The fiery trials of a humanitarian crisis

The ethical dilemmas that divide a community

In recent decades, it has become common for churches to be rocked by revelations of child sexual abuse and coverups. Still, nobody ever believes their own church could be guilty of something so vile. That was certainly true for the congregation of the church I was born and raised in—a group now publicly referred to as the 2x2 church. It prides itself on being the authentic Christian article of the first-century church, distinct and countercultural in its approach of defying the progression of time. The ministry’s format is same-sex pairs going homeless and celibate. Its institutional structure is informal and historically invisible to broader society, despite existing for more than a century. That distinctiveness is worn as a badge of why believers refer to their church only as ‘The Truth’—a common moniker of fundamentalist groups.

Two years ago, this congregation became another church publicly outed as also having a long, systemic history of enabling child sexual abusers. They subsequently had to reckon with the fact that they weren’t so different after all. While the church’s practices had many obscure differences from most other Christian churches, they had the worst parts in common with many other churches they believed themselves morally and spiritually superior to.

Living in a Nightmare

It was March 2023 when the 2x2 congregation woke up to its own scandalous nightmare of systemic child abuse and coverups. The dam broke when a revered, recently deceased senior minister of the 2x2 church was exposed as a child rapist. The impact was shattering—and it was only the beginning of dark revelations. Day after day, fresh horrific stories came to light. Some victims were people I knew well—or thought I did. I never saw the depth of their suffering, let alone understood its cause.

What we woke up to wasn’t just a scandal. The scale of abuses and abusers was so large that it was better described as a humanitarian crisis. The sexual abuses were extensive and spanned decades. We also discovered the abuses weren’t only sexual. Over time, we realized how rampant many forms of abuse had deeply harmed people, including emotional, physical, and spiritual forms. The trauma ran deep and wide, spanning generations. We also began to understand the invisible toll it was taking on people’s lives: elevated rates of autoimmune disease, cancers, and mental health disorders. We learned that, according to new medical discoveries, the effects of generational trauma had literally altered our DNA, increasing our susceptibility to these tragic health outcomes.

This humanitarian crisis wasn’t a sudden catastrophe. It was a slow-moving train wreck, decades in the making—powered by the crushing inertia of religious tradition and willful ignorance.

Ethical Dilemmas in a Community of Absolutes

Congregants responded differently to the unveiling of this humanitarian crisis. Many rushed headlong into the chaos, trying to understand the depths and how to help. Some paced themselves, as they overwhelmed quickly. Many simply looked away, refusing to engage at all with the harsh realities.

Yet no one escaped the ethical crucible a humanitarian crisis creates. The situation presented moral dilemmas deeply uncomfortable for a community used to viewing the world in black and white. The collision with intense moral dilemmas was, at times, brain-breaking. These included:

• Innocent Until Proven Guilty vs. Believing Survivors: While ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is a core value of civilized legal systems, it creates further harm when used to doubt sexual abuse survivors bringing their stories forward. Survivors usually have no proof and are often well beyond statutes of limitations for seeking justice. They have only their word as evidence—as well as the long-term effects of untreated trauma. Not believing their accounts re-traumatizes them, causing those who doubt them to become complicit in further harm. Yet as a society, we are far more comfortable dismissing a true account than believing a false one, even though both outcomes destroy people’s lives.

• Forgiveness vs. Criminal Accountability: Forced forgiveness became the de facto process for child abuse reports, rooted in how Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness were interpreted by the ministry. This allowed forgiveness to be weaponized by predators. Once confronted, these sexual predators and their enablers effectively demanded, “Forgive me or you will go to Hell,” as the mechanism to reenter communities and access more children. Survivors were often pressured to forgive their perpetrators, which usually buried and deepened trauma instead of healing it.

• Faith in Transformation vs. Incurable Conditions: The belief that God can help anyone—especially moral failings—ran into the hard reality that pedophilia has no proven cure, whether via faith or medicine. Even well-intending abusers often relapsed; their urges overwhelmed their own attempts at self-control, if such good faith attempts even existed. As a result, trusting divine intervention to remove these depraved urges created a frictionless path to recidivism for abusers.

• The Unchanging Way vs. Adopting Best Practices: The church leaned heavily into the concept of ‘the unchanging Way,’ treating even small changes to tradition as moral backsliding. This collided with the simple idea that “when you know better, you do better.” Yet learning from mistakes—far too kind a word when applied to criminal coverups—proved impossible when the root cause was an immutable interpretation of scripture.

These ethical conflicts divided the community, creating a deep chasm. Some called for reform, unwilling to remain in a system that enabled abuse and refused accountability. Church leadership, however, saw reform as a path to apostasy. And so, a stalemate took root—and mass departures followed.

When the Morality Is the Crisis

I was not a distant observer to these events, but a full participant in the intense cognitive dissonance these moral dilemmas created. The church is dogmatic about having no scriptural writings besides the Bible. Thus, doctrine was interpreted and enforced by the most revered elder male ministers. Periodically, letters from these ministers would circulate, bringing clarity on the sect’s biblical interpretations. This made it difficult to pinpoint the ideology driving the abuse crisis. But one core belief stands out as the root cause. The church’s moral imperative is perhaps best captured in a hymn verse from its songbook:

“Nothing matters but Salvation, in this life or that to come.”

The author likely intended encouragement for those struggling: Keep going—something better awaits. But within the church’s ideology, these words became quite literal. Every decision—especially by leadership—was filtered through the lens of how it might affect someone’s salvation. And in the 2x2 church, salvation requires regular attendance at home-based worship services to demonstrate “living faith.” This moral imperative collided with how abuse disclosures were handled—and how perpetrators were protected. That’s how things turned tragic.

One vivid example is a letter from a prominent 2x2 overseer in the early 2000s. In it, he recommended relocating a minister with a known child sexual abuse history to another country. This minister had been caught and confronted in his home country, and action was required. Why did he propose relocation? Because many developing regions needed access to “the true gospel,” and this abusive minister was willing to go. The implication: despite being a child molester, the preacher could still serve a valuable purpose. Thus he was simply relegated to a less desirable post. The moral imperative justified what effectively became a “body for a soul” tradeoff.

As a result, predators were allowed to continue preaching in exchange for ongoing access to children. Once victims gained the strength to speak up—often years later—the preacher would already be moved to fresh territory, with no warnings issued. The unmarried, childless men leading the ministry made secret decisions that placed others’ children at risk. The parents were neither informed nor consulted. In this particular preacher’s case, he abused children across multiple countries simply because he was willing to serve abroad. Those families had no idea what risk they faced. The betrayal they later felt ran deep.

And the truth is, I once believed this moral logic—that salvation trumped all. Many of us did. Most who believe in eternal reward systems do. But when salvation demanded we tolerate child abuse, the ideology collapsed. For me, and for many others, the tradeoff became not just offensive, but intolerable. If obedience to a religious system came with a cost of child sacrifice to sexual deviants—then it was the faith’s ideology, not our children, that had to be sacrificed.

Religious Dogmatism and the Mirror It Holds

The harsh reality is that the 2x2 congregation simply wrote their own chapter of how religious fundamentalism plays out. History is filled with stories of people trading suffering in this life for paradise in the next. When it's someone else’s faith, we call it brainwashing. When it’s our own, we call it devotion. Western society views suicide bombers promised 72 virgins in heaven as lunacy. But when our own religion demands extreme, even destructive, sacrifice—it seems righteous. Once the humanitarian crisis surfaced in our own midst, it became our turn to play the lunatics to onlookers. And those of us who looked around in horror quickly found ourselves disassociating, moving to stand with the onlookers.

That’s the thing about humanitarian crises: they don’t just reveal institutional failures. They force you to examine your own ethical foundations. Theoretical values become real-life choices—with life-changing consequences. In those moments, what you choose defines who you are. If your response aligns with your values, it’s liberating. If not, it will haunt you.

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