Teen Mania/The Honor Academy

[Dhani_C]

I was wondering if anyone had ever heard of Teen Mania or its affiliate The Honor Academy? My foray into the fundie universe began with this evangelical organization that I heard of through a friend who attended the Acquire the Fire events and later attended the HA. I never thought much of it until this friend told me about moderating an event called ESOAL (now called PEARL) and I looked it up and found myself horrified at what I discovered. I won't go into too many details, but, suffice it to say that this ESOAL event involved young adults rolling themselves down a hill covered in vomit, eating cat food, and going through forced sleep deprivation for 72-96 hours in order to become closer to God (among other things).

I was absolutely floored and disgusted when I read about this. I called this friend out on it and the justifications they tried to come up with were deflective to say the least ("it's not for everyone"). They also tried to say that the HA was a great place and welcomed any Christian denomination to which I asked if I, an LDS woman, would be allowed to come. This friend told me no. I think that about sums it up.

There's a blog that has several stories from past alumni of the HA as well as the owner of the blog's own journey. She, along with other past members, have been trying to get the directors of the HA to realize the harm they are doing to their interns and are trying to inform potential people going to the HA to carefully consider their decision. I thought the posters here might be interested to learn about this particular organization. If you want a link, please let me know and I'll post it.

[debrand]

What does rolling in vomit have to do with Christianity?

[CanadianHippie]

WTF... Sounds like a "lets see what we can convince these dumbasses to do!" organization.

[FloraDoraDolly]

Whaaaaat??? OK, maybe now I can understand why Steve Maxwell kept his kids out of Christian youth organizations.

[bettertomarry]

The Honor Academy claims that they are sort of the ROTC/boot camp for Christian teens. Its supposed to be similar to the SEALS training (lack of sleep, intense mental and physical tests, etc.) If you read "Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement" by Lauren Sandler, the intro talks about a girl who attends an Acquire the Fire event and eventually goes to the Honor Academy. If memory serves me right, they even get rings at the end, sort of like a faux-military academy graduation.

[Kitty]

I've heard of Teen Mania, but the only affiliated program I have any familiarity with is BattleCry, or something like that. It's now defunct.

Even without ESOAL it seems cultish, and I have to somewhat agree with FloraDoraDolly... youth orgs can be pretty cliquish and move toward cult-like tendencies. I read a blog entry somewhere (I'd have to dig it up again) on why a lot of people are skeptical of youth organizations in Christianity, and that definitely rang true for my time in a church youth group 7 years ago. TeenMania seems to prey on teens, who are by nature quite vulnerable and insecure and trying to find something to fit in with. This youth org just comes with a side dish of hazing.

I can't be the only person who finds some weird sort of irony in calling it PEARL, you know... also, they totally pulled a Blackwater and changed the name to avoid the bad press they were getting. Fucking morons, it didn't work for Blackwater, what's making TM think it's going to work for them?

[Kitty]

The Honor Academy claims that they are sort of the ROTC/boot camp for Christian teens. Its supposed to be similar to the SEALS training (lack of sleep, intense mental and physical tests, etc.) If you read "Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement" by Lauren Sandler, the intro talks about a girl who attends an Acquire the Fire event and eventually goes to the Honor Academy. If memory serves me right, they even get rings at the end, sort of like a faux-military academy graduation.

Yeah, TeenMania is a very militaristic movement. It seems that they're trying to cover all of that up now by dumping BattleCry and re-naming ESOAL.

[divadivine]

I saw a documentary on ATF/ESOAL late last year. I felt sorry for the girls who came out about the abuse that happens in the program. They come out of there so broken and beat down. How has this program not been shut down?

One of the men I work with was a youth minister before starting to work with me. I mentioned the documentary after I watched it. He said he had been to an ATF with his group. He said he didn't know anything about ATF before going to the event. He said he could tell fairly quickly that the program was very much bordering on a cult. He quickly declined further invitations to take his groups to other ATF events.

[Dhani_C]

What does rolling in vomit have to do with Christianity?

That was my question that I posed to this friend of mine. Originally, I didn't really question this friend (for privacy reasons I will not mention name nor gender) going to this place because, as a Mormon, our young men and young women go on two year missions and some people think that's odd so I tried to give this place the benefit of the doubt. However, this organization, as far as I can tell, asks its interns to pay something like $12,000 to work in call stations to recruit new interns for the following year, take "classes", and participate in events like unreached people (one group of interns pretends to be a foreign people who haven't received the message of Christ and the other group has to decipher their language and try to teach them about Christianity. You have to be careful though because the foreign tribe can kidnap you :roll: ) and ESOAL (or PEARL).

[Dhani_C]

I saw a documentary on ATF/ESOAL late last year. I felt sorry for the girls who came out about the abuse that happens in the program. They come out of there so broken and beat down. How has this program not been shut down?

One of the men I work with was a youth minister before starting to work with me. I mentioned the documentary after I watched it. He said he had been to an ATF with his group. He said he didn't know anything about ATF before going to the event. He said he could tell fairly quickly that the program was very much bordering on a cult. He quickly declined further invitations to take his groups to other ATF events.

Good for your youth minister. RA and a few past interns at the HA sat down with Wendy and Doug Duncan (world-renowned cult experts who I believe are ex-cult members themselves), talked about their experiences, and Wendy and Doug agreed whole-heartedly that it was a cult. Is this the documentary you saw? I believe it aired on MSNBC.

[divadivine]

Good for your youth minister. RA and a few past interns at the HA sat down with Wendy and Doug Duncan (world-renowned cult experts who I believe are ex-cult members themselves), talked about their experiences, and Wendy and Doug agreed whole-heartedly that it was a cult. Is this the documentary you saw? I believe it aired on MSNBC.

Yes! That was the documentary!

[Dhani_C]

Yes! That was the documentary!

Cool, Mica is the one who runs the Recovering Alumni (RA) blog and was one of the people interviewed. She seems like a level-headed person and is very fair with her criticism of Teen Mania/The Honor Academy. When I found her blog, my friend who interned at the HA said not to read it (and he/she and his/her fellow interns were instructed not to read it either). This raised a red flag with me, because this was ONE person saying something negative about what they were doing and if the things she were saying were untrue then the leaders at the HA wouldn't care (if you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear). The way they have reacted so strongly and so negatively to her only makes them look bad and puts them under more scrutiny.

[CrazyCatLady]

i went to an ATF event as a teenager. it creeped me out! never went to another one.

[debrand]

http://www.dallascult.com/index.php?page_id=277

I found an article about Teen Mania

[AmyP]

I know they've toned down the ESOAL thing in recent years. I know someone who observed it, and didn't seem to think it was a big deal. I didn't ask much about it though.

[Mela99]

One of the scariest books I've ever read on this sort of thing is JesusLand by Julia Scheeres. She and her brother got sent to a religious bootcamp in south america. Apparently the school stills exists, and some of the stuff they pulled is... unreal.

[zoestercoaster]

What does rolling in vomit have to do with Christianity?

Furthermore, where do they GET the vomit?

[FireIsCatching89]

I think the MSNBC documentary is on youtube or vimeo. I know I saw it at some point and felt ill to my stomach.

[genericJname]

I went to an ATF when I was in HS. It was pretty crazy. There was this multi-part skit the whole weekend about a guy who was too shy to tell his friend about Jesus and then the friend died in a car accident and it was too late. They sent us out to assigned public areas one afternoon to try to convert people.

[Dhani_C]

Furthermore, where do they GET the vomit?

It's from the motion-sick interns that have to roll down the hill. They vomit and keep going.