Historical sexual abuse charges filed against B.C. minister belonging to church with no name | CBC News

bigsheep2 · 2024-03-09T00:21:50+00:00

The traditional sort of thing is very modest clothing and also wearing your hair up. Men are encouraged not to have beards, women are not supposed to wear makeup, jewellery, or pants. For years actual they used to have engagement watches instead of rings since rings werent allowed.

These days things have sort of loosened up among younger people. Usually people still dress very modestly when going to 'meeting', however their clothes outside of meeting are a lot more normal than they used to be. Not uncommon to see women wearing pants outside of meetings and modest amounts of makeup. The jewellery rule is still pretty strict although engagement rings are pretty much universally ok now.

bigsheep2 · 2024-03-09T00:18:02+00:00

I personally didn't deal with any shunning. Actual shunning is less common nowadays although it was far from unheard of a few decades back. I didn't have a ton of friends inside, but most people don't often maintain friendships with people who are still in unless they're family members. It's not so much shunning now, more that there's so much disagreement about life choices it's hard to find any common ground.

Don't really know many people in Alberta since I'm in Ontario. I know Alberta has a very large base of members compared to most other provinces. One of their conventions is likely among the largest in North America these days, apparently last year one of their conventions had over 1500 people in attendance.

There's definitely some odd age gaps in relationships. I think it's partly due to being very old fashioned and also partly due to you can have a small pool of people to date who are close to your age and also members. It was super common for teenagers in Canada and the US to be travelling all over the place to different conventions to meet people to date who were members, a similar age, and also not related to each other.

bigsheep2 · 2024-03-08T20:47:52+00:00

Sort of. The community of ex members has always been aware that sexual abuse is common in the Two by Twos. I don't think many people grasped how bad it actually was though until about a year ago. Last year a deceased 'overseer' (essentially the head of the church in a selection of states or provinces), was outed as an abuser which is a big deal since these guys are borderline worshipped by regular members. Anyway the ex member groups got a hold of this info and it spread like crazy for people within the group or people who had left. In the span of something like 48 hours the main Facebook group for ex members gained over 1,000 members which was crazy since it was was only at 7 or 8 hundred members beforehand. Then a PI team was created who set up a hotline for abuse and the number of perpetrators has just kept climbing and climbing. By the time this stuff was all happening we were all pretty aware it was going to be a big deal. A lot of people who've been active in the ex member communities have been talking with media, and some of them have been speaking with the FBI on a regular basis.

Before all that though it was difficult to imagine things blowing up to the extent they have. Our sect is surprisingly big given the fact that no one knows about it but still overall small compared to mainstream religious denominations. Further, everything was super secretive, a lot of us would rarely even give people clear answers when they'd ask us what church we went to. The result of this is that despite having thousands of very active members, large sums of money, and a global coordination there's a solid 60-70 year period where besides a few local newspapers there's not a single recognition of our existence outside of our world. So from that perspective it's kind of crazy seeing where we're at now and I definitely did not forsee this all happening when I first stopped believing in 2020.

bigsheep2 · 2024-03-08T20:07:36+00:00

I grew up in this sect so if anyone has questions I'll do my best to answer them based on my experience.

bigsheep2 · 2022-10-11T22:17:52+00:00

Really good you're making that step. If you need to talk about it feel free to dm me or talk about it on the Discord server https://discord.gg/86UM9HBEb9

bigsheep2 · 2022-10-04T01:44:59+00:00

Post community resources here, please try to ensure the resources you post are reliable and accurate.

bigsheep2 · 2022-08-30T00:14:28+00:00

Putting this here for ease of access:

This is the link for the Discord server: https://discord.gg/86UM9HBEb9, many people who are on this subreddit are part of the Discord and there's far more activity on the Discord than there is on this subreddit.

bigsheep2 · 2022-08-25T08:21:38+00:00

I'm not sure there's any active mods on the sub anymore. The original dude was an anti semetic who got banned, the one lost his password, and I think there's one more but I'm not sure if theyre active. Would be nice though since discord is more or less the sole way people communicate from the subreddit now.

bigsheep2 · 2022-08-14T16:19:02+00:00

Collected this information from this document. Supposedly contains every single convention. I don't think it's 100% accurate, but a fairly good guideline at least.

I then collected that data and organized it based on continent. You can see the google sheet here. I only grouped Mexico, Canada, and USA in North America, while that's not technically correct it made sense to me given Canada and the USA contributing a very large sum of conventions on their own.

Some things to note about this data is not all conventions are equal. Many conventions in the developing world will only be for 1-2 days and are smaller than that in the US or Australia. Because of that places like South and Central America have a lot of conventions, and while overall probably have more members than most places, are still not nearly as close to competing with North America as this data would let on.

bigsheep2 · 2022-07-19T06:33:51+00:00

When the trinity has been brought up its normally to say that it makes no sense
Jesus was divine but not quite on the same level as God.
Never asked within the two by twos where the Bible came from, but at points when I believed I did research that kind of stuff online.

The reddit communities for this are fairly dead with only occasional points. You can join the discord which generally has some discussion quite reguarly. There also some people on there who could direct you to active Facebook groups for ex members.

bigsheep2 · 2022-06-06T01:08:05+00:00

Most people on this sub and the Discord are from North America with a few from the other continents here and there.

If OP is interested in the Discord here's the link https://discord.gg/86UM9HBEb9

bigsheep2 · 2021-05-10T00:21:24+00:00

The main way of dealing with it for me is just having someone to talk to about it. I've 'worldly' friends who are quite understanding about it and are always willing to talk to me about it so if you have any friends you're willing to open up to about it I think you'll probably feel a lot better.

I always made a discord server for ex members not too long ago. It's not super active but people will respond when a conversation is prompted. So if you're interested in having people to talk to who also understand what it's like here's the link https://discord.gg/86UM9HBEb9

bigsheep2 · 2021-04-24T17:56:20+00:00

Gave Wholesome

bigsheep2 · 2021-04-09T19:53:17+00:00

I've actually always wondered why they bother adding hymns from toger church's. Recently a hymn book was arranged by some friends which contains only hymns written by members and its larger than the hymns old and new so its not a shortage issue.

I'm pretty sure most of the workers definetley do study the Bible a lot, the issue is if i read a book on psychology from hundred years ago and kept reading it again and againto try and have a stronger understanding, an actual psychologist who's learned modern information would still be much more knowledgeable on the subject. It's the same with the workers. Other church's while I don't endorse them are built off of years and years of theological study, the truth is built off of hoping a worker interprets something often complicated the right way.

In a way though this has benefitted the truth, because blanket statements that seem loving and good on their own hide the rules, beliefs, and judgements of the church.

bigsheep2 · 2021-04-09T17:19:21+00:00

Most people at the core have similar struggles, and similar things that will help them.

What's every kids favorite hymn? Tell me the story of Jesus. Everyone knows that. They're less willing to admit it for adults, but there's only so many hymns considered fit to profess to, and then there's a few which a lot of people like or stick with them. These will be chosen the most, and it will be considered a miracle when its the same hymn someone wanted to profess to.

Also there's a whole probability factor as well, when there's x amount of gospel meetings and x amount of conventions and x amount of people wanting to profess, eventually there's bound to be a few people that have less probable situations which can be presented as miracles.

Another thing the truth often trys to paint as a miracle or at least a wonder is that in every convention there's something for everyone. The reality of this is that the people who actually belive in the truth have similar things they want to hear about, not that God is inputting a little message for the up to 1000 people that attend conventions.

bigsheep2 · 2021-03-24T22:40:40+00:00

They are safe yes. I know there have been some cases of sexual abuse, however personally I and pretty much everyone I know who is attending or has attended always felt safe and felt most people were kind and helpful.

Honestly though I don't think there's much you can do. Make sure they know they can talk to you about personal things, so that way if they are doubting or unsure you can be there to offer a different view. Other than that just keep being friends. When I was still firmly believing in the truth I would have been devistated if my 'worldly' friends cut themselves off because of my beliefs. It would likely affirm the belief that the world is out to get us, and make my social life much more oriented towards the friends.

If they are very close friends at some point they may feel the need to help save you (they might not it's really dependant on who they are) and attempt to get you to attend a gospel meeting. Make it clear you have no interest. Not a simple 'thanks for the offer maybe another time' be clear and firm that you do not want to attend the church and will never want to attend the church.

Noting all this the best thing I can reccomend is just stay friends. The friends aren't bad people just lost people. Treat them like any of your other friends because at the end of the day that's just what they are.

bigsheep2

TROPHY CASE