‘Shiny Happy People’ Season 2: ‘A Teenage Holy War’ To Focus On Ron Luce’s Teen Mania
Season Two of the hit TV docuseries “Shiny Happy People” will focus on now-defunct Dallas-based youth ministry Teen Mania and founder Ron Luce, Amazon Prime Video announced Wednesday. Premiering July 23, the three-episode season will expose the early-2000s evangelical teen pop culture phenomenon.
“Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War” will delve deeply into what was once America’s largest Christian youth ministry. Led by the charismatic Luce, it shut down in 2015 after years of financial troubles.
The ministry’s growth was propelled by its stadium events. According to Luce’s current bio, more than 3 million youths in North America from more than 100,000 churches participated. Many were the children of baby boomers converted in the Jesus movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.
READ: How I Escaped From The Shiny Happy People
A press release on the series promises “peak millennial nostalgia and cringe.” It also features “colossal stadiums filled with teens enraptured by religious rock anthems, inspired to swear purity oaths and eagerly embark by the thousands on culturally questionable global missions.”
In a statement to The Roys Report (TRR), docuseries producer Cori Shepherd said this season reflects “a real love and nostalgia” for late-1990s youth group culture. It also examines the impact of how some beliefs are lived out.
Shepherd said, “A lot of good came out of that time — deep friendships in youth group, important lasting values that people have held onto, Carman videos (!) — even something as easy-to-mock but as ultimately profound as a bracelet reminding us to stop and think WWJD?”
She added, “But it’s also an honest look at what else was taught that didn’t end up serving the spiritual or emotional lives of the kids of that era — and of the adults they’ve become.”
Responding to TRR’s request for comment, Ron Luce merely replied, “There is no story.”
The docuseries’ first season, titled “Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets,” offered an inside look at the large, home-schooled family of Jim-Bob and Michelle Duggar. The Duggar family was featured for years on TLC’s top-rated reality TV show “19 Kids and Counting.”
With elder sibling Jill Duggar Dillard providing commentary, the first season unpacked how Christian educator Bill Gothard and his patriarchy-centered curriculum influenced the family.
It also compiled accounts of students allegedly abused in Gothard’s ministries and camps.
The series illustrated how, due in part to the Duggars’ TV programs, the influence of Gothard’s religious empire went beyond the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) movement.
The first season sparked significant controversy among evangelicals and beyond.
Shepherd, who noted to TRR that she was raised in Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God churches, responded to believers skeptical of the series. “This isn’t a ‘Hollywood’ attack on faith. I come from the Church. I love so much of how I was raised.”
‘Spiritual abuse can hide beneath the surface’
Produced by award-winning filmmakers Blye Faust and Shepherd, part of the team behind the Oscar winning film “Spotlight,” “Shiny Happy People” became the most-watched docuseries to date for Prime Video.
Now the producers are turning their focus to Teen Mania, founded in 1986 by Oral Roberts University graduate Ron Luce.
For about three decades, Luce organized flashy stadium events, branded “Acquire the Fire,” with Christian rock bands, dance groups and pyrotechnics, along with sermons by Luce and other youth leaders.
The events recruited youth for Teen Mania’s gap-year program Honor Academy, based in Garden Valley — 100 miles east of Dallas — and the ministry’s international missions. During summers, tens of thousands of teens participated in the latter.
Honor Academy, which at its peak had annual enrollment of more than 1,000 students, will be a significant focus of the series. A part of the training school was a boot camp week called ESOAL (“emotionally stretching opportunity of a lifetime”), which featured sleep deprivation and extreme physical challenges.
The docuseries release calls Honor Academy “a high-pressure pipeline of brutal spiritual bootcamps, surreal role-playing scenarios, and relentless psychological control … all under the command of a charismatic leader with endlessly expanding ambitions.”
In 2005, Luce rebranded the youth stadium events under the banner “Battle Cry,” a campaign with militant imagery that emphasized cultural threats to Christianity and seemed to veer into politics.
YouTuber Blaise Foret, host of “Wake Up And Win,” which addresses issues of church abuse, attended Honor Academy starting in 2001 and was a staff member at Teen Mania for six years.
He told TRR he views that time in a “positive” light but added, “I’ve become increasingly aware of how spiritual abuse can hide beneath the surface in high-intensity ministry environments.”
“I plan to watch the docuseries with an open mind and listen intently and compassionately to those processing pain from their time at Teen Mania or any similar ministry,” said Foret. “I believe it’s super important to listen when people bravely speak up, even when their stories challenge our own positive memories.”
This article originally appeared at The Roys Report.
Josh Shepherd writes on faith, culture and public policy for several media outlets.