Hi, my name is Ray, and I'm a Christian musician.
And I'm also gay.
And I want you to know that it gets better.
[light music playing]
[Liz] Our dad, he had a very successful career,
but he had a bit of a secret.
No one knew all those years.
He became very depressed.
[Phil] At the time, I was coming back from the internship, frankly destroyed.
Dad's career starts to slow down a little bit
and I started to get really concerned about Dad's mental health.
[woman] Here's Daddy, we have him after his long, long drive.
-We sat him down at like a family meeting. -Which we do not have family meetings.
-We don't do that. -That is not a thing our family does.
-We don't need to talk about that. -We don't talk about things.
We just got very earnest, and we're like, "Dad, what's what's wrong?"
I had prayed for 30 years. I gave my heart to the Lord at 19.
I went to church, I went to counseling. I went through deliverance.
I did every single thing that everybody said to do.
And at the end of 30 years, I just decided I can't pretend anymore.
I was with my children and my wife, and I thought,
"If I can't tell them who I really am and what I'm going through,
what kind of a father am I?"
We immediately... we supported him.
We told him how much we loved him.
I was like, "Guys, I think it's fine to be gay. I think it's good.
-I think it's okay." -Yeah.
-Dad came out publicly, and... -Church turned on him.
[strings music playing]
[Ray] Can a gay person be a Christian?
Some people have it so nailed down that nobody can be a Christian.
I kind of decided the only person
that can really answer that question is Jesus and you.
After my internship the next spring, I ran into Ron at the Acquire the Fire,
when it came to Muncie.
And we sat together for 30 minutes.
Dad came up, and he was like, "Oh, homosexuality is bad."
He wished me well, and that was the last time I talked to Ron.
I wasn't quite, like, "I'm never touching this organization again."
However, in the few years following...
-Let me hear your battle cry tonight! -[teens screaming]
[Phil] ...Teen Mania just becomes crazier than you ever imagined.
Whoever speaks up most gets to shape the culture.
Suddenly, he's holding events on the steps of government buildings.
Do you consider being gay a crime?
Well, we believe in purity.
According to the Bible, it's not in God's plan.
We won't be silenced! Our voices will be heard!
The message they say is very divisive, rather than inclusive.
The message of Jesus was divisive as well.
[Phil] And Ron recruits a generation into holy war.
[screams]
[Ron] Yes, Lord! Oh, God, give us this generation!
Oh, God, we're going to war!
[theme music playing]
The gay marriage movement is spreading.
[Jeff] In the early 2000s, same sex marriage was a big issue
in the United States.
The Christian right leaders, the Arlington Group in particular,
are sitting there thinking about, "How do we politically organize?"
Same sex marriage was a battleground that they wanted to fight on.
The most dangerous national policy being considered now,
of course, is same sex marriage.
I think what's sometimes misunderstood about fundamentalism
is it's not driven so much by any of the particular issues of the day.
The idea that a woman has rights,
or the idea that your body is your own, and you can be queer or whoever you are,
these are all, in the fundamentalist mind, rebellions against the authority of God.
The promotion of homosexuality is a deplorable reality
that we cannot countenance. Something must be done.
This group has seen its cultural power declining.
It has seen its numbers shrinking.
[newswoman] A large majority of young people support same sex marriage,
leading some supporters to believe increasing national support is inevitable,
as the younger generation gains more power.
[Jeff] These men, who had been in it for a long time,
knew that you got to capture these kids before it's too late.
We need them because they're going to be voters in the future.
They knew they needed that power. It was about cultivation, right?
It was about long term victories. They needed that army of kids.
They needed Ron, and Ron's ready.
The last couple of years have been pretty alarming to me
because we have so much to lose if we lose this generation.
We could be in total moral chaos and anarchy
if we don't turn this thing around. We've got to do something about it.
[Jeff] It's Ron's chance to be the good son trying to please his father.
The world lulled us to sleep and told us things like,
"There's no right or wrong. Why not legalize gay marriage?
I mean, come on. What's wrong? It's just a different thing.
And besides, you were born that way." That's what the world told us.
He desires to see a dramatic response.
He starts dreaming really big.
What could be done to build a massive political force of kids
dedicated to a God-led nation?
And so he creates Battlecry.
-[explosions] -[rock music playing]
[Dani] Teen Mania already had the Honor Academy, Global Expeditions,
and Acquire the Fire.
Battlecry was designed to be a bigger Acquire the Fire.
-[dramatic music playing] -[bell ringing]
[fireworks screeching]
[Phil] Battlecry was Acquire the Fire on steroids.
[screams]
I didn't hear you! Let me hear your battle cry tonight!
[Dani] These were big stadium events, really getting people pumped up.
I want to say he had Seals or something rappel down from part of the stadium.
But wait, there's more.
We've launched a campaign called "Battlecry for a Generation".
-This was a movement. -A call to be politically active.
-"Battlecry for a Generation". -The book--
Study series--
[man] The ultimate interactive website, designed to launch you into battle,
and to help you be an intense warrior for Christ
-as you fight on the frontlines. -[gunshots]
[Jeff] Everything was a military metaphor, and he'd been using that before.
But he took it to a new extreme.
And suddenly, it was like, "Oh, my gosh, there's news coverage of this."
[choir music playing]
-Let me hear your battle cry tonight! -[screams]
I'm looking at a whole army of young people who want to speak out.
[Jeff] It's The Red and the Black.
This was fascism... in front of me, on a massive scale.
It goes from the idea of a Christian right
that's like, "We want our piece of the pie,"
to, "No, we're taking the whole thing. We're taking America back."
[Ron] What if we quit listening to the culture,
and we said, "We want to shape the culture,
instead of being shaped by the culture?"
What if we said we want our voice to be heard instead of your voice to be heard?
[Jeff] He no longer wanted the kids to turn away from the culture.
Now he wanted them to take it over.
It was the first time that it was very much
trying to get the youth involved in political issues,
as opposed to just being an event to inspire them.
[reporter] This sounds like a message of bringing back your values,
but it's actually a message of intolerance and of hate.
Now, you could say it's divisive. Well, maybe it needs to be divisive.
He starts gathering in support
from pretty serious conservative sources of capital.
The Arlington Group.
-I want you to join the Battlecry... -Battlecry.
[man] The Battlecry Coalition.
Ron did it. He brought them the children.
Lord, as an army, we unite, and we say, "No! Enough is enough."
They're a warrior, God. Use them.
[Jeff] You've narrowed Christianity down to one word... "fight".
[Ron] The enemy has declared war on you guys.
It is time to strike back with the love of God. Are you ready?
[screams]
[Phil] If you build that army,
eventually you have to give them their marching orders.
If you're telling them that it's all high stakes,
eventually you got to point them into a battle.
That pivot happened very quickly.
Tens of thousands of teens waving banners
and saying they're taking back their generation.
We won't be silent! Our voices will be heard!
[Jeff] These big arena events are now accompanied by,
"We're going to do a rally at some place of governance,"
to an explicitly political end.
We've got virgin teenage America being raped on the sidewalk,
and Americans just walk by and look at it.
[Jeff] Ron started leading the kids in political protests.
He'd never done that before.
One of the very early ones is in San Francisco.
He goes to San Francisco's City Hall because same sex marriages had
only a couple of years previous, become legal there.
[Mica] I think he felt emboldened to go to San Francisco,
to the steps of City Hall, in the gayest city in America,
and he wanted to plant himself right in the middle of the culture wars
and get as many kids as he could to follow him.
And they said pretty explicitly,
"We're not here because it's a heavily gay city.
We're here because it's one of the most secular cities in the country."
They went there because of gay marriage.
In part, that's what they said in their press release.
We're here as teenagers just to stand up, as the leaders of this cultural war,
that is just fighting up and saying enough is enough.
[Phil] There is no doubt in my mind that they were seeing this
as a confrontation between church and enemy of the church.
This was a movement upon San Francisco.
San Francisco, God bless them, pushes back hard.
[newswoman] Protesters were out in full force,
accusing the group of being anti-gay and anti-choice.
[man] Battlecry is not a harmless movement.
Its program is fiercely anti-woman,
anti-gay, pro-war, and pro-obedience.
Battlecry is a tool to make the kids into little fascist zombies.
"The army of God." You guys don't see anything wrong with the army of God?
They're calling us angry, yet they were the ones angry.
We didn't realize that it was kind of a hotbed
for a very violent response to people who represent the Bible.
I can't imagine they would play ignorant,
of like, "Oh, I didn't even realize."
To represent a far bigger agenda. A Christian right, theocratic agenda.
Joining us now from Washington, Ron Luce.
They think you might want a theocracy in this country?
-Is that true? -Absolutely not.
We just want young people to have a voice. We're being drowned out.
Do you want the Bible to go over into public policy?
We want just Judeo-Christian values that made our nation great,
and it's really less about what I want.
It's what these young people are voicing their own opinion.
We were at war.
We were an army for God.
We were going to rise up with a battle cry.
But the bad thing about using
that sort of mindset is that you create a soldier
who will follow orders in an unquestioning way,
because that's what you have to do when you're being shot at.
[sighs]
I don't know how you segment your mind to not think
about the ramifications of what you are doing to kids.
[Dani] Honor Academy interns were behind the scenes,
running almost everything that you saw at these events.
We were working 15-hour days.
You're sacrificing yourself for this vision.
Teen Mania was like a giant systemic machine.
[Corey] We did dozens of cities in a row,
sleeping on a bus as we drove through the night.
We were exhausted.
I got shingles... from the stress.
They'd given us five dollars a day to eat with.
We had to trust God for the rest of it.
And I remember once running out of money,
and I was like, "Okay, I'll just call it a fast." [laughs]
All of those young people who provide the labor, that is his operation.
It is absolutely exploiting these kids.
[Corey] At the Honor Academy, there was a monthly tuition.
You pay to work. I was in the middle of the ministry team touring.
They were starting to hound me for money.
If you ever got behind on your payments, you would get kicked out.
[Corey] When you don't have enough money in your account,
they send you on what is called "a fundraising trip".
They told me that they were going to send me on a fundraising trip
or dismiss me after I've spent that entire year traveling the country,
saving people for "them", getting people to go on mission trips for them.
Here's a book on all the different things that you can do to raise funds.
One 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.
I will let you crack an egg over my head for a donation of any amount.
Crack an egg over my head.
Shame, embarrassment.
I think the theology of Teen Mania is based on the impossibility of the ask.
We're asking you to be something you can't be, if you're going to be human.
There's no point where you say, "I did it." You're always failing.
Well, then, try more, do more, become more, serve more, submit more.
These kids, they were disposable.
About a quarter of the interns didn't last the whole year.
Whether it was they couldn't raise the money,
or they broke one of the rules.
People who broke a rule,
they would get a "BV", which was a bon voyage,
which was a very unceremonious exit.
Within 24 hours, you were out of campus, like you were kicked out like that.
Once they were gone, you never spoke to them again.
It was like they never existed, almost.
I was dismissed for kissing a boy, and it was just a kiss.
So this is the ministry team, and I would like you to see what goes on here.
The people that I have grown to love and know the best,
now, they weren't allowed to talk to me.
They had to delete my number, and I was kicked off campus.
It was just like I did not exist.
Very lonely.
Very, very lonely.
[singing] ♪ I miss you so ♪
♪ You don't even know ♪
[Carrie] You could return to the Honor Academy
after you were kicked out of the program.
However, we would have to humble ourselves.
And once we had done all of the things that were required
by Dave, by Ron, then we could reapply to come back.
A lot of us wanted to go back.
Nobody knew how to live out in the world anymore.
I went through a really rough year, but I was able to go back.
[Jeff] The more you get into that guilt cycle,
the more committed you become to the organization, the more unworthy you are,
the more grateful you are for them letting you stay there.
I just made choices that I shouldn't have knowingly,
like knowing that it was wrong.
Knowing that there would be consequences.
[Dani] After I came back to Teen Mania, I ended up in an Acquire the Fire video.
[singing] ♪ I've been where you are, and then some ♪
♪ I know exactly what you're feeling ♪
♪ I've been with my share of gentlemen ♪
[Dani] In that video, we're supposed to mimic this story
in the Bible of the adulterous woman.
"He has no sin cast the first stone."
But in the video, it's this woman, me, in this room.
The door opens, and these three men come in.
And the video was shown all across America,
every Acquire the Fire that year.
I, as a woman, who was shamed for something that I had done,
was now in a video broadcast to the world
about a woman who is shamed for what she had done.
But I volunteered to do it.
[Jeff] The indoctrination is complete now.
It is inside you.
You're doing it to yourself, and you're doing it willingly.
And then it was my turn to be erased.
I was still working as Ron's assistant.
I was just getting super, super depressed, and I didn't understand why.
I read my Bible every day. I had my quiet times. I prayed.
I only hung out with Christian people. I didn't date, you know, I served God.
I was on fire for God.
I thought that doing all of the right things would lead to the right outcome.
And so why am I so depressed? Why am I suicidal?
Why do I feel so much guilt and shame and condemnation all the time?
I must be doing it wrong. I must have sin.
There must be something bad about me that's just irredeemable and broken.
Every day they tell you you're elite, you're changing the world.
So they're pumping you up all the time. They're also breaking you down.
Sin, guilt, shame. You're bad. All of these things.
And to the point that you're in a prison, nobody else can see it,
but the prison is in your mind.
This whole Teen Mania thing has had me way down.
All this depression crap and this low self-esteem,
always thinking the most negative thing,
always just wallowing in self-pity and depression.
I just can't live like this anymore. That's where I'm at right now.
Finally, I met with Dave Hasz. I was like, "I need help."
I remember sitting across from him in his office.
He looked at me and said,
"Well, you just need to go to church more."
I couldn't be doing more Christian stuff if I tried.
I couldn't have done any more.
And that was the moment where I was like, "No, I'm leaving.
I'm not going to survive if I stay here."
But it's scary to leave...
that kind of an environment.
There's such a feeling of belonging and...
[crying] and community, that's what keeps people there a lot.
And it's hard to lose that.
[sighs] Okay. [breathes deeply]
[Phil] People construct an identity in that space of who they are.
To leave is to separate from that identity.
-Mm-hm. -So to move on to a new space
was to leave that sense of self behind.
I think that makes almost an impossible choice.
This life that you're so deeply entrenched in... is gone.
I was caught in this in-between space.
The stuff that really...
caused the most trauma is stuff that it's a lot harder to put on video.
It took a while for me to...
actually talk about everything that happened
because I thought it was normal.
I left Teen Mania feeling something was wrong with me.
I internalized a lot of that.
I excused a lot of what went on there
because it's like, you must protect your authority figures.
Even when we were grown up and adults and married with kids,
we still didn't talk about it.
I never planned to be the demise of Teen Mania.
Um... [sniffles]
I just thought, I want to help somebody
and give them the advice that I wish somebody gave me.
[typing]
[Phil] Teen Mania has an alumni bulletin board,
and people would have threads talking about current events.
But there started to be people who had beef and wanted to talk about it.
Teen Mania was stopping that discourse.
"Well, if you don't like this, this is a Teen Mania paid for space,
so you can pay for your own space."
Which Mica took very seriously. [laughs]
[Mica] It was about ten years after I left, when I started the blog.
And at that time, Teen Mania was really at the peak of their popularity.
[screams]
[Ron] You're just showing your city that there are young people that love God,
that you don't want to be manipulated by a bunch of old people
making money off destroying you.
[Mica] Teen Mania was raking in $20 million a year.
Even George W. Bush endorsed Teen Mania.
I started the blog as an outlet for people to share their stories
and to tell the truth about what Teen Mania actually is like and find healing.
I wrote the blog anonymously at the beginning
because it was really important to me that people will contend with the arguments
that I was making and not with who I was as a person.
I think the fact that it had been so repressed,
as soon as a little opening came,
people were ready to rush through the door.
[Carrie] Nobody knew who was behind the blog,
but I reached out to the person.
I just said, "Hey, thank you for saying this."
You are now validating everything that I already knew.
When Mica started the Recovering Alumni blog,
she sent it to me and said,
"Hey, I'm starting this. I invite you to be a part of it."
And I was like, "I love this. I love this engagement. This is fun."
[Mica] We had a really lively comment section,
just trying to validate each other.
Like, "Yeah, you did go through that, and that was heinous."
[Phil] There started to be threads and more and more threads.
"Hey, what about this? Hey, did anybody..."
Like little pieces, and I start reading it every day.
It was very shocking. Over the top, over the line abusive.
They would take a team of us to an abandoned well
and make them crawl down the hole.
[Zachariah] Riding around in four-wheelers,
shooting at us with paintball guns.
[Corey] They had people actually eating cat food.
[Mica] One of the people in my company lost consciousness,
and the other was finally released when her temperature reached 102.
[Carrie] Permanent physical injuries. Permanent trauma, real life torture.
[Mica] I was actually locked in the coffin twice,
during my ESOAL, with mice and Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
[Carrie] They were publishing stories from survivors
who detailed their experiences of abuse.
[Mica] But I think everybody felt like somebody is finally hearing it.
Because it's a really particular kind of loneliness
to go through something,
and then to have nobody believe you about what you went through.
-[clicks] -[dramatic music playing]
[clicks]
[over phone]
[Mica] Once the blog took off and a lot of people were sharing stories,
I realized that this was widespread enough,
it needed to be addressed.
And so I gathered 20 pages of stories.
I FedExed it to each and every board members' home or business,
and contacted Dave Hasz, who was in charge of the Honor Academy.
You know, had gone through all the levels of leadership,
and expected or hoped that they would read this and go,
"Oh, man, I had no idea this was going--
We've got to get on this. We got to fix this. This is awful."
That is not the response that we got.
[over phone]
If they had just apologized,
there were so many people who would have never continued
-telling their stories. -Yeah.
And there was no willingness to do that. And that solidified into, "Oh, really?
You're going to deny that this happened to me?"
This isn't coming from Satanists
or people that hate Jesus or hate the church.
This is people that are part of the church.
You know, we followed all the confrontation rules.
We came to you with our grievances privately.
You didn't listen, so now we go to the press.
Crawling through the mud and rolling down a hill until you vomit.
All in the name of Jesus.
Teenagers are put through strenuous exercises and sleep deprivation
to, as their website says, "Learn to rely on God's strength."
If we weren't doing it correctly, besides getting punished,
They'd say it pays to be a winner, and you're a loser.
It pays to be a winner, and you're a loser.
[newsman] His injuries ranged from cuts and bruises
to more serious sprains and infections.
Last year, we had the bus come by and drop about ten patients off.
[newsman] Mica Marley started "My Teen Mania Experience" blog.
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's just blows my mind.
[newsman] A Facebook group called "I've Rolled the Hill"
discusses an ESOAL rite of passage,
rolling down a hill to the point of sickness.
Parents that are sending their kids have no idea
what is actually going on in those woods back there.
It was really exciting to see that there were some other people
who were trying to kind of raise the alarm that this group's up to something weird.
Teen Mania suspended the ESOAL program after the in-depth look.
[Mica] And then to counter the bad press, Teen Mania went into full damage control.
They were just not in a good place to help fight
what the people of Recovering Alumni were doing.
And so I was brought in to help fight that directly.
I had a background in conservative politics.
I had been at Americans for Prosperity,
which focused on the fight to get conservative influence
at the highest offices.
Whether I was working for a campaign, my job was to represent Christ
and ultimately to speak boldly and live boldly for Christ.
The first time I went to Teen Mania campus,
I was impressed as hell.
The idea of raising up an army of young people for God
was part and parcel of my beliefs.
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."
I thought this is a typical left-wing exaggeration of a Christian organization.
I was going to come in and help quell this attack from Satan
to help a ministry that has been so effective
in helping so many thousands of teenagers lives over the decades.
I said, "I can help you fight this effectively persecution
that you're facing."
-[clicks] -[typing]
I learned about Mica early on.
Here we are in Texas, in the rain, in camouflage ponchos,
carrying a cross down the side of the road.
Okay, if that doesn't look like a cult, I don't know what does.
Mica was public enemy number one.
I come up with a crisis communications plan.
My strategy was to go on this blitz to bury Recovering Alumni
with positive messages about Teen Mania.
So having a passionate Christianity can be a little bit unusual.
It's not the most popular thing, and we know that because of that,
it being a little unusual, that it can also be misunderstood.
ESOAL was a very positive and...
very lasting experience.
You have medical people, you have EMTs.
You have the staff that are constantly asking you, "Are you okay?"
The Honor Academy cultivates a protected safe environment.
Former interns, influential people connected to the ministry.
We just looped everybody in who had a positive experience with Teen Mania.
You know, whenever someone asked me what organization
is making the greatest impact upon students in the United States,
My answer is Teen Mania, led by Ron Luce.
25 years of spreading light and life to teenagers.
You are making an impact in America on young people that you cannot measure.
Influential mega pastors or Christian authors.
God bless you.
He was trying to get credibility from all of these other people,
and they were lending it to him.
We had a very Internet-focused effort, with the intent that Recovering Alumni
would not se the light of day on page one of Google.
I even had people writing reviews on Yelp,
on all of Ron's books on Amazon. [laughs]
[Mica] You could write as many good press releases as you want,
but if you've got 50 or 100 kids pouring out their guts to you
and telling you, "I went, and I loved God. I was abused in this way.
I have nightmares every night."
How many stories can you read before you go,
"Okay, there might be something wrong there."
Parents were reading my blog, and once they were reading my blog,
they were not sending their children.
The spiral was starting, and they saw it.
[Cindy] We were ready to do anything to stop
the dwindling numbers of Honor Academy attendance.
[applause]
Let me ask you this. How many of you guys have a voice?
[cheering]
You just got to use your voice.
[Mica] There's thousands of people that have been through the program,
and a lot remain loyal to Teen Mania.
They've all been trained for battle, and they all think I'm the enemy.
[Carrie] People with harass her. Harass her dogs.
She suffered death threats.
She was the one who took the bulk of the hate.
I know it took a toll on her.
She did so much for us.
-[typing] -[clicks]
[Mica] By 2012, my blog was on the very front page of Google,
if you searched Teen Mania,
and I was hurting their numbers quite a bit.
And if they don't get new interns, they're not getting new labor.
And if they're not getting new labor, they can't keep putting on
the amount of events that they're putting on.
And that was money in Teen Mania's pocket.
Listen, we're in an urgent moment right now in the history of teen ministry.
Give us the name, and help us get connected with a young person.
We'll give you a certificate you can hand to them.
[Ron] There are rumors out there I've seen, "Is Teen Mania in bankruptcy?"
No, we're not in bankruptcy.
If we're in bankruptcy, we'd be having a whole different conversation.
You may have already given already, so thank you very much for that.
But if anything you could possibly do, a small gift, a large gift,
together, we're going to do something just amazing.
[Cindy] And then Ron very excitedly announced good news.
We're going to give the campus back to the bank.
But this is a good thing because we're going to move to Dallas.
And of course, people are asking about the finances. [laughs]
Is this related to finances?
And he said, "Well, no, this is for us to streamline,
be closer to the DFW Airport,
and we've got a press release that we're going to send out about this."
Some exciting news.
We're moving our headquarters from Garden Valley, Texas,
right to the middle of a world class city, in Dallas, Texas.
You know, the one great thing when you go to a population mass like Dallas,
there's hurting people everywhere.
And we're going to get lots of practice reaching out to them.
To Jesus, we just... are so very grateful.
I saw the bank statement, and it said foreclosure.
Because of failure to pay.
Ron was trying to salvage a sinking ship.
It was my job to send out this press release.
What's in this press release is a lie.
Ron denied that they were in foreclosure,
saying that they were returning the property to the bank,
instead of, "We're broke."
The Ten Commandments say do not tell lies, like God cares about telling the truth.
I pleaded with Ron to please tell the truth.
I believe in Teen Mania. I believe in you. Please tell the truth.
And he wouldn't.
And then I had a meeting to discuss Recovering Alumni.
A post had come out about someone who had been exorcized.
And I said in this meeting, "This is so absurd.
Of course this didn't happen."
They looked at me, didn't say a word.
And I was like, "It didn't happen, right?"
And they didn't say anything, but switched topic.
I was just like, "Oh, my God, it's true."
To me, that was a telltale sign that that did happen,
and probably many other things on the Recovering Alumni website happened.
And I was just stunned.
I just felt this like cold shudder go through my body.
When you know the truth, you can't go back.
At the same time, Acquire the Fire events were being canceled.
Youth groups did not get their money back.
When Global Expeditions trips are being canceled,
these teen missionaries did not get their money back.
They're not wealthy kids.
These are kids who did car washes, bake sales,
fundraised like crazy, and Ron stole their money.
My mission at that time became to expose the truth.
I worked with other internal and external folks at Teen Media and with alumni.
I had a friend who worked in World Magazine.
And I just called him up, I'm like, "Hey, I've got a story for you."
And he's like, "Okay, are you sure you want to do this?"
I'm like, "Yes, this needs to get out there. Ron is stealing money from kids."
[dramatic music playing]
And then the announcement of a shutdown came out.
[music intensifies]
They never restarted the internship again.
It was over.
I remember thinking that was crazy.
I didn't really think that that was going to happen.
I'm like, "Well, that'd be crazy."
When we started the blog,
Teen Mania was the biggest Christian youth organization in America,
and the idea that they would just go out of business,
that was never even a possibility in my mind.
It was certainly never the goal.
The goal was just to help people who had been through the program.
A brave group of survivors were the ones
that eventually caused Teen Mania's demise.
I was so happy. [laughs]
They took advantage of a lot of very sincere kids,
and that genuinely makes me angrier now.
It makes me a lot angrier now than I ever was when I was young.
[Ron] But when you die to yourself, that's when He breathes real life in you.
And we've been talking about, there's a battle going on for your generation.
And this morning, we're talking about the battle for your mind
and for your dollars and for your identity.
But God wants you to be a warrior that's known only as a follower of Christ.
[Mica] It took me many years to get that voice out of my head.
There's a lot of things that stem back to Teen Mania
that are still traumatic, that I hold in my body.
Thinking if I make any type of mistake, I'm going to lose everyone.
I'm thankful that Teen Mania's not around anymore.
Even though Ron's trying to start a new thing somewhere.
After Teen Mania went bankrupt in 2015,
Ron has been trying get other ministries going,
and so he's gone overseas.
Ron is trying to kind of replicate what he did with Teen Mania.
This week, we're praying that God will infect and invade the hearts
of thousands of Burmese people, that were Buddhists.
[Phil] He's toured around Africa to support and train pastors.
He doesn't call it Teen Mania, but the talking points are all the same.
And his methods, from what I've seen, are all the same.
Why don't we give a big hand to our beloved brother, pastor, Ron Luce?
[cheering]
I think Ron really believed he was called by God
to share the gospel with teenagers.
I think there's this undercurrent of the ends justify the means.
I think he sincerely doesn't know any other way of doing things.
I do think Ron and Dave are victims
as much as they are also perpetrators.
They also have to live in this narrow, prescribed, rigid way of living.
If you're telling other people that they're bad,
they're evil, they're shameful, you also believe that about yourself.
It's so hard not to psychoanalyze Ron Luce,
this man who went looking for a father his whole life.
If he could have just accepted that the wounds of his youth lived with him...
Instead, he had to find a whole political apparatus,
and then he had to drag all these other young people into it,
instead of contending with it.
He had to spread it around to other young people who are just trying to grow up.
It's like he wanted to lock them in to that same angry moment
he couldn't get past.
I think Ron Luce taught them that to be a Christian was to be angry.
He took a lot of young people, who had a lot of intense emotions,
and he told them that your anger, your fury, which can curdle into hate,
that's the one that matters most.
Some kids got out of Teen Mania, but most did not.
The army Ron trained is still out there.
Teen Mania was part of a movement to blow up the order as it is
and to build a new kingdom. It's not done yet.
Welcome to the end of democracy.
We're here to overthrow it completely.
We didn't get all the way there on January sixth,
but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it.
-Amen. -That's right.
Because all glory, all glory is not to government, all glory to God.
[applause]
This whole democracy thing, how important is that?
You know what? Let's just rewrite the Constitution.
So now comes this idea called "Convention of States".
[Pete] There is something called "Convention of States".
Article five in our Constitution, it's gathering momentum.
There's an intensity around the Convention of States
-as an idea that really noticeable. -Yeah.
There's a reason for that.
The Convention of States is an effort, in essence, to amend the Constitution.
[Jeff] Shred the Bill of Rights, First Amendment.
Separation of church and state.
The Convention of States has been endorsed
by a number of influential evangelical leaders, including James Dobson.
[James] Remember those words, "Convention of States".
[Sarah] And also House Speaker Mike Johnson.
An amendment may be proposed by two thirds of the states in a convention...
And many, many others that have played an important role
in the religious right for many years.
They say it's about states rights,
states rights, the battle cry of segregation.
The battle cry of the Confederacy.
It's about decentralizing power,
and letting California be California, letting Idaho be Idaho.
Let Alabama be Alabama.
And that is not by any stretch of the imagination a United States.
I spent a lot of my teen years on the campaign trail,
laying the groundwork for the Tea Party movement.
I was a true believer. I put my heart soul into this movement.
It is an existential threat to democracy.
The Convention of States is a way to amend the Constitution
without using the normal federal Congress.
They want to do it a different way that they are legally allowed to do.
And they only need 34 states.
They call a meeting to write amendments to the Constitution.
Once they get in there and open the Constitution up,
they can basically do whatever they want.
They just need their army to vote for their state politicians
in order to succeed.
This is not going to be put to a vote by the people,
except for the fact that the people elect the legislators.
You don't have to deal with the low information voters.
It got so much further than you would expect.
We're in 19 states, so passed halfway. We have 15 states to go.
I'm telling you, it has the possibility of becoming the law.
They are actually doing model conventions now.
They're LARPing it.
It appears that they will be satisfied by nothing less
than the complete destruction of our American liberties.
Must we not then do something to secure those very liberties?
They role play the Convention of States, so that they'll be ready.
Alabama votes yes.
[Jeff] What God has commanded you to do is to take the kingdom,
You take it by force. And now...
[newscaster] The push to put the Lord's Scripture into Florida Public schools.
The words "In God We Trust" will be required reading
in Louisiana schools this year...
Republicans today block legislation designed to protect access
to in vitro fertilization...
The new state guidelines sent out today requiring teaching from the Bible...
Texas saw a 56% rise in maternal mortality.
I think divorce should basically be outlawed. [laughs]
The way your Christian nationalists want,
will women have the right to vote tomorrow?
-No. -We own the country, not them.
[Jeff] They are aiming for a complete structural transformation.
This is the project to rewire America.
[sighs]
It's fine. I'm safe. Complete this stress cycle.
Evangelical culture is very much a binary.
There is no nuance. You have to pick one side or the other.
It's the black and white thinking.
My books have been a part of putting these heavy burdens
and rules on people that weren't in the Bible.
And I'm very sorry for that.
And I think this is something that a lot of people,
who grew up in this movement and are now adults,
have to reflect on to one degree or another.
You know, what was I involved in?
What did I do, and who did I hurt?
[Cindy] My own...
ignorant and small minded beliefs
allowed me to dismiss the harm that happened to these kids.
And I was wrong. That was wrong.
[sighs] And I know how many victims of abuse,
spiritual, physical, sexual, are not believed
and how the systems that we have in place cause...
harm, at a huge scale.
I'm sorry that I caused that harm, and I was a part of a system
that continued to perpetuate harm against people who are abused.
[groans and sighs]
There was a lot rooted in me
that I had to dig out from this kind of experience.
There was a lot of prejudice I didn't know that I had
towards just people living their lives.
Because even if you say that you love everybody equally,
if they don't line up with what you believe
or what you say is true,
there will always be something wrong with them.
And in some part of your mind, you're probably not even aware of it.
But you're being judgmental of them,
and you are telling them in a million nonverbal ways
that you're doing it wrong, and you're not good enough.
We were complicit, and we were also victims.
But there's tremendous grace for anyone who went through it.
Anyone who had a good experience, and some people did have
a good experience, like genuinely had a positive experience.
But this isn't for them.
The ring represents...
hard things, things that I went through and things that I accomplished.
Trauma and loss and grief and pain.
I have nothing left of that life.
I have nothing left to hold of that experience.
I burned it all, and I'm glad that it's gone.
So for almost two and a half decades, I have been really taking the time
to be honest about who I was, what I really, really wanted.
I want to be the person that that 18 year old would be proud of,
and look at me and go, "Thank you for healing me."
Thank you for doing the work.
[cries]
We all get together all the time.
Our mom and our dad, our dad's husband. [laughs]
-We go on vacations together. -Yeah it's great. It's great.
And so his feeling of,
-"I'm going to lose my family..." -Yeah.
Now, we have this huge family and all these kids and grandkids,
and we all rejected that narrative of, "This is what it's supposed to look like."
Coming to terms with the fact that this Jesus that's been sold to me
for the longest time is not my Jesus.
It's a journey for sure.
I still identify as a Christian.
The Jesus kind.
I think that that little voice in the back of your mind that sometimes goes,
"Wait a minute,"
and you start to like... that's you, that's your conscience.
And it's okay to listen to that voice.
That voice is not evil. It is not going to lead you astray.
[director] What are you hoping might come of this for people
hearing your story?
You have to stand for the truth,
and you have to stand for what's right or else we're going to lose everything.
At the end of the day, we cannot let these people silence us.
They are plotting.
They are strategizing while everybody else is out there living their life,
not trying to control everybody.
Guess what? All the authoritarian people got together,
and they're all coming after you.
[credits music playing]