Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Youth Groups

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Welcome to our life-changing, missional, intentional ministry for young people from all walks of life to strengthen their faith in Christ while having soooo much fun!! Evangelical youth groups (think: Young Life, Teen Mania Ministries, etc.) love-bomb vulnerable adolescent recruits into joining the Christian “cool” kids—a place where they’re promised to find both earthly acceptance and heavenly salvation—only to manipulate and indoctrinate them with oppressive, homophobic, legitimately terrifying dogma and providing zero exit strategy. Sounds. Like. A. Damn. Cult!!! This week, Amanda and Isa chat with former youth group kid turned TikTok comedy sensation Kevin James Thornton to unpack the cult-like tactics and ideology of Christian youth organizations. (Don’t worry, culties, a Jewish youth groups episode is coming l8er!!) https://www.kevinjamesthornton.com/ Go to Zocdoc.com/CULT and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.

The views expressed in this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. When I was in high school, some friends and I decided to start an after-school Bible study, and it was pretty well attended because we made people feel guilty and it worked because it was the 90s. And we met in the cafeteria and we had to have a teacher present, and in my super fundamentalist church, there was always pressure to do like the most for Jesus.

So I was like, I'm about to turn this Bible study up to 11, so I dropped down to my knees and put my hands in the air and start speaking in tongues, and several students visibly recoiled. And I'm like on my knees in the cafeteria going shamala, hamala, next to the math teacher. And after-school Bible study didn't last much longer. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism. And I'm Issa Medina, a comedian. Every week on our show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural

zeitgeist, from Taylor Swift Stands to Flat Earthers to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? To join our cult and see culty memes and BTS pics, follow us on Instagram at SoundsLikeACultPod. I'm on Instagram at Amanda Under School Montell. And I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina, I-S-A-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-A. If you want to see me live, that's where I post comedy dates, baby. I do events too, and I'll post about them on my Instagram, but be careful, cause they're culty.

So are yours, bitch! Yeah, comedy is culty. Live comedy is even more culty, so come. You can also check us out on YouTube where you can watch our show or hit us up on Patreon where our episodes are available ad free at patreon.com sounds like a cult we would appreciate your support. We are doing an episode today on youth groups. Ooh, baby, this one's gonna be fun, and we have an amazing guest for you.

Oh my god. I, well, I put out a call on my Instagram cause I wanted to get our listeners and readers suggestions for who we should have as a guest on this episode. And this person was by far our most requested idea, and I was giddy when he responded. And it's perfect because he's a stand-up comedian, but also like a low-key theater kid vibe. He stopped doing stand-up for a while and then got back into comedy through TikTok and then blew up, and that's how everyone knows him now.

And in many of his TikToks, he talks about his youth group experiences in the 90s. That's a little, it's a little clue for you. But what are youth groups, and why are they so culty? Today we're going to be specifically talking about Christian evangelical youth groups, cause there are also Jewish youth groups, which are culty AF. That is another topic for another day. Today, we're specifically talking about Christian youth ministry. These are age-specific Christian youth organizations that typically focus on kids between the ages

of 12 and 18, so middle school and high school. And they can either be tied to a specific church or to a larger organization. Youth groups that you might have heard of in the past, these evangelical groups include Young Life, Team Mania Ministries, Youth for Christ, etc. The one I always heard of growing up was Young Life, and also at UVA. Like there was so much Young Life. I had never known anyone actually in it. I just had heard of it through the streets, through the hallways.

Once I got to college, I became friends with people who were pretty religious because they were like in my dorm. I don't know. Like I didn't know they were religious until weeks later. You know, like you become friends with random people in your hall and then later you find out that they're religious. Anyway, one of them is still my best friend, but she's not as like Jesus-oriented. But she does like the adult PG-13 version of youth groups, which is like volleyball

league. You know what I mean? Like she joined like a sports team when she moved to San Diego and like other people in the volleyball league are also kind of Christian. It's not like you have to be Christian. It's just kind of implied. Okay. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean, for every sort of pastime or hobby or career that you could possibly have, there is a Christian affiliated version. Yes. I know this because when I first moved to LA, I was having a salad outside of Whole Foods. It was a Whole Foods salad. I didn't bring an outside salad. I believe you.

I was like eavesdropping on a mysterious conversation to my right. And it was like a Christian modeling agent interviewing a Christian model to join her Christian modeling agency. And some of the questions were like about his experience and about like his career goals. And then every now and again, she would be like, oh, well, I'm glad that you didn't get involved in so-and-so agency because they really support homosexuality. It was just every once in a while, I would just be like, whoa. What?

That is so crazy. Yeah. I mean, maybe like 75% of it is like wholesome and friendly and welcoming and then 25% of it is like outright hate. Yeah. And they hide it. Yeah. But it's so true.

Like there is a Christian version of everything, like Christian rock, you know? Oh, of course. Like Christian radio. Like, I don't know. Is there a Christian nail salons? I'm sure there are. Are they like, do your nails in a specific way so you can pray properly? Yeah.

They do your nails in a specific way so that you can't masturbate. Oh. That's evil. Don't put that out into the world. They're going to start doing that now. It's called the Chastity Manicure. It's all right. Everyone should be using vibrators anyway.

It's 2022 after all. What is technology for? Yeah. Anyway. Youth group ministries combine the social interaction with religious devotion famously. You know, they have an adult leader, a kind of cult leader in a way who like does the strategy behind the scenes to like make sure that they foster the relationship between the adult believers and the students and they kind of become like their mentors.

Groups kind of pitch themselves as these mainstream, totally innocent extracurricular programs and religious education communities that are to keep students on quote unquote the right path in life. But oftentimes they're actually these totally unchecked, extremely oppressive, dogmatic and even violent organizations that manipulate, threaten and trap vulnerable young people who are literally just seeking community and connection and they do that in the same way fringy religious cults do. So there's a memory that I have from middle school, my first ever youth group encounter

that sends a shiver down my spine. Even now when I think about it, my best friend in middle school, I've brought her up a few times was the daughter of a born again Christian. And I would sometimes to my parents, chagrin skip Hebrew school to attend their megachurch services just because I was like, so fascinated by that food, right? I was just like dumbfounded by the fanaticism of these believers and I was really interested in the language more than anything. Like they spoke in this sort of modern evangelical ease where like if something was on their

mind, they would say it was on their heart and they would use the word intentional, basically signifying that whatever they were doing, dating, choosing an outfit, whatever it was with the church's dogma at the forefront. And I feel like when you're a kid, because you don't know a lot of like the meaning behind the words, you're so good at relating to feelings like you get pulled into things because of how something makes you feel. And so if the people at this church were saying things with like a certain intonation, then you're like, oh, this makes me feel a certain way and I feel like a pull towards it.

But you're not really registering that they're saying like something homophobic or that they're saying something like no sex until marriage until then you're there. Because they're using euphemisms that sound really friendly and inviting like purity or modesty, but really they're implying that like you can't wear whatever you want or else God will smite you. Yeah. It's like keep sweet. Yeah.

Totally. A new favorite documentary. Yeah. And what made the language culty was that they like weren't saying anything that couldn't be said more specifically in plain English. But this language was like a password, like a secret code word to signify that you were an insider. I mean, I thought the language was creepy.

Like I had an intuition about that and I would sort of like pick it up as an experiment to see like how would they perceive me, like would they know I was Jewish? Like how could they tell? But the minute I started using this language and saying that like I was convicted to do this today and I'm trying to be really intentional with my words and whatever, like they saw me as an insider and that was like so profound to me. That's so crazy because I feel like they also use that language to prevent you from leaving. Totally.

And so like they'll talk to you in a certain way that's like, you know, you're just battling your demons. Yes. You know. Yes. Oh my gosh. And the language is so emotionally loaded. They'll call Satan the father of lies.

Like that is so, okay, I want to be the father of lies. I know. The lie daddy. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I remember attending a few of the youth group specific meetings that were associated with the church.

I'm so proud of your apple pen. Another cult. I just can't stop scrolling. We are going to do an episode on the cult of apple. Yeah. Not today, Satan. Not today. You're right.

Sorry. Let's focus. I like don't know where to put it. You said it has like a magic wand. Yeah. You're like, Amanda, stop talking. Pause. On to the next bullet point.

Oh my God. But I remember attending one of these youth group specific meetings and like the mega church was not pretty. It was not like Notre Dame in there. It looked like a prison. Like it was in this big ass warehouse. Yeah. And the youth group would meet in this conference room that looked like a room out of severance,

you know, like, it was so ugly. That's how like all these new group church groups are like everything looks kind of like a gym. Yes. Or like a small mall, like a small strip mall and I'm like, say what you will about old Catholicism. At least the churches were pretty. I'm not defending it, but yeah, it was really pretty stained glass.

Beautiful. Bring it back. I wonder if like back in the day people thought like stained glass was the tacky like strip mall thing. I wonder if like in a hundred years people will look at these like ugly buildings. Yeah. Of like modern churches and be like, look at the structure and the architecture. No, I mean, like eyes are eyes.

Yeah, you're right. You're right. We ain't blind. That's for sure. Well, some of us are. And youth groups probably claim that they can heal that. Yeah. Jesus.

So true. Hi friends, it's Addy from Indianapolis. I think youth groups are super culty. I was a member of one called Young Life for about nine years, and I think the cultiest thing is the bait and switch tactics that youth groups use, welcoming and accepting. So many of these groups are right off the bat, but once you're invested at such a vulnerable age, switching to a lot of rhetoric that's pretty discriminatory against the LGBTQ community, women and people of color.

I remember doing Young Life for a crew this summer before my senior year of high school and a guy on my crew, a friend, was sat across from me as we were setting up for a camp dinner and he was like really hesitant to say something. And then he just looked at me and was like, I feel like you're the only person I can say this to, but do you ever feel like we're in a cult and we're participating in indoctrinating others? And I remember the relief I felt that I wasn't the only person who felt this way, and that conversation was really the start of the end of my time with Young Life.

I remember like I was sitting very calmly, almost like a mole. I thought I was like undercover, like the atheist Jew with the youth group. I was very proud of myself and I'm like 12 years old and I'm sitting in this youth group and the guy who was guiding this meeting was a sort of like, again, bald, probably talking to these bald ass cult leaders, it's like bald, sweaty, middle-aged, white guy with a mustache and he was just really like orating in a very passionate way. And to your point earlier, like when you're a kid, you're so used to picking up language and like subscribing to beliefs that may or may not be real.

Yeah, you're used to like picking up language based on how it's sung. Kind of. What is said. Yes, like you're just, you don't know what a lot of things mean. It's kind of like talking to a puppy. Like you know how like when you talk to a puppy, you're like, do you want to go out? Yeah. Do you want to go for a walk?

Yes. It's like when you talk to kids, you kind of talk to them in that sing-songy thing because they don't know what things mean, they just hear what things mean. In linguistics, that's called motherese. Oh. But with middle schoolers, I mean it was the mid-2000s, so like I'm in this Christian youth group, everyone's wearing like Abercrombie message cheese that say things like, I had a nightmare.

I was a brunette. Oh my God. I'm a brunette. So am I. But like remember those Abercrombie message cheese that would say things like heartbreaker, but she's 10? Yeah. You know?

There was always this juxtaposition of like sexuality and Christianity. They were like teetering right up against what was allowed. They limit the idea of sexuality and sex appeal so much that then they add sexual tension in like random relationships. For sure. Or they'll sexualize things that aren't inherently sexual like, I don't know, a tankini. You can't wear a goddamn tankini because it's not modest. I'm like, this girl, again, she's 11.

Like there's nothing sexual about her. Exactly. Like showing shoulders shouldn't be sexual. I know. But I remember being in this room and this guy is orating and you're 12, so like you are still like coming to grips with what's real and what's not. And you're a really little kid. Think about it.

It's like God aliens, the Tooth Fairy and dinosaurs all kind of seem equally plausible. Bro, dude, I believed in the Tooth Fairy until I was like 15. I was like, as long as this money keeps showing up, I'm a believe. When did you lose your last tooth? I don't know. I just like saved them. So anyway, when you're 12, most people are past the Tooth Fairy age. Yeah.

But you're still coming to grips with what's real and what's true. And here's someone communicating to you very passionately and zealously that like this story of Genesis and the Bible is facts. And like if you have sex before marriage, you'll go to hell or whatever. And I remember raising my hand and just asking a very simple question. I was like, hey, where did God come from? When did God start? And everybody was like, it's like the Scooby-Doo like what?

Like you asked a question and the guy looked at me with his like wild BDIs and was like, God was always here. And I was like, how's that possible? You know, I was like inquiring. Yeah. It's like when little kids ask like, why is the sky blue? And like your parents brain explodes because they're like, bro, I do not know. Like you think you know, it's like, well, just cause, and then you're like, wait, fuck.

Yeah. Kids ask the best questions. They do. Because they don't have the societal limits put in front of them. They're just like asking questions that no one knows the answer to or the questions that like people would ask in the early enlightenment. Or the questions that people ask when they're on psychedelics. Like when you're seeing the world through fresh eyes without all the bullshit narratives

you've been like conditioned to believe your entire life. Oh my God, I love it now. I sound like Charles Manson, but those questions in all honesty can feel really threatening to people who don't want to do that kind of deep unpacking. So this youth group leader and I just kept sort of going back and forth. I would just sort of like poke holes in the story that everyone was supposed to just accept without question. You're so different, Amanda.

I'm not like, oh my God, who would ever poke holes in the Bible? Well, I feel like other people in the room probably wanted to ask the same questions, but they weren't because they were scared or because they had grown up in it. And I hadn't. Like I was coming into it cold. And finally the guy just like had it with me and he like put his hand on my arm in this way that signified to me like stop. It was like a nurturing touch, but also a threatening touch.

Yeah. And he was just like, can I pray for you and it was so condescending. And that is just so classic cult leader vibes to sense even the slightest whiff of descent or rebellion and immediately shut it down. The can I pray for you that line is so common. Yeah. It's like their final straw line of being like, let me fix you. Let me do for actually, I don't know if you've watched this, but you know, Colton, the bachelor

who later came out as gay, I watched his documentary on Netflix and he struggled with that. I mean, I think the reason he was like had so much internalized homophobia was because like he grew up Christian and grew up in these youth groups. And when he went back home to his hometown in Colorado, he went to his church and he came out to his pastor and his pastor just like didn't accept him. He did that thing. He grabbed his arm and he's like, we're always going to love you, but let me pray for you. He was pretty much saying like push down these feelings because it is a sin and you will

not get into heaven. And Colton had to like, you know, decide in that moment, like, am I going to stay at this church that doesn't love me for who I am? Like they say they love me because it's modern Christianity. So they want to be politically correct. But they are telling me that I will go to hell if I continue to be authentic to my sexuality. It is this sort of like fake progressive, fake holistic, almost new agey type of Christianity now.

Like evangelical churches are so good at using holistic intentional, missional type of language, but really the ideologies are still the same. They're still homophobic. Yeah. Oh, and we uploaded a season one episode on the cult of celebrity mega churches that if you haven't listened to that one, that's a good companion episode to this. Yeah. Let's talk to youth groups specifically, which obviously are part of these big churches and

talk about where they started. Modern youth ministry is linked back to the beginning of YMCA actually in the late 1800s. It placed youth ministry in like a different setting outside of the church. It was the first time that it kind of began this public movement of Christianity in the marketplace, you know, Christianity for the common man. Yes. In the 1940s, that's when a fellow named Jim Rayburn began Young Life, which is probably one of the most recognizable names in the youth group, industrial complex.

Young Life's original mission was to introduce adolescents to Jesus Christ and help them grow in their faith. Actually, oh my God, I will bleep out her name, but my friend was in Young Life. Oh, wait, I knew that because she's bisexual now, but she wasn't for a while because Christianity and she had just gone through a breakup that had really brought her to her knees. Someone from Young Life sort of clocked that she could use this type of organization and they found her and the pitch in so many words was like, oh, you're heartbroken. You know who will always love you.

You know who you can always date. You know who will like, don't say Jesus. Yeah. No, it was. It was like Jesus. Jesus will always be like your lover, your savior, your supporter. That's just a reminder of how these youth groups clock these kids at 12 to 18, which is these really influential years.

Maybe your friend, I know for a fact she wasn't in those years at the time, but she was in a really vulnerable place that brought her back to that. It's crazy because missionaries have always existed. These missionaries are always going to go to people who are struggling or vulnerable and be like, come with me, follow me, I'll fix all your problems, but youth groups have kind of structured it in a way that it is geared towards younger people and they've kind of made it into like the capitalist version of it. For sure.

It's really institutionalized. It's so institutionalized. Today there are over 1,400 organizations that focus on religious youth. Most of these organizations are nonprofits, but they are worth over $1 billion and this is insane. They earn around $800 million annually. Oh yeah. Christ is big business.

The way that they operate is that they'll hold these regular kind of small scale meetings in conjunction with larger retreats and conferences, which might be held once or twice a year. There are also these mission trips like teen media ministries, which I mentioned has a global expeditions ministry where they'll go on mission trips to basically put on the image that they're doing good in developing countries. Oh yeah. Christ. There's a club at UVA that would go build schools in Brazil.

These groups go to these far away community, usually international, and they take the pictures with the people in this community. They build like half a school. They spray paint a wall and then they leave and then the school isn't finished. I know. Oh, it's completely performative. That's just how cults get you by making you feel spiritually superior than everyone else. Just for showing up.

That's how they weaponize their us versus them dynamic and that's exactly what youth groups do. The cultiest thing about youth groups is definitely the love bombing. I went to youth group maybe once a month instead of every week and every time I went, my youth pastor would tell me how much they all loved me, how much he loved me, how much they're proud of me for coming. It was a lot. I was in a youth group when I was in middle school.

It was religious based. It was held out of the basement of a church, but I felt it was really culty because we started and ended every meeting with a song or prayer. There was this kind of expectation put upon you to be a certain kind of person. They would kind of call you out if you dressed funny, if you made a joke that they didn't like. They would kind of have this broad discussion in front of everybody without naming you, but like everybody knew it was you.

I'm Vanessa calling from New York City and the cultiest thing about youth groups is that they put you in a dark room and you pass the candle around and you all say something emotional until you have an emotional breakdown or make people cry. These youth groups also weaponize fear. I have a friend who is also bisexual. I have so many ex evangelical bisexuals in my life. They're my favorite people to befriend because their stories are more exotic and fascinating to me than any true crime podcast.

My favorite thing is to hear a queer woman talk about, once they realize they were queer, then they look back on relationships in the past and all the innuendos that existed. That's my favorite thing. That friend of mine was in a youth group growing up in Texas and she told me a story about how as a break you down to build you up tactic, they took them on like a really scary, unsafe cave spelunking trip and the guy, the sort of like handsome teacher who was leading it left all the kids down at the bottom of this dark cave with no light. Underwater?

It wasn't an underwater cave, but oh, invariably there was moisture. Okay. Yeah. So they're all like screaming actually, bloody murder, like at the bottom of this cave because they think that they've been left or abandoned or something happened to the teacher and they're like screaming like, help, help, somebody help us. And then right at the breaking point, the teacher like flicked on his headlamp and was like, that's what it feels like to not have Jesus.

They use these fear tactics up. Yes. I literally just like pushed away from the table. You can't see it, but I was like, I'm done. That's fucking evil. That's like intentionally traumatizing a child. I know. So my friend told me that the majority of her peers in that group felt like it was such

a profound moving converting experience. She was like, this is fucked. Yeah. And it's scary because a lot of the times like when you're that age, you're not really taught to think for yourself just yet. Not yet. And so you're taught, you're a teenager. What do you know?

That is the moment that a lot of those kids were indoctrinated and it's going to take years of unlearning if they even get to realize that, that was a fake moment to get out of it. Yeah. I mean, I think just like fundamentally the most cultish thing about these youth groups is that they are radicalizing young impressionable minds. In part, obviously any religious group is going to provide positive things, community, ritual, meaning, but when these positive things are accompanied by fear, the discouraging

of critical thinking, us versus them dichotomies, outright hate, financial exploitation, and it starts when you're so young, it starts now. And these things have political consequences later. I mean, I'm willing to bet that all our conservative Christian legislators and politicians were in youth groups. We're in fucking youth groups. Yeah. That's so true.

So a lot of these kids already probably come from some type of religious household, right? So like it doesn't matter what religion. A lot of teens share like religion with their parents or their legal guardian. And so whether their parents are super duper religious, it doesn't matter because they're already one foot in. And so what these youth groups do is they get kids that are one foot in and they make them extremists. We were talking before about like talking to little kids with motherese to sort of get

on their level. In these youth groups, they'll use like hipster language, they'll use like teen language. Like we're making Christ cool. Like we're making Christ hip. Maybe that's why young people and teenagers are like always changing the language they use because they're like, we got to get away from these loser Christian adults trying to like capitalize on our language to reel us in. Honestly, it's like once the Christians have like put their tentacles around the slang,

it's time to pivot. I know. Once Christians are like, Yasqueen, go off. We're like, mm. No. So obviously like it's already like taken language from AAVE, but like it starts with AAVE and then it ends with Christian youth groups. Yeah.

That's when you know it's dead. Yeah. Totally. Which sucks because like a lot of these black and brown communities have used this language for centuries. Well, the shitty thing is that at the end of the day, white co-opters of slang that comes from black communities will just like drop the language as soon as it's, it can be like a trend.

So like they use it, they overuse it and then they drop it, which is annoying because it's like black or grandmothers are using this language, you know, it's not like, it's not like a trend for them. No, it's not a trend. It's a dialect. That is a true community used to like evade persecution and like find solidarity. And this is a community that's weaponizing the fuck out of it. Yeah.

Exactly. Another thing that I find extremely culty about the language of these groups is how militarized it is. They'll talk about like armies for God locked in a battle with the enemy Satan. A lot of these youth groups will call themselves things like campus crusade for Christ, youth for Christ. Do we not remember that the crusades were some of the bloodiest battles in history? Like this is part of the radicalization.

They're glamorizing violence, but it's in service of God. It's in service of Christ. So like there's so many excuses to violence. Exactly. And even a macro and micro level, there's excuses to violence with war. And then there's excuses to violence within the community, like being homophobic or attacking people who are queer and gay. Like there's always an excuse to be violent and it's fucked up.

And if it's something that's like Christ or a mythical figure or whatever, then you can't argue with it. There will be some youth group leader who is empowering you and fanaticizing you. If you are like loaded and charged with this mission that you're doing something whose stakes are as high as life and death and heaven and hell. I mean, like that's scary for a kid, for a kid. So there was like a former youth group kid who wrote a medium blog post we found that said that there was always something to prove and any bad experience was turned into an

active service. So even with their powerful leaders, it meant that there were no bad experiences. Like they didn't even have the right to complain to their leaders. Right. Right. Because they're serving something greater than themselves. It's that classic ends justify the means mentality. So I think the final and most red flag culty thing to me is the isolation, you know, both

physical and emotional and psychological. There was this group youth with a mission, YWAM, and they stated that people are generally encouraged to submit every aspect of their lives to the loving lordship of Jesus, including their personal relationships. So as a result, a lot of people from WYAM specifically end up living together. They cut ties with other people in their life who are viewed as not right or godly. And this kind of starts in those middle school years when your group of friends becomes your youth group.

Yeah. It's like forming social group, forming phase of your life. So like this is already a muscle that you're strengthening to like isolate others who aren't part of your group. Yeah. Especially if like you're throwing homeschooled kids into this mix. Oh my God. They already don't have any friends.

Yeah. Not to mention like once or twice a year when they go on these sort of like tent revival type conferences, those are the sort of modern equivalent of a pilgrimage. Those are like these touchstones where it's like now I'm in a group of like hundreds or thousands of these people throwing my hands in the air with worship feeling like, oh yeah, this is my purpose. Yeah. Any questioning that I was doing, that's put to rest now.

Yeah. It's giving Elvis if you have seen the movie. Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of the time they'll bring Christian rock star celebrities. They want to create the experience that like you're better than everyone else because you're here. You're cool. Yeah.

You're cool and you're chosen by Christ. Yeah. They love music. They showed it in the Elvis movie. Like that's where he heard like a good music for the first time in like black gospel music. That shit is so powerful. It's just like the slang, you know, like the most marginalized communities are responsible for creating the best shit.

Yeah. Like from language to music, you know. Did you ever watch the movie Jesus Camp? It's a musical, right? Oh, I'm dead. Jesus Camp is this. Oh my God, it is this stunningly horrifying documentary that centers on evangelical fundamentalist Christian camp for little, little kids.

The camp is called the Kids on Fire School of Ministry. This woman was trying to create an army of children who would take back America for Christ. They were taught that they have prophetic gifts, that they can speak in tongues because an angel is moving through them and there was this one really disturbing scene where one of these youth group leaders who looked a lot like the youth group leader that I encountered in middle school was like putting tape on the mouths of the little kids to demonstrate like the silence of aborted fetuses and writing like no more on the tape. Kids respond to energy.

Kids respond to delivery and intonation. So the guy is like throwing his hands up in the air and using Dr. Seuss language like a person's a person no matter how small, referencing Horton hears a who, to radicalize these kids politically and they're all like throwing their hands in the air and crying like a person's a person no matter how small, a person's a person no matter how small, no more, no more. These are little kids. They don't know what they're saying. All they know is that something really, really bad is happening and a grownup told me so.

Yeah, they're indoctrinating them into political beliefs at such a young age. I feel strongly about this stuff. Yeah, me too. So we're going to introduce our guest. We are. We're so excited for you to hear this interview. I loved speaking with him and I'm so excited to see what he's working on in the future. I know.

So we are so fucking pumped to introduce you to our guest, Kevin James Thornton, comedian, TikTok sensation, he's the guy you might have seen in your Furuyu page who talks into his earbuds speaker about like traumatic youth group stories from his past and he'll say, because it was the nineties in auto tune and it's so funny. We can't wait for you to hear our conversation about the cult of youth groups with him. I recently found a letter that I wrote while I was at church. I was 15 titled to my future husband and the things that I wrote in there, I don't agree with at all now.

I was absolutely part of the cultiest, not only were there extremely strict dress codes for girls, but also one day when we were talking about abstinence, all the boys were sent out of the room and all the girls were given a piece of bubble gum and told to chew it up and then to take it out of our mouth and ask the person next to us if they wanted our gum and obviously know because that's disgusting, but then what we were told was that's what happens when you have sex before marriage. Just to start off, can you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us a little bit about the hilarious content that you make?

My name is Kevin James Thornton. Up until like a year and a half ago, I was just running a photography studio in Nashville, but then my TikTok blew up and changed everything. In a past life, I was on the road as a stand-up comedian and I sort of retired, but now that my TikTok has gone totally bananas and subsequently Instagram, now I'm back on the road full-time in comedy clubs all over the country. That's so amazing. Congratulations.

Thanks. Let's go back a few of those years and start at the beginning. Where did you grow up and what was your family's religious situation? I grew up in, I say it's a small town, but anyone in Evansville, Indiana will tell you that it's the fourth largest town in Indiana, but it's a small town. If you go there, you're like, this is a strip mall and some houses and a whole bunch of churches. When I was really young, my parents did take my sister and I to church and it was a very

old-fashioned, this is like the late 70s, early 80s, so if you can imagine, Southern Baptist, like the men still had horn-rimmed glasses and not ironically, like the actual glasses, like slicked-back hair, racist, old-fashioned, strict, oppressive, rock and roll music was of the devil, all of that stuff. When I got into high school, a friend invited me to his church and it was one of those big like, non-denominational mega-church, like 2,000 people. The youth group, like we walked into the gymnasium and it was like, a whole new world, like there was a band playing and there was a party, there was pizza and like 200 kids.

So that was my whole high school experience. My mom and dad at that point kind of bailed out on church, so a lot of people asked me like, what are your parents like? And my parents weren't on that crazy journey, I did it to myself. Like my high school years were like just completely that youth group. It's never truly your own fault though, it's like, you know, you were introduced into it and then that's when you kind of are taken into it and like, I feel like parents do hit an age where they kind of shift out of religion too, my parents kind of did the same thing.

Those youth groups are designed to compel you into faith more than a parent ever could. Yes. So are you still religious today? I am not. Okay, great. Love that for you. If you're moving on. Check, we can continue this interview now.

Could you tell us a little bit more about like that story of your youth group experience as a kid? You mentioned a little bit about when you first started going, but what was it like, you know, like what really captivated you and kept you in? Oh my God. So my high school years were 1988 to 1992. And that was the height of the AIDS epidemic. And you know, in this again, this is a small town, it's before the internet, right?

So the only voices I could hear were those directly around me. I don't know if youth groups are still like this because obviously this is like 30 years ago, but they were so sex obsessed. Oh, they're still like that. I mean, it's because they're youth. What else are they going to talk about? But just like the church as a whole, everything was like purity, wait till marriage. Anything around sex and sexuality was just controlled and manipulated.

And it was like the undercurrent of everything. And so when I was a teenager and started realizing, oh, I might be gay, and I couldn't even let myself think that thought. I knew something in that realm was happening. And I was in this like nightmare scenario of like peak AIDS epidemic, small community, couldn't hear any voices that were affirming at all. It was just this message, like the sex obsessed, AIDS, gay people or monsters message all around me.

So I know this sounds weird, but something about that panic and probably self loathing like just like rocketed me into that community. It's interesting that you use the word panic because small towns in the 80s were actually HQ for the so-called satanic panic, which was this era following the Jonestown massacre of 1978 when cults like made mainstream American news for the first time and many suburban folks got paranoid that fringy blasphemous cults were like posing a threat to their wholesome Christian communities. So all current events considered, it actually makes a lot of sense that the folks that you

grew up with were doubling down on their conservatism at the time. It seems like you'd run from it. But when you're 16. Yeah. I mean, it makes total sense. You're running in the opposite direction of what you wanted because they created a space where like what you were was scary. And so like you ran into the direction that you thought was safe.

I mean, it's classic us them dichotomies, good, evil, binaries, and it's the sense of like if you can't beat them, join them. What tools were there to protest? You know? Yeah. When I first realized I was like queer in any capacity, you know, you're scared immediately. You're like, oh, shit, like this could change my life. And so like you kind of want to like double down on what you do know and like that sounds

like it's what you did. Yeah. On the flip side of that, it was really fun. Yeah. Like, you know, I mean, it was the only thing to do in my community. And so it was alive and like there was always a band playing and pizza and it wasn't just a church like that youth group like banded together and like every night of the week, there was a Bible study at someone's house with cheese dip and, you know, it's like

the snacks. Yeah. I was never in a youth group, I was never in a youth group, but I wasn't Girl Scouts and let me tell you that made me hold on for years because of the snacks. The third layer I should add to the appeal of the youth group. This is the bizarre thing. The ideology was very fundamentalist, but the culture, again, this is so like late 80s, early 90s, my church was obsessed with like MTV culture and they viewed that as like

a way to reach people. So rock band ministries were the highest calling. And so if you see pictures of me in that era, I show them sometimes on Facebook and Instagram, I'm wearing a biker jacket. I have very long hair and it was like for Jesus. Yeah, that's so funny. I played in Christian rock bands. It was my dream to be like a Christian ministry rock star.

And that's what I had, you know, that was like the highest calling in that world and it's so funny because, you know, people have a certain image of like fundamentalist Christianity and then they see pictures of me and they're like, what? It's so incongruous because as a Christian, you're supposed to like surrender. I am powerless to Christ, but then becoming a rock star is like, that's a total celebration of the self. You're like supposedly this sex symbol. Youth groups can obviously be culty in about 400,000 and two different ways.

But when we say the cult of youth groups, what memories like instantly spring to mind for you? When I think about the cult of youth group, I think about the youth pastor men who had intricately manipulated that whole universe to kind of serve them. When I look back, this is the biggest revelation for me when I was leaving that world is because there are like figurehead men in those communities that have somehow managed to like manipulate the entire community into like obeying them and whatever they feel like the Holy Spirit is telling them.

I often mush these stories together, but throughout that time of my life, there were probably three youth pastor men and at the time it seemed like they were like I respected them so much and they had the Holy Spirit and you wanted to be them and follow them. And at some point when I was leaving that community, I had this like identity crisis like world shattering or shattering, world shattering realization, how manipulative and controlling those men were like that's the thing I think about. Not to paint them as like these like evil sinister monsters because it was also subconscious. Yeah, and I mean like not to get super dark right now, but like you do see a lot of inappropriate

relationships with priests or pastors and like youth. I mean, when you position yourself as a sort of prophetic figure, like you have a direct mainline to God in some capacity, you can exploit that left, right and center. Like there's no way to question or disprove that. So if you want to build clout in any type of way, you can always justify your direct connection to God in order to do that and that's the ultimate manipulation, right? Because the context is not just like a wellness group or a school. It's like life and afterlife and eternal salvation at stake.

And again, I don't know what it's like today, but 30 years ago in Indiana, it was all subconscious. Like no one was like thinking, I'm going to manipulate this community. Like it's like this double reverse backflip of like even believing your own bullshit. And I was being taught to become that man also. I thought I was going to be a youth pastor. You know, I was going to take over and become one of these men in this community. And you know, and you believe it yourself, like you even believe like you're supposed to be in this position.

This is God calling you to put you in this position where everyone does what you say. You talked a little bit about what you loved about the group, but what are like some of your favorite like wackiest like youth group stories that like you still remember to this day? There were these, all these little productions for ministry, but they were always super absurd like there was this one time we decided we were going to create like a clown ministry. We dressed up like clowns and each clown represented a different sin. And then we'd go to the park and put on these like sinful clown plays.

So yeah, so, so there'd be like premarital sex clown and like divorce clown. I don't know. And like we'd put on these plays and like, and we'd have candy and we'd like lure children into our clown play. It was so funny. And then they took us on a mission trip to New York, which is that's if you think about it, it's kind of offensive that like small town Indiana was like, we need to go to New York City.

Yeah, it was definitely like whoever was in charge was like, I've never been to New York and I would love to go to New York and then they're like, we're going to New York. Yeah, but we took our sinful clown play to New York City and did it in a park in like Spanish Harlem. That's amazing. What did like the people of the park think? I remember we were treated with great skepticism. That's funny.

So often on this show, we talk about culty red flags like that us versus them mentality we mentioned before and ends justify the means philosophy and exit costs and exploitation and abuse and supernatural beliefs, but it is a lighthearted show. Could you talk about how some of these culty red flags started to show up in your youth group? I was nearing the end of my high school era and we were getting deeper and deeper into this like rock band ministry thing. So my church opened a Christian rock venue and the youth group, we went all in on like

punk rock, goth, like every youth group kid with had like piercings, all black. It was like everyone had to sort of like put on the uniform and participate in this like rock venue and it was like all black with like gothy, like hot, it looked like hot topic, you know, but it was for Jesus like the aesthetic of Satan, but for Jesus. And it was popular, it was popular, like, you know, it was like a venue in my town with rock bands. Well Satan is a blast. Yeah.

And so was that like a red flag for you or like? I don't know. I'm trying to think of like red flag. The thing is that era for me is such a blur in some ways because I was so emotionally conflicted. I wasn't ever seeing clearly, I have to kind of like look back and be like what should have been a red flag had I been thinking clearly, you know, it's a little hard to see. Yeah.

No, it just sounds like there were so much dissonance, like a celebration of the self, but also a surrender to God. We are all about purity, but we're dressed up like a hot topic rock band, like all of that seems to just add to the confusion and that dissonance could be a red flag, even if only in retrospect, because you mentioned obviously you left and you were like, I'm gay, so you were like, gotta get out of here. Was there like a moment or a shift that made you do that, like your hometown or specifically your youth group?

I mean, well, this is personal and graphic, I'm certainly willing to go there. I'm actually writing this story right now. Yeah. If you're comfortable with it, we'd love to hear. My senior year of high school, moving into like the year or so after high school, I knew I was gay, but there was zero acceptance even within myself and I referred to it as like, I'm struggling with my sexuality, being gay was absolutely not an option. And so like my senior year, I moved into this phase of like, maybe I'll be celibate my whole

life and just like devote myself to God or whatever. And in my senior year, in a kind of a desperate move, I had sex with a girl thinking I was going to, maybe that would fix, that would do something that would fix me in some way. And she got pregnant. And she was not in my Christian community at all. And she decided that she was going to have an abortion and it was kind of a secret personal thing for a minute. And then it leaked out into my community and was like a disastrous like scandal of the

century because I was such a like young, gonna be the next pastor, you know, figure. And how could I have possibly done this plus no one even knew I was secretly struggling, not struggling, but I'm gay. And I just, you know, no one even knew that layer. It's like, it's like this trifecta. There's so many layers. Oh my God. Like they thought that it was bad because you had sex with a woman before marriage.

And then they thought it was bad because she had an abortion. And you were like, surprise, bitch, I'm gay. Yeah. You know, looking back now, I can see it in a different way, but at the time it was the most searing, hot, painful thing. I had ever experienced and that community was rejecting me, not even because of the thing I thought they were going to reject me for, which was being gay is this other thing. And then it was like, oh my God, if they find out the total truth, this is over.

So I went through this like two year period. This is when the Christian Rock venue is opening and I, I like humbled myself before the Lord, whatever that means, but I shaved my head as a visual representation of, you know, I was like, that's so gay of you to be like, to be like, I'm going to change my look. Okay. But also like, yes, yes, very gay of you, but also like so many notorious cults from history have had a head shaving moment. Yeah.

Yeah. I existed in that space for a couple years and I slowly sort of like rose back to the top of the Christian Rock venue ministry, everyone kind of trusted me again. Then I was falling in love with like all of my best friends around me and just such torment and like they were all, you know, they, I'd fall in love and kind of delude myself and then they'd get married and I'd be a wreck, you know, and I did that like three times in a row. And when I finally left, it was so like instinctual and in primal.

It wasn't like, I'm gay and I have to go find freedom. It was like, I am in such pain, I have to get out of here. That's all I knew. And so I went and signed up for college five hours away and enrolled in the theater department. It was all instinctual, but that probably saved my life. Yeah. I mean, it definitely prevented you from going down another path where you wouldn't have been happy.

Yeah. And you wouldn't have been able to be yourself. I mean, this story happened so long ago, but it connects to so many things that we're like dealing with today, like abortion and like gay rights and like all these rules that are just put into place to make people not live their authentic life. It's so culty. You know, I have had that same thought in the last month as I'm working on putting this story together.

I didn't realize in the moment this story was going, I mean, because, you know, when this comes out, it's like, am I going to go to prison for putting this story out? Because it's gay and abortion and, you know, it's like, so it's, I didn't realize. No, you're going to go to the Emmys, baby. Yeah. Hell yeah. You know, it is also true that like not living your authentic self and that unhappiness can have life or death consequences.

And the fact that it began when you were so young, you know, if you aren't gay or if you happen to be accepted for your whole life by this oppressive group, then you could go on to become a Supreme Court justice who's then presiding over the rights and futures of so many different people and it starts with these conservative Christian fundamentalist youth groups. Yeah. Absolutely it does. If you listen to my TikTok or Instagram, I tell these stories in a comedic way.

It's taken me aback a little bit how many people are like, I relate to those stories so much. Those were 30 years ago for me and I've lived most of my adult life Jesus free, you know? And so when people like are, you know, much younger than me or like you just told my story and I'm like, it's still happening. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

I mean, that's why we like wanted you on the podcast because we love how you've taken heavy subjects and turned them into like a lighthearted story that's so relatable and like digestible, especially in this economy. You know what I mean? It's like, we don't need another depressing story, but what made you want to like start telling your story in that lighthearted way? And why do you think clicked so well with people in your format? There's a little bit of accidental things happening here because like I mentioned, I was a theater

kid. I left college and I worked professionally in theater for a while. I moved to Nashville for music. I eventually transitioned into standup comedy and I've been doing like storytelling onstage things my whole life. And so even in my older standup act, I had used a lot of my early church memories as material in a different kind of tone, probably a little bit more cynical back then. And then like I said, as I was getting older, I was like, well, maybe this is, I want to

do something else. And that's when I sort of retired that part of my life and opened my photography studio. When TikTok happened, I didn't go into it thinking I was going to do something. Like most people, I downloaded it during the pandemic. It was like a new form of entertainment. It was more interactive, like lots of people were commenting and responding, so it seemed like interaction in some way. You know, so I had a lot of those stories already there because I've told them so much.

The accidental part is when I just told them with the autotune filter on my mic. That's the accidental part. I didn't know that that was going to add like a new layer of like absurdity, I guess, or something like that. I love that. My super fundamentalist Christian church, we had our own language. Like the word charismatic didn't mean charming. It meant how high is the level of crazy at a church like speaking in tongues.

Also I just think at this older stage in life, my energy is different than it was when I was trying so hard to make it a career 20 years ago. It's like, I'm softer and you know, and I think just like during the pandemic, everyone's attitude is different. And then just like the absurd, it is absurdity. It's the absurdity of the autotune telling these dark stories in my soft middle-aged body presence. It's beautiful.

Yeah. What was the name of your youth group? We didn't have a name. Oh, name-less. There was no name. It was just the youth group of the church, you know, but we were a part of a nationwide group called Acquire the Fire. Oh my God.

I love that name. I don't know if you got it, but Acquire rhymes with fire. I am hearing that with my ears. Yes. Speaking of ridiculous names, we're going to play a little game called youth group name or fringy cult name, so we're going to read you a list of names that either correspond to a real youth group or a real notorious fringy cult from history, potato, potato, and you're going to have to guess which is which.

The first one is Jesus Freaks International. I'm going to go ahead and say that that is a youth group. You are correct. That is a youth group. It's a German evangelical Christian youth movement that uses the alpha and omega symbol to represent Jesus, so it's giving fraternity. And of course, it's experienced some controversy for conservative fundamentalism as they do. Oh, not fundamentalism again.

Strikes again. Is it a youth group or a fringy cult name? The Freedomites. I'm going to say that as a cult. You are good. You are good. I'm going to win this game. This was a cult.

It was originally formed in Saskatchewan in 1902 after a fracturing of different religious groups who had fled Russia to escape persecution. The Freedomites insisted on three things, communal living, nudity, and anarchy. They became most famous for their all nude public demonstrations to show opposition to the material tendencies of society. And in the 20s and 30s, they even burned and bombed a bunch of public buildings. Ooh, we don't want that. But they were naked, of course.

Yeah, they bombed them in the nude. They bombed them in the nude. And to show their disdain for the government. Yeah. You know what? Bring that back, honestly. That's the energy we need for 2022. It's true.

In this economy, in this economy, we got to do it. The next one, youth group or cult, the family. That sounds like a cult. You're quick. And you're good. You are good. You're good. You're good.

You're good. This is actually one of my favorite cults. From the 60s to the 90s, there was this female cult leader named Anne Hamilton Byrne who would like collect little children to create her vision of a perfect race. She was Australian, of course. She would give these kids heaps of LSD, which was pretty fucked. Yeah. What the actual F, dude?

That will traumatize a child. I can barely smoke weed. Like, that's not good. Last one, world of life fellowship. Um, that's a tough one too, but I'm going to say youth group. You are correct. I thought we were going to get you on the lap. You won the whole game.

You won. I don't think. No one has ever won the whole game, actually. No one's ever won the whole game. You're really good. Congratulations. Thanks. I think we have to, like, send you merch or something, because this has never happened

before. Would you like a shirt? Yes. Or a shirt? Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much for being on this episode of Sounds Like a Call. I feel like we trauma bonded.

If folks want to join your call and keep up with you, where can they do that? All of my everything is on my website, kevinjamesthornton.com. My full calendar of shows coming up, my podcast, my merch store, all of my everything is on my website. My name is kevinjamesthornton.com. Amazing. What's your podcast called? Call Kevin.

Hi. My name is Paige, and I'm from Cincinnati. I was a volunteer young life leader, and there are so many cool things about that organization. You're required to commit about 20 hours of volunteer work a week, and then in all your free time, you're expected to pray on children in their schools and at sporting events. We weren't allowed to drink alcohol or hang out with the opposite sex past a certain time. We were required to memorize two Bible verses every week, and there's this unspoken pressure to only marry other young life leaders after like six months of dating.

My name is Olivia from New Braunfels, Texas, and the cultiest thing about youth groups to me is that they lure you in from such a young age, usually like 12 or 13. My friend brought me to one when I was like 10, we had like a fun movie night, and then we were brought into a room and went through the Bible with someone. They lure you in at such a young age and promise you the social group, these fun experiences, and then you have no way of leaving because that's your entire friend system. So Amanda, cult of youth groups, do you think they're a live your life? A watch your back or a get the fuck out level cult?

Oh, it's really tough because I don't want to pass judgment and I don't want to completely discourage people from participating in religion that brings them peace and solace in a fundamentally entropic universe. But I do think that because of the predatory capitalistic fucked up hateful nature of many of these youth groups that they're a little bit get the fuck out. Yeah, as you were saying that I was thinking, I think they're like high, high watch your back 12 to 18, and then if you're still in a youth group at 18 or involved in a youth group in any way post 18 years old, it's get the fuck out dude, you're no longer the youth.

Well that's the thing, it's like a kid probably doesn't have like that much say so. That's why it's so important to tell children that they have autonomy and that they can think for themselves. So it's like, I don't know if any kids are listening to this podcast if you're 12 to 18, like watch your back. But that's the importance of like good parenting. It's like if you let your kid join one of these youth groups because they want community and they want friends, just remind them periodically like you can leave whenever you want, like

you can do whatever you want, you're not tied to this because it is good for some children. Yeah, no, I think we talk about sometimes and I talk about all the time how like a sign of a healthier cult like group is when they let you have one foot in and one foot out. Yeah. So that's it for our show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty.

Sounds like a cult is created, hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. Kate Elizabeth is our editor. Our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by Casey Colb. Thank you to our intern slash production assistant Noemi Griffin subscribe to sounds like a cult wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. And if you like our show, feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts and check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.