Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War is peeling back the curtain on the evangelical youth organization that took America by storm in the 1990s.
The Prime Video docuseries premiered Wednesday, July 23, exploring Ron Luce’s wildly popular Teen Mania Ministries, which became one of the largest Christian youth organizations in the country. Luce, now 64, toured the organization’s “Acquire the Fire” events throughout major cities in the U.S. and Canada, espousing Christian values through live concerts and high-energy performances. Other programs included Global Expeditions mission trips, Honor Academy internships and Extreme Camps held at the Teen Mania campus in Texas.
As Teen Mania grew more popular, its practices took a dangerous and militant turn. According to Shiny Happy People, young participants experienced psychological — and sometimes physical — distress that had lasting impacts well into adulthood.
Several survivors came forward to share their stories in the shocking three-part docuseries, including Mica Ringo, who created the “Recovering Alumni” blog that gave former Teen Mania followers a safe space to speak out.
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“I never planned to be the demise of Teen Mania,” Ringo said in the doc. “I just thought, I wanna help somebody and give them the advice that I wish somebody gave me.”
The blog came to be “about 10 years after” Ringo left the organization behind. “At that time, Teen Mania was really at the peak of their popularity. … I started the blog as an outlet for people to share their stories and to tell the truth about what Teen Mania is actually like and find healing,” Ringo explained. “I wrote the blog anonymously at the beginning because it was really important to me that people contend with the arguments I was making and not with who I was as a person.”
Mica Ringo Courtesy of Prime Video
It wasn’t long before Ringo’s posts reached their intended audience. “We had a really lively comments section, just trying to validate people, like, ‘Yeah, you did go through that and that was heinous,’” Ringo said, adding that what was being shared online “was very shocking” and “over the line abusive.”
As Ringo reflected on how the blog took off, viewers saw screenshots of various comments from fellow Teen Mania survivors describing their own experiences at the Honor Academy.
“They would take a team to an abandoned well and make them crawl down the hole and through a pipe to come out at the base of a hill,” one user claimed, while another said, “I got shot in the head with a paintball.”
A third post claimed, “I know for a fact cat food was served because I helped take it out … [and] place it in Styrofoam bowls … A staff member told me that it was fine [and] if dogs and cats could eat it, so could humans.”
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Another alum alleged that they were “actually locked in a coffin twice … with mice and Madagascar hissing cockroaches.” Several posts referred to health and safety concerns, with a user claiming they “went into acute seizure mode” during the internship.
“One of the people in my company lost consciousness and the other was finally released when her temperature reached 102,” one post read.
With so many alumni coming forward, Ringo decided to take their stories to the organization. “I gathered 20 pages of stories. I [sent them] to each and every board member’s home or business … and expected or hoped that they would read this and go, ‘Oh, man. I had no idea this was going on. We gotta get on this, we gotta fix this. This is awful,’” Ringo said. “That is not the response that we got.”
During an alumni conference call in 2010, the audio from which was featured in the docuseries, Teen Mania executive vice president David Hasz noted that he was aware of the blog. “There are stories on that site that sometimes are true,” he admitted. “And then sometimes there are stories that are not true.”
When the alumni group’s grievances weren’t resolved “privately,” Ringo’s next step was to go public. “It’s absolutely shocking that you could brainwash a young adult to roll down a hill through other people’s vomit and somehow think that’s a spiritual activity. It just blows my mind,” Ringo said in a clip from prior news coverage about the controversial tactics used by Teen Mania.
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According to Ringo, the organization “went into full damage control” mode in an attempt to maintain enrollment in its programming. Along with interviewing survivors, Shiny Happy People also featured Cindy Mallette, the former comms director for Teen Mania.
“I immediately started looking at the Recovering Alumni website. The stories sounded so extreme and bizarre, I thought, ‘There’s no way this is real,’” Mallette recalled, adding that Teen Mania was “ready to do anything to stop the dwindling numbers” of participants.
The ministry did, however, go on to face financial difficulties as the accusations emerged. In December 2015, Luce announced that Teen Mania would “cease operations.” That same month, news broke that Teen Mania filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, closing permanently.
While the ministry is no longer active, its impact hasn’t gone away. “There’s thousands of people who’ve been through the program and a lot remain loyal to Teen Mania,” Ringo said in the doc. “They’ve all been trained for battle and they all think I’m the enemy.”
Shiny Happy People is available to stream on Prime Video.
