Ray Boltz’s Children Share Teen Mania Experiences in New Season of ‘Shiny Happy People’

Phil said he came back from his internship “frankly destroyed.” His dad’s career had slowed down, and Phil was worried about Boltz’s mental health. The siblings said they had a family meeting, which was very unusual because their family didn’t “talk about things,” according to Ranfeld.

“We immediately…supported him. We told him how much we loved him,” she said about the family’s response to Boltz’s revelation. “I was like, ‘Guys, I think it’s fine to be gay. I think it’s good.’” Phil agreed. 

Ranfeld and Phil said that their dad had been afraid of losing his family. Instead he ended up with an enormous family that spends time together. “We all rejected that narrative of, ‘This is what it’s supposed to look like,’” said Ranfeld.

“We all get together all the time,” she explained as she and Phil laughed. “Our mom and our dad, our dad’s husband. We go on vacations together.”

“Yeah,” said Phil. “It’s great. It’s great.” 

When Boltz came out publicly, the “church turned on him,” Ranfeld said. Luce continued to maintain that homosexuality was wrong, something that he publicly spoke out against. Over the next few years “Teen Mania just becomes crazier than you ever imagined,” said Phil. “And Ron recruits a generation into holy war.” 

RELATED: Alex Harris: ‘Shiny Happy People’ Is Flawed but Serves the Church

The last episode of the docuseries looks at Teen Mania’s political activity and explains how Teen Mania alum Mica Ringo created the blog Recovering Alumni to provide a space for people to share their harmful experiences with the ministry.

The blog caught the attention of Teen Mania leadership, and Ringo ended up sending copies of survivor stories to board members. The upshot was that leaders responded as though the former interns were attacking them and launched a PR campaign to preserve the ministry’s image. There is a more detailed breakdown of events on the Recovering Alumni blog.

Ranfeld said that if leaders had simply apologized, many people who were speaking out would have stopped and accepted the apology. Instead, said Ranfeld, “That solidified into, ‘Oh really? You’re going to deny that this happened to me?’”

Ringo pointed out that the people doing the confronting were part of the church, not the church’s enemies, and they were following biblical guidance for confrontation. When they were not taken seriously, they decided to go to the press. The negative publicity eventually led to Teen Mania going bankrupt in 2015.

Pushback on ‘Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War’

While there are numerous testimonies describing harm that Teen Mania caused, some people have criticized the docuseries for bias or for not showing a greater variety of perspectives.