Torres felt defeated. This extremism represented nowhere near a majority of the church; the cabal numbered no more than twenty, a fraction of the hundreds of people who attended services every week. But these troublemakers were not a bunch of fringe, Easter-and-Christmas-Eve churchgoers. One of them worked on his staff. Another taught confirmation classes. Several were close friends—people he’d spent years praying with, laughing with, hanging around with. They had even gone on a trip together to the Holy Land. Now some of them were turning his church into a war zone. Torres was spiraling. For
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