GUELPH – Brianna Bell was the first journalist to break the story about abuse in the Two by Twos church, a story the Guelph-based freelance journalist wrote for the Daily Dot two years ago.
Six months after that, the FBI announced it was investigating the church and several arrests have been made.
Now Bell is writing a book not just about the Two by Twos, but about the abuse she too suffered at the hands of church members.
Called God Lover, “It’s a deeply personal, gritty memoir,” Bell said in a phone interview.
“It’s a memoir plus – a personal story with social commentary.
“It’s about religious coercion, sexual coercion. It’s what I’m grappling with now.”
The Two by Twos are a religious sect without a name or even a church.
They meet in people’s homes and at annual conventions and members are born into it more often than not.
According to Bell’s research the sect was founded in the late 1800s in Ireland by Scottish evangelist William Irvine.
“He believed the Christian church should follow the guidelines for preaching set out in Matthew 10, a chapter of the Bible in which Jesus instructs the apostles to leave their houses and belongings and travel from home to home, preaching the gospel,” Bell wrote in a story for Chatelaine magazine.
Ministers in the church are called workers and workers travel in pairs staying in the homes of members, spreading the teachings of the Bible.
Hence the Two by Twos name.
It’s only people who leave the church that started calling the church Two by Twos, however.
Bell said she came upon a Facebook page for survivors of sexual abuse in the church and that’s where she discovered sexual abuse is a widespread problem with this secretive sect.
Bell’s history with the church goes back generations, she said.
“My family was in the Two by Twos for almost a century,” she said.
“I always knew something was mysterious about this group.
“As a child I experienced abuse, and I heard about abuse. But nothing was ever done about it.”
Her parents divorced when she was a baby and her mother, a Catholic, raised her in the Catholic church.
But her father remained in the Two by Twos, and would bring her to meetings, as they called their services, and the annual conventions.
Her mother discovered online chat rooms where women in the Two by Twos were discussing their abuse.
“So, I knew about this,” Bell said of the time when she started writing her investigative story.
“But I had a hard time doing the work. Nobody wanted to talk about it.”
Once she found the Facebook group, however, she found people who would talk.
“I knew this needed to be shared,” she said.
She wrote about it for the Daily Dot and later for Chatelaine.
The FBI investigation spanned the U.S. and Canada and Bell took satisfaction that arrests were made and leaders in the church were convicted.
But writing those stories opened old wounds for herself.
“I would not be writing it if I didn’t think it would be healing for me,” she said.
“But I knew it would open wounds too. There would be personal fallout.”
And so she’s writing a book, God Lover, which will be published by Dundern Press in 2027.
“This is my story,” Bell said. “The story of a little girl who didn’t feel she belonged and all the ways she tried to belong.”
Bell is married to a pastor – not of the Two by Twos – and has three daughters.
She’s broken ties with her father and the Two by Twos and feels better for it, she said.
“I believe I have saved (my daughters) from what happened. I’m estranged from my (father’s) family. I chose this family,” she said. “I feel very ready to write it.”
Bell is dedicating the book to her mother and her mother’s mother, “the two women who raised me and who saved me.”
She hopes readers who have been abused will see themselves in her story, feel some agency, and be able to tell their own story, she said.
“I hope anybody who has lived under the thumb of a group or a person will read the book and feel less alone.
“This feels like the story I have to tell,” she continued. “It’s a starting point for me.”
