(2021 Moderator’s Note: Allie’s Story is part of The Vault, a series of drafts that were discovered in a backup file from 2011. These posts were not published for some reason but are now being published. If this is your story and do not want your story to remain published, please email me at recoveringalumni at recoveringalumni dot blog.)
My involvement with TM began when I was about 12 years old when I went to my first ATF. My dad and stepmom were youth pastors at their church and became enamored with Ron Luce, buying up all his teaching tools and implementing them at their youth group over the next several years. One of my best friends was going on missions trips every summer with GE and I soon followed suit, spending 2 summers in Panama. The trips were absolutely amazing and life changing, but more from a personal perspective than a ministry one. The impact those trips had on me was from the Panamanian people I met and the culture I experienced. I grew disillusioned with short term missions as a ministry tool. It seemed to me that the “conversions” we sought were more about having numbers to report back than about creating meaningful change. I figured the best way to change the world was the Honor Academy, so the August after I graduated from high school I arrived at the internship.
I was excited about everything in the internship for the first few months. The expectations were nothing new to me, since my dad and stepmom taught HA standards to me for years through their youth group. I loved that I was meeting new people who shared the desire to live extreme Christianity like I did.
My attitude started changing, however, around the time I became an ACA. I had two roommates who were completely inseparable and everyone thought they were too close to be just good friends. The approach of the leadership and pretty much everyone else at the Honor Academy was to confront the “sin” at any available opportunity. Interns who had never actually met them were coming up to them saying things to them. I know that there was a culture at the internship of constant “accountability,” but this response felt, to me, as significantly more drastic than the response to potential boy-girl couples. As the “leader” of the room, I was expected to lead the confrontation assault against them. I was told to police them 24-7 and not allow them to speak to each other at all. I didn’t feel right about dealing with the issue in that manner, so instead I did my best to build a positive relationship with them. I became more and more certain as time went on that the way Teen Mania leadership was handling the situation was destructive and damaging for them.
After completing the internship, although I had become very dissatisfied with Teen Mania, I was still strong in my belief in Christianity. I lived with a group of great HA alumni and was very active in my local church. When a very close friend of mine, also an HA alumnus, told us he was gay I revisited my beliefs on homosexuality and came to the conclusion that I can’t align with a lifestyle that condemns people so drastically based on this “sin.” I realized that it’s not a choice that someone consciously makes, and they deserve love and acceptance instead of condemnation, just like everyone else.
I began to question the things I had been taught, beginning with the ideas surrounding homosexuality, and over time rejected Christianity, as well as religion in general.