Didn't see a thread on this so I thought I'd start it.


Shiny Happy People Season 2 (Amazon Prime)
Season 2 is three episodes and covers Teen Mania which was a very popular youth ministry in the 90s that was also a cult. They had a large campus in east Texas between Canton and Tyler that was their base of operations and home to their Honor Academy. It covers the founder Ron Luce and the three main branches of Teen Mania as well as their downfall

• Acquire the Fire
• Global Expeditions
• Honor Academy

I thought it was good but could have gone into even more detail on how messed up and bad the program was. It's a little personal because I have a family member that was in really deep and it messed them up so badly, they never really recovered.

Watched it last week. Very interesting. Well done but episode 1 was basically the same as episode three.

Watching the second season brought me back to my teenage years in McKinney, TX. I grew in the Disciples of Christ Church but First Baptist dominated the town and had tons of youth events that welcomed everyone, so I went to many of them. Their youth group and yg leader mirrored a lot of the ideas within the documentary. He wasn't a fraud or dangerous but the **** they focused on was intense. They were primarily focused on drinking and sex/homosexuality at just about every event we went to. Today I wonder why they didn't focus on other sins.

never heard of this group prior to this documentary and I'm glad they were shut down in 2015.

Attempt in episode 3 to try yolk their oxen to TPUSA is very weak.

Where were these kids parents?

BadMoonRisin said:

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never heard of this group prior to this documentary and I'm glad they were shut down in 2015.

Attempt in episode 3 to try yolk their oxen to TPUSA is very weak.

Where were these kids parents?

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Most just assumed that everything was fine. They were just going to a Christian summer camp or mission trips. That's typically a fairly safe activity. There was also a lot of social pressure to prevent the kids from speaking out. Ron Luce was almost mythical to a lot of people and to imply he was doing something bad was close to heresy. Plus once you were cast out, that's your entire social group/family gone. Everyone severed all ties to you. t's similar to Scientology in that manner

I remember them doing promos at a youth event I went to when I was in high school. They made a big deal out of Cassie Bernall and "making the devil pay" for keeping her from going on her trip with them. I was and am still hella baptist, and that still straight up pegged my impressionable young mind's BS meter.