Welcome to the We Are More podcast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe

that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word. And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.

Hello. Hello. We thought about starting this episode off with some affirmations, but we couldn't think of anything positive.

Yeah. It turns out we don't know how to affirm. We know how to say mean things.

Yeah. We're like, you're the worst. You suck. You smell like ham.

It's frighteningly specific. Don't love that.

You're not denied. Did you know that you can ask now, this could be a lie, but apparently you can ask Alexa to give you Snoop Dogg affirmations. And it's like Snoop Dogg's voice, and he'll give you like motivational phrases.

Now, I don't know. But I

bet that's true. I bet it's true.

Because as it is, you can tell Alexa to fart. She absolutely will.

Let's really miss some people some people's households Alexa. Alexa, fart.

Oh, sorry, mom. Someone's house for sure just did. If you guys aren't listening to this on headphones, now you're gonna regret it.

Yep. So

Brie is struggling through a big problem today as we record. Turns out her headphones. Oh, are on the struggle bus.

I was thinking about which one of my problems you were gonna say.

Brie has truly the worst headphones that anyone's ever seen while we record.

Oh, they're very busted. Like,

I I hope that you guys think of us and you think, wow, those are professional women recording podcasts for us. I'm sure that's how you feel. Yes. But here's the deal. We're not.

And Bree's sitting over here with, like, wired, blue, in ear headphones.

And the little cushiony part fell off of one of them. And I just shoved it in my ear anyways. Professionalism. Professionalism. We are are business women.

That's what we're known for.

And our beauty and our grace. That too. But this is a podcast, so they can't see us.

That's right. Follow us on Instagram.

Not that we often post pictures of ourselves.

I just posted one recently. Did you? Yeah. You're welcome.

So proud. I'm deeply proud. Mhmm. Was it that one of us from the family reunion? Mhmm.

Oh, hey. That was a good one. We looked pretty

good that day. I think

I said something snarky too. You always say something snarky.

Follow our Instagrams for my snark. Oh, yes. And her face. And my face.

Just my face. We pretend you don't exist.

Yes. Actually, Alyssa just speaks to herself because even our recording programs don't know how to tell us apart.

I know. Yeah. So we upload this into a program that's supposed to tell you, like, alright, speaker one, speaker two, you know, whatever. And it it cannot for anything figure out who's who. And neither can we.

It's there are times where I legitimately especially if we finish each other's sentences Mhmm. Which we do.

Oh, I was editing the last episode. I was like, what do we call this? I was editing the last episode and multiple times, you said a word, then I said a word, then you said a word, then I said a word. And together, we made sentences. So

even we don't know who we are.

We're confused. That's why we need some affirmations. You suck. You smell like am Brianna.

Smell like I am. So now that you feel all warm and fuzzy today, we have a really fun show we were gonna talk about called Shiny Happy People. Have you heard of it?

If you haven't, you've maybe been living under a couple of rocks.

At least two. Maybe three. Maybe three. So Shiny Happy People is a show that it's on season two right now on Amazon Prime.

Is that correct?

Yes. And the first season focused on the IBLP church, which is a hyper conservative kind of sect of Christianity.

Think 19 kids and counting growing your hair really long and not being able to wear pants.

Just for the girls. The boys can wear pants. Oh, yes. Because the boys get to do whatever they want.

The boys can't

wear skirts.

I'm not

sure how Jesus would have felt about that considering the robes. But, you know, it's fine. So anyway, season one focused on that. And focused on quite a bit of the Duggar family who, if you're familiar with them, like Brie said, they're from 19 Kids and Counting. And then 20 Kids and Counting.

And then 20 I I don't know how many they went don't like think they made 20. I thought they hit 20.

I think it was it ended at 19.

Did it? Anyway, there's about a billion of them. I'm pretty sure. And it focused on them. And it just kind of the whole show dives into kind of this, like, cult mentality, but cult within an accepted form of religion.

Mhmm. Because the IBLP church, while it is hyper conservative and very cult like, is technically a Christian church. Mhmm. So that focused on that. I wanna say there were, like, five or six episodes that season.

It was a little bit longer. Super interesting, but that's not the season we're gonna talk about today.

Mhmm. Highly encourage you to go back and watch it. I think it's, like, a little bit eye opening to realize, especially as people who grew up in a more conservative Christian religion, to see kind of the similarities or things that tiptoed their way into our childhood too, even though we weren't part of the IBLP. Right.

But what parts of that are echoes of our childhood? Actually, was talking to our mom about it. And she so I related a little bit more to season two. And we'll get into that in a minute. But Arma was saying that she related more to season one because when she was growing up

Mhmm.

The IVLP movement was much bigger and impacted their church

Yeah.

In a big way. But for me, I related more to season two, which focused on I don't know. Would you how would you even describe it? A group

called teen mania? Yeah. I think it was kinda like a youth group on steroids. Yeah. But I don't think it's a traditional youth group in that, like, oh, every Sunday and Wednesday, I go to my church.

It was kind of like an entity onto its own.

Yeah. Not like related to a church specifically.

And then they had kinda like a a school

used. Yeah. So kind of what happened my understanding of it is there was there was this guy. His name was Ron Luce. And he decided that he was God pretty much.

Still exists. Yeah. And he still does. Yeah. So he kinda started off on all this ministry stuff and then eventually created what what I guess you would call a school and had internships for kids.

So you would pay to be there.

Yeah. It's almost like instead of college, I'm gonna go almost on mission. Mhmm. But on mission for run loose.

Yeah. And so you would go and I wanna say it was like $8,000 a year or something like that Mhmm. That you had to pay to go do this internship at this place. And so you would you would get assigned something. You might get assigned to the worship team.

You might get assigned to the kitchen team, you know, whatever. So there's a potential that you're paying $8,000 a year saying like, I'm in ministry and you're washing dishes.

Mhmm. And I think it depended on a couple of different aspects. And they were like, well, if you're on kitchen duty, you need to pray a little bit more. Spend a little bit more time with God. And then maybe you can work your way up to being, oh, Ron Luce's assistant.

Mhmm. Woo hoo. Which is like the top tier. Right. That's where you wanna be.

But one of

the biggest programs that they were producing were these student events. Mhmm. So one of them was called Acquire the Fire. And then I forget what the other one was Was it Teen Mania? No.

Teen Mania was the program's name. Oh. But there were anyway, there were two programs, one of which was Acquire the Fire. And basically, it was like like a giant concert for Christian children. It was like this huge event.

And Brie and I never went to one, but we attended a small church at that time. And I very distinctly remember our youth group leader wanting to take everybody to Acquire the Fire and being so pumped about it. And she was just, like, all about it.

It's like a concert. And then I think they added drama elements. Mhmm. They really tried to pull from, like, what's popular today. So it was nineties, early two thousands when this was at its peak, I believe.

And MTV was really popular. So they would take aspects of MTV and Christianize them. Yeah. So they'd make, like, knock off versions of MTV music videos and Mhmm. Songs.

And they thought that's gonna draw in the youths.

And this was all put on by the interns. So you had pyrotechnics being done by these, like, 18 kids Mhmm. That had no idea what they were doing. But they were and they were touring. So this would go these events put on by Teen Mania would go across the country.

And these kids were in these grueling tour buses.

Mhmm.

Putting on event after event after event. Not being fed well. I remember one of the people that was being interviewed, he said that he was given $5 a day to eat while they were on tour.

And they were told to Pray for the rest. Trust God with the rest. Yep.

Yeah. Which means that a huge chunk of the time, you're not eating more than whatever the value of $5 a day is.

And you're still paying to be there.

Paying $8,000 a year.

Mhmm.

And one of them said that it that I think that their account had gone kinda negative. Like, they weren't able to make one of the monthly payments or something like And you would immediately get a letter saying like, hey, you need to you need to do this. You need to pay us.

Here are the consequences. Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so this is kind of the premise of the show. Was talking about this organization, talking about what they put on. They interviewed quite a few people that had been part of the organization.

The actual man himself, Ron, was not interviewed, which on the one hand, I kinda wish I kinda wish they had been able to interview him just to just to hear what on earth this man had to say. Right. Because in season one, they did have a couple of, like, the Duggar kids. I think one of the Duggar kids and one of the cousins

Yeah.

Interviewed on the show.

As far as I know, he's trying to start so shocker, teen mania went belly up. No. They lost all their fun

day through a series

of different events, which we can either talk about or you can watch the show yourself. But he kind of got exposed for what he was doing, and now he's trying to start up essentially the same thing Mhmm. Just with a different name in another country.

Right. So that's kind of a background of what it was. Like I said, it it's on Prime. You can watch it. It came out on July 23.

And there's only three episodes. That threw me off a little bit.

I was kind of upset. I was like, I need more. Mhmm.

Yeah. So they did kind of like an intro to what was going on, people's experiences. And then they kinda led into how and we'll get into it a little bit more. And they kinda led into the political sphere today and how organizations like this, and we'll talk in a minute about how political it was, lead into the Christian nationalism that we're seeing today.

Mhmm.

But it was kind of odd because the last episode, they started bringing in new people. They started talking about current politics, things like that. And it you feel like, alright, we're ramping up to something. And then it ends and there's nothing else. And you're like, what?

Yeah. Is this like Wednesday where I didn't know it was split up into two parts and now I feel like, what the heck?

That's really what I thought happened. Because we finished it before we recorded the last episode. And I think we had said on the last episode, like, oh, we've gotta finish the series. We're only on episode three. And then turned out we had finished the series.

Choked on us. So that was a little bit

of a bummer. I think that they could've could've done a little bit more. Mhmm. Oh, it

so it says it's called

the Honor Academy is the actual, like, place that they're hanging out.

Yeah. They're hanging out.

They're they're not hanging out. They're struggling. So one of the things that they talked about was while you're at Honor Academy, you sign up for however long you can be there for multiple years. Like, this isn't just like a, oh, it's a two month program or whatever. Like, you can be there for a long time.

Yeah. Of course, they'll take your money. Right.

Of course. And while you're there, you're doing whatever your specified task is. So maybe you're in the kitchen. They also had a call center. And this is one of my favorite quotes.

Because the kids in the call center were calling pastors. They were calling parents. They were even calling students, asking them to come to the events, the acquire the fire and other events.

Mhmm. Churches of other religions. Yes.

They were like, we're Jewish. I think you've misunderstood. But one of my favorite quotes in all of the three episodes, I feel like you can't call it a series. It's three episodes, Was the one guy who was in the call center. He said, I was a teenage telemarketer for Jesus.

And I'm paying to do it. What

a bizarre like, that sentence should just never have come out of anyone's mouth. That's bizarre. Mhmm. But that was part of what they did, and that was their assignment. So you do your assignment all the time.

But then during your downtime, which you have very little of to begin with, you are also expected to do a bunch of other things. So you're expected to be in charge every week, obviously. Mhmm. But also you're expected to be in a small group. Also, you're expected to have your accountability partner that you're checking in with on a regular basis.

Mhmm. Also, you're expected to volunteer for this, this, and this. And then on the weekends, they would have weekend events. Mhmm. And that's where things really went off the rails.

Like, you think they're off the rails now, boys and girls. So the weekend events, one of them I don't know if they I'm sure that they had a name for it, but I'm not sure what the name for it was. But essentially, was like a boot camp style event.

Mhmm.

And when you watch the videos of it, it's truly horrific. Because the show actually has promotional video that came from from Teen Mania. And it's kids going through boot camp. Like, think they're in freezing mud.

Well, when these kids originally signed up for the Honor Academy, I think there was a lot of question about like, okay, what is this?

Mhmm.

Because it's not a school. Mhmm. They're not learning. This guy, Ron Luce, is like making up the curriculum as he goes. Mhmm.

And he was very vague about it. And so now they've added in this boot camp aspect to it. Mhmm. Which was insane. It was like fear factor.

Mhmm. They they show kids and they would put a cockroach on their head and make them crawl through this, like like, think army crawl underneath barbed wire Mhmm. With, like, cockroaches all over them.

Or in a trench filled up to their neck with water. They're traversing through there in the dark Mhmm. And terrified. Meanwhile, they had just been doing this crap all day too.

There so some of the examples are, that people said happened during their individual events. And I think it seems like it changed all the time

just Mhmm. On the whim of

whoever was But people said things like being forced into coffins.

Mhmm.

Having mock executions. Being forced to eat worms. Bizarre stuff in addition to these really physical elements as well.

Mhmm.

All done in the name of God.

Mhmm. Because I think they go into this, but they're trying to raise martyrs.

Mhmm.

They want to put fear into you, and they want to say, like, you are gonna be put in these situations where you need to die for Christ.

Mhmm.

And you need to be ready to die for Christ. Mhmm. And let's get you

ready. Yeah. There was a ton of war imagery used and a ton of military imagery used throughout the whole thing, like, throughout the events that they were putting on, throughout all of

their marketing. Because what we were talking about this earlier, but they were being told, you are the generation that has to save this world. Mhmm. So let's prepare you like we're in war. Mhmm.

But the thing is, Jesus didn't come down as a military leader. Mhmm. He didn't come down and try to start a war. He tried to love people Mhmm. And accept people, and that's how he gained their hearts.

And what a bizarre concept to tell the kids to say to someone, you're here to win the world for Christ, but you're going to war for Christ. Like, we're going to physically give you, like, an example of real boot camp style war. And that's how you're gonna win people for God? Because a bunch of people have been won for God through terror. Right?

Right.

That's how we win them.

Yeah. What like, what a strange concept. And Brie was saying earlier, and I don't have this confirmed necessarily, but it does not seem that any of the people in leadership that were putting on this boot camp actually had military experience. Not maybe like, we're lucky if

they had any military experience. But what about, like, teaching?

Mhmm.

And coming up with a curriculum that makes sense, and here's why we're doing this. This is the purpose of it. Not just, we're gonna make you roll down a hill forever until you vomit. Because that's something that actually happened to people.

Where is the purpose there? Mhmm.

What's the lesson? Well, I think

the not what they're telling them, obviously, but the reality of the situation is that they're trying to create an unquestioning soldier. And I'm putting air quotes again. You can't see them. But an unquestioning person. Someone who is never gonna question authority.

And then that leads you into going to church and never questioning the authority of your pastors, leads you into political organizations where you never question that. So you're very manipulatable.

They manipulated these people, these kids, in so many ways. They also created such a sense of community with them. They were in this bubble where their entire lives were wrapped up with these lessons and the people around them that when they went back into the real world, they didn't know how to function. So they had to go back to run loose.

Well and I don't know if you guys ever saw I love to watch those, like, documentaries on the weird cult y religions. Everybody loves that. So I watched what's the one it's about Scientology with Leah Remini, and she did a whole series on it. And one of the things that she talks about with Scientology is that if you leave, then the people who are still in the religion cannot speak to you, cannot communicate with you. Like, they have to pretend you're dead.

Mhmm. And that was the same thing with this. Oh, yeah. Which was fascinating because there were plenty of people, plenty of kids who either couldn't handle the literal torture Mhmm. Perfectly reasonable, or who started to question it and say, this is not for

me. Mhmm.

I don't believe in this. Or financially,

he couldn't afford it.

Yep. And so they would leave. And once they left or got kicked out for one of the many moral reasons that we can go into in a little bit, They were shunned. Mhmm. No one was allowed to talk to them or communicate with them.

And now all of all the love bombing that happened when they were there and they were told even though they were treated like crap, they were told, you're amazing. You're amazing. You're amazing. It's all gone. All their friends are gone.

So they had an example of a woman that was there. And I think she's now a Christian singer. She is. Yeah. And she got kicked out because she kissed a boy.

Heaven forbid. How very dare

she.

Girl's like 20 years old. And she kissed a boy. And so she got kicked out because that was against the moral code and whatever.

And they were encouraged to tattletale on each other too. Right. There wasn't getting away with anything. I

think too, that's and this is a little bit of an offshoot, but that's such an aspect of Christianity for young people is this tattling.

Mhmm. It's like, that's how I'm gonna I need to keep my friend in check so that their soul is saved.

So I'm gonna go tell everything they've ever done. Which is so, again, so anti biblical. Like, when we really look into the base of these things, the bible says, take the log out of your own eye before you point out the speck in someone else's. So the idea of and they'll hide it under this guise of like accountability. I'm your accountability partner and whatever.

And I think there's a healthy way to do that. Mhmm. To sit with someone and say, like, you're my accountability partner, and I'm struggling with this. And then that person just talks back to you. You know, and you two have a dialogue.

Yeah. As opposed to, I'm gonna go to authority. Right. Tattle on you so that you get punished. Mhmm.

Like, I think there is a time and place where you do have to seek out authority figures. Like, if that person is harming someone else or harming themselves Right. Yeah. Definitely seek some extra help.

But the line probably isn't kissing someone. No. Or holding someone's hand.

No. And think about, like, true friendship. Mhmm. Are you really friends with these people? Like, I would never sell you out depending on the day and depending on how much caffeine I've had.

Like, that's not trust. Right. You're supposed to have trust with the people that you care most about. And you couldn't trust anybody there. Well,

I think of the early church. Like the church right after Christ died. And they were each other's people.

Mhmm.

They were this strong family unit.

Mhmm.

And whatever the others needed, they were there. Mhmm. They knew they had each other's backs. There wasn't this infighting. There wasn't this control.

Because their religion wasn't rules. Mhmm. Like, yes, they have the 10 commandments. I see that. But I think religion so often now is just a list of rules and checkboxes.

And as long as you follow the rules and check boxes, you can be seen as the most religious person you want. But really, how is your soul?

Mhmm.

How is your heart? How is

your relationship with God? Right. Well, it's just like like the Pharisees in the Bible. The first thing Jesus did was say, this is not my church. This is not what I want.

This is not what God wants. Mhmm.

Knock this off. Yeah. He said knock it off.

The message. I'm pretty sure that's in the message. Okay.

I don't know how often I say knock it off. That's funny. I should I should bring that back.

Yeah. Bring that back. That'll be good.

Something else that they did for to financially manipulate people. Mhmm. If you couldn't afford your tuition, they had a list of things that they would suggest that you try to raise money because it was so important that you needed to be there. But you couldn't be there unless you paid for it. So one of the things that they mentioned was they suggested that you go door to door and have a carton of eggs and say, will you donate?

And I'll let you crack an egg on my head. Mhmm.

How horrible. It's humiliation.

And I Because think I can afford this. Mhmm. Now I need to humiliate myself to complete strangers just to try to collect a few dollars. Mhmm.

A few dollars is going where? Yeah. Exactly. It's not going into charity work. Mm-mm.

It's not going into God's kingdom. It's going into this man's pocket

Mhmm.

At the end of the day. I think humiliation obviously is like a theme throughout all of

it. Mhmm.

If we can humiliate you and you keep coming back, that does something to you psychologically. Yeah. To say, I'm gonna keep coming back to harm because I feel safe here even though I shouldn't feel safe here. They've created an environment where I I think I do. I think I feel safe here.

I think this is where my community is.

Because they pushed you and we've all kind of had experiences like this. I feel like my, you know, career. They push you just far enough

Mhmm.

And then they give you a little bit, a little compliment. Like you said, they say, but you're the generation that's gonna save this world. Mhmm. Or think about all the other people that aren't here and how lucky you are

to be

And they give you a little bit of praise with a bucket of humiliation.

And the more that you do that, like, that's rewiring your brain. Mhmm. That is changing who you are as a person and what you will accept in the future. Will you accept being treated poorly? Or will you stand up against it?

And so that's what we see in the documentary is these people that there's one woman that she started a blog afterwards. Kinda went viral. Yeah. She got popular. Mean to, like, take the whole organization down.

But basically, took the whole organization down. Good for her. Yeah. And she started this blog, and she just was talking about her experience.

Mhmm.

Here's what happened to me. And then other people started jumping on and commenting and saying like, oh, this was my experience. This was my experience.

They literally just started sharing their stories and saying, is this normal? Mhmm.

Was this okay? Mhmm. And I think about that so many people who go through trauma in their lives, there is that unpacking phase of like, this wasn't normal, was it? I thought it was, but turns out it wasn't.

And that's why we deconstruct our faith. Right. Right? To make sure that we know what we believe and why.

I think anyone who hasn't and again, the word deconstruction gets so demonized in Christian culture because the concept is that if you deconstruct your faith, then there will be nothing left. You will have no faith. Which that's that doesn't say a lot for your faith.

Exactly. Right? It says like, we don't have enough Mhmm. To sustain questions.

Mhmm. But Jesus encouraged questions.

Mhmm.

And to me, if you meet a Christian who has never gone through a deconstruction journey, who has never sat there and ripped their faith to shreds, and then rebuilt it Mhmm. I don't know that I've ever seen a mature Christian.

Mhmm. And I think they package it up and just say, well, you have to have faith.

Mhmm.

You have to have faith the size of a mustard seed. And you, it's not about what you actually physically see, you just have to believe it.

But

you need to know why you're believing these things. Yeah. You need to open your Bible and say, who is Jesus? Because the Jesus that they're shouting from the White House

Mhmm.

And from so many of these churches is not the Jesus that's in the Bible. Mhmm.

And if you don't know the Jesus that's in the Bible in the first place, if you haven't become familiar with those stories and who Jesus really was, and they're telling you that's who Jesus is, you're gonna believe that.

Mhmm. And I would argue to say also not just the Bible. Dig back and look to people like Beth Allison Barr and Marg Mouskowitz. That's not her last name.

That's not it.

People who have studied medieval history and biblical history and not because the Bible that you're reading is a translation of a translation of a What did the original text say? Right. What did their lives really what did their lives look like? Mhmm.

There's so many interesting little tidbits. And I've been looking up a couple that would take us way off on a tangent. I'm not gonna say

That's weird for us. We don't do that.

But so many of them yeah. Like, the words are completely different. Mhmm. And we've translated them kind of as best we can, but then the next person took that translation seriously. And then the next person took

the next translation seriously. And cultures are different and agendas are different. So things are skewed.

Mhmm. Now one of the things that I thought was really interesting in the aftermath of this, this came out and it I think it became a big thing because so many people our age, so many of the millennials looked at this. And even if you weren't part of the organization, and we were not, we didn't go to the events. Like, it wasn't necessarily in our world. It all filtered in.

Yeah. It was still the stuff we were taught. Even though I didn't have someone shoving me through boot camp, I was absolutely taught that you're going to war for Christ. Mhmm.

Prepare yourself. Something that they focus on in this season of Shiny Happy People is the Columbine shooting. There's a school shooting in Columbine, Colorado. It was a mass shooting.

I believe it was the biggest one in a school in The US at that point.

And one of the victims, her story was that one of the shooters came up to her and asked to, like, essentially, do you believe in God?

Mhmm.

And she said, yes. And so they took her out. Mhmm. Now, Ron Luce took this and made her into kind of like A martyr. A martyr.

Mhmm. A superstar for teen mania. Because this girl was signed up to go to one of the teen mania events. Mhmm.

I think she was going to the school. Okay. She was gonna be an intern.

And he turned around to all these kids and said, this could be you. Mhmm. Not what a terrible event, how horrible, but it was almost like how how lucky is she?

Mhmm. Like, strive to be this.

To be able to die for your faith. Mhmm. That's what you should wanna do. Mhmm. Now, I remember being told this story Mhmm.

When I was in young. Way too young to have heard

this I was young. Mhmm. In the single digits. Hearing this story about the shooting and being asked, like, what would you do? Mhmm.

What would you do? You you have to say yes. And when you're a kid, you're like, when this happens to me Yes. I will do this. Mhmm.

And so you assume I'm gonna I'm gonna die for my faith. That's how I'm being taken out.

Mhmm.

And I think that's super dangerous.

To tell that to young children it reminds me of have you ever heard, like, online? It'll be like, I thought lighting on fire was gonna be a much bigger problem than us. Yes. Stop. Stop and roll.

It's the same kind of vibe where you teach kids what to focus on. And obviously, like, drop, and roll has some positive impacts. But in this case, when you teach a child, child, young young children this was in, like, elementary school ages were being taught this. What does that do to the way that they interact with the world? The way that they interact with their faith?

Mhmm. Because that's terrifying. You are putting these children in terror that at any moment, someone's gonna come around the corner.

Mhmm. And rather than teaching that that's wrong Mhmm. What the people did now, obviously, they did. They said that it was wrong. No one's saying that what happened was good.

But that's not what they focused on.

Right. That's not the part of the lesson. Even though I'm sure that they didn't believe that it was right, that wasn't part of the message. Like, oh, hey, this was wrong. Oh, hey, this shouldn't happen.

Hey, let's make some legislative changes so that this doesn't keep occurring. No. It was expect that this will happen to you someday.

Which because of the lack of legislation about this

Mhmm.

America, right, is one of the highest rated, if not the highest rated school shootings, percentages of school shootings.

Yeah. I mean, the world by far. By far and away. We win that race. Yay.

And one of the other things that they talked about so that filtered through. Another one of the things that they were very strict on was purity culture and modesty, which was just absolutely all over our religious education. And we keep talking about wanting to do an episode on purity culture. It's just one of those things that's so personal. It's really like, it's kinda hard to talk about because it hurts a little bit.

And when, like, your mom listens to this.

Sorry, mom. Sorry, mom. But they were teen mania was very particular on the way that people were dressed. And you can see that throughout the videos, like high necklines and snow shorts, you know, all the things. Like, everybody's it's very particular about the way that you're dressed.

And then they really preached out of the book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Mhmm.

Which I don't know if you

guys are familiar with. But that was, like, the Christian dating, I guess, book when I was a kid. I was given it when I was a teenager. And I don't know that I ever actually read it. And frankly, I don't think our parents

read it either. Listen. I didn't read. It was just like, it

was the thing. It was what you're supposed to whatever. And it talks all about courting for one, which we have talked about before. If you're not familiar with it, it's essentially like you only date with Yeah. The intention of getting So even as like a 15 year old kid, the only time you're allowed to date is intending to marry that person.

Mhmm. Which is just so problematic.

From the beginning. Right. And really not asking the woman's permission. Mhmm. Asking her father.

Her father. Yep. Or her closest male relative. And so that was a big book that they focused on. It also talked about don't kiss until marriage.

Don't hold hands until marriage. Because if if you give that to someone else, what will you have to give your husband? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Not yourself. You're worth nothing. And that's a huge part of purity culture. And all of that filtered out of organizations like this because they had these massive events that were impacting all the Christian youth across the country. Mhmm.

So even if you didn't attend, maybe your youth pastor attended. Maybe someone from your church attended. And it's all filtering through.

Mhmm. To the

point that I think back and I think on, like, I remember we did a purity retreat. If that is the weirdest phrase you've ever heard, I'm with you.

It was, like, multiple days. Mhmm. All the girls went and stayed the

night at someone's house that I did not know. They preached at you constantly of, like, if you the analogies. I'm trying to think of them. If you have sex before you get married, then it's like you're a chewed piece of gum. And a chewed piece of gum can never be un chewed.

Specifically, women. Yeah. Boys were not getting this message.

No. There were boys at the purity retreat, but it was not the same. It was geared towards the women. Here's a jar of marbles.

Weren't they separated? I think the boys were in a separate room.

Maybe. But here's a jar of marbles, and this represents you. Mhmm. And every time you have sex or every time you kiss or every time you hold hands with someone who's not your husband, you lose a marble. Mhmm.

And then when you go to inevitably find your husband, because that's the ultimate goal for you, You're going to be

nothing but an empty jar. Mhmm. Awesome. Mhmm. Thanks.

Your entire value was, are you a virgin? Mhmm.

That's your currency. Yeah.

That's all you have to give your husband.

Mhmm.

You don't have a personality. Or a brain or a heart or a fun tattoo. You have nothing but that. And I think of organizations like this and how they impacted women especially.

Even the phrasing, what you give your husband Mhmm. And it's not reciprocated what your husband is giving to the wife.

Well, because the expectation simply is not the same for boys. And and this is just a general purity culture issue. But the expectation is, well, men are sexual beings and can't control themselves. So if a boy has sex before marriage, it's not that big of a deal. The focus was like, well, it's fine if he does.

Like, we're just not gonna talk about it if he does. It's not exactly accepted. But we're not gonna talk about it. Whereas if the girl does, then that's a whole different like, that's all her value. It's all her worth.

It's everything everything that she has.

Mhmm.

And it's the same question. What does that do to your brain Mhmm. To think this is everything that I am? And you look at the people on the show, the one girl that kissed a boy and got kicked right out. And then they made her do an interview, not not shiny happy people.

She wanted to come back.

Mhmm.

Because, again, when she went back into the outside world, she couldn't cope. So she did everything she could to come back. And she was part of, like, the The singing group. Yeah. The singing group.

The worship team. And they made her do a music video where she was shamed in the music video. Like, oh, she kissed a boy. Now let's bring her out and kill her.

It was actually it was very extreme. Yeah. Won't say how extreme, but watch the show. It was Mhmm. Truly horrific.

And she also did an interview in one of their promo videos talking about how and I made a decision that I knew was wrong, and I just should never have done it. Like, just this shame

Mhmm.

Heaped on her. It's just this entire culture of shame

Mhmm.

Surrounding everything that we've talked about. Mhmm. Humiliation, shame. And the more that you can put that into someone's brain, turn that into who they are. All they are is shame.

All they are is humiliation. You're gonna be able to get them to do anything you want.

Mhmm. Because you don't want a confident person.

Mhmm.

You don't want a person with a brain, because then, you're right, we start to question the people who have authority. Mhmm. The people who have power. And they don't want to give up that power and authority. They want to dominate as many people as possible.

They want to financially manipulate. Specifically, children. Because they're

easy To on

manipulate. Let's take their money. Not an insane amount of money like what we do to kids in like real colleges. But just enough so it, you know, they profit. Mhmm.

And

yeah, abuse.

Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I noticed that compared to like our growing up, not abuse, but Mhmm. The way our churches treated women, treated the youth

Mhmm.

Is manipulative.

Mhmm. So then as the show goes on, basically what happens so this blog that we talked about, it becomes a big thing. Right? And it becomes basically, when you search teen mania, it was in the top, I think, three searches on Google. So parents started to see that.

Youth pastors started to see that. And they started asking bigger questions, not just of the organization, but of the events as well. So now you've got people saying, well, I see all these allegations of abuse.

The blog is called Recovering Alumni.

There you go. I had to Google it. You've got all these parents that are like, well, I'm not I'm not gonna send my kid into that. Are you insane? Mhmm.

And you've got youth pastors that are thinking, absolutely not. Mhmm. So slowly, slowly, slowly, their customer base, because that's what these children were.

Mhmm.

Diminishes. Nobody wants to come. So eventually, the organization went bankrupt. And the stupidest story. Okay?

So when they they go bankrupt, the bank is gonna take the property. They've got this whole, like, compound, basically

Mhmm.

For the ministry. And the they have his assistant. I think it's his assistant. One of the higher up women in the organization on the show. And she said that he Ron Luce asked her to put out a press release.

She was brought in to kind of, like, damage control.

Mhmm.

What was going on?

Yeah. And so he wanted to put out a press release and be like, hey. So we're gonna we don't need this property anymore. We're gonna make another headquarters somewhere else. We're gonna give this property back to the bank.

We're gonna give it back. Guys, that's not a thing. That's not a thing. And so she saw the paper come across her desk that said foreclosed. Like, the bank's coming.

Yeah. And she begged him, tell the truth. Just tell the truth. She was like, I believed in this organization at this point. Mhmm.

So just tell the truth. And he would not do it. We're giving it back to the bank. We're giving it back to them. So from there, then eventually, like, the whole organization kind of went under.

But one of the things that they did before they went under was become very political. Now, obviously, that was happening before. But to the point that they had kids, like, marching on Washington, like, they were organizing events, they were also heavily involved with the Arlington group, I believe is what they called themselves, which was a super secret group of pastors.

Who had our favorite. James Dobson. James Dobson.

And they it was a bunch of white male old men pastors that got together and decided that they were gonna influence the government for Jesus. For Jesus. But it wasn't, though. It was for their male whiteness power. And they got involved with Run Loose and basically, like, kept funneling people into his ministry.

Mhmm. All with the goal of we're gonna create this big base of people Mhmm. To do what we want. We've humiliated them. We've manipulated them.

They'll do anything we tell them to do. Mhmm. So march on Washington. Do the things that are going

to get Our agenda attention. Exactly. Not God's. Mhmm. Ours.

Mhmm.

Because none of this stuff is biblical. Jesus didn't say, hey, go control the government. Mhmm. Jesus didn't go after the Roman government and say, I'm gonna be the king. Mm-mm.

No, he did not. He didn't come as a military leader and say, I'm gonna win all the wars.

No. He came a hippie. He basically came as a hippie.

He was he was a rabbi, but before that, he was A carpenter. A carpenter. And I think they think also a stonemason. Like Mhmm. He was just a person whose influence came from the fact that he was a great person.

Mhmm. Not from the fact

that he was seeking power. He showed radical kindness. Mhmm. And he gave to people that maybe didn't deserve his generosity. Mhmm.

Obviously, none of us deserve it. But he was generous, he was kind, and he did it to the extreme. Mhmm. And that is not what we're doing today.

Mhmm. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately, because I've been thinking about some of the political things that are going on in the world right now.

What do you mean? The world is great. Yeah. It's great. And

one of the things I've been thinking about is that, you know, Jesus came and said, your greatest commandment is to love. Right? The number one commandment that you have is to love each other. Mhmm. Love can never exist in a relationship where control exists.

It can't. It can exist together. Because one thing is always gonna be your priority. Your priority is always gonna be control. If there's a control aspect in your relationship with your partner, with your friend, with your sibling, with your kids even, with the people that you impact every day, with the political movements that you want to make.

If control exists in those things, that's your priority. Your priority is not love.

Because love is supposed to be unconditional.

Mhmm.

That's what God showed us when he had Jesus die on the cross. Mhmm. Right? Unconditional love. The condition with them is control.

Mhmm.

To maintain control.

Yeah. Do what I say or I don't love you anymore.

Mhmm.

And that's being said to the broader United States right now. Mhmm. Fall in line with what the White House is saying, with what many of the conservative Christian churches are saying. Or you're not part of us anymore. You don't get to call yourself a Christian anymore.

You don't get to say you love Jesus anymore because you're fighting against Jesus. That's what's being said to us. Mhmm. But I would argue that none of us, the people on this show, us sitting right here, many of the pastors who are fighting against this all over the country, we're not fighting against Jesus and what Jesus taught. We're fighting against the church.

And I'll fight against the church till my last breath if the church doesn't represent Jesus. And isn't that what Jesus did?

Mhmm.

Jesus fought the church. Mhmm. For as much as we're like, oh, Jesus loves the church. Jesus Jesus fought the church. Tooth and nail.

He created a new church.

Mhmm.

He looked at the church. He looked at the church leaders and he said, no. Absolutely not. Mhmm. I will not stand for this.

I'll flip tables for this. So what we're doing today feels fully justified. Mhmm. As people say things like, well, you can't you can't say bad things about the church because then other people aren't gonna wanna come to church. Other people aren't gonna wanna be Christians.

Well, I don't think a lot of people are that aren't already Christians are looking at the church, they're like, I want a part of that.

Unless it meets their agenda.

Well, for sure. For sure. One of the things that I guess the reason that we got really interested in this in the first place is that one of our cousins was actually a part of this organization when she was younger. She did, I think, two years with the organization. Mhmm.

She was on the road doing the events. Like, living her whole life. Yeah. And she eventually started to realize how bad it was. Like, just sort of of her own accord, got out into the world and saw this is not okay.

This is abuse. This is horrible. And started deconstructing it. And she really hadn't shared a lot of it with us because this is traumatic Mhmm. And horrible.

And once this show came out, she realized, oh, hey, my story is about to be told. And I wanna be the one to tell it. Yeah. So in a super brave and incredible way, she had a blog already and decided to do kind of a mini series Mhmm. On it.

So we wanted to just shout out her blog a little bit. It's called The Wild and Wondrous, and it's on Substack. So you can find it there. And we can always repost that to our socials as well so you can find her. But she's she's truly an incredible writer.

And she, I think, has six pieces out. And she talks about her experience and deconstructing it and what it means for the world today Mhmm. In a much more succinct way than we probably usually are. But also from a place of having experienced it as well. So super good resource if you're interested in more of this.

Also, definitely check out the show. Watch seasons one and two. They're really interesting and I think really important because if you don't know history, you're doomed to repeat it.

Mhmm.

So let's make sure that we know what happened.

And before they erase our history, maybe we should, you know, memorize it.

This leads us well into what I wanna talk about next week, and that is a huge part of what's going on in politics right now. I wanna talk about Doug Wilson, who I would love to not call a pastor, but I suppose he calls himself a pastor. And he is the pastor of the secretary of defense, I believe. Yes. Pete Hagseff.

Yeah. So he's he's the pastor of his church, which makes you feel safe and comfortable. Mhmm. And he is trying to repeal the nineteenth amendment.

Which if you don't know, gives women the right to vote.

Yep. Yep. So that's been all over the news. I've seen that all over the place, all over, like, the types of accounts that I follow too. We're seeing this.

So I wanna talk about that, about what that looks like biblically and the arguments that they're making because they're saying they're making biblical arguments Mhmm. And how they've cherry picked different parts of the Bible to say what they wanna say.

I think I reposted a TikTok with one of his interviews, CNN interview.

Yeah. So we'll talk about that. We'll dig into it a little bit, what it means, the history behind it, and probably get a little angry, probably. Just, you know, because we do.

It's our norm.

So we will talk to you about that next week. I feel like I should have some really amazing advice for the week. Don't be horrible. Oh, good. I think last week I said don't suck at the end.

See? Our our our we're full circle. We're one mind. Shower, you smell like ham. Alright.

And with that, goodbye. Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye.