by twos being taught that one thing that was special about our church was that there was unity all over the world. And then seeing Covid come along. And every geographical area was handling things very differently because in the Pacific Northwest, they had a professing doctor who was advising the workers, and they were taking very careful precautions. And then where we were, it was just like a free for all. And when they started meetings back up again, they were like, if anyone's concerned, there is this one meeting that has masks. And if you want to wear a mask, you can go to that one meeting.

Kari Hanks [00:57:39] Everybody else can do, you know, whatever they want. Like, some people are extra concerned and might want to wear a mask. There was a worker who, like, wrote an email about the vaccine being the mark of the beast. And to be fair, he was removed from the work for a time because of that email. I think.

Kyle Hanks [00:57:56] For a year.

Kari Hanks [00:57:57] Yeah, for about a year. But a lot of people believed that you have some of this in your. And you're like, why? This led the catalyst to your own kind of faith shakeup.

Kyle Hanks [00:58:08] Yes. I think that's where we are now, is kind of where we both started. We both stepped away and started essentially deconstructing my own deconstruction. Besides just trying to deepen my faith from other things. I'd also watched a few deconstruction stories and just like Kari said, watching cult documentaries or something, I was absolutely fascinated by deconstruction stories.

John Dehlin [00:58:29] Can you take us through some of the ones that grabbed you early and then. Yeah. And then how that led to Mormon stories? Not so much because I care about Mormon stories per se, but I want to understand other people's deconstruction.

Kyle Hanks [00:58:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:42] And how we can help with that.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:44] Sure.

Kyle Hanks [00:58:44] Well, my own. My first. The first story I ever watched was a lady named Megan Phelps Roper from Westboro Baptist. Yeah, you probably heard of her. Her story fascinated me because I'd already. I'd also seen the Louis Thoreau documentaries about Westboro Baptist he did for the BBC, I think it was. And I was fascinated with them because they were. They were like our group but on speed. They were just. They were.

Kyle Hanks [00:59:11] I saw, I identified with a lot of it, but they had a lot of extra anger. They were even smaller. They were even more isolated. And so when Megan Phelps Roper left and then started talking about her experience, I watched it expecting to hear about this crazy colt. And we did. But also I heard some interesting things. The fact that she told her story long form, it was two or three hours. I listened to it, I listened to it several times because I thought, that's crazy. There's some identifiable things there. And I don't, honestly, to be completely honest, I don't remember exactly what those were, but I just remember thinking, they're crazy, but they're.

Kyle Hanks [00:59:49] Women can wear pants. Are we more restrictive than a crazy cult that got a documentary? That's weird. And so that was probably around the time that I was doing the whole listening to Bible scholars and all this stuff. And then I think I credit the algorithm because I think probably from there I ended up on Mormon stories. Somehow. I don't remember specific examples of Mormon stories that resonated with me in particular, but I remember themes. I remember themes of people leaving and the narratives around them. Things like, well, they never had it. They never truly had it and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [01:00:26] Things that were disparaging about them.

Kyle Hanks [01:00:28] The way they interacted with the community as they left was really interesting to me because it sounded exactly, exactly like us. It sounded like the exact same things we say to those bitter ex members who leave and say bad things about us.

John Dehlin [01:00:38] Y' all say bitter too. Oh, bitter.

Kari Hanks [01:00:40] X and I have shirts that say bitter on them that we wear to our in person ex. Two by two get together.

Kyle Hanks [01:00:47] Yeah. So those types of themes. And also the concern about, you know, the. The model, I think, from somebody inside watching somebody leave is, oh, they just got angry. They just left. They stopped believing. They hate God and all this stuff. The narrative about the people who leave is so different from the narrative of the people who leave themselves because so many people leave reluctantly. And the stories, the things that were resonating to me, being completely inside, by the way, at this point, but my faith was. We'll talk about COVID in a second. But I remember hearing themes of like, wait, I've talked like that about people.

Kyle Hanks [01:01:21] I've called people. They're just bitter they left, but they can't leave it alone. I've said that about people. I've probably said those exact words about friends of mine. And hearing the commonalities in all these stories. I like that you're doing this series of never Mormons as well, because it just shows all the commonality between the groups. There's so much fear. Fear about telling your spouse that you're having any doubts, fear that you're telling your family. You're letting your family down. You're letting down this lineage. Pioneer lineage for an LDS faith or for us. It's just we've professed for generations. We don't know how far back, not very far back.

Kyle Hanks [01:01:53] But you're letting you to even question, to even look outside, to even look outside anything but the KJV Bible, you're showing some doubt. You're falling short a little bit. And true believing, planning on always going to meeting my entire life, me resonated with that. I remember watching and thinking, wow, that's interesting. And there was a tiny bit of empathy I had because I was like, man, they're good people, though they're not very few people.

Kyle Hanks [01:02:23] I think a lot of people, maybe people think this about us coming on Mormon stories. They're just coming on to tear us down. No, they're not. They're trying to tell their own story. And that was interesting to me.

Kari Hanks [01:02:34] I remember particularly LGBTQ themes being helpful for me because as I was deconstructing my political beliefs, I was learning to have compassion and empathy for groups of people that two by twos do not ever consider the perspective of so people of color and the LGBTQ community. And I was identifying with some of their stories of feeling repressed, maybe before I even could put language to that, of recognizing parts of myself in their stories. So I remember those being really impactful. And I was reading a lot of books about people leaving every type of religion, Scientology, and flds and. Yeah, just. Just eating up. I was like a sponge, just soaking up as much information as I could get.

John Dehlin [01:03:30] Kari, do you remember now reflecting back on the first moments you may have experienced attraction to women? Did you experience that before? Did you even allow yourself to.

Kari Hanks [01:03:42] Yeah, my first crushes now in retrospect, were on girls that I remember.

John Dehlin [01:03:48] Okay.

Kari Hanks [01:03:48] Yeah. But it's a running theme through all of my childhood. I just didn't have the language for it, like in the Two by Two. So it would have been as ridiculous as saying you were attracted to a tree. Like, you just don't. It's not a thing. It doesn't exist. You don't talk about it. Other than there are gay people and we kind of feel sorry for them and they have a very personal struggle. But especially bisexuality wasn't even on my radar as a thing that could exist, really.

John Dehlin [01:04:14] So the Mormon stories and other high demand religions discussing LGBTQ acceptance not only connected with you because it was a marginalized group within your community, but it made you start wondering about yourself, particularly

Kari Hanks [01:04:30] Mormon stories was where I was getting that content from. Yep.

John Dehlin [01:04:34] Okay.

Kari Hanks [01:04:35] That was really impactful.

John Dehlin [01:04:36] Okay. Did y' all stumble on ex Mormon Reddit at some point?

Kyle Hanks [01:04:40] No, I don't. I haven't done much of that, no.

John Dehlin [01:04:43] Y' all have. Y' all spent any time on Reddit?

Kyle Hanks [01:04:44] Not really.

John Dehlin [01:04:45] There is an X2. X2.

Kari Hanks [01:04:46] Yeah, there is.

Kyle Hanks [01:04:48] I've been on there and looked around a little bit. I've talked on there a little bit. But yeah, it's.

John Dehlin [01:04:52] We have the largest ex religious subreddit in the world that I'm aware of. Like, bigger than Catholics, bigger than Baptists, evangelicals, ex, you know, witnesses. For some reason, Mormons just dominate, you know, ex religious YouTube, ex religious podcast, ex religious Reddit. Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [01:05:12] Yeah, I have some thoughts about that, actually. We'll get to it when we talk about the end of our deconstruction starting a group, but I think there's some reasons for that. But I think we just talk about COVID now because. So I'll just tell my own story. I think Kari talked about it when Covid started and everything started locking down. We locked down ourselves first.

Kyle Hanks [01:05:31] I remember every. I think everyone probably remembers the great toilet paper rush of March of 2020. About two weeks before, we'd gone out and bought extra toilet paper because we were just seeing this coming and thinking, man, if a virus gets going crazy in the country, this is not good for us.

Kyle Hanks [01:05:48] But I thought, you know, there's very few things that Bring a lot of people together. And one of those is sports and another one is tragedy. And this virus looks like it could be a tragic thing. Hopefully we all bring ourselves together. Hopefully we all just put differences aside and try to do the right thing, try to help each other out. And what felt like the right thing for me to do at the time was for us to not go to meetings for a little bit and not go into a small room where we're all sharing emblems out of the same cup and singing and all this stuff.

Kyle Hanks [01:06:15] So we stopped going. And I realized that, I think when my face started really cracking, was realizing that we were very much alone in thinking that a lot of the group we were from, the Two by Twos, they felt like, well, this is just another worldly thing. Don't get caught up in the hype. Just keep going to meetings.

Kari Hanks [01:06:34] Faith over fear.

Kyle Hanks [01:06:35] Yeah, don't have fear. I mean, they're fearful of everything all the time, but don't fear this. You know, they tend to be fearful of things they can't see, but they're not fearful of this. And that hit me really hard because I was taking it very seriously. I'm thinking, we don't know what this virus does. At the time, we didn't know anything about it. This could be really bad for someone, for a family with health problems. I'm the sole breadwinner. I need to keep it together here. And then hearing from, even from the ministers at the time when things shut down, they were doing a lot more call in meetings.

Kyle Hanks [01:07:04] We could call in the ministers, speaking to the phone. And we were hearing real, in my opinion, craziness about, well, this is just some worldly problem. This is just the world trying to shut us down. And they were processing it all as persecution in a way. And I thought, that doesn't make sense at all. I hadn't foreseen that. I hadn't foreseen that way of processing the information. And early on, I think before COVID even came to the US I called someone in the Two by twos and I told them my concerns. I said, this is kind of a scary thing. What do you guys think you're going to do?

Kyle Hanks [01:07:34] We're probably going to do whatever. And they said, they responded by telling me a bunch of conspiracy theories that were detached from any reality in my mind.

Kari Hanks [01:07:45] That's when we learned about QAnon.

Kyle Hanks [01:07:47] We learned about QANON accidentally because I think this person I was talking to had kind of gone down that rabbit hole.

Kari Hanks [01:07:52] A lot of the two by twos were into QAnon. Not all of them, but a lot of them were.

Kyle Hanks [01:07:57] And I hung up the phone and I went to Kari and I was like, you won't believe this conversation I just had. This is the wildest thing. And so I don't want to paint with too broad a brush and say everybody in the two by twos is completely crazy. That's not true. There's all. There's the widest spectrum. But what really cracked my faith and ultimately I think was the last. Was the last thing on the shelf was just seeing a lack of care around people who. The elderly and the people who have health issues and things like that. And I will never fault anybody for getting something wrong about COVID or not taking a vaccine or whatever.

Kyle Hanks [01:08:27] Those are all personal choices. But the narrative about the narrative that we shouldn't fear a thing that's very real and tangible to us, that was confusing to me right up to the point of we actually know someone who died. Someone who passed away very early on who had a kid our age. This person was about my age. They passed away. Their spouse was in the ICU and their kid had to go live with grandparents from COVID And people within the two by twos kind of was like, well, we're just going to keep having meetings. Yeah, they got sick. We don't really know what happened. And I thought, man, there's a gigantic disconnect between our faith and reality right now.

Kari Hanks [01:09:06] They weren't even using the word Covid in general. Like, we were hearing of elderly people passing away and this lady we knew passed away. And they weren't calling it Covid. It was like they were pretending it didn't exist.

Kyle Hanks [01:09:20] Yeah. And again, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush and say everybody lost their minds. But enough people were saying things that there was a real. There was a real. The faith butted up against something and needed to reckon with it. And in my mind, it wasn't doing it. It was making people worse judges of what to do than better.

Kyle Hanks [01:09:41] And to get to meeting, I had to get around my faith to get there. I had to. Faith wasn't helping me deal with this crisis. Faith was giving me a lot of stuff. I had to work around to keep my family safe. And I know that many people, I've heard on Mormon stories, many people have left their faith when they realized, hey, they're shutting down, that. Why would you do that? We're a faith based community.

Kyle Hanks [01:10:01] Those people are in the two by twos as. As well it was the opposite for us. It was like, why shouldn't we have some faith, pull back, let God's faith. Let. Let God put faith in us to continue our faith forward even if we can't meet together and we'll meet up on the other side. And instead there was a narrative of if we don't meet together, the faith's going to go away. Essentially, you're going to lose out. Someone even told me on the phone, I had a family member tell me, this is. This is Covid is bad because it's going to keep you away from meetings.

Kyle Hanks [01:10:25] It's going to cause spouses to divorce. It's going to processed it as essentially, Covid was somehow persecuting all of us in our faith. And that's a condensed version of me losing my faith, essentially is realizing that it just didn't pour it into the real world.

Kari Hanks [01:10:38] We got an email after meetings opened up again, and we voluntarily had stayed away for several more months past what everybody else was doing. We got an email from a worker in our field at the time who was talking about how God is the one in Deuteronomy who put the plague on people's houses. So it's really up to God who. Who gets sick and who doesn't. And it's not up to us to worry about if we're passing something on to other people, because it's up to God to choose who gets sick and who doesn't get sick. And so just no accountability, no responsibility.

Kari Hanks [01:11:10] And that it's very important to physically be in that place of meeting, to have your kids in meeting. And it was very clear to us that our presence in meeting was valued more than our lives in a very literal way. And we also have children with chronic illness.

Kari Hanks [01:11:25] So that was insane to us. Like there was no way we were going to sacrifice one of their parents or their own health to have them physically in meeting. Just didn't make sense to us.

Kyle Hanks [01:11:36] Yeah, it was very evident to me that this thing I'd grown up with taking such good care of in my life called the truth. The first time it gets tested, I feel like it didn't survive that test. It was lacking in something, and I was looking for help outside of it because I wasn't getting help from my faith at that time. And long story short, that letter that Kari's talking about, she read it to me on the phone, and that was the first time I said, we're not going back.

Kyle Hanks [01:12:02] This is not a responsible group. My faith, I had faith to believe in things. That I couldn't see. I believed in God. I can't see God, but I have faith in him. My faith doesn't disregard things I can see. And I felt like the two by two faith was struggling so much to deal with just a normal real world problem. Viruses happen. And they were struggling so much to just keep people, trying to keep people from walking away. They were afraid that if people walked away, they wouldn't come back.

Kyle Hanks [01:12:28] Well, that's interesting, right? It means you have to stay there. You have to stay in to have any connection with God. And that was not. I realized that my faith, as it was to me, was so personalized that it actually didn't match the two by twos anymore. So.

Kari Hanks [01:12:42] And then I told you I was an atheist.

John Dehlin [01:12:45] Yeah. How was that conversation? Tell us about that.

Kari Hanks [01:12:49] That was a really, really difficult six months.

John Dehlin [01:12:53] Were you afraid he'd leave you when you told him?

Kari Hanks [01:12:55] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tell us that story again. Like I. I mentioned briefly in the last episode before we stopped, I. It. It was. It didn't feel like a choice. It didn't feel like I woke up one day and was like, I want to be an atheist. That's not what it felt like. It felt like this realization that I just didn't believe anymore. And I could try forcing myself, but I, but I, I just didn't. I. I went through the whole gamut. I was like, do I still believe in hell? Am I dragging my kids to hell if I'm an atheist?

Kari Hanks [01:13:26] I was under the impression that a marriage in the two by twos that was built on two by two faith would not survive two different beliefs. So I thought I was ruining my marriage. Like this wasn't something that I wanted or that I had sought out.

Kari Hanks [01:13:43] And the more I accepted it in myself, I thought I might lose my peace. I will never experience joy again. These were feelings that you feel as a two by two because you have God. But with some time, I realized I was still capable of this full range of human experience, of having joy and peace.

Kari Hanks [01:14:05] And there were things about it that were comforting to me, like the randomness of suffering. So these were things I was starting to accept about myself.

Losing Faith and Sharing It With a Spouse

John Dehlin [01:14:14] Can I ask a question? So you may have mentioned it in the previous episode, but just for the sake of containment in this episode, the main reasons you lost your faith in God, that you can think back and say these were the main reasons God died for me, were what?

Kari Hanks [01:14:32] Allowing myself access to information that had been withheld from me in the church and just educating myself, reading information, reading Books. And that's how it hit me.

John Dehlin [01:14:41] And the big ones were what Bart

Kari Hanks [01:14:43] Ehrman was a big one, who I'd heard about on Mormon Stories podcast.

John Dehlin [01:14:46] So like a flawed Bible, flawed New Testament, is that right?

Kari Hanks [01:14:50] Yes, because for me, the Bible as a two by two had always been very true. Everything in it was true. It was not metaphorical, unless Jesus said it was a parable. So it was literal and true. And once the contradictions in the Bible were pointed out to me and the, I don't know, you would call them anachronisms or just things that didn't add up, didn't make sense, it all fell apart for me.

Kari Hanks [01:15:13] And also just being a parent had started, this idea had started to accumulate of if God is a loving parent and I understand how that feels now, as a parent, I would never punish my children or make them suffer, especially not for all eternity. But like I coming from this, I had, you know, recently been educating myself about gentle parenting. And we weren't using corporal punishment, so punishment itself didn't make sense to me. This like reward and punishment binary system of, of a higher power that we had been taught, it just wasn't adding up for me anymore. So that was the God that I had been taught as a two by two.

Kari Hanks [01:16:01] And I did do some research into other theologies and how other people learned about God. And two by twos are very works based. Like we weren't ever really taught about grace other than it's sort of synonymous with forgiveness. So I learned about grace and I learned about the Trinity and I learned and I, I had an open mind to these other ideas, but it just didn't fit for me.

John Dehlin [01:16:22] So I mentioned a lot that my Christian listeners are super mad at the Mormon Church for killing not just belief in Mormonism, but also in God and Jesus. Why didn't you just go to like, well, there's a couple answer questions. Why didn't you just go to like liberal Christian which is like, ah, it's myth, it's metaphor, it's good moral principles or some other Christian tradition, you know, or not Christian, but still believing in God, but just not Christianity, the Christian God. You could make a God that felt right to you. You know what I mean?

Kari Hanks [01:17:00] Yeah, yeah, I thought about that. So with my deconstruction, first of all, I had to take everything down to the bare bones of what I had been taught. I had to deconstruct everything that I had been taught about the two by twos and belief and God and Jesus and everything and then rebuild from There. And when it came to the rebuilding process, as I was learning about all these different theologies and different ideas and different religions and different viewpoints and different beliefs, and all of these opportunities opened up of what I could adopt as my own belief, I just realized I didn't need it. I realized that I had been seeking external validation my entire life for proving that I'm a good person, that I'm a moral person, that I'm okay, that I'm an acceptable human.

Kari Hanks [01:17:51] The idea that that had to come from outside of myself, from. From whether that's a higher power or the two by twos or the workers or even parents, it felt unhealthy for me. For my own healing and my own reconstruction, I needed to accept myself as a moral, good enough human the way that I was, and build on that, on my own internal validation. So for me, externalizing that wasn't healthy anymore. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:18:23] So you just kind of lost interest in external sources of authority.

Kari Hanks [01:18:29] Right. And once I realized I can still feel the full range of peace and joy by looking at a sunset that I believe came about naturally, not through a higher power, then I just didn't need to look outside of myself for those feelings. And on top of that, you know, a lot of these books I was reading were talking about the problem of suffering. And if there's a loving creator, why in nature does a baby antelope have to be played with by the lion for so long before it's killed? And why our babies getting cancer and suffering horrifically before they can even talk? All of that stuff just.

Kari Hanks [01:19:08] It felt more kind and comfortable to believe that those things were random. And on top of that, if you don't believe in unicorns, it's really hard to force yourself to believe in unicorns. And that's how I felt about a higher power at that point. I thought I could fake it till I make it maybe, and, like, eventually might change my mind, but it just felt like too much work when I realized that what I was building internally was okay for me.

John Dehlin [01:19:37] I'm seeing Margi's head nod quite a bit. Are you channeling? Are you vibing with this?

Margi Dehlin [01:19:45] Yeah, I'm just vibing it. For sure. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:48] Okay, so you had to. Do you remember, like, a day you had to, like, have the conversation with him?

Kari Hanks [01:19:55] I do remember. I remember the date.

John Dehlin [01:19:57] Yeah.

Kari Hanks [01:19:57] Yeah, it was the end of November, and I.

John Dehlin [01:19:59] What year? 2020.

Kari Hanks [01:20:01] 2020.

John Dehlin [01:20:01] Okay.

Kari Hanks [01:20:02] I just kind of blurted it out to Kyle. Like, it almost felt like this exciting new discovery about myself. With a lot of potentials. And it was scary, but it was like there's. There's this whole new world opening up to me. I think I'm an atheist. And the reaction I got was intense betrayal. It was as if I had told him that I had had an affair. The hurt was so deep, and I wasn't expecting that. Like, it made. It made sense to me once I realized it. And I definitely could have broached the topic in a more gentle, maybe toned down my excitement kind of way.

Kyle Hanks [01:20:37] Oh, wait.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:38] Not a celebration.

John Dehlin [01:20:41] But you were excited about your own discoveries, it sounds like.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:44] And it felt like a celebration. It sounds like.

Kari Hanks [01:20:46] It felt like it did. I had internalized a lot of what I. What I was presenting to Kyle. And this is my fault too. I tend to do this. I tend to internalize new ideas that I have and really work them from every angle before I come out and present them to Kyle. So I had already worked through a lot of, like, the potential scary parts and the problematic parts in my head and come to the place where I was excited. And this was like a new discovery of mine. And it completely shocked him. I think.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:17] I think just really quickly, like noticing that this is a moment where actually you are connecting with yourself and you are doing this new process of, you know, how do I feel about this? How do I. Which I don't know. I think it does feel like empowering. It does feel like a coming to

Kari Hanks [01:21:43] or growing up as a two by two girl and not being allowed to accept, Explore your identity and your autonomy and your independence. It felt like the first time I was doing that, like I was choosing a value for myself rather than inheriting it or having it handed to me.

Margi Dehlin [01:22:01] And I think that's one of the hardest situations to be in. Sometimes when you're in relationship with someone, when the thing that frees you or the thing that actually, you know, liberates you hurts your spouse.

Kari Hanks [01:22:18] Yeah, it was incredibly difficult and very confusing. And his hurt hurt me. And yeah, it was a really, really tough time. That six months was just for both of us, incredibly dark. I was suicidal a couple of times. I thought, I'm hurting. My existence is hurting people that I love. You know, I also have my two by two family that's hurting because I told them that I wasn't going back to the church around that time. So it was a really, really dark, difficult time. Yeah. And you can speak to what you were going through during that time too, because I think.

John Dehlin [01:22:55] Yeah. How was that for you, Kyle?

Kyle Hanks [01:22:56] Yeah, it was terrible. Yeah, it was. She described it very well because that was my viewpoint on it. She Steel manned my viewpoint very well. It was. It was a chaotic time anyway. But to. We've mentioned before that just based.

Kyle Hanks [01:23:13] The system we grew up in, we tended to not talk about things that really mattered. And we thought we were. I mean, we were close. We've always been close. We've been very good friends. We're very lucky in that way. We didn't just pick each other out of, you know, because we fit the criteria. We are actually really good friends too. And so when she said that, it came out of nowhere. And I immediately thought, we haven't even talked about this. And that's what felt like a betrayal to me, is that she'd been doing work on her own on the side. I had too, to be completely fair.

Kyle Hanks [01:23:42] But, you know, in the past that I'd talked about some things that maybe were outside the norm. I had talked to her about it and we'd had these discussions and she told me to not do that anymore. And now this. And that felt. It did feel like a betrayal.

Kyle Hanks [01:23:54] It felt like, how in the world did we get here? We had this all planned out exactly right. We had the good family. We had 2.3 or so kids. We had dogs in a minivan, and we were professing and had a good job. We checked all the boxes. And now in the middle of this, we're disconnected. And yeah, I had the same dark period of my life, to be completely honest.

Kyle Hanks [01:24:17] It was. I don't want to misuse psychological terms or anything, but I was depressed for a couple months. And it was not just. I don't want to simplify it down to. I was depressed that Kari was now not believing. It wasn't that. It was. I was depressed that my entire worldview didn't work. The worldview that I had spent 30 some years putting together and curating carefully and making sure not to offend anybody and raising a family with these values and sacrificing any time I needed to to make sure that this belief system continued on through me and around me. And now it's not. And I was despondent for a while, and I was.

Kyle Hanks [01:24:55] It was dark because it's. It's weird to describe now because when I. When you say it out loud, it's like, really? You got that depressed about it. But I had a hard time. I would wake up in the morning for a while. Like, I wish I hadn't woken up. I don't want to be up today. Sleep was better. And, and I was constantly. It was like the only thing running on my brain. I'd go to work and I could concentrate on work. That was a break for me to go to work. And then I'd come home and I'm like, okay, back to the black cloud. Like, it's not just that I felt like I had failed somehow.

Kari Hanks [01:25:23] He would call me on his lunch break from work because he has done that our entire marriage. And he would just be crying and like his whole lunch break would just be him not able to talk, just sobbing on the phone.

Kyle Hanks [01:25:34] Yeah, we had a lot of. And we had a lot of arguments and a lot of. We would try to have good conversations and we couldn't do it. We were just too disconnected. And neither of us wanted that to be clear. Like, we didn't, we didn't want to be disconnected from each other, but we were. And I was realizing that that was the only connection I had. I wasn't that connected to the church anymore. My beliefs aside. My beliefs were part of it for sure.

Kyle Hanks [01:25:58] But there's a version of me with my kind of loosey goosey beliefs that. Where I could allow for a little bit of gray area when I needed to. Worked really well to keep a family together and to be a good example of my own family name and all this stuff. And now what it felt like was outside of my control is that that was gone. And.

Kyle Hanks [01:26:16] And so I wasn't having the freeing feeling of like, I can start over. I was having the feeling of like, oh, I just ran off a cliff accidentally. The, the analogy I've used is back in those old, like Warner Brothers cartoons or something. You see the character running around, he'll run off a cliff and he'll just keep running for a while.

John Dehlin [01:26:31] It's Wile E. Coyote.

Kyle Hanks [01:26:32] Yeah, the Wile E. Coyote thing. And there's a moment in all of those cartoons where they'll stop and look at the camera and blink a few times in midair and think. And you can tell they're. They're looking at the audience thinking, this could go a lot of different ways. I could turn around and run back to the coast or to the cliff, but I was running from that, so I shouldn't do that. I can fall and put a big character sized hole in the ground or I could build some sort of aircraft on the way down or something that, that pause, stare at the camera, blink, fear.

Kyle Hanks [01:26:59] I was there for months of just like frozen in place. Like, I don't know what to do. Nothing prepared me for, for any disjointed belief at all. And I knew that. I use that analogy because running off the cliff also implies that you could run back. And I knew I couldn't do that. Meetings. I was checked out of meetings at this point, kind of. I hadn't told anybody, but I knew mentally I'm not a two by two anymore. Clearly my values don't align with them. And my deconstruction had progressed to that point, I think. But we also weren't seeing eye to eye on anything. And I felt completely just. Just in the dark.

Navigating Marriage Through Deconstruction

Kari Hanks [01:27:39] I think we were both kind of reacting from a place of fear and concern. Like, I knew I was constantly worried that, like, now he knows I'm an atheist, he's not going to want to stay married to me because he's still a believer. So this, this place of fear, of like not being accepted, not being wanted, it's not going to work out. It wasn't that we didn't want it to work. It was just like we were so quickly flooded and so quickly in this reactionary state with each other that was so difficult to communicate. And it was during that time, at some point, Kyle came to me and he was like, I found this podcast and Mormon stories and I want you to listen to this episode because it explains what I'm going through.

Kari Hanks [01:28:22] And I said, I found Mormon stories and I already listened to that episode. And we started communicating through these guests that you, you had on your show. Like, hey, this one episode where this guest said this, that's how I'm feeling. And it was like we were able to use Mormon stories to start reconnecting and communicating. It was like the only thing we had in common for a while.

Kyle Hanks [01:28:44] Yeah, there was a short time where we kind of communicated through the. By holding up the doll that is the Mormon stories guest. Because it was. There was relatable stuff on all sides. There was, you know, families that had differing faith and stuff like that. And that was a common point for us, I think.

John Dehlin [01:28:59] And you don't remember what that first episode was?

Kyle Hanks [01:29:01] I wish I did. Yeah. I wish I did.

John Dehlin [01:29:03] It's fine.

Kari Hanks [01:29:03] There were just so many. I mean, we were binging it back.

John Dehlin [01:29:06] Did y' all have any idea who Mormons were, what they believed a little bit before you started? Like, were we Amish to you? Were we Mennonites to you?

Kyle Hanks [01:29:16] No, I only had good feelings about Mormons. So there was actually a ward in my local town. I grew up in a small town, but that town had a ward with a lot of kids. I had a lot of kids that I went to school with who were LDs and they were fine. I didn't know anything about the beliefs other than other than they had some polygamy in their past and something about Moroni and not much else. We actually had a minister our workers love to talk down about other religions and one of our ministers, it's come up a couple times, like those Mormons with their copyrighted materials.

Kyle Hanks [01:29:49] We don't copyright anything. We just have the Bible and we actually had one, one minister who brought up Maroni one time and referred to him as Maroney Baloney. Just as a way just to be disparaging, just off handed disparagement. So I knew about them, but I never. They were just kind of like everything. Some people are Mormons, some people are Catholic, whatever.

Kari Hanks [01:30:09] I actually wrote down that quote from an overseer and he said this in 1968. So this was before we were born, but we grew up with this, this idea about Mormons. He says, I was looking at a Book of Mormon and on the first page it says it is copyrighted. Do you say that is an inspired book? They will never let anyone see the book unless they pay for it. Which isn't true.

Kyle Hanks [01:30:32] Which isn't true. I've had people offer me books of Mormon before, but.

Kari Hanks [01:30:35] And then, yeah, recently I was asking,

John Dehlin [01:30:39] by the way, did y' all know Joseph Smith tried to sell the copyright and wasn't able to. Yeah, he was like broke and needed money and he received a prophecy that if he sent some of his followers to Canada or whatever, they'd be able to sell the copyright. So he sent them to Canada and they weren't able to sell it.

Kari Hanks [01:30:56] That's really funny.

John Dehlin [01:30:57] Anyway.

Kyle Hanks [01:30:58] But no, my impressions of LDS members, even to this day, they're just really good people. They're nice people.

John Dehlin [01:31:04] We are co workers.

Kari Hanks [01:31:06] I did not grow up around Mormons and I thought they were a cult because we basically were taught every other religion as a culture before coming on here. I sourced our, our support group for any ex 2 by twos who had stories about Utah specifically. And someone mentioned. And I found a workers list and this story was on the bottom of it. But basically there's a legend that workers told that in the 1930s they came to Utah to preach the gospel and they had set up a tent and the Mormons came and burned their tent down. So Utah is not very friendly to the two by twos and that's why they never put like a, a lot of energy into it. I think there's like 1 to 202 by twos in Utah. There's one field, very small. It's a small population.

John Dehlin [01:31:51] How many two by twos?

Kari Hanks [01:31:52] About one to 200.

Kyle Hanks [01:31:53] A couple hundred at most. Yeah, there's one field.

John Dehlin [01:31:56] And if you're watching, if you're a Utah two by two, reach out to me and you can come on the podcast and tell us why these people are really bad people and totally wrong and misrepresenting your faith.

Kari Hanks [01:32:08] Yeah, there you go.

John Dehlin [01:32:09] I'm sure they'll do it. Right. I'm sure they're watching, right?

Margi Dehlin [01:32:11] Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [01:32:12] Who knows? Maybe you never know.

John Dehlin [01:32:13] We were, but they don't think of themselves as two by twos. No.

Kyle Hanks [01:32:16] They're probably watching, thinking, who are these people? They're not the two by twos. We're the truth.

John Dehlin [01:32:20] That'll be wild when somebody says, yeah, I was a two by two, but I didn't call myself that. And I was curious about this weird church called the Two by Twos. So then I started learning about them and I realized that was us.

Kyle Hanks [01:32:32] I have no doubt that's happened at some point.

John Dehlin [01:32:34] Anyway, so you. You thought Mormons. Do you think that story's true, that Mormons burned down their tent, or do you think that? I don't know.

Kari Hanks [01:32:41] Again, workers love persecution stories, so it's just hard to know. I don't really know.

Kyle Hanks [01:32:45] Who knows?

Losing Community and Imagining Life Outside the Church

Kari Hanks [01:32:46] Another thing that we started realizing that I want to, like, bring out as we were deconstructing was we started realizing the community of support that had been consistent through everything we had been through was our already ex. Two by two friends, like Mike and Abby and another friend who lived with us for a while were our friends when they left the church and we were still two by twos. And then when we were leaving the church, they were there for us and supporting us. More so than any two by two friends we had had. These ex members who were supposedly bitter and angry were consistently there for us

Kyle Hanks [01:33:24] and never told us to leave either. No one ever tried to talk us out of going. They just were there for us to talk to. But I didn't. Even during my faith crisis, I didn't even talk to them because I knew they were gonna. I thought they were probably gonna tell me to leave, and I didn't want that, but I knew the people inside were gonna tell me to stay, and I didn't really want that. And I wasn't getting along with Kari. I mean, we were getting along, but, like, the important parts of our conversations weren't Happening. And I got into a really dark place, too.

Kyle Hanks [01:33:51] And I remember driving to work one day in the. What was the December, I think we decided. I can't remember the dates on this stuff, but I was driving to work, and in the darkest place, I remember thinking, maybe this is hell. Maybe losing all purpose and all meaning and realizing you don't have a single person to look out, to, ask, to talk to, because every single person is going to have an agenda in your life. That's not true, but that's how I felt at the time.

Kyle Hanks [01:34:17] And I was driving to work, and I just thought I failed completely. Thirty some years, I completely failed. And I have three kids now. Those are souls we talk all the time about. It's better for you. They warn the people inside. The workers warn the people inside.

Kyle Hanks [01:34:34] If you leave, that's even worse for you. People who know and leave are way worse off in eternity than people who never knew it in the first place. I brought my kids into this. I have this whole family.

Kyle Hanks [01:34:44] Something I did failed. I didn't even blame Kari for her beliefs. I was like, well, she can't help that, clearly, but could I have helped it? I'm supposed to take care of things. I'm the one holding things together. I'm the responsible person here. I can't cause someone else to stumble. Never occurred to me that somebody else might cause anything for me. I just kept myself away from people that could.

Kyle Hanks [01:35:03] And I was driving to work one day, and I thought, maybe I shouldn't be here. And the time period I'm talking about was about a second and a half, probably, but it felt like a thousand years. There's like a before and after to it because I was driving and I thought, I don't have to get to work today.

Kyle Hanks [01:35:22] Like, maybe I'm just better off not here. Maybe the kids will be better off. Kari will find somebody else. The kids, they're growing up in a household of somebody who lost it. I had it, and I lost it. Kari had it, and she lost it.

Kyle Hanks [01:35:35] Maybe they'd be better off without me around. And it was the darkest feeling I could possibly imagine. And I thought, this might be how hell feels, and that might be where I'm going, but I'm going to keep driving. And so I kept driving and got to work that day. And I made a decision that day that I'm going to figure it out, too. I think that's where. When Kari talked about, like, I can think of my own values and come into your new self. I made a decision to do that. Because the other decision, I. I don't. At the moment, at that time, I was like, I might be sending a whole family to hell with just not taking care of the beliefs I was given.

Kyle Hanks [01:36:18] And I don't believe them. That's the problem. It's not that I believe really hard and am disappointed that we're all not going there. I also don't really have it. I've kind of lost the revelation. This is a mess, but I should stay.

Kyle Hanks [01:36:33] And I've never felt like that since. I never felt like that before. I've never felt like that since. But I did hit a rock bottom just driving my car down the freeway at 4:30 in the morning. And the before and afters of that, I didn't come out of that thinking, okay, now I'm past it. I'm good.

Kyle Hanks [01:36:51] I don't believe anymore. I'm not gonna go to the meetings. I still wasn't sure. I threatened Kari a couple times with maybe taking the kids to those meetings anyway, just out of spite, but I didn't really believe it. And from then on it was a matter of, okay, well then what do we do now? What? What is that all? Everything I put my effort into in the first 30 some odd years of my life, that wasn't it.

Kari Hanks [01:37:12] That was a big realization moment for me when I realized if it's so hard to leave this religion, that death or suicide seems like a reasonable way out.

John Dehlin [01:37:27] Preferable, it's a cult.

Kari Hanks [01:37:30] Like, that was a big profound moment for me where I accepted that term. You asked about that earlier and as we're talking about this, that memory comes back to me because that is not how leaving a healthy religion should feel. Like that's not a healthy. Whether you feel comfortable using the word cult or not, that is not a healthy religion. If leaving makes you consider suicide, yeah,

Kyle Hanks [01:37:58] I felt the same thing. Even in that moment, I thought the fact that I'm even here feeling this right now is because I'm giving too much weight to something that's not giving me anything back. When I really, really need something to lean on, there's nothing there. And that's not my fault. I can't say I was a doubting person that was always sinning all the time. All the things that you would say about somebody who left, like, oh, they never really had it. I did really have it. I based my life around it. And when I felt that it wasn't for me anymore, the fact that I would feel that like, wow, my life is on some level has ended and there's going to be a new life after this. That's. That's a bit ridiculous. And I knew it at the time. And so it was like.

Kari Hanks [01:38:30] It was hard to imagine existing outside of that of 2 by 2 ism. Like, we couldn't picture what life outside would even look like. It was too hard to imagine. It was easier to imagine us just disappearing from life altogether.

Kyle Hanks [01:38:45] Yeah, I think it's probably similar to the LDS faith. It's not what you do, it's who you. You are on a molecular level. You don't have language prior to what you learned.

John Dehlin [01:38:54] It's your identity, it's your marriage, it's your family relationships, it's your community, it's your worldview.

Kyle Hanks [01:38:59] And the more you've curated that over time, like both of us had, the more that was true. And so we were kind of stepping off. We were realizing, I'm off that cliff looking at the camera, going, wait, where do I go? I'm going to have to build something on the way down. And so that's kind of what we did next.

Kari Hanks [01:39:14] Yeah, we tried some couples therapy for a while. It really stirred the pot and didn't help much at that time. So I went into individual therapy, which was more helpful. And we just spent the next year really, like, Covid was going on still. And we were just processing a lot, learning a lot. We started working more on our communication. I told Kyle that I was bisexual in 2022. And that was a really healing experience for us because I was a little scared that it would be a repeat of the atheist conversation. And it was not. Kyle was surprised, but immediately accepting and warm and loving and, like, fully on board with this part of my identity. And that was really healing for both of us to, like, be able to repeat that conversation in a way that. Yeah, I don't know how to explain that. I was just very.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:11] Well, it's kind of like you had done some becoming. You had done some work, and so it allows. It sounds like it allows you enough of a similar situation to see the growth together you had made.

Kari Hanks [01:40:26] Yeah, and I was more aware, a little more aware of, like, how to present it and to be aware of, like, the impact it could have on him. But he was just immediately so supportive and loving and accepting. And I came out to my kids who were like, cool, whatever. No big deal. Like, which also speaks to sort of how the culture was already changing in our house around topics like LGBTQ issues, and that they were just immediately like, that's cool, mom. Shrug, like, whatever.

John Dehlin [01:40:54] Kyle, I'm wondering what kept you from feeling insecure or afraid, threatened by her coming out as bisexual, that maybe she might want to love other people.

Kyle Hanks [01:41:04] Yeah, well, bisexual means she likes more than one, and I'm one of the genders, so it works out.

Kari Hanks [01:41:10] There was a little bit of. I had to reassure him a little bit as far as, like, but you're still into me, right? Like, yeah, of course I'm still into you.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:16] Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [01:41:17] I guess I just wasn't that threatened by. I think, honestly.

Kari Hanks [01:41:19] And our communication had improved to the point that we could have those conversations of, like, I love that you're telling me this, but, like, I'm a little nervous about this, or I'm a little worried about this. And then we were able to talk through it.

Kyle Hanks [01:41:31] Yeah. I think that we've compressed a lot here. We've compressed, like, a year. But in that time, we both committed individually to, let's work on ourselves, figure out what's valuable to us. We know we're valuable to each other, so let's do what we didn't do before. Let's talk about all of our values. Let's talk about everything that's important to us. Let's just put it on the table and talk about it. And if it's uncomfortable, that's okay, but it's not a threat.

Kyle Hanks [01:41:56] I think we'd processed while we were in. We processed any sort of deep conversation as a threat to the stability of us at this point. We'd both been through feeling suicidal at that point, and it's like, well, we're both still here. Let's do this. We want to be friends. We want to do this for each other, for ourselves and for each other. We love our family. We don't want something outside of us to break that up. And so everything on the table. We've had a lot of really honest conversations that we wouldn't have had before, which is crazy to think that being in a church made us less honest, in a way.

Kyle Hanks [01:42:26] And maybe honesty isn't the right word. Maybe it's just authentic. We weren't authentic. Yeah. And so we've been. So that was just something we decided to do. And it's. And it's been good.

Kari Hanks [01:42:36] Yeah. And on some other podcasts, I've come out about my bisexuality, and in the comments, people have said things like, poor Kyle. Did you see his face? And, like, as if I was coming out to Kyle on a podcast, like, I didn't know. So do you want to speak to that in case we get Any.

Kyle Hanks [01:42:51] Well, I mean, I already kind of said that. Like, it. It doesn't. I mean, I'm one of the genders. You still like me.

Kari Hanks [01:42:57] So I didn't come out to Kyle on a podcast. It was a private conversation. He's fully supportive of my sexuality.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:02] You used all your new communication tools. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:43:05] Well, I think the fear isn't that she necessarily won't be attracted to you. It's that she'll feel a desire, need to explore with other partners, too.

Kyle Hanks [01:43:15] Yeah, I mean, it's. That kind of gets into the whole. Every conversation is on the table, and that's just like. I think that we just decided that's more healthy. We've had to reevaluate all of our values, and now it's more of a negotiated space than it was before. We didn't grow up with negotiated values. We grew up with values that were given to us and told they were holy. And now it's like. Well, holy's an operative phrase. I guess. Mostly we just need to talk what is valuable for our family.

Kari Hanks [01:43:45] And learning that marriage isn't a union where you lose your autonomy to join and become one person.

Kyle Hanks [01:43:52] Right.

Kari Hanks [01:43:52] That it's two people with sometimes different ideas and different needs in a relationship, communicating and working those things out in a way that is mutually beneficial to each individual and to the relationship as a whole. Whereas two by twos teach that when you get married, you're basically setting aside your identity and becoming one with this person, especially the wife. Right. Submitting to your husband. And Kyle. Seeing Kyle and both of us growing individually in a way that we could come to the table with all of our fears, all of our concerns, all of our needs, all of our desires to be fully autonomous people and to explore whatever sides of our identity we need and want to explore.

Kari Hanks [01:44:39] And being willing to. To have those open conversations, that's a lot of work and a lot of growth and has also been really awesome. Like, just. I don't know, it's. I think it has really strengthened our marriage.

Kyle Hanks [01:44:55] Yeah, definitely. I agree with that. And I also. I don't think you mentioned it, but I also went. And it was a long time after Kari started, but I went and started getting my own counseling, too. Just. And I went to therapy. I'm not actually going to one right now, but for about two, two and a half years, I went to a

Kari Hanks [01:45:08] therapist just because she moved. So, sadly, you lost your therapist.

Kyle Hanks [01:45:11] Yeah, I did lose my therapist, but that's okay. But I just felt like I needed a third party to talk to some of how I was feeling and stuff like that. So, yeah, I think that we just have decided to grow. Like, that's the best way to put it. And I think that it's weird to think. I think we were talking, maybe we were talking before the show, but about autonomy and the idea that I can go to choose to do this thing, I can go choose to grow. That's kind of a foreign concept. When you're raised in a high control group, you do what reinforces the group.

Kyle Hanks [01:45:40] Well, we don't have a group so necessarily. So we have to take that responsibility on ourselves. And I guess that maybe feeds back to my feeling responsible, but now I'm responsible for myself and that I think we can meet together on that. And I think it works really well.

Kari Hanks [01:45:54] Yeah. And speaking of autonomy, one of the things I did during this time, it was, I think early 2022, maybe January, was I went and got my ears pierced. That was easily one of the top 10 best days of my life. Like, I can't describe the feeling of. Of what it was. Like how freeing it was to be able to choose to put holes in my own ears. Like it sounds like such a simple thing, but that had never been allowed and it would just represented so much to me of how far we had come.

John Dehlin [01:46:27] Well, Mormon female equivalent of that. Can you guess what it is?

Kari Hanks [01:46:30] The second piercing or shoulders.

John Dehlin [01:46:33] What? What?

Kyle Hanks [01:46:33] Or shoulders. Like showing shoulders.

John Dehlin [01:46:35] Horn shoulders is one when a woman. Tell me, Margi, if I'm wrong, when a woman wears a tank top, but also when you take off your garments and wear just normal.

Kyle Hanks [01:46:42] Yeah, it's like a rite of passage.

John Dehlin [01:46:44] Almost like an ex Mormon probably.

Kari Hanks [01:46:46] Very similar feeling for you.

John Dehlin [01:46:48] It was piercing yours. That's awesome.

Kyle Hanks [01:46:49] Hadn't thought of that connection, but you really did.

Margi Dehlin [01:46:51] Yeah.

Kari Hanks [01:46:51] It was a great day. I had a couple friends go with me and we all went out to dinner to celebrate after. And it was really, really awesome.

John Dehlin [01:46:58] Yeah, that's fun.

Kyle Hanks [01:47:00] So after that.

Kari Hanks [01:47:02] Yeah. So moving on to like our support group and kind of the. All of the craziness that came after,

Building Community for Ex-Two by Two Members

John Dehlin [01:47:10] you didn't just heal and ride off into the sunset. You decided to try and provide community for other people. Right. And support.

Kari Hanks [01:47:20] Yeah. So the beginning of 2022, I went to Kyle and I was like, you know, I've been thinking of how difficult it was for us to leave without community and without support. And like the two by twos preach that leaving is the easy way out. But it was so hard and so difficult. I thought there was something wrong with Me and Maybe there's like 50 other people out there feeling the same way.

Kari Hanks [01:47:43] I was thinking about starting a Facebook support group and Kyle was a little hesitant for reasons that maybe he can explain. But I also brought the idea the same day to our friends Mike and Abby, and they were like, immediately on board. They were like, oh, this is. Yes. I think Mike had even said he had thought about doing it before, but I was like, do you guys want to start this group with us? Like, let's all be. The four of us work together really well. We've been friends for a long time. Mike and Kyle actually roomed together briefly in your first years of college or something. Anyway, so, yeah, they were like super on board. And Kyle's like kind of hesitantly, but on board. So we started the support group.

John Dehlin [01:48:25] And that was a Facebook group.

Kari Hanks [01:48:26] Facebook group, yeah. And he called it the X2X2 support group.

John Dehlin [01:48:30] Okay.

Kyle Hanks [01:48:31] EX2X2.

Kari Hanks [01:48:32] And we purposefully chose the term 2X2 to be in the name because there weren't any other support groups that were using that name. And we were like, it can be a really healing and powerful thing to like we were talking about earlier, Margi, to have language to call something what it is. And these are two by twos, so let's use the term and put it out there. And we knew the growth would mostly be word of mouth in the beginning anyway, so we started the group. And the first year it grew to about 700 members, right?

Margi Dehlin [01:49:03] What?

Kyle Hanks [01:49:04] Yeah, yeah, we thought. I was pretty optimistic that it would grow, which is why I wasn't sure I wanted to do it. I was like, man, this sounds like a full time job. And also, I don't want to be defined as an ex. I don't want to be a bitter ex my whole life. I'd rather think of what I'm going toward and build a group around that.

Margi Dehlin [01:49:18] I see that.

Kyle Hanks [01:49:19] But the.

Kari Hanks [01:49:19] And what will family think? Who's still in.

Kyle Hanks [01:49:22] Yeah. So I should back up just a second. And right before that, I did tell my family. I hadn't told my family. It was a year and a half between the last meeting I went to and telling my immediate family because I knew that I was breaking a chain that was very. Would be very hard for them to deal with. And disappointing them, you know, the family name is ruining the family name on some level. And I thought, man, it's a whole. It's one thing to leave and the heartache that comes with that, disappointing so many people, but also now to start a group and be an Administrator of an X community seems like a lot.

Kyle Hanks [01:49:55] It seems like I'm really being a stereotype of an ex member here. And so I. At first, I was a little hesitant to do it, but then I thought, no, we need it, though. There were groups online. There were some web pages out there that talked about history. There were even a few Facebook groups, But a lot of them had used terms like. The groups were called things like truth. The way they string a bunch of things together. Anytime you talk to an X2X2, a lot of times they'll just string a bunch of, oh, we were part of the truth. Or the way. Saints and servants and all this stuff.

Kyle Hanks [01:50:25] And we were like, we need to simplify it down. Just SEO. Good SEO. But. But also I thought, man, if we did it, I think it could be successful, because I think, given our experience that we were just coming out of such a dark time, maybe we could help some people. So well.

Kari Hanks [01:50:40] And we really wanted to establish a community, and all four of us had this commonality and the goals, the vision that we had for the group was an inclusive, accepting place that it didn't matter what your beliefs were. Now, we wanted to be a safe place for the LGBTQ community, and that really hadn't been done before, and a

John Dehlin [01:51:00] safe place for believers. I just joined your Facebook group, and it tells you, hey, there are believers and non believers in this group.

Kyle Hanks [01:51:08] Yeah, we don't allow proselytizing in there because we've all experienced enough of that, but no proselytizing. And we're pro lgbtq. And those are kind of our two.

Kari Hanks [01:51:17] Those are in the rules.

Kyle Hanks [01:51:18] Yeah, those are the two of the rules. But also, this is where I want to hat tip to Mormon stories. I'd watched Mormon stories for long enough now to realize that, in my view, and I don't know how you view Mormon stories, but to me, Mormon stories was a hub where I found a lot of other things. Everything from Sandra Tanner, you know, historical stuff, people who'd been X for a long time and had a lot of history. That stuff is amazing to me. I don't even understand the history, but I love listening to those episodes.

John Dehlin [01:51:43] You like Sandra Tanner?

Kyle Hanks [01:51:44] Yeah, I love Sandra Tanner episodes. And Mike, I think his name, who wrote the book, and you did all those episodes.

John Dehlin [01:51:49] LDS discussions.

Kyle Hanks [01:51:50] That's really cool. And then there's all these. All these younger. You know, I almost said kids. They're adults. All these YouTube channels of people.

John Dehlin [01:51:59] Nemo and Alyssa.

Kyle Hanks [01:52:00] Nemo, yeah. Alyssa Grenfell. Exmolex, Zelf. I know I'm going to forget some, but I think it's really cool because when I was thinking about our support group, I was thinking, well, Mormon Stories has all these people on. They have a place that they can go and if, if, maybe if Mormon Stories is clicking for somebody, but they can go follow Sandra Tanner to learn history or they can go follow, you know, fun commentary by Zelf on the shelf or something, RFM or something like all of these different channels. There's so many different places. Mormon Stories is the hub with all of these spokes and it ties everything together so well.

Kyle Hanks [01:52:32] Why don't we do that? Why don't that. For me personally, I think all four of us who run the group each maybe have a little bit different idea of what we want out of the group. But that for me, that is the idea. That's why I was, I decided I'm going to do it. And I want to do it really well because I want people, no matter who they are, to be able to come in. And even if they don't find it in our group, they can head off on one of the spokes of the wheel out to something.

Kari Hanks [01:52:52] And there have been spokes that have come from it. There is now an LGBTQ specific x2 x2 support group and a Christian specific one and an atheist specific one. So there has been all these little spokes that have come off for more support, more explicitly, you know, for whatever your need is.

Kyle Hanks [01:53:10] I think that some of those may, I think the Christian one and maybe there might have been one or two others that predated ours as well, but it's helped them too. What's that?

Kari Hanks [01:53:17] The Christian one was before.

Kyle Hanks [01:53:18] I think it predated ours. But, but it, but tying it all together into a kind of a hub for all that, a hub for the network, I think, really helped and helped where we're going to go with the story in a second.

Sexual Abuse Allegations and an Overseer's Death

Kari Hanks [01:53:30] So then in summer 2022, an overseer, a very well known, highly respected overseer from the area where we grew up, was found dead in a hotel room. This was in and of itself really unusual because workers don't stay in hotel rooms. They stay in the homes of professing people.

John Dehlin [01:53:52] Oh.

Kari Hanks [01:53:54] So it was very strange. Kind of the thought at the time was that maybe he had been sick and stopped for the night so that he wouldn't get anyone else sick. Nobody really knew. And there was a huge funeral for him and time passed.

Kyle Hanks [01:54:15] And then what's a huge funeral? I don't know if Mormons have Big funerals. But the funeral, for this funeral, I

Kari Hanks [01:54:21] don't know how many would have been there.

Kyle Hanks [01:54:22] People. 500 people.

Kari Hanks [01:54:23] They had it at a convention grounds. Oh, easily 500. I was thinking more a thousand, maybe a thousand.

Kyle Hanks [01:54:28] Highly high.

Kari Hanks [01:54:30] 5,500.

Kyle Hanks [01:54:31] Yeah. Yeah. Some of these funerals can get really, really big. Especially for a minister who spent his whole life in and especially as an overseer. Highly respected people traveled from miles around, from states away to go visit.

Kari Hanks [01:54:44] This was a man that we had stay in our homes when we were children. So he was a worker that we grew up knowing really well. And so then, end of 2022, our support group has around 700 members.

Kari Hanks [01:54:58] Fast forward to March 2023. We received a message from a group member in our support group that she had heard or someone had posted. Was it Sheree, maybe even posted that there was rumors going around that workers were calling emergency gatherings with workers and elders across the western US and Canada, which was.

Kari Hanks [01:55:25] There was no reason why that would be necessary in our minds. We'd never heard of such a thing happening before. It, it was unheard of, like unprecedented. We're like, okay, something big is going on. That's very strange. So we were kind of keeping our earload to the ground in our group. And then I get a message from someone in the group that her, her sister, who was a two by two at that time and the wife of an elder, was at one of these gatherings and that the workers had shown them, handed them a letter about Dean Brewer, who was the worker who had died in the hotel room that said he was an abuser who abused women and children.

Kari Hanks [01:56:14] And then they were told to hand the letter back to the workers. But she, this elder's wife, hero, managed to get pictures of the letter on her phone and sent them to her sister, who with her permission, sent them to us.

Kari Hanks [01:56:31] So we had this letter in our possession written by Dean brewers, successor, the current overseer of that area in the Pacific Northwest. About Dean Brewer, I have, if you don't mind, can I read part of it, please? Our dear friends, I'm skipping part of it, but pointing out the main part. We have come to the tragic conclusion that Dean Brewer had another side to his life that none of us except victims ever witnessed or suspected. It has come to the surface in recent months and more so in recent weeks that Dean was a sexual predator. We never respect or defend such totally inappropriate behavior among us.

Kari Hanks [01:57:11] There's a very united consensus among us that the only thing to do is to be transparent with all of You. For obvious reasons though, this is very difficult. We are very sorry for the hurt this will bring to the hearts of many. Thankfully, he is no longer in a position to hurt anyone. Some things have come to light from Dean's own records. Dean had his own Best Western Hotel preferred customer account and spent a considerable amount of time and money in motels. As we all know. When he died last June, it was in a motel in Government Camp, Oregon, a place that he frequented. The receipts often included two guests.

Kari Hanks [01:57:44] Victims have come forward. His actions include rape and abuse of underage victims. He totally abused his authority as an overseer in order to control, manipulate and threaten his victims. So we transcribed this letter and it has a typo at the bottom. Sincerely, you brother. And then signed by the current overseer. We transcribed this and decided, Abby and I specifically decided to release it publicly on social media.

John Dehlin [01:58:13] What do you mean by transcript?

Kyle Hanks [01:58:16] Wrote it down in this copy that somebody had sent.

John Dehlin [01:58:18] Did we transcribe it so it wouldn't be the original document?

Kari Hanks [01:58:21] It is not the original.

John Dehlin [01:58:22] We have to avoid legal stuff.

Kari Hanks [01:58:23] So remember I had mentioned how the workers showed her the letter. She took pictures on her phone. So I got those images and from those images I put it in a format that was shareable online.

Kyle Hanks [01:58:35] Really important point that they weren't handing the letter out to everybody. They were showing it to people they viewed as worthy to see it in the church, which is some elders and some workers, not all. And then taking the hard copies back for themselves. They didn't want to distribute a copy, but someone took a photo and tried transcribed it.

Kari Hanks [01:58:50] So they were telling elders to tell their meetings about Dean, but to, and I quote, be vague. And this was also only a certain geographical area where Dean had spent the most time. Now, being a prominent overseer, he had traveled extensively, including to other countries. But because he mostly labored or was on worker lists in the the northern, western part of the US and into Canada, they believed those were the only areas that needed to know. And that was historically how they handed handled things, was keeping it very geographical and quiet.

Kari Hanks [01:59:30] And we decided there's so many people that knows who Dean, who know who Dean is, that I think this would. Everyone should know this, like everyone in the current and X community should know. So Abby and I shared it both in our group and from there. People shared it and on our public Facebook pages. And I think for both of us, I know for me, I think for Abby, this was the first time either of us had shared anything about the church since leaving. And they left like A decade before we did. So that was kind of a scary thing to do, but we felt like it was important that people know.

Kari Hanks [02:00:09] And, yeah, the next couple months were absolute chaos for us. Specifically, we have an admin chat with where the four of us communicate about group things. And I wanted to read a little bit of what we were talking about at the time because, like, shows the impact of this. So when we first got the letter, March 22, 2023, and heads up to anyone who doesn't like this, there's a lot of cursing in here because we were very shaken up.

Kari Hanks [02:00:38] So I said, holy Mike. And this was after I showed them all the letter, before we shared it publicly. Mike says, yeah, this is huge. This is some serious shit. Kyle said, I feel sick to my stomach. Abby said, I'm raging. I said, I'm shaking. So this was our initial response to this news about this overseer, who we all knew really well had had in our homes as kids.

Kari Hanks [02:01:01] And for the record, Mike and Abby gave us permission to read this. And at that point, membership in our group was at 900 people. And Mike says, maybe this news will push us to a thousand before the end of the month, which it happened, like, the day later.

Kari Hanks [02:01:18] The next day, we released the letter. Kyle. We're still processing. Kyle says, holy crap. I had no idea DB Was this kind of worker. This is hard to process. I feel like the floodgates are about to open. People are going to start telling their stories and it's going to get ugly, which it did.

Kyle Hanks [02:01:34] Yeah. And I knew part of it was just that he was so well respected. We looked at workers not as deities, but we looked up to them a lot. We realized they. They sacrificed their lives for us to bring the gospel. We look up to them so much. And Dean, in particular, my family looked up to him. They thought he was this great guy. And so having I understood, because we'd both been so recently through a faith crisis, this was going to cause faith crises. To find out if it could happen once, could it happen more.

Kyle Hanks [02:02:03] That's an open door to a faith crisis. And I was terrified for people inside. And I actually gave a heads up to some people I knew, my immediate family being one of them, saying, I have a letter. I know it's authentic. We actually authenticated it before we shared it to anybody to make sure it was real. It wasn't somebody just spreading rumors. And I said, there's going to be. People are going to spread rumors. This is going to be crazy. This is, you know, one. One guy with Some indiscretions hit everyone really hard and then.

Kari Hanks [02:02:31] And there was some discussion about, like in sharing this publicly, are we going to be responsible for throwing other people into full on faith crisis? I'm terrified of that because we had just come out of this very dark period of time and we weren't interested in dragging other people through that exactly. But it felt like the right thing to do. Abby says this bombshell is going to go down much differently than they have in the past. Meaning other scandals that had just been handled very locally. And usually what they would do is they'd move a worker to a different area.

John Dehlin [02:03:02] Like the Catholic Church.

Kyle Hanks [02:03:03] Yep, very similar.

Kari Hanks [02:03:04] She said our group is a massive force at this point, meaning we have a group of people who are now organized and sharing information.

Kyle Hanks [02:03:16] One thing that happened right away is people started realizing that they got the letter from the X community and not from the workers. And that bothered a lot of people. And that letter, I don't know if you're going to get to this, but the letter started to be shared within the community. The workers started sharing the letter around and so people started posting it online. And we realized right away Kari mentioned a typo in the letter. We realized that that was our copy of the letter, the workers, our copy. And we thought about correcting the typo. And then we thought, well, it's out there, now people have it. But we realized, and I'll just fast forward a little bit to this day, we've never seen a copy of the letter that wasn't the one we released. Even though we know word for word it is their letter. We've heard, we've, we've authenticated it.

Kari Hanks [02:03:58] Yeah. An overseer wrote this letter, but they never intended it to be widely shared.

Kyle Hanks [02:04:02] They wanted to just share it with a few people and then kind of make this go away.

John Dehlin [02:04:04] You have the photo of it, right?

Kyle Hanks [02:04:05] We have a photo of it as well.

Margi Dehlin [02:04:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:07] Have you shared the photo of it?

Kari Hanks [02:04:08] No. Shared the photo of it.

John Dehlin [02:04:10] Is there a reason?

Kyle Hanks [02:04:12] We didn't need to, actually, I think

Kari Hanks [02:04:15] considering an elder's wife was brave enough to send it to the X community, that my thought was to protect her.

Kyle Hanks [02:04:24] Yeah, I think that was the main thing because they were still in. But yeah, we started having people flooding to us for information, instant messaging us, like, what is the scandal? How bad is it? We're not getting information from our own workers, our own elders.

Kari Hanks [02:04:37] So we were just being just absolutely flooded with messages from people both in and out of the church who were like, what's happening? I Want more information. You guys seem to have the information. Why am I not hearing information from my workers? And also, I was raped or I was abused, and not just by Dean. Like lots of stories were starting to come out. So at the end of that day, I said, good job today, everyone. You guys are seriously amazing. And today was tough. A lot of emotions and chaos being flung around. We are a great team. We all deserve a round of applause.

Kari Hanks [02:05:08] Keeping it together today and also processing our own feelings and being brave because again, this was somebody that we knew who had these allegations. The next day, Kyle says, try describing our last 48 hours to ourselves. Ten years ago, I said, this will all hit the media one day in some way for sure. Guys, you do realize we broke that letter. That is why people inside is what I meant. Don't know. They were not going to know. The workers never had any intention of people reading that letter. Abby says, seriously, it wouldn't have gotten out otherwise. Maybe with a few connected people, maybe a couple families would be disrupted, but most wouldn't even know.

Kari Hanks [02:05:46] And then we started talking about how people would leave over this. Kyle and I speculated over whether or not his parents would cancel their trip to see us that next month. And they did, which they did. They haven't seen our kids since.

Kyle Hanks [02:06:00] Yeah, they're very upset. That information. They didn't. They didn't.

John Dehlin [02:06:04] That's.

Kyle Hanks [02:06:04] I think it probably felt like betrayal to them and they haven't wanted to speak to us since much. They. There's a little bit of communication, but it's not the same as it was

Kari Hanks [02:06:13] and none with our kids.

Kyle Hanks [02:06:14] Yeah,

Kari Hanks [02:06:17] we had multiple elders and their wives reaching out to us, upset that they had found out from our post online and not from the workers. On March 25, we posted information in our support group on how survivors could report to local law enforcement as well as resources, because we had survivors experiencing mental health crises and who were suicidal. And we posted that information at the request of the sheriff's office, who we reached out to to confirm some things that we had heard about Dean. And we were able to get his death report from them because there were a lot of crazy rumors going around that we wanted to make sure we were. Were putting out accurate information.

John Dehlin [02:06:55] How'd he die?

Kari Hanks [02:06:57] They didn't say how he died, but they did say it was natural causes. One of the rumors going around at the time in the two by twos was that he had died bent over a hymnbook listening to a meeting. That's not true. He had accessed pornography that day. And he Was found dead on his couch. On the couch in the hotel room. He had several white envelopes with $100 bills in them. Other than that, there was really nothing interesting on the report. Natural causes. It said he had a letter in his car giving him permission to drive it. Because, of course, workers don't drive their own cars.

Kari Hanks [02:07:30] They drive church member cars. I said, I'm just swamped with messages right now. Today is going to be wild. Then I said, I was in the bathroom being sick because my name was circulating in the two by twos as the one who had spoken with the police. So it was actually Mike who had called and gotten that information from the police. But my name was going around the two by twos as the person who had done that. And it's funny looking back on this, because the idea that my name circulating amongst the two by twos would make me feel sick to my stomach to the point that I was in the bathroom is laughable now because we're very notorious in the two by two community now just because of what we do with our support group and because of this crisis. But back then, it's interesting to see how uncomfortable I was with that idea that people would know who I was in that community.

John Dehlin [02:08:17] Let me ask, how do members again? What do you call them? Members of the movement?

Kyle Hanks [02:08:25] I don't know. Professing people.

John Dehlin [02:08:26] How do the professing people call them Two by Twos? They're like, oh, there's this letter. Oh, one of our own may have been abusive. Let me find a support group. If they don't think of themselves as two by two. If the church doesn't call itself two by two, how do they find a Facebook group called two by two when they don't even think of the church as being named that or identify as 2 by 2?

Kari Hanks [02:08:47] In the beginning, it was word of mouth, People telling other people about it.

John Dehlin [02:08:51] That would have had to have been believing members telling other believing members.

Kyle Hanks [02:08:56] I think a lot of communication opened up around the scandal, but.

Kari Hanks [02:09:00] And we have really pushed the term two by two to the point that, like, international media has published articles not using the term two by two. And we've reached out to the journalists and been like, you have to include the term two by two or your article's not going to show up in searches. And they have gone back and edited it and put it back in.

John Dehlin [02:09:19] Wow.

Kyle Hanks [02:09:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:20] So you named the church.

Kari Hanks [02:09:22] We didn't, but we promoted the name that already has existed for over 100 years. We popularized it.

John Dehlin [02:09:28] We popularized the name for the church.

Kari Hanks [02:09:29] Yeah, we gave the X community an identity. That was our goal in pushing the term two by two was this is our identity, this is the culture we came from. It has a name.

Kyle Hanks [02:09:41] And to your point though, it's a great point because people who, when we started the group many people joined early on and said oh this is my old community. I left 30 years ago and haven't talked to anybody since. I don't even know how to find ex members. That's how little community there was. Like I say there were a few websites and, and groups here and there but as far as a broader community, there wasn't a broader community that many, many people had left. Of course now we're finding out from because of abuse and things but also just all kinds of reasons they left the community and never have never talked to anybody, never.

Kyle Hanks [02:10:12] Another feel kind of weird. Like I have this weird history that doesn't match anything anywhere. So that's part of why we've been pushing the whole two by two concept. It's like if we can just get this concept out there then people can find each other.

Kari Hanks [02:10:25] So the workers were sent our infograph about how to report abuse and what like resources for if you're in a mental health crisis. And they started sending it around and then they found out it came from the X community. And all of a sudden they were like we don't know if we can trust this then. So they ended up calling the sheriff's office and validating what we had said that they had recommended we share those resources. It was just like there were so many mind games going on in the two by two community at the same time where the workers were like this looks like helpful information, I'm going to share it. And then they find out it comes from the X community because the only information was coming from the X community at that time, you know, on how

John Dehlin [02:11:05] to help survivors and yeah, and just to throw in what I know, ABC News ends up covering this. The FBI is investigating, it's an ongoing investigation. And the last number I heard was like 800 to 900 reports of covered up child abuse.

Kyle Hanks [02:11:25] Yeah, I mean that was our next several months was just people reaching out to us. A lot of people not even wanting to report to anything, just wanting someone to hear their story. Like yeah, 20 years ago something happened to me. I need someone to talk to. And there's been different hotlines and different organizations that have stepped up and set up different things. But yeah, ultimately we'll talk about the FBI in a second. But yeah, the next several months of our lives was just fielding calls from people who'd been abused and had never told anybody about it.

Kari Hanks [02:11:55] Yeah.

Documenting Abuse, the FBI, and Survivor Advocacy

Margi Dehlin [02:11:55] So.

Kari Hanks [02:11:56] So a couple days later, we got another message from a survivor along with two other survivors that this person knew about, asking about the current of one of the current overseers of the Pacific Northwest, if we had heard of any allegations against him.

Kari Hanks [02:12:13] That one was really shook us up again because again, this was someone we had had stay in our homes when we were young. And there were three survivors coming forward at the same time. We sat on that for a couple of days. Not like wanting to kind of. We were really just processing it. Like it was. It just felt.

Kari Hanks [02:12:32] It felt like the last good guy that we knew was going down. Like, it felt like if. If he has allegations, who. Who doesn't like, the whole thing is corrupt. Right. That's how it felt to us at the time. It was just a really big thing to process.

Kari Hanks [02:12:48] And then the church or some workers, I should say, sent out an email that some current two by twos had also come forward with allegations about this same man. So we shared that and said we also have had people in the X community. Altogether, I think there were seven or eight survivors who ended up coming out against this other overseer. So he stepped down from his position as overseer, but they were keeping him on as a worker and he was still allowed to attend meetings. So we pushed publicly.

John Dehlin [02:13:19] Meetings, stay in people's homes?

Kari Hanks [02:13:21] Yeah. I'm not sure if he was staying in people's homes still or if he was with a relative, but he was still preaching. Our understanding was that he was still allowed to preach and he was still having fellowship with people, including women and children. So we, we post about this online a lot until current 2 by twos picked it up and put pressure on the workers to remove him entirely from the ministry and from meetings. So he was removed. Wow.

John Dehlin [02:13:50] In the report that I heard from ABC News, the guy that was named as an abuser, the news report said that he was suspended or put on probation for a time, but by six years later, he's been promoted. So this idea that just seems so strange to me in Mormonism that literally child abuse can get you a promotion. I'm seeing the same thing happen in the two by twos.

Kari Hanks [02:14:15] Yeah. And there were also a lot of people up high who knew about these things. Like, we were hearing from survivors. Abby and I were getting individually 12 to 15 messages a day from people reporting abuse of. From two like that they had been abused by two by twos. And a lot of these survivors had told workers at the time that it happened or told other people, elders, somebody they trusted in the church, and nothing had been done about it or some

Kyle Hanks [02:14:42] minor little change, like, you know, shuffling some worker off to a different state, sometimes to a different country, different places, trying to shake things up a little bit, tell these people, well, don't go the to this meeting anymore. We'll assign you to a different meeting to keep you two apart and all that stuff. So they'd been trying to take, again, they have the highest authority, they have the authority of God. So they're just doing stuff. And it's not particularly educated or trauma informed, of course, and legally dubious, I would say. But they thought of themselves as the main authority to do this and they kept it out, away from law enforcement most of the time.

Kari Hanks [02:15:14] So go ahead, John, you had a question?

John Dehlin [02:15:15] Well, I mean, if there's no organization, then there's no organization to sue.

Kari Hanks [02:15:19] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:15:20] And there's no organization to name, to hold accountable. Yeah. And I can even tell you right now that in one generation this will probably largely be forgotten because all the current members don't lose.

Kari Hanks [02:15:31] That was our goal with media.

John Dehlin [02:15:32] Well, I know, but I'm just saying, like, it's even worse with the LDS church and the Catholic Church, but with you guys. If nobody thinks of themselves as two by twos, if no one, if everyone's discouraged from even mentioning this or talking about it, if there's no lawsuit, if there's no one to sue, then fast forward a generation, no one talks about it, it all gets forgotten. And there's no even way to trace it, because none of these people think of themselves as two by twos. And so they won't have any way to say that happened to our community because they won't think of themselves as two by twos, nor have any reason to look up the term two by two.

Kari Hanks [02:16:10] I think the term two by two has been promoted enough at this point that people would at least know to Google it. Like, I have nieces and nephews still in the church, and that's my worst fear, is that all of this will repeat itself generation after generation. And our motivating factor for talking to media and pushing media and pushing the term two by two out there, of course, was to prevent this from happening again in the future. Prior to this abuse scandal, if you googled, there wasn't media about the two by twos. There was, there were people screaming into the wind, Particularly Australia, I think, had a 60 Minutes thing that they had done about.

Kari Hanks [02:16:50] And there were some survivors who were talking about their abuse, especially in Australia, I would say. But. But it hadn't become a well known thing. Media hadn't really picked up on it, especially not us media. So there was a reporter who had some connections with the two by two. She hadn't been a member, but she. She had grown up sort of with some relatives who were members. And she published an article in the Daily Dot about. And I think that was the first one that talked about the crisis. And from after that, it just exploded in the media. And we had.

Kyle Hanks [02:17:25] Well, you know, what happened next is someone reached out to us and said, hey, we have a contact at Vice News named Anna Merlin. And we said, oh, oh, it's Anna

John Dehlin [02:17:35] Merlin who covered the Tim Ballard stuff.

Kyle Hanks [02:17:36] They won. And we just listening to Tim Ballard and we're like, yes, let's get her. So we worked with her. You and Abby worked with her quite a bit. And she put out a couple articles before Vice Digital went down with Rolling Stone or with Vice before Vice went away.

Kari Hanks [02:17:48] It was right before Vice.

John Dehlin [02:17:49] Okay, okay.

Kyle Hanks [02:17:50] So that was kind of a cool connection too. We'd actually heard of her own Mormon stories.

John Dehlin [02:17:53] That's awesome.

Kari Hanks [02:17:54] And then the Hulu doc producers, we worked with them behind the scenes. We're not on the documentary. It would have been nice to get some credit, but we didn't put a

Kyle Hanks [02:18:03] lot of time into that.

Kari Hanks [02:18:04] We put a lot of time into that. We spent a year working behind the scenes, connecting them with some. Some survivors.

John Dehlin [02:18:08] I do that all the time. I'm always consulting documentaries. And you don't get any credit or money. You know, we do it for the

Kyle Hanks [02:18:15] cause story got out there.

John Dehlin [02:18:16] But it's just weird that.

Kyle Hanks [02:18:17] Yeah, but that was the first media outside of a few print articles, that was the first documentary, quote unquote. It was kind of a long news.

Kari Hanks [02:18:25] Nothing had ever.

Margi Dehlin [02:18:25] What's the name of the documentary?

Kari Hanks [02:18:27] Secrets of the two by two Church. I think it's Impact X Nightline or Night.

Kyle Hanks [02:18:35] Yeah, it's on Hulu.

Kari Hanks [02:18:36] It's on Hulu. I should have that written down, but I don't.

John Dehlin [02:18:40] Okay.

Kari Hanks [02:18:41] And then. So November. So we're working with media throughout that summer and November 2023, Mike and Abby were.

Margi Dehlin [02:18:49] Was.

Kari Hanks [02:18:49] It was 2023, Mike and Abby were at our house for Thanksgiving. It was the day before Thanksgiving. I was upstairs taking a nap. I missed a phone call. They left a message. I checked my messages. They had my full name correctly. Hi, Kari Hanks, this is so and so from the FBI.

Kari Hanks [02:19:08] We'd like to talk all things two by two. And here's how you can verify that this is a real call, not a scam. So I did that. I verified through their instructions that it was indeed FBI. That was quite a shock. Went downstairs, told Mike and Abby and Kyle, like, you guys, I just missed the call from the FBI.

Kari Hanks [02:19:28] They want to talk to Abby. And I. I was like. So we called them back, and I was like, well, actually, Mike and Abby are here for Thanksgiving right now. And he. He's like, yeah, yeah, I'd like to talk to you both. Not sure if that means he knew they were there.

Kyle Hanks [02:19:41] They knew a lot of things.

Kari Hanks [02:19:42] They knew a lot of things. They knew. They knew overseer names. They knew the regions those overseers were over. They. They had done. They had done their background work.

Kyle Hanks [02:19:51] They liked all your posts.

Kari Hanks [02:19:52] They had listened to our podcast on Trust Me and so said that they had really appreciated that. One of the first things he asked was, are you safe? Have you received any threats from the church? Fortunately, we had not, so we were able to say that we were safe.

Kari Hanks [02:20:08] He thanked us for what we've been doing for survivors. He knew that we had cataloged quite a long list of information. Abby has put in the majority of that tracking movements of overseers and what years they were in what areas, and workers in general, they. She's put in so much work to all that. So we've kept kind of an ongoing, mostly email communication with. With the FBI. There was a recent article published in BBC about another sort of side scandal involving something we call the Baldwin babies, which is allegedly coerced adoptions in the two by twos that the workers were facilitating.

Kari Hanks [02:20:51] So, for example, I've had mothers come to me who wanted to send information about that to the FBI, but were too nervous or just didn't have the emotional capacity. So I'll pass information on at the requests of survivors or Baldwin baby mothers or whatever.

Kyle Hanks [02:21:07] So their investigation's been going on since then, and they've interviewed. I would say we recently interviewed almost everyone I know connected to this has been interviewed in person by the FBI. Now, we've had many stories of people saying, they recently showed up at my

Kari Hanks [02:21:21] house today, they've interviewed a thousand people and still have another thousand to interview and are still receiving reports. So the FBI publicly announced an investigation into the church with the A landing page specifically for the two by two church. So it's like FBI.gov I don't remember the exact website, but it has the term two by two in the landing page, which is really wild to see.

Kari Hanks [02:21:46] And meanwhile, our group was just absolutely exploding because people were hearing about it because we were sharing public information and then word of mouth and everyone was like, where's the information coming from? It's coming from the support group. So we had a lot of ex members who had been out for a long time just hearing about the group. We had a. A mass exodus from the two by tws who were flocking to our group. And we went from 900 members to over 3,000 by the end of that year. And now we're hovering around 5,500, which

John Dehlin [02:22:19] is freaking amazing, which is crazy because

Kyle Hanks [02:22:21] that's just a lot of homes. That's one person that has Facebook. It's not the five people who left. So, you know, we talked about church size. I think in the 80s, we think it was probably at its peak, 150 to 200, maybe more. And anecdotally, we've heard many people say that their fields or their meetings are half the size they were. Now, several people have said to me, my entire meeting left when we realized that half the women had been abused or assaulted in the meeting, but none of us had ever talked about it. Finally, somebody said, let's do a straw poll. I was talking to somebody who said that they were in a meeting where the elder of the meeting, the man of the home, said, well, there's a few victims. That's just. That's not a problem for us. We don't need to worry about it. We don't know any victims.

Kari Hanks [02:23:02] And.

Kyle Hanks [02:23:02] And somebody said, raise your hand if you were a victim. And half the women in the meeting raised their hands. And ultimately that entire meeting, as far as I know, has left the belief system. So. And that's a story we just keep hearing versions of that repeated.

Kari Hanks [02:23:15] Yeah, and that's something that's different that we've been hearing about that, to my knowledge, hadn't happened before, where you have entire family groups and entire meetings leaving together, which is just fascinating to me.

John Dehlin [02:23:28] So when I was listening to the ABC News report, it characterized this system of celibate missionaries or elders staying in people's homes with children around that are highly trusted as like the perfect recipe for abuse.

Kyle Hanks [02:23:49] Yeah. And we, of course, grew up believing that they had extra power from God to do, to live a better life. And of course, as you get older, you just don't analyze that. Of course this is going to happen. Of course, having that scenario you just laid out, of course that's not going to end well. But if you've been raised in it believing that God gave this group extra power to do the right thing or whatever, and you think everybody's being super conscientious all the time, that it'll come as a surprise. And that's why a lot of people. And I genuinely feel bad for people in the church right now, hitting a wall at 100 miles an hour going, oh, that didn't work out like I thought it would. It's led to significant abuse. Abuse at a scale that's. That's pretty crazy. I mean, it's not wrong to bring up.

Kari Hanks [02:24:32] Well, here I have some numbers on how big this abuse scandal is, at least. So Mike and Abby have been collecting worker lists, including historical worker lists. So he ran some. Mike ran some numbers recently, and this is what he wrote. So I'm quoting Mike. About 20% of male workers within the U.S. since 1950, brother workers in the U.S. since 1950 have allegations of sexual abuse. 20% that you know of.

Kyle Hanks [02:25:01] That we know of.

Kari Hanks [02:25:02] About 4% of the Catholic clergy has been alleged to have committed sexual abuse. Just to compare.

John Dehlin [02:25:08] Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [02:25:09] And there are.

Kari Hanks [02:25:10] And they have an awesome TikTok. I highly Recommend. It's our 2 by 2 story who

Kyle Hanks [02:25:15] you are 2 x 2 story. Yeah, that's Mike and Abby. And we highly recommend they do a really, really good job of speaking to these issues.

John Dehlin [02:25:23] Wow. And I'm just, I'm struck by the idea that if ever there was a church, and we talked about this in part one, so you missed it if you didn't watch part one. But if ever there was a church set up to explicitly avoid the pitfall of so many religions, which is their downfall due to sex, money and power. It was your church. It was almost like it didn't even have a name. It didn't even have a legal organizational structure. It totally downplayed and then erased its founder.

John Dehlin [02:25:58] And then it did all that it could to have it be local. No churches, no real estate run in people's homes. And then no personality cults, or at least minimizing the risk of personality cults. So, like, how is this church going to become taken down by allegations of sex, money and power? You're even making your missionaries celibate so they can't go around having sex with people. So, like, how could anything go wrong? And yet it turns out that suppression of sexuality probably led to extreme, let's just say perversions or abuse by those missionaries. Because it's just like we learned with Catholic celibate priests. It's Just unhealthy and unnatural to just completely suppress a human need, a basic core human need, which is sexuality. It leads to abuse and perversions and probably mental. Serious mental health problems.

Kyle Hanks [02:27:00] Severe.

John Dehlin [02:27:00] Yeah. So they're. So in spite of the organization being carefully curated to avoid those things, it actually creates a likely higher than average prevalence of sexual abuse.

Kyle Hanks [02:27:12] That's. That's it.

John Dehlin [02:27:13] Right. Clearly y' all were. In terms of power, you were controlled at a. I would say your cult was more extreme than the cult, you know, the Mormon Church that I was raised in. I don't know if y' all see it that way, but I see what y' all were raised in as probably more severe and extreme than what I was raised in. So that just speaks to the undue influence and power that the leaders had over the members, even though it was designed for them not to have power. Right.

Kyle Hanks [02:27:43] I mean, even the Mormon Church has curtain of McConkey. Right?

John Dehlin [02:27:46] Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [02:27:47] They know there's systems in place to address the pitfalls if they happen. Whether or not that's done correctly, that's for them to decide. But in our group, there wasn't. There was no higher authority than the worker. That was. Just happened to be in your field this year, and you've said before, something you have said before that I really. When you said it, I was like, that's it. People shouldn't speak for God. When you start speaking for God, that takes away all accountability. And there's no room for someone to say, hold on a second, can we talk about this one thing? And when you don't hold on a second and talk about this One thing for 100 years, what do you think's gonna happen? You're gonna end up with a lot of unaccountable people with unchecked power.

Margi Dehlin [02:28:26] Yeah, yeah.

Mental Health, Power, and the Church's Lack of Accountability

Kari Hanks [02:28:27] And speaking to the problems with mental health that you were saying, there were some EX members and ex workers who recently did a survey of about 70 to 80 ex workers and they found that 72% of them experienced depression while in the work, 76% had anxiety, 17% had OCD, 37% had suicidal ideation, and over 5% had a suicide attempt.

Kyle Hanks [02:28:56] So an attempt mental health, crazy to

Kari Hanks [02:28:58] think about, at least for the workers, is what this was on, is the

John Dehlin [02:29:02] prevalence of OCD is 1 to 2% of the population.

Kyle Hanks [02:29:05] So an OCD is hidden in groups like this. That's part of the problem of groups that are very top down. Exactly. Mental illness can hide it. Groups that don't allow for that sort of trying to learn about yourself, trying to learn about mental health. Just that simple idea. Everything you do is seen as a virtue or something wrong with you. And so when you have a system that's not accountable at all, and you've also pathologized normal humanity as being sinful. So if something happens to you, it's actually your fault that it happened. It's not the group that did it to you. And it's not human nature that God created you with. It's just a stew where. Yeah, at the end of the day, it's like, it's surprising. It happened and it was chaotic. It's happening, by the way, it's not over. The FBI investigation's currently ongoing. The story's not over.

John Dehlin [02:29:49] But how do you shut down an organization that doesn't exist?

Kari Hanks [02:29:51] That's the question.

Margi Dehlin [02:29:52] Can I just say, like, it actually reminds me of. Do you remember the picture that you look at and it's like a woman and you look at it and it's one thing and then there's an old

John Dehlin [02:30:02] lady and then an older lady.

Kari Hanks [02:30:03] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:30:04] And then it tells you. That's what that reminds me of. You're saying, oh, you know, the setup. It's too. It was this perfect thing to eliminate all of the. But then look again and it's the perfect scenario to hide, predators to hide to create this perfect thing. It's that flip of like. Actually, it's also perfect. Hard to track. It really is hard to like, no

John Dehlin [02:30:30] accountability if there's no name nor corporate structure.

Kari Hanks [02:30:32] Well, and the two by twos never saw leadership in the workers. They would never call workers leadership. And many of them, for the very first time, because of this abuse crisis happening, realized they had no power over the overseers. For an example, there was an overseer, I'll just say, in the Midwest who was treating survivors really horribly. Like sending out emails saying, I will not hear more reports of. Of abuse. Gossiping is evil. We shouldn't be calling out people's crimes. By which he meant abusers.

Kari Hanks [02:31:03] There were some really awful rumors about how he had treated women. Not necessarily allegations, but just red flags and just not being nice to survivors in general. Not hearing them, not supporting them. A lot of current two by twos in his area wanted him out and he would not step down. So they're realizing for the first time when we actually take the reins of power and call for accountability, they don't. There's no check and balance here. They don't have to step down if they don't want to.

Kari Hanks [02:31:32] So we realized during this time. This was about a year ago now, and it did end up in the media that he had a Facebook account, which was unusual if you're a worker, Especially.

Kyle Hanks [02:31:43] Especially an overseer.

Kari Hanks [02:31:44] Especially an overseer. And it wasn't very active. But his. And I wasn't friends with him on Facebook, but his likes were public. So Abby and I realized he has this Facebook page. His likes are public. I went on there and I took a screenshot video of pages that he liked and followed. They included questionably underage close ups of volleyball players, butts, and our favorite, because this is like a very two by two thing. An Archie website that took Archie comics and created fanfic porn out of them. Now, Archie comics growing up was like one of the forms of entertainment that we were allowed like most two by twos grew up with hundreds of Archie comics.

Kyle Hanks [02:32:22] The most scandalous thing, Archie porn.

Kari Hanks [02:32:23] Archie porn. So I posted.

John Dehlin [02:32:25] That's your soaking. Basically.

Kari Hanks [02:32:27] Yes, Archie. So I posted this video. No comment, no context. Online, publicly. It went viral within the church. Within that week, a few days, overseers from the Pacific Northwest flew out on a plane to where this overseer was, and he stepped down from the work. It took porn. It took pornography to hold him accountable, not how he was treating survivors.

Margi Dehlin [02:32:52] Yeah.

Kari Hanks [02:32:52] Legal porn.

Margi Dehlin [02:32:54] Yeah.

Kari Hanks [02:32:55] That's what it took to hold him accountable. And it took other overseers getting on a plane and flying over there to deal with him, to get him taken down. So that is a leadership structure, in my opinion.

Margi Dehlin [02:33:07] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:33:08] How does it feel to have so much power, to be too.

Kari Hanks [02:33:11] That one was fun. That was like the one fun thing we did that year.

John Dehlin [02:33:14] You're kind of taking down a cult. You're kind of like Leah Remini and Mike Rinder taking down a cult.

Kyle Hanks [02:33:18] Right. And. And it's crazy because that's true. And we feel a heavy responsibility about how we message things, how we. That we're not passing along false things, that we're not. We want to be trauma informed. That's something we've all learned. Trauma informed as a concept.

Kari Hanks [02:33:34] We're not professionals.

Margi Dehlin [02:33:35] Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [02:33:35] Trauma informed as a concept is something we have all learned. The four of us who run this group and others around. There's a wide community of people who are helping out and doing different things, have different initiatives to help. But all of that's being done by the ex community. The inside community feels no responsibility at all. They view any accountability as persecution. So there's no reason for them to go out and learn how to actually take care of these things and how to speak to survivors, how to address victims. So to your point, we do have a lot of power, but. But it's not power that we wanted. This all fell in our lap. But it fell in our lap because we were the ones being responsible. Back to that theme.

Kari Hanks [02:34:08] And a lot of the X community has so many survivors in it. So you have groups of survivors, including myself, helping other survivors because the church won't do it, which is re. Traumatizing some of the stories we heard. I cannot even tell you how horrendous they were. And we're not trained to handle things like that. But the church isn't being accountable to its own situation that, frankly, it created.

Kyle Hanks [02:34:34] Right?

Margi Dehlin [02:34:34] Yep. Such a good point.

John Dehlin [02:34:36] So I have so many questions. So we talked about sex and power. You say this guy died with envelopes full of $100 bills. Where's the church getting money? How much money does the church have? Like, there was a time where no one knew that the Mormon church was a $300 billion corporation.

Kari Hanks [02:34:58] The FBI is very interested in asking the same questions. There's a lot of money.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:06] There's a lot.

Kari Hanks [02:35:06] We don't know how much. It's not trash. We do know that there are wealthy two by twos who are holding accounts of money for workers. So it's not necessarily in the workers names.

Kyle Hanks [02:35:17] Yeah, we. We always get asked two things. Anywhere we've talked about, there's two questions. One, is this a cult? Two, how does the money go? And the fact that we're. The fact that I'm now in my early 40s and have no idea how money is handled in that group is very strange. Everything's done privately because there's no organization, there's no public accountability. There's no. You know how churches oftentimes as nonprofits will publish their statements of what they've been doing with their money? No one's doing that. I've heard rumors that are shocking enough that I wouldn't repeat them because it's like, if that's true, the money going through this church is hard for me to wrap my head around.

Kari Hanks [02:35:52] That there have been wealthy two by twos who have died and left all of their inheritance to harvest. We do know that the workers fly other workers around the world every year for conventions to the tune of thousands and thousands of dollars that they move workers around a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of money. There's one area of the country that is funding therapy for survivors. It's the only part of the country that's doing it. One small Geographical area. And that has been quite expensive for them because I know that they've had a lot of survivors utilizing that.

John Dehlin [02:36:28] They can't be banned from countries because they don't exist.

Kari Hanks [02:36:31] Right.

Kyle Hanks [02:36:32] It's got to be done at an individual level, I think. I don't know. I got to be honest.

John Dehlin [02:36:35] How would you even find the leaders?

Kyle Hanks [02:36:36] I don't know how the FBI is going to handle it, because there's nothing to grab onto. It's just a bunch of. Of individual people.

Kari Hanks [02:36:41] They express frustration to us at the same thing. Like, how. How do you hold accountable a group of people so good at not existing?

Margi Dehlin [02:36:48] That's right. Being invisible.

Kari Hanks [02:36:50] Yep.

Kyle Hanks [02:36:51] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:36:52] I guess I'm just curious, like, where. Where are y' all going from here? Are y' all. Like, I. I saw that you have a podcast.

Kyle Hanks [02:37:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:00] It seems like it's audio only. It doesn't even seem to have the name two by two in it. Like, have y' all can considered. Does it. Okay, well, have y' all considered a YouTube channel?

Kyle Hanks [02:37:10] So here's. Here's the thing about all this. We went from fully in to Covid. Deconstructing really quickly. Darkly deconstructing. Starting a group. And at what, a year and a little over a year into the group, a major global scandal breaks. We haven't really put ourselves back together yet.

Kari Hanks [02:37:26] And our deconstruction completely hit pause during that scandal, too, because we didn't have time to think about our own emotional needs during this time. There were many. So, so many survivors coming forward. And a lot of these had allegations against people we knew. And a lot of the survivors were people we knew.

Kyle Hanks [02:37:43] So that's what we've known all our life.

Kari Hanks [02:37:45] A lot of processing. I'm in trauma therapy twice a week right now. And we just very recently have been kind of talking about, like, our deconstruction again. And like, where are we on this? And picking back up on that and like, what do we still need to process and what would be healing for us and things like that.

Kyle Hanks [02:38:05] Just speaking into it a little bit. I think all of us have. When we left, we had a little bit of deference to the group. It's a group that. Oh, it's just a bunch of people who like to get together for Bible studies. It's not for me, but they can do their thing and we help. Maybe, maybe didn't want to speak into them too much. We didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. We didn't want to cause any offenses or anything like that. Even though we're not believing we've left. We have our own beliefs now. I think just now.

Kyle Hanks [02:38:31] 2 years post Dean letter. Right about now. It's in a couple weeks. Two weeks, two years. We're just starting to get our head above water a little bit and think, well, how do we want to speak into this? And I mean, coming here, for one thing, is being much more public, talking publicly about it. And we talk about Mike and Abby's TikTok, which is really good and hits really hard. They're talking about things.

Nonprofit Work and Moving Forward After Leaving

Kari Hanks [02:38:48] Abby helps found a nonprofit called Voices for the Truth, which has partnered with rainn, the international. I forget the acronym for rainn, but they help sexual abuse survivors. So she has voices, which is awesome.

Kyle Hanks [02:39:05] And there will always be people who are hardliners, who are inside, who will think that it's persecution, in fact, increasingly so I would say that the people who remain are the hardliners more than ever. The people who had any nuance to it or had maybe a conscience towards some of this stuff anyway, have all left now. So the people who are inside still are much more harder to reach, maybe, but for our own selves. Yeah, it's just. It's like, okay, yeah, where do we go now? We're starting to kind of feel that out a little bit and speak into it. My own little YouTube project is just talking about stuff publicly.

Kyle Hanks [02:39:38] People know it's me. I use a pseudonym, but it's not because I'm hiding. It's because I wanted to separate it out from the being an admin of a support group a little bit. So it's called cow tipper Verne's X2X2 podcast. It's a cow tipper. Vern is an old moniker I used on a website back in the geocities Angelfire days, when so long ago. Yeah, I know. A friend and I had a silly website we used. It was like redneck themed and stuff, and so we used Cow Tipper names.

John Dehlin [02:40:02] Have you ever tipped a cow?

Kyle Hanks [02:40:03] I never have. I don't think you can. I think that's folklore. I think so. I think that cow tipping is one of those things that everybody knows. It's kind of like a lot of the stories you hear in churches about, oh, this thing that happened somewhere. Everyone knows someone who, who tipped a cow, but no one's actually done it. And I think that's true for a lot of these apocryphal stories you hear in church meetings about, like, oh, this thing happened and this person, you know, had this revelation or this person Crashed their car because they didn't.

Kari Hanks [02:40:27] Spent the last of their money that they had to get to convention over feeding their family.

Kyle Hanks [02:40:31] They didn't commit to God. And then some terrible thing happened. None of that happened, probably. It's probably everybody knows somebody who it's happened to, but it hasn't happened to them. So. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:40:39] All right.

John Dehlin [02:40:40] I'm curious about x2x tour. So have you ever gotten together in groups as x2x tours, and if so, in what format, how?

Kyle Hanks [02:40:47] We've tried.

Kari Hanks [02:40:48] Yeah, Kyle and I have, and then when Mike and Abby are in town, we try to host at least one a year locally. In Arizona, where we are, we've had some people fly in from out of town for it, which was cool.

John Dehlin [02:40:57] What's the biggest group you've seen?

Kyle Hanks [02:40:59] We've had like, what, 40 or 50, I think.

Kari Hanks [02:41:00] 40 or 50 the first year.

John Dehlin [02:41:01] That's cool.

Kyle Hanks [02:41:02] Yeah, the first year was like.

Kari Hanks [02:41:03] First year were like five of us. Yeah.

Kyle Hanks [02:41:06] But. But again, it's. It's global, too. So, like, in our group, a significant percentage of our group is actually from Australia, and a significant percentage are from Canada, and there's certain parts of the. We have people in our Facebook support group now from every continent. So we're all still pretty spread out, but.

Kari Hanks [02:41:20] Well, not every continent. Not Antarctica.

Kyle Hanks [02:41:22] Not yet, eventually.

John Dehlin [02:41:24] Thank you for that.

Kyle Hanks [02:41:26] I'm glad somebody the literalism giving some clarity on this.

John Dehlin [02:41:29] Words matter.

Kari Hanks [02:41:30] Words.

Kyle Hanks [02:41:31] You're right, they do. I got to be careful, as you've already seen. But. Yeah, but. And then other people have been setting up meetups for exes and stuff, so, you know, maybe not quite thrive level yet, but a lot of people, ooh,

John Dehlin [02:41:42] you know about thrive.

Kyle Hanks [02:41:42] I know about thrive.

John Dehlin [02:41:43] I can come to Thrive. Y' all are welcome to Thrive.

Kyle Hanks [02:41:45] Yeah, you should come sometime. So. Yeah, but I think there's a lot of different. And like Kari mentioned, there's lots of spinoff groups as well, of people gathering around certain interests, but x2 x2, so, you know, whatever those be, there's even a group recently that started for people who have left themselves but still have professing spouses what to do about that. So they created their own Facebook spin off of our group, and they're collecting people over there.

John Dehlin [02:42:08] What's that called?

Kyle Hanks [02:42:09] I don't know. It's a private group, and you have to come into our group. You got to know the secret handshake to get into some of these groups, but.

John Dehlin [02:42:14] Ooh, you have secret handshakes.

Kyle Hanks [02:42:16] No, we don't.

Kari Hanks [02:42:17] We are not cult leaders, but yeah.

Kyle Hanks [02:42:19] And then also, we're watching a lot of other people start their own podcast. Tons of substacks. Now.

Kari Hanks [02:42:24] People are finding their voice. Especially, I think, after this scandal, people aren't feeling like they have to defer to the two by two so much anymore. They're really reclaiming their voice and power.

Kyle Hanks [02:42:36] I think there's part of you that when you leave, you still think you're broken somehow. That even if you don't believe it anymore, maybe you still carry some guilt. And that guilt's going away for a lot of people right now, and they're finally speaking into, yes, this is what I believe now. This is why I left. I'm not going to hide this anymore. So I think that's awesome.

Margi Dehlin [02:42:51] Yeah, that is awesome.

John Dehlin [02:42:53] Well, man, hats off to y'.

Kari Hanks [02:42:55] All.

John Dehlin [02:42:55] I mean, I remember when I went. When Margi and I went through it at Microsoft in 2001, we had the same reaction. It's like, wait, this is way too hard. We got to figure out a way to make it less hard. And that was before podcasts existed. That was before social media existed. But we just couldn't not do it. And so you guys have had a

Kari Hanks [02:43:19] huge impact on people.

John Dehlin [02:43:21] Oh, well, that's not what I was saying, but you have.

Kyle Hanks [02:43:23] That's what we're saying.

John Dehlin [02:43:24] Oh, thank you. But, I mean, it's cool to know there's someone else who kind of likes, you know, another couple that kind of like, yeah, this is way too hard. There's no support, there's no resources. How do we even find people? Let's do something about it. Like, we just need. We need everyone in their own coming out of their own religious tradition if it's been harmful to follow your example. That's so inspiring. I'm inspired. Are you inspired, Margi?

Margi Dehlin [02:43:52] I am. And I really feel for. And I don't know, I'm inspired also by the attention you're giving your own healing. Because I think coming out of a conditioned place recently, kind of detransitioning. I think you can keep this belief that your purpose is to show up for other people and harm yourself doing so. Like, I think it's not so much about showing up for other people. It's like, at any cost, it's that your own healing is not really important. And so just the fact that you address that and you are. You're aware of, hey, we want to help people. We want to be there. And this was something we could not turn away from. And also. And also we want it to actually be good. For us too. Like we no longer want to participate in these missions or beliefs or ideas where we're the sacrificed people.

Kari Hanks [02:45:02] Yeah. And in fact a few months into the abuse scandal Kyle and I released a statement publicly on our social media that we needed to pull back from the public aspect of it because we had, we were the clearinghouse for information for the two by two church. And at this point we were like you guys have enough information now it's time to start taking accountability. We've put our lives on hold, our relationships on hold, our health on hold to be this clearinghouse for you for several months now. We're not going to abandon survivors and we're not going to abandon the X community. But our focus is the X community. You two by twos are on your own now. Like figure it out with, with what. We've, we've given you informed consent.

Margi Dehlin [02:45:43] We're passing the baton. Yeah. You can take it.

Kari Hanks [02:45:46] And we had to do that for our own mental health because it was just too much.

Margi Dehlin [02:45:48] I can imagine, I can imagine.

John Dehlin [02:45:51] So thrilled. I just. On this YouTube channel just two months ago ABC News announced former elder of secretive two by two Christian sect sentenced to 120 years in prison.

Kari Hanks [02:46:04] That's in our area. I know that guy.

John Dehlin [02:46:05] His name's Zwillhofer Zwiflehofer.

Kari Hanks [02:46:07] Zweifelhofer.

John Dehlin [02:46:08] Zweifelhofer.

Kyle Hanks [02:46:08] We know him personally.

John Dehlin [02:46:09] So you knew this guy?

Kari Hanks [02:46:10] I know him. I'm good friends with one of his

John Dehlin [02:46:12] daughter in law and it's listing just all these felony counts against him.

Kari Hanks [02:46:17] He had 10 counts of exploitation of a child which is under Arizona law. What? Child pornography. That's the crime and it's a very harsh sentencing in Arizona. So he got 10 years or 11 years was it per photograph?

Kyle Hanks [02:46:32] Yeah. I want to make one point that I'm not sure if we've made clear yet is that this isn't just the ministers who are abusing people. It's the church is rife with abuse. So it's a percentage of it is ministers. It's also just abuse of relationship abuse, elders abusing people. And a lot of the assaults and abuses that have happened weren't from workers. It's just from the community at large.

Kari Hanks [02:46:52] Yeah, I think, I think it was around 20% of. Of the, the allegations we've heard involved allegations against workers. But there's also elders and there's family members and there's. It's a culture of systemic abuse.

Margi Dehlin [02:47:06] Yes. So insidious and so interesting that you

John Dehlin [02:47:08] left not knowing any of this. You discovered that after leaving for separate.

Kyle Hanks [02:47:13] Yeah, it's crazy. I was. When I was going to a therapist, I started going. And a couple, A couple, maybe two, three months in, I was like, okay, scratch what we were going to talk about. This thing just happened. And that's what we talked about for the rest of the time. And at the end of when she was moving on to another job, she's like, yeah, you didn't plan any of that, did you? That just kind of fell in your lap, this whole thing. We left for very personal reasons. And, yeah. Now looking back, I wonder, I have to be honest, I wonder how I would feel if I were on the inside. Maybe true. Believing me would be on the wrong side of this. I have empathy for people.

Kari Hanks [02:47:43] We've had a lot of those conversations of like, would this have pushed us over the edge? Would this have pushed us over the edge?

Kyle Hanks [02:47:48] And so when people are talking, you hear people talk about, like, oh, the exes are bitter and trying to just burn everything down. I actually don't. I don't care what anybody believes about God or anything. I just want people to be safe. But I understand if this is hard for you. It took me a year and a half to tell my own family that I'd left. Knowing how they think about it, with very little on the line now, with a big scandal like this going on, hitting people very immediately, I actually have a lot of empathy for people and the struggles they're going through right now. And I hope everybody, everybody can get through it.

Kari Hanks [02:48:14] But just as informed consent as a motivation for you guys and what you do, I do feel like it's so important that two by twos have the information so that they can make an informed decision on whether or not they want to be aligned with the church.

John Dehlin [02:48:28] Amen.

Kyle Hanks [02:48:28] They don't like informed consent. When I was young, there was. That book we showed earlier is a really good book. It's a recent book. There's actually another book called the Secret Sect that was released in the 80s and that was trying to give conformed consent, consent to people. And when I was a young. When I was young, probably 8, 10 years old, that book made its rounds in my community. And the people in the community burned

Kari Hanks [02:48:46] it, literally buying copies to burn.

Kyle Hanks [02:48:49] They were buying copies of this book called the Secret Sect and burning copies of it. That's just so on the nose. But that's what they were doing back then. So informed consent hasn't always gone very well. But now with the Internet, it's hard to burn copies of the Internet.

Margi Dehlin [02:49:01] So indeed.

Closing Reflections and Words of Gratitude

John Dehlin [02:49:05] Well, before we end, I'm just going to really quickly ask everybody if you've enjoyed this episode. Please take the time to like it. Please take the time to subscribe to this channel. Wherever you are listening or viewing, wherever it's being shown, please comment that helps. Please share it. Those are all ways that help encourage Spotify and YouTube and all the algorithms to kind of get the word out. We are always thankful to our donors that make all this possible. So thank you donors. We couldn't do it without you. If you value this content and you want to see it continue, please go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button and become a monthly donor.

John Dehlin [02:49:47] I want to stay in touch. I have a thousand questions. We probably need a wrap up for today. I'm really curious to hear how EX members are doing, how they're finding meaning and purpose and identity, how they're doing with alcohol and drugs and exploration into all different types of lifestyles. If there's a lot of similarities between EX Mormons and EX2 by twos, we don't have time to get into that today. But mostly I just want to say y' all are cousins, siblings, in a sense, we are immediately in love. I can speak on behalf of all our viewers and listeners. We're in love with you guys and your communities.

John Dehlin [02:50:26] We hope we can find some way to support each other, to help each other, maybe even to get together at some point because we have so much we can probably teach each other and learn from each other and support each other in. So you know, Kari and Kyle Hanks, thank you so much for your courage, both in leaving and figuring things out, but also in helping protect victims and give a voice to victims, for helping provide community to others who need it. And then to raise your voice and to come on this podcast, which is going to reach probably hundreds of thousands of people to.

John Dehlin [02:51:08] And that comes Margi and I know probably as well as anyone, you know, in this space that comes at a price and it comes at a cost for our individual mental health, for our relationship with each other, for our relationship with extended family and for our family and for our kids and everything. So as two people that kind of know a little bit about what y' all have been doing, our gratitude and admiration and love and support are extended to you. So thank you.

Margi Dehlin [02:51:40] Yeah, we see you, we see the work and we're really, we're grateful for the work that you've done and wish you all the rest and space and healing too, for you.

Kari Hanks [02:51:53] Thank You. That really means a lot. And thanks so much for having us on. It's been an honor, really.

Kyle Hanks [02:51:58] Thank you very much.

John Dehlin [02:52:00] All right, so if people want to get a hold of you, how do they get ahold of you? Go to that Facebook group.

Kyle Hanks [02:52:04] Go to the Facebook group. I also have an email.

Kari Hanks [02:52:06] The Facebook group is specifically 4x2x twos or people who are trying to leave the church.

Kyle Hanks [02:52:13] You can also message us on there. You'll see us as admins.

Kari Hanks [02:52:16] And Kyle, you have an email, though?

Kyle Hanks [02:52:17] Yeah, Kari and I. Well, it's yours too. We have a. We have a Gmail address. X ex2x2podcast gmail.com x2x2podcast. And we don't have. We kind of had an idea of having an us podcast. I kind of have my own little thing on there right now.

Kari Hanks [02:52:31] I needed to not be part of that right now. It was just.

Kyle Hanks [02:52:35] But you can contact me there.

Kari Hanks [02:52:36] So, yeah, we'll definitely respond to people who reach out there.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:40] And many times people comment on the YouTube this release as well, which is great.

John Dehlin [02:52:45] Yeah. Do you have a way for people to financially support what you're doing or do you not take donations or.

Kyle Hanks [02:52:52] We've done it all for free so far. We haven't.

John Dehlin [02:52:54] We did for five years, too.

Kyle Hanks [02:52:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:52:57] Maybe it's about time.

Kyle Hanks [02:52:58] I don't know. We'll see. I think we're finding a good balance right now, so. Yeah, I appreciate that.

John Dehlin [02:53:03] Okay. All right, well, stay in touch and we hope to see you all again soon. Maybe come back on Mormon Stories. And we'd love that.

Kari Hanks [02:53:12] Again, thank you both Sean and Margi. Appreciate it.

Kyle Hanks [02:53:14] Yeah, thank you.

John Dehlin [02:53:14] Our pleasure. All right, well, again, thanks to Kari and Kyle Hanks for coming on Mormon Stories Podcast. Hats off to all the former and current 2 by 2ers out there and all. All of our never Mormons who are viewers and listeners as well as our Mormons and ex Mormons. We just want this to be one in a series. We recently, just a month or two ago. Oh, I should give an update. We recently, a month or two ago, had an ex Pentecostal on a shrier. On a Shrier. Just this past weekend, our friend Nathan Hinckley with some family members and I think another couple. Couple that we had on as well.

Margi Dehlin [02:53:55] Oh, the Johnsons.

John Dehlin [02:53:57] Yeah. Went out to Anna Schreier's house and did. Helped renovate and refurbish the house.

Kyle Hanks [02:54:07] That's awesome.

John Dehlin [02:54:08] And we'll be announcing it, but we shared photos on our last episode that we did on Sunday. But like really Fun story of one of our Never Mormons receiving love from the community. So anyone who sent money to Anna Schreier, anyone who's helped out, including the Hinckley, Nathan Hinckley and his family, and anyone else, the Johnsons or whoever's been loving them and helping them. It just makes our hearts sing when community rises up to support each other. Isn't that amazing?

Kari Hanks [02:54:38] Yeah, that's awesome. I listened to that episode and I'm really happy to hear that update.

John Dehlin [02:54:42] Yeah. But also we. We really want to hear from any of you who have never been Mormon, who watch or listen to Mormon stories and feel particularly benefited by it. We want to hear your stories. So the way you do that is you go to MormonStories.org, you apply to be on the show, you create a little video, you fill out an application, we vet it, and if it feels like a good fit, then we'll invite you to come on. So we hope to have this beautiful, just one in a long series of Never Mormons. For me, it's fun because obviously I love Mormons and I love Mormon stories, but we're like over 2,000 episodes into Mormon stories now. I've heard a lot of Mormon stories. Can you imagine? It's fun to hear stories from other traditions, too.

Margi Dehlin [02:55:26] Yeah.

Kari Hanks [02:55:26] We love learning about other churches.

John Dehlin [02:55:29] Yeah. So we want Mormon stories to spotlight lots of high demand religions or groups. So please check. You know, do that. Please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you have feedback. And again, we appreciate any financial support y' all can offer. Yeah. Anything else, Margi, that I'm forgetting?

Margi Dehlin [02:55:50] I think you've covered it.

John Dehlin [02:55:52] All right, well, thanks for joining us today. Thanks to Brooklyn and Gerardo and Julia and Maven and the OSF board and everyone who makes this possible. Thanks to Margaret and Nemo and anyone who is a part of our team. You guys be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.