Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War by Nicole Newnham and Cori Shepherd Stern (2025)
Amazon’s Shiny Happy People docuseries turns its focus to Teen Mania, a ministry launched by Ron Luce in 1986 that became one of the nation’s largest Christian youth organizations in the ’90s and ’00s. Famous for their overseas missions trips and elaborate “Acquire the Fire” rallies, Teen Mania also launched an elite internship program where teens underwent intense training (some might say indoctrination). But through interviews with several Teen Mania alumni, the series explores how the organization grew increasingly militant and politically minded, with Luce ramping up his culture war rhetoric even as he came under fire for exploiting and abusing teens. Shiny Happy People’s second season isn’t quite as solid as its first season, which focused on the Duggar family. (For example, the final episode’s efforts to connect Teen Mania to modern right-wing politics feels a bit tacked on and tenuous.) Even so, it’s a fascinating (if disquieting) look at the evangelical Christian subculture and how a sincere desire to serve the Lord can be coopted. Needless to say, my wife and I talked at length after each episode, comparing and contrasting Teen Mania with our own evangelical youth group experiences. Although neither of us experienced Teen Mania or the sort of trauma described by the interviewed alumni, the footage of Teen Mania’s missions trips was eerily familiar, as I went on several summer missions trips to Mexico as a high schooler.
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