- 2 days ago
Shiny Happy People Season 2 Episode 3
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00:00Hi, my name is Ray, and I'm a Christian musician, and I'm also gay, and I want you to know that
00:06it gets better.
00:09Our dad, he had a very successful career, but he had a bit of a secret.
00:15No one knew all those years.
00:18He became very depressed.
00:21At the time, I was coming back from the internship frankly destroyed.
00:25Dad's career starts to slow down a little bit, and I started to get really concerned
00:30about Dad's mental health.
00:33And here's Daddy.
00:35We have him after his long, long drive.
00:39We sat him down at a family meeting.
00:42Which we do not have family meetings.
00:43We don't do that.
00:44That's not a thing our family does.
00:45We don't need to talk about that.
00:46We don't talk about things.
00:48We just got very earnest, and we're like, Dad, what's wrong?
00:52I had prayed for 30 years, I gave my heart to the Lord at 19.
00:57I went to church, I went to counseling, I went through deliverance.
01:01I did every single thing that everybody said to do, and at the end of 30 years, I just decided
01:07I can't pretend anymore.
01:10I was with my children and my wife, and I thought, if I can't tell them who I really
01:14am, and what I'm going through, what kind of a father am I?
01:20We immediately supported him.
01:23We told him how much we loved him.
01:26I was like, guys, I think it's fine to be gay.
01:29Like, I think it's good.
01:31I think it's like, okay.
01:34Dad came out publicly, and church turned on him.
01:38Can a gay person be a Christian?
01:55Some people have it so nailed down that nobody can be a Christian.
01:58I kind of decided the only person that can really answer that question is Jesus and you.
02:05After my internship, the next spring, I ran into Ron at the Acquire the Fire when it came
02:10to Muncie, and we sat together for like 30 minutes.
02:15Dad came up, and he was like, oh, homosexuality's bad.
02:20He wished me well, and that was the last time I talked to Ron.
02:23I wasn't quite like, I'm never touching this organization again.
02:26However, in the few years following,
02:32Teen Mania just becomes crazier than you ever imagined.
02:35Whoever speaks up most gets to shape the culture.
02:40Suddenly he's holding events on the steps of government buildings.
02:44Do you consider being gay a crime?
02:46Well, you know, we believe in purity.
02:47According to the Bible, it's not God's plan.
02:50The message, they say, is very divisive rather than inclusive.
02:57The message of Jesus was divisive as well.
02:59And Ron recruits a generation into holy war.
03:03Yes, Lord!
03:05Oh, God, give us this generation!
03:08Oh, God, we're going to war!
03:10The gay marriage movement is spreading.
03:25In the early 2000s, same-sex marriage was a big issue in the United States.
03:30The Christian right leaders, the Arlington Group in particular,
03:34are sitting there thinking about how do we politically organize it.
03:38Same-sex marriage was a battleground that they wanted to fight on.
03:42The most dangerous national policy being considered now, of course, is same-sex marriage.
03:52I think what's sometimes misunderstood about fundamentalism is it's not driven so much by
04:00any of the particular issues of the day.
04:03The idea that a woman has rights or the idea that your body is your own and you can be queer or whoever
04:13you are, these are all, in the fundamentalist mind, rebellions against the authority of God.
04:20The promotion of homosexuality is a deplorable reality that we cannot countenance.
04:27Something must be done.
04:28This group has seen its cultural power declining, has seen its numbers shrinking.
04:33A large majority of young people support same-sex marriage, leading some supporters to believe
04:39increasing national support is inevitable as the younger generation gains more power.
04:46These men who had been in it for a long time knew that you've got to capture these kids before it's too late.
04:52We need them because they're going to be voters in the future.
04:56They knew they needed that power.
04:58It was about cultivation, right? It was about long-term victories.
05:03They needed the army of kids.
05:07They needed Ron, and Ron's ready.
05:09The last couple years have been pretty alarming to me because we have so much to lose if we lose this generation.
05:15We could be in total moral chaos and anarchy if we don't turn this thing around.
05:19We've got to do something about it.
05:21It's Ron's chance to be the good son trying to please his father.
05:26The world lulled us to sleep and told us things like, there's no right or wrong.
05:30Why not legalize gay marriage? I mean, come on, what's wrong? It's just a different thing.
05:36Besides, you were born that way. That's what the world's told us.
05:38He desires to see a dramatic response.
05:43And he starts dreaming really big what could be done to build a massive political force of kids
05:51dedicated to a god-led nation. And so he creates Battle Cry.
05:57Teen Maniac already had the Honor Academy Global Expeditions and Acquire the Fire.
06:07Battle Cry was designed to be a bigger Acquire the Fire.
06:19Battle Cry was Acquire the Fire on steroids.
06:22I didn't hear you. Let me hear your Battle Cry tonight.
06:29These were big stadium events, really getting people pumped up.
06:32I want to say he had like seals or something propelled down from part of the stadium.
06:40But wait, there's more.
06:41We've launched this campaign called Battle Cry for a Generation.
06:44This was a movement.
06:45A call to be politically active.
06:48Battle Cry for a Generation, the book study series.
06:51The ultimate interactive website designed to launch you into battle and to help you be an intense warrior
06:57for Christ as you fight on the front lines.
07:00Everything was a military metaphor. And he'd been using that before, but he took it to a new extreme.
07:07And suddenly it was like, oh my gosh, there's news coverage of this.
07:11Let me hear your Battle Cry tonight.
07:24I'm looking at a whole army of young people who want to speak up.
07:29It's the red and the black.
07:31This was fascism in front of me on a massive scale that goes from the idea of a Christian right.
07:40It's like we want our piece of the pie to, you know, we want, we're taking the whole thing.
07:46We're taking America back.
07:47What if we quit listening to the culture and we said we want to shape the culture
07:51instead of being shaped by the culture?
07:53What if we said we want our voice to be heard instead of your voice to be heard?
07:57He no longer wanted the kids to turn away from the culture. Now he wanted them to take it over.
08:02It was the first time that it was very much trying to get the youth involved
08:06in political issues as opposed to just being an event to inspire them.
08:10This sounds like a message of, you know, bringing back your values,
08:15but it's actually a message of intolerance and of hate.
08:17You could say it's, it's divisive. Well, maybe it needs to be divisive.
08:21It starts gathering in support from pretty serious conservative sources of capital.
08:29The Arlington group. I want you to join the battle cry, battle cry, the battle cry coalition.
08:36Mon did it. He brought them the children.
08:39Lord is an army. We unite and we say no. Enough is enough.
08:44They're a warrior. God used them.
08:47You've narrowed Christianity down to one word. Fight.
08:51The enemy has declared war on you guys.
08:54And it's time to strike back with the love of God. Are you ready?
08:59If you build that army, eventually you have to give them their marching orders.
09:08If you're telling them that it's all high stakes,
09:12eventually you got to point them into a battle.
09:16That pivot happened very quickly.
09:19Tens of thousands of teens waving banners and saying they're taking back their generation.
09:23We won't be silent. Our voices will be heard.
09:27These big arena events are now accompanied by we're going to do a rally at some place of governance to an explicitly
09:36political end.
09:37We've got virgin teenage America being raped on the sidewalk and Americans just walk by and look at it.
09:43Ron started meeting the kids in political protests and he'd never done that before.
09:48And one of the very early ones is in San Francisco.
09:53He goes to San Francisco City Hall because same sex marriages had only a couple of years previous become legal there.
10:01I think he felt emboldened to go to San Francisco to the steps of City Hall in the gayest city in America.
10:09And he wanted to plant himself right in the middle of the culture wars and get as many kids as he could to follow him.
10:16They said pretty explicitly we're not here because it's a heavily gay city.
10:19They said we're here because it's one of the most secular cities in the country.
10:21Well, they went there because of gay marriage in part. That's what they said in their press release.
10:24We're here as teenagers just to stand up as the leaders of this cultural war
10:29that is just fighting up and saying enough is enough.
10:32There is no doubt in my mind that they were seeing this as a confrontation between church and enemy of the church.
10:41This was a movement upon San Francisco.
10:45San Francisco, God bless them, pushes back hard.
10:49Protesters were out in full force accusing the group of being anti-gay and anti-choice.
10:55Battlecry is not a harmless movement.
10:58Its program is fiercely anti-woman, anti-gay, pro-war, and pro-obedience.
11:05Battlecry is a drool to make the kids into little fascist zombies.
11:09The army of God. You guys don't see anything wrong with the army of God?
11:12They're calling us angry, yet they were the ones angry.
11:15We didn't realize that it was kind of a hotbed for, you know, a very violent response to people who represent the Bible.
11:25I can't imagine that he would play ignorant of like, oh, I didn't even realize.
11:28It represents a far bigger agenda, a Christian right, theocratic agenda.
11:32Joining us now from Washington, Ron Luce.
11:34I think you might want a theocracy in this country. Is that true?
11:38Absolutely not. We just want young people to have a voice.
11:41We're being drowned out.
11:42Do you want the Bible to go over into public policy?
11:45We want just Judeo-Christian values that made our nation great.
11:48And it's really less about what I want.
11:49It's what these young people are voicing their own opinion.
11:52We were at war.
11:56We were an army for God.
11:58We were going to rise up with a battle cry.
12:01But the bad thing about using that sort of mindset is that you create a soldier who will
12:07follow orders in an unquestioning way because that's what you have to do when you're being shot at.
12:13I don't know how you segment your mind to not think about the ramifications of what you are doing to kids.
12:26Honor Academy interns were behind the scenes running almost everything that you saw at these events.
12:35You're working 15 hour days. You're sacrificing yourself for this vision.
12:39Team meeting was like a giant systemic machine.
12:43We did dozens of cities in a row sleeping on a bus as we drove through the night.
12:47We were exhausted.
12:49I got shingles from the stress.
12:52They're giving us $5 a day to eat with.
12:55We have to trust God for the rest of it.
12:58And I remember once running out of money and I was like, okay, I'll just call it a fast.
13:02All those young people who provide the labor that is his operation, that is absolutely exploiting these kids.
13:14At the Honor Academy, there was a monthly tuition.
13:17You pay to work.
13:18I was in the middle of the ministry team touring.
13:20They were starting to help me for money.
13:22If you ever got behind on your payments, you would get kicked out.
13:25When you don't have enough money in your accounts, they send you on what is called a fundraising trip.
13:31They told me that they were going to send me on a fundraising trip or dismiss me after I spent that entire year traveling the country,
13:38saving people for them, getting people to go on mission trips for them.
13:41Here's a book on all the different things that you can do to raise funds.
13:46One of which included going door to door with a carton of eggs and having someone give you a donation to crack an egg over your head.
13:54I will let you crack an egg over my head for a donation of any amount.
14:01Crack an egg over my head.
14:03Shame.
14:05Embarrassment.
14:05I think the theology of teen media is based on the impossibility of the ask.
14:13We're asking you to be something you can't be if you're going to be human.
14:18There's no point where you say, I did it.
14:20You're always failing.
14:22Well then, try more, do more, become more, serve more, submit more.
14:30These kids, they were disposable.
14:35About a quarter of the interns didn't last the whole year, whether it was they couldn't raise the money
14:40or they broke one of the rules.
14:43People who broke a rule, they would get a BV, which was a bon voyage, which was a very unceremonious exit.
14:50Within 24 hours, you were out of campus, like you were kicked out like that.
14:53Once they were gone, you never spoke to them again.
14:55It was like they never existed almost.
14:56I was dismissed for kissing a boy, and it was just a kiss.
15:03So, this is the Master Team, and I would like you to see what goes on here.
15:10The people that I have grown to love and know the best, now they weren't allowed to talk to me.
15:15They had to delete my number, and I was kicked off campus.
15:24It was just like, I did not exist.
15:26Very lonely.
15:27You could return to the Honor Academy after you were kicked out of the program.
15:45However, we would have to humble ourselves, and once we had done all of the things that were required
15:54by Dave, by Ron, then we could reapply to come back.
16:00A lot of us wanted to go back.
16:03Nobody knew how to live out in the world anymore.
16:08I went through a really rough year, but I was able to go back.
16:12The more you get into that guilt cycle, the more committed you become to the organization.
16:17The more unworthy you are, the more grateful you are for them letting you stay there.
16:22I just made choices that I shouldn't have, knowingly.
16:27Like, knowing that it was wrong.
16:29Knowing that there would be consequences.
16:34After I came back to Teen Mania, I ended up in an Acquire the Fire video.
16:38I've been where you are, and then some.
16:44I know exactly what you're feeling.
16:49I've been with my share of gentlemen.
16:54In that video, they're supposed to mimic this story in the Bible of the adulterous woman.
16:58He who has no sin cast the first stone.
17:01But in the video, it's this woman, me, in this room.
17:07The door opens, and these three men come in.
17:12And the video was shown all across America, every Acquire the Fire that year.
17:18I, as a woman, who was shamed for something that I had done,
17:23was now in a video broadcast to the world about a woman who was shamed for what she had done.
17:34But I volunteered to do it.
17:37The indoctrination is complete now.
17:46It is inside you.
17:48You're doing it to yourself.
17:50And you're doing it willingly.
17:52And then it was my turn to be erased.
18:00I was still working as Ron's assistant.
18:03I was just getting super, super depressed, and I didn't understand why.
18:08I read my Bible every day.
18:10I had my quiet times.
18:11I prayed.
18:11I only hung out with Christian people.
18:13I didn't date.
18:14You know, I served God.
18:15I was on fire for God.
18:17I thought that doing all of the right things would lead to, like, the right outcome.
18:22And so why am I so depressed?
18:24Why am I suicidal?
18:25You know, why do I feel so much guilt and shame and condemnation all the time?
18:29I must be doing it wrong.
18:31I must have sin.
18:32There must be something bad about me that's just irredeemable and broken.
18:40Every day they tell you, you're elite.
18:42You're changing the world.
18:43So they're pumping you up all the time.
18:44They're also breaking you down.
18:46Sin, guilt, shame, you're bad.
18:48All of these things.
18:49And to the point that you're in a prison, nobody else can see it,
18:51but the prison is in your mind.
18:56This whole teen mania thing has had me way down.
19:00All this depression crap and this low self-esteem.
19:03Always thinking the most negative thing.
19:04Always just wallowing in self-pity and depression.
19:08I just can't live like this anymore.
19:10That's where I'm at right now.
19:12Finally, I met with Dave Hawes.
19:14I was like, I need help.
19:17I remember sitting across from him in his office.
19:19You know, he looked at me and said,
19:21well, you just need to go to church more.
19:23I couldn't be doing more Christian stuff if I tried.
19:27I mean, I couldn't have done anymore.
19:29And that was the moment where I was like, no, I'm leaving.
19:31Like, this is, I'm not going to survive if I stay here.
19:36But it's scary to leave in that kind of an environment.
19:41There's such a feeling of belonging and community that that's what keeps people there a lot.
19:52People construct an identity in that space of who they are.
20:03To leave is to separate from that identity.
20:06So to move on to a new space was to leave that sense of self behind.
20:14I think that makes almost an impossible choice.
20:17This life that you're like so deeply entrenched in
20:19is gone.
20:22I was caught in this in-between space.
20:26The stuff that really caused the most trauma is stuff that is a lot harder to put on video.
20:36It took a while for me to actually talk about everything that happened because I thought it was normal.
20:46I left humania feeling something was wrong with me.
20:48I internalized a lot of that.
20:50I excused a lot of what went on there because it's like, you must protect your authority figures.
20:59Even when we were grown up and adults and married with kids, we still didn't talk about it.
21:05I never planned to be the demise of teen mania.
21:10I just thought, I want to help somebody and give them the advice that I wish somebody gave me.
21:14Teen Mania has an alumni bulletin board and people would have threads talking about current events.
21:23But there started to be people who had beef and wanted to talk about it.
21:27Teen Mania was like stopping that discourse.
21:30Well, if you don't like this, this is a Teen Mania paid for space.
21:34So you can pay for your own space, which Micah took very seriously.
21:40It was about 10 years after I left when I started the blog.
21:52At that time, Teen Mania was really at the peak of their popularity.
22:00You're just showing your city that there are young people that love God.
22:04That you don't want to be manipulated by a bunch of old people making money off destroying you.
22:10Teen Mania was raking in 20 million dollars a year.
22:14Even George W. Bush endorsed Teen Mania.
22:21I started the blog as an outlet for people to share their stories
22:24and to tell the truth about what Teen Mania actually is like and find healing.
22:30I wrote the blog anonymously at the beginning because it was really important to me that
22:34people contend with the arguments that I was making and not with who I was as a person.
22:40I think the fact that it had been so repressed, as soon as a little opening came,
22:47like people were ready to rush through the door.
22:55Nobody knew who was behind the blog, but I reached out to the person and just said,
23:01hey, thank you for saying this. You are now validating everything that I already knew.
23:10When Micah started the Recovering Alumni blog, she sent it to me and said, hey,
23:16I'm starting this. I invite you to be a part of it.
23:18And I was like, I love this. I love this engagement. This is fun.
23:21We had like a really lively comment section, just trying to like validate each other. Like,
23:27yeah, you did go through that. And that was heinous.
23:31There started to be threads and more and more threads. Hey, what about this? Hey, did anybody like
23:38little pieces? And I start reading it every day. It was very shocking over the top,
23:43over the line abusive. They would take a team of us to an abandoned well and make them crawl down
23:48the hole and through a pipe. Riding around in four wheelers, shooting at us with paintball guns.
23:54They had people actually eating cat food. One of the people in my company lost consciousness,
23:58and the other was finally released when her temperature reached 100. Permanent physical
24:02injuries, permanent trauma, real life torture. I was actually locked in a coffin twice during my easel,
24:10with mice and Madagascar hissing cockroaches. They were publishing stories from survivors who
24:17detailed their experiences of abuse. I think everybody felt like somebody's finally hearing it
24:25because it's a really particular kind of loneliness to go through something
24:31and then to have nobody believe you about what you went through.
24:40This is Dave Oz, joining you from Garden Valley, Texas. I had some people telling me about a
24:52particular website where there were some alumni that had some frustrations about the ministry.
24:57There are stories on that site that sometimes are true, and then there's sometimes there are stories
25:02that are not true. Once the blog took off and a lot of people were sharing stories, I realized that
25:10this was widespread enough. It needed to be addressed. And so I gathered 20 pages of stories.
25:21I FedExed it to each and every board member's home or business and contacted Dave Haas, who was in
25:28charge of the Honor Academy, had gone through all the levels of leadership and expected or hoped that
25:36they would read this and go, oh man, I had no idea this was going, we got to get on this,
25:40we got to fix this, this is awful. That is not the response that we got.
25:45Hey, well this is Recovering Alumni and Dave, I've got a few questions for you.
25:49Earlier you said that easel has changed a lot. I wanted to read you a few of the things that have
25:53been reported in the last three years. We've got hypothermia, leg, knee, ankle injuries.
25:58People that were having panic attacks were told that they were just fighting their flesh.
26:03People that were type 2 diabetic told to eat without their insulin. People who became suicidal.
26:08How do you justify an event that causes so many injuries?
26:12My turn. I think anytime you get 500 teenagers and you go outside and you run around for five
26:18straight days, there is no possible chance you're going to do that and not dislocate a kneecap,
26:24sprain an ankle. There are stories you're telling there that I've never heard of.
26:28I never had anyone in the Honor Academy come tell me about them. I mean, what's, what is your,
26:35what would you say is your heart intent? What are you hoping to accomplish both in this call,
26:39with your site? To me, you're just out to get me or something, I guess.
26:43I would love for you to understand the complete devastation you have wreaked on many people's
26:50lives for years and years and the core of their being. And I, and I don't think you're really
26:54getting that. If they had just apologized, there were so many people who would have never continued
27:02telling their stories and there was no willingness to do that. And that solidified into, oh really?
27:09You're going to deny that this happened to me? This isn't coming from Satanists or people that
27:14hate Jesus or hate the church. This is people that are part of the church. You know, we followed all
27:19the confrontation rules. We came to you with our grievances privately. You didn't listen. So now we
27:24go to the press. Crawling through the mud and rolling down a hill until you vomit all in the name of Jesus.
27:31Teenagers are put through strenuous exercises and sleep deprivation to, as their website says,
27:36learn to rely on God's strength. If we weren't doing it correctly, besides getting punished,
27:40they'd say it pays to be a winner and you're a loser. Pays to be a winner, you're a loser.
27:45Injuries range from cuts and bruises to more serious sprains and infections. Last year we had
27:51the bus come by and drop about 10 patients off. Micah Marley started My Teen Mania Experience blog.
27:58It's absolutely shocking that you could brainwash a young adult to roll down a hill through other people's
28:04vomit and somehow think that's a spiritual activity. It just blows my mind. A Facebook group called
28:10I Rolled the Hill discusses an ESOL rite of passage, rolling down a hill to the point of sickness.
28:18Parents that are sending their kids have no idea what is actually going on in those woods back there.
28:25It was really exciting to see that there were some other people who were trying to kind of raise
28:30the alarm that this group's up to something weird. Teen Mania suspended the ESOL program after the in-depth
28:36look. And then to counter the bad press, Teen Mania went into full damage control.
28:47They were just not in a good place to help fight what the people of recovering alumni were doing.
28:52And so I was brought in to help fight that directly.
28:55I had a background in conservative politics, and I had been at Americans for Prosperity,
29:01which focused on the fight to get conservative influence at the highest offices. Whether I was
29:07working for a campaign, my job was to represent Christ, and ultimately to speak boldly and live
29:12boldly for Christ. The first time I went to Teen Mania campus,
29:18I was impressed as hell. The idea of raising up an army of young people for God was part and parcel
29:27of my beliefs. I immediately started looking at the Recovering Alumni website. The story sounded so
29:34extreme and bizarre. I thought, there's no way this is real. I thought, this is a typical left-wing
29:42exaggeration of a Christian organization. I was going to come in and help quell this attack from
29:50Satan to help a ministry that has been so effective and helping so many thousands of teenagers lives
29:56over the decades. I said, I can help you fight this effectively persecution that you're facing.
30:04I learned about Micah early on. Here we are in Texas in the rain in camouflage ponchos carrying a cross
30:14down the side of the road, okay? If that doesn't look like a cult, I don't know what does.
30:20Micah was public enemy number one. I'd come up with a crisis communications plan.
30:27My strategy was to go on this blitz to bury Recovering Alumni with positive messages about Teen Mania.
30:38So having a passionate Christianity can be a little bit unusual. It's not the most popular thing,
30:44and we know that because of that, it being a little unusual, that can also be misunderstood.
30:50ESOL was a very positive and very lasting experience. You have medical people there,
30:57you have EMTs, you have the staff that are constantly asking you, are you okay?
31:01The Honor Academy cultivates a protected, safe environment. Former interns, influential people
31:09connect to the ministry. We just looped everybody in who had a positive experience with Teen Mania.
31:13You know, whenever someone asks me, what organization is making the greatest impact
31:19upon students in the United States? My answer is Teen Mania, led by Ron Luce.
31:2425 years of spreading light and life to teenagers. You are making an impact in America on young
31:32people that you cannot measure. Influential mega pastors or Christian authors. God bless you.
31:38He was trying to get credibility from all of these other people, and they were lending it to him.
31:43We had a very internet-focused effort with the intent that recovering alumni would not
31:50see the light of day on page one of Google. I even had people writing reviews on Yelp,
31:58on all of Ron's books on Amazon. You could write as many good press releases as you want,
32:03but if you've got 50 or 100 kids pouring out their guts to you and telling you,
32:08I went and I loved God, and I was abused in this way. I have nightmares every night.
32:13How many stories can you read before you go, okay, there might be something wrong there?
32:17Parents were reading my blog, and once they were reading my blog, they were not sending their children.
32:24The spiral was starting, and they saw it.
32:26We were ready to do anything to stop the dwindling numbers of Honor Academy attendance.
32:36Let me ask you this. How many of you guys have a voice?
32:42You just gotta use your voice!
32:45There's thousands of people that have been through the program, and a lot remain loyal to Team Mania.
32:50They've all been trained for battle, and they all think I'm the enemy.
32:54People would harass her, harass her dogs. She suffered death threats.
32:59She was the one who took the bulk of the hate. I know it took a toll on her.
33:05She did so much for us.
33:11By 2012, my blog was on the very front page of Google if you searched Team Mania,
33:16and I was hurting their numbers quite a bit. And if they don't get new interns, they're not getting
33:21new labor. And if they're not getting new labor, they can't keep putting on the amount of events
33:25that they're putting on. And that was money in Team Mania's pocket.
33:29Listen, we're in an urgent moment right now in the history of Team Ministry.
33:34Give us the name and help us get connected with a young person. We'll give you a certificate you can
33:38hand to them. There are rumors that are saying, what is this? Is Team Mania in bankruptcy?
33:42No, we're not in bankruptcy. If we're in bankruptcy, we'd be having a whole different conversation.
33:47You may have already given already, so thank you very much for that. But if
33:50anything you could possibly do, a small gift, a large gift, together we're going to do something
33:54just amazing. And then Ron very excitedly announced good news. We're going to give the campus back to
34:02the bank. But this is a good thing because we're going to move to Dallas. And of course,
34:06people were asking about the finances. Like, is this related to finances? And he said, well, no,
34:11this is for us to streamline, be closer to the DFW airport. And we've got a press release that we're
34:18going to send out about this. Some exciting news. We're moving our headquarters from Garden Valley,
34:24Texas, right to the middle of a world-class city in Dallas, Texas.
34:29You know, the one great thing when you go to a population mass like Dallas, there's hurting
34:33people everywhere. And we're going to get lots of practice reaching out to them. To Jesus, we just
34:37are so very grateful. I saw the bank statement, and it said foreclosure. Because of failure to pay,
34:49Ron was trying to salvage a sinking ship. It was my job to send out this press release. What's in
34:56this press release is a lie. Ron denied that they were in foreclosure, saying that they were returning
35:02the property to the bank instead of, we're broke. The Ten Commandments say, do not tell lies. Like,
35:09God cares about telling the truth. I pleaded with Ron to please tell the truth. I believe in Teenvania.
35:16I believe in you. Please tell the truth. And he wouldn't. And then I had a meeting to discuss recovering
35:24alumni. A new post had come out about someone who had been exorcised.
35:36And I said in this meeting, this is so absurd. Of course this didn't happen.
35:42They looked at me, didn't say a word. And I was like, it didn't happen, right? And they didn't say
35:49anything but switch topic. I was just like, oh my God, it's true. To me, that was the telltale sign
36:02that that did happen. And probably many other things on the recovering alumni website happened.
36:07And I was just stunned. I just felt this like cold shudder go through my body. When you know the truth,
36:13you can't go back. At the same time, the Choir of the Fire events were being canceled,
36:23youth groups did not get their money back. When Global Expeditions trips were being canceled,
36:28these teen missionaries did not get their money back. They're not wealthy kids. These are kids who
36:33did car washes, fake sales, fundraised like crazy, and Ron stole their money. My mission at that time
36:42became to expose the truth. I worked with other internal and external folks at Teen Mania and with
36:50alumni. I had a friend who worked in World Magazine. And I just called him up. I'm like, hey, I've got a
36:57story for you. And he's like, okay, are you sure you want to do this? I'm like, yes. This needs to get
37:02out there. Ron is stealing money from kids.
37:21And then the announcement of the shutdown came out.
37:32They never restarted the internship again. It was over. I remember thinking that was crazy.
37:41I didn't really think that that was going to happen. I'm like, well, that'd be crazy.
37:45When we started the blog, Teen Mania was the biggest Christian youth organization in America.
37:51And the idea that they would just go out of business, that was never even a possibility in
37:56my mind. It was certainly never the goal. The goal was just to help people who had been through the
38:00program. A brave group of survivors were the ones that eventually caused Teen Mania's demise.
38:10I was so happy. They took advantage of a lot of very sincere kids. And that genuinely makes me angrier now.
38:21It makes me a lot angrier now than I ever was when I was young.
38:37But when you die to yourself, that's when he breathes real life in you.
38:41And we've been talking about, you know, there's a battle going on for your generation. And this
38:48morning we're talking about the battle for your mind and for your dollars and for your identity.
38:54But God wants you to be a warrior that's known only as a follower of Christ.
39:00It took me many years to get that voice out of my head.
39:04There's a lot of things that stem back to Teen Mania that are still traumatic that I hold in my body.
39:15Thinking if I make any type of a mistake, I'm going to lose everyone.
39:19I'm thankful that Teen Mania is not around anymore.
39:24Even though Ron's trying to start a new thing somewhere.
39:27After Teen Mania went bankrupt in 2015, Ron has been trying to get other ministries going.
39:36And so he's gone overseas.
39:40Ron is trying to kind of replicate what he did with Teen Mania.
39:43This week we're praying that God will infect and invade the hearts of thousands of Burmese people that are Buddhists.
39:50He's toured around Africa to support and train pastors.
39:54He doesn't call it Teen Mania, but the talking points are all the same.
40:00And his methods, from what I've seen, are all the same.
40:14I think Ron really believed he was called by God to share the gospel with teenagers.
40:21I think there's this undercurrent of the ends justify the means.
40:24I think he sincerely doesn't know any other way of doing things.
40:28I do think Ron and Dave are victims as much as they are also perpetrators.
40:38They also have to live in this narrow, prescribed, rigid way of living.
40:44If you're telling other people that they're bad, they're evil, they're shameful, you also believe that about yourself.
40:50It's so hard not to psychoanalyze Ron Luce, this man who went looking for a father his whole life.
41:00If he could have just accepted that the wounds of his youth lived with him.
41:04Instead, he had to find a whole political apparatus, and then he had to drag all these other young people into it.
41:13Instead of contending with it, he had to spread it around to other young people who were just trying to grow up.
41:19It's like he wanted to lock them in to that same angry moment he couldn't get past.
41:24I think Ron Luce taught them that to be a Christian was to be angry.
41:32Took a lot of young people, had a lot of intense emotions.
41:35And he told them that your anger, your fury, which can curdle into hate, that's the one that matters most.
41:44Some kids got out of teen mania, but most did not.
41:49The army Ron trained is still out there.
41:51Teen mania was part of a movement to blow up the order as it is, and to build the new kingdom.
41:57It's not done yet.
41:59Welcome to the end of democracy.
42:02We're here to overthrow it completely.
42:04We didn't get all the way there on January 6th, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it.
42:09Amen.
42:11That's right, because all glory, all glory is not to government, all glory to God.
42:16This whole democracy thing.
42:21How important is that?
42:22You know what?
42:22Let's just rewrite the Constitution.
42:24So now comes this idea called Convention of States.
42:28There is something called Convention of States Article 5 in our Constitution.
42:32It's gathering momentum.
42:33There's an intensity around the Convention of States as an idea that is really noticeable.
42:39There's a reason for that.
42:40The Convention of States is an effort, in essence, to amend the Constitution.
42:44Shred the Bill of Rights, First Amendment, separation of church and state.
42:50The Convention of States has been endorsed by a number of influential evangelical leaders,
42:54including James Dobson.
42:56Remember those words, Convention of States.
42:59And also House Speaker Mike Johnson.
43:01An amendment may be proposed by two-thirds of the states in a convention.
43:05And many, many others that have played an important role in the religious right for many years.
43:09They say it's about states' rights.
43:13States' rights, the battle cry of segregation, the battle cry of the Confederacy.
43:19It's about decentralizing power and letting California be California, letting Idaho be Idaho.
43:24Let Alabama be Alabama.
43:26And that is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a United States.
43:30I spent a lot of my teen years on the campaign trail, laying the groundwork for the Tea Party movement.
43:38I was a true believer.
43:40I put my heart and soul into this movement.
43:42It is an existential threat to democracy.
43:47The Convention of States is a way to amend the Constitution without using the normal federal Congress.
43:53They want to do it a different way that they are legally allowed to do.
43:56And they only need 34 states.
43:59They call a meeting to write amendments to the Constitution.
44:02Once they get in there and open the Constitution up, they can basically do whatever they want.
44:07They just need their army to vote for their state politicians in order to succeed.
44:16This is not going to be put to a vote by the people, except for the fact that the people elect the legislators.
44:23You don't have to deal with the low-information voters.
44:28They've gone so much further than you would expect.
44:31We're in 19 states, so past halfway.
44:34We have 15 states to go.
44:36I'm telling you, it has the possibility of becoming the law.
44:41They are actually doing model conventions now.
44:44They're LARPing it.
44:45It appears that they will be satisfied by nothing less than the complete destruction of our American liberty.
44:52Must we not then do something secure to those very liberties?
44:56They role-play the Convention of States so that they'll be ready.
45:00Alabama votes yes.
45:03What God has commanded you to do is to take the kingdom.
45:06You take it by force and now.
45:11The push to put the Lord's scripture into Florida public schools is just going to happen.
45:15The words in God we trust will be required reading in Louisiana schools this year.
45:18Republicans today blocked legislation designed to protect access to in vitro fertilization or IVF.
45:24The new state guidelines sent out today requiring teaching from the Bible.
45:28Texas saw a 56% rise in maternal mortality.
45:31In fact, I think divorce should basically be outlawed.
45:34Wave your Christian nationalist wand.
45:36Will women have the right to vote tomorrow?
45:37No.
45:38We own the country, not them.
45:40They are aiming for a complete structural transformation.
45:45This is the project to rewire America.
45:53It's fine. I'm safe.
45:56Complete the stress cycle.
45:58Evangelical culture is very much a binary.
46:05There is no nuance.
46:08You have to pick one side or the other.
46:10It's the black and white thinking.
46:13My books have been a part of putting these heavy burdens and rules on people that weren't in the Bible.
46:20And I'm very sorry for that.
46:21And I think this is something that a lot of people who grew up in this movement
46:28and are now adults have to reflect on to one degree or another.
46:31You know, what was I involved in?
46:34What did I do?
46:35And who did I hurt?
46:38My own ignorant and small-minded beliefs allowed me to dismiss the harm that happened to these kids.
46:47And that is wrong.
46:48That was wrong.
46:52And I know how many victims of abuse, spiritual, physical, sexual, are not believed.
47:00And how the systems that we have in place cause harm at a huge scale.
47:08I'm sorry that I caused that harm.
47:10And I was a part of a system that continued to perpetuate harm against people who were abused.
47:20There was a lot rooted in me that I had to dig out from this kind of experience.
47:25There was a lot of prejudice I didn't know that I had towards just people living their lives.
47:33Because even if you say that you love everybody equally, if they don't line up with what you believe
47:39or what you say is true, there will always be something wrong with them.
47:44And in some part of your mind, you're probably not even aware of it, but you're being judgmental of them.
47:49And you are telling them in a million nonverbal ways that you're doing it wrong and you're not good enough.
48:00We were complicit and we were also victims.
48:05But there's tremendous grace for anyone who went through it.
48:11Anyone who had a good experience, and some people did have a good experience.
48:15Like genuinely had a positive experience.
48:20But this isn't for them.
48:25The ring represents hard things.
48:29Things that I went through and things that I accomplished.
48:32Trauma and loss and grief and pain.
48:37I have nothing left of that life.
48:40I have nothing left to hold of that experience.
48:44I burned it all.
48:45And I'm glad that it's gone.
48:48So for almost two and a half decades, I have been really taking the time to be honest about who I was,
48:54what I really, really wanted.
48:56I want to be the person that that 18-year-old will be proud of.
49:00And look at me and go, thank you for healing me.
49:05Thank you for doing this work.
49:07We all get together all the time, our mom and our dad, our dad's husband.
49:16We go on vacations together.
49:17Yeah, it's great, it's great.
49:18And so all the, his feeling of I'm going to lose my family.
49:23Yeah.
49:23Now we have this huge family and all these kids and grandkids.
49:26And we all rejected kind of that narrative of like, this is what it's supposed to look like.
49:30Coming to terms with the fact that this Jesus that's been sold to me for the longest time
49:34is not my Jesus.
49:38It's a journey, for sure.
49:41I still identify as a Christian.
49:44The Jesus kind.
49:45I think that little voice in the back of your mind that sometimes goes, wait a minute.
49:55And you start like, that's you.
49:57That's your conscience.
49:59And it's okay to listen to that voice.
50:02That voice is not evil.
50:03It is not going to lead you astray.
50:06What are you hoping might come of this for people hearing your story?
50:12You have to stand for the truth, and you have to stand for what's right,
50:18or else we're going to lose everything.
50:19At the end of the day, we cannot let these people silence us.
50:22They are plotting.
50:24They are strategizing.
50:25While everybody else is out there living their life, not trying to control everybody.
50:29Guess what?
50:30All the authoritarian people got together, and they're all coming after you.
50:42Thing does none.
50:46They are umphousness-שה sans behavior of conversation for them.
50:47Recommds meeting forever.
50:48In a second there's not went another metaphor.
50:50Well, my brother once became one technically marksman,
50:51or I've- I have to catch up on the sides of the л Boima.
50:53Well, to the table.
50:55I've heard him come trueИн's life,
50:57oh that is common for him.
50:59Call me.
51:00Okay.
51:00Well, I've seen him look.
51:01I have faith in it.
51:03I've seen it on his mission of the enemy to everёт公式.
51:05I believe it in part of all things.
51:07Just to point out.
51:08And it's not like you.
51:09Just to point out your idly on earth dozen.
51:10Transcription by CastingWords
51:40CastingWords
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