Shiny Happy People : Season 2

Rated 13+ • Prime Video

My high school youth group activities consisted of Bible studies, mini golf, and beach outings, a week at an ARP campground, and a mission trip to Mexico. Normal stuff, right? I don’t remember much else about it—probably because I graduated in 1986.

That same year, Ron Luce founded Teen Mania, an organization that grew into the nation’s largest evangelical youth movement. Reportedly, 3 million young people participated during its 30 years of existence. I was never involved with the organization, so I didn’t have an axe to grind while watching Season 2 of Shiny Happy People. (The first season centered on Bill Gothard and the Duggar family.)

The three-part series proceeds chronologically, beginning with Acquire the Fire, Teen Mania’s arena-filling events that gained traction in the early 1990s. Newsboys, Audio Adrenaline, and other bands rocked the stage. Luce, “an insanely intense person” who came from a broken home, and his “right-hand man” David Hasz charged young believers to resist worldly influences and spread the gospel. Luce and Hasz appear only in Teen Mania video clips.

Acquire the Fire gatherings also served as recruitment opportunities for Teen Mania’s Global Expeditions mission trips. Participants spent a month or two overseas under the supervision of adults not much older than they were.

The main target of the interviewees’ criticism is the Honor Academy, a “finishing school for [Luce’s] elite” built on 460 acres in eastern Texas. Each year, up to a thousand college-aged kids paid for yearlong intensive discipleship and physical training. Videos show a military-style boot camp, complete with strenuous field exercises and verbally harsh instructors. According to the documentary, fears of anti-Christian sentiments stemming from the 1999 Columbine massacre increased the intensity at the Honor Academy. Participant Carrie Saum says of Teen Mania leadership, “They were raising martyrs, and they were recruiting children.” Another adds, “We were very sincere kids. We were believers, but we knew something was wrong.”

The last episode focuses on the Arlington Group, a coalition of conservative Christian organizations and leaders, including James Dobson and Chuck Colson, that brought Teen Mania into its tent. A program called Battle Cry was “designed to be a bigger Acquire the Fire.”

But then came Teen Mania’s downfall, sparked by interviewee Mica Ringo’s blog Recovering Alumni, where hundreds of people posted negative experiences. Also, a former communications director says she contacted WORLD, which reported on Teen Mania’s financial misdoings in 2015. If there’s a bright side, the series does not mention any sexual assaults, weapons use, or deaths.

The series’ 10 interviewees (mostly Teen Mania alumni) are largely critical, but their opinions can’t possibly represent the experiences of all “Teen Maniacs.” Nevertheless, Christians should take note—but not of the documentary’s tiresome insinuations about religious devotion and Christians’ political activism amounting to cultish activity and government subversion. No, the real takeaway for believers should be this: The family and the local church must always be the primary centers of training in righteousness. Bad things often happen when parents outsource the discipleship of their children.

Malicious or misguided? That’s a tough question, but probably the latter. Knowing what I’ve seen, would I send my children to Teen Mania if it were still around? Easy answer: No.