I was 13 years old when it happened. Up until that moment, I had remained a sheltered little boy whose only real exposure to anything of cultural interest had come vicariously through his friends. Yet in the blink of an eye, everything changed. I had transformed into a fully enlightened young man. I had entered a portal into a new world. I had stepped onto a plane of reality that had previously been far beyond my reach.
No, I’m not talking about my first kiss. (Sadly, that would still be another eight or nine years down the road.) I’m talking instead about something much more transformative: the moment I became the proud owner of the two-disc “WOW 1999” CD (the one with the green cover and dc Talk’s “Into Jesus” on the opening track). For a kid whose wildest music encounters until that point involved listening to Kenny G albums on loan from his parents, this was a true crossing of the Rubicon.
The significance of that moment wasn’t just about the thrill of owning “cool” music for the first time in my life. In the years that followed, that green CD proved to be my initiation into the vibrant world of early-2000s evangelical youth culture. This was a culture permeated with WWJD bracelets, Joshua Harris books, and overzealous accountability groups. And as the years went by, it was a culture that would come to define my entire adolescence.
Having spent my childhood in conservative Baptist churches, I’d always been well-versed in the basic tenets of born-again Christianity. But there was something about having a CCM Magazine subscription and slapping a faux-chrome fish decal on the back of my first car that took this existing belief system and turned it into a complete identity. It was like a second conversion. Before I knew it, I had become thoroughly immersed in evangelical youth culture.
Now that I’m in my 40s and a good distance removed from both the “evangelical” and the “youth” aspects of that strange little world, I can start to see the whole thing a bit more clearly. Some parts of it make me cringe, others make me cry, and a few even make me wonder if I might have survived something borderline cult-like. But more than anything, I increasingly find myself able to look back at this phase of my life and laugh. Honestly, it was all just a little bit silly. How else would you describe a punk kid running around with a beaded surfer necklace talking way too seriously about courtship and how “The Matrix” is the perfect allegory for Christianity?
So in the spirit of humor and self-deprecation, let’s take a look back, shall we? The early 2000s era of American evangelicalism was a singular moment in human history, and it deserves to be studied by sociologists and historians for centuries to come. But in the meantime, I invite my fellow millennial church kids to reminisce with me as I review some of the iconic forces that molded us into the people we are today.
Christian Rock Music
It’s hard for the average American to understand how big of a deal contemporary Christian music was to kids like me. We were a generation whose ears craved the worldly sounds of blink-182, Foo Fighters, Eminem, and Pearl Jam, but our souls were only allowed to dwell on that which was true, noble, right, and pure. For many of us, the answer to this dilemma came in the form of cheap Christian knock-off bands imitating the music the rest of the world listened to on the radio.
I, for one, loved the whole scene. By the time I graduated high school, my CD collection was as impressive as any in the tri-county area — not a flex, just a fact. I had music from mainstream artists (Newsboys, Third Day, Steven Curtis Chapman), contemplative artists (Jars of Clay, Caedmon’s Call, the Normals), edgy artists (Relient K, Grits, the O.C. Supertones) and even a few singer-songwriter babes who were destined to one day meet me and fall hopelessly in love (Jennifer Knapp, Rachael Lampa, Stacie Orrico).
Most of that music hasn’t stuck with me. Either the music itself has proven to be bad, the lyrics have proven to be corny, or the artists have proven to be creeps, crooks, or full-fledged right-wing lunatics. But 25 years later, it is somewhat satisfying to see that a precious few of my old favorites still hold up. Whether it’s a band that now distances itself from evangelicalism, an artist who stands up for LGBTQ rights, or just a song that speaks about spirituality in a way that still resonates, I’ve been known to put on the old jams every now and then and reminisce.
- Verdict: It’s a complicated legacy, but man did we rock out back in the day.
- Rating: 7 Dove awards out of 10.
Acquire the Fire
What do you get when you combine the unbridled energy of a rock concert, the raging hormones of 60,000 poorly supervised teenagers, and the spiritual fervor of a good old-fashioned tent revival — all packed into an NFL stadium for two unforgettable days? The answer is straight 150-proof evangelistic madness, otherwise known as the teen mega-ministry Acquire the Fire.
My own memories of acquiring the fire involve some genuinely hilarious shenanigans and zany antics carried out in the old RCA Dome of downtown Indianapolis (may it rest in peace). Those were some good times with great friends. The downside is that those memories are all mixed up with the emerging conviction I felt — fueled by this event and others like it — that it was my lifelong burden and responsibility to save all the lost and reprobate heathens who would otherwise spend eternity in the torments of hell. Let’s just say that made for a complicated psychological state and an odd relationship with every non-Christian human I met. Such were the predictable outcomes of a high-budget religious rally geared toward impressionable teens searching for purpose.
- Verdict: I prefer my emotional manipulation with slightly less pyrotechnics.
- Rating: 4 altar calls out of 10.
Family Christian Bookstore
What if I told you there once was a place in a strip mall where you could enjoy a blissful heaven-like state during normal business operating hours? Does that sound too good to be true? Well, apparently it was, because Family Christian Bookstore tragically went bankrupt and closed its doors in the mid-2010s — proof that humanity was neither ready for nor worthy of the transcendent retail experience it offered.
When I was a teenager, I made no shortage of pilgrimages to this promised land. Whether I was looking for the latest Audio Adrenaline CD or I needed some weird Christian trinket to attach to my keychain, this place was like God’s own response to Hot Topic (which I never entered, by the way, because clearly that was Satan’s domain). Sure, you occasionally had to dodge the old folks picking up their Gaither Homecoming VHS tapes, but if you knew where to look, this place might as well have been the official gift shop of evangelical youth.
- Verdict: Who doesn’t love the holy matrimony of American Christianity and rampant consumerism?
- Rating: 5 Teen Study Bibles out of 10.
“The Passion of the Christ”
Nothing divides a conservative evangelical youth group quite like the release of a new movie that’s entirely about Jesus (yay!) — but also happens to be rated R (oh no!). When the dust finally settled on this debate, I found myself siding with the pro-Passion crowd, arguing that the extreme violence in the film should only remind us of the heinous nature of our sins. After all, what’s healthier than some blood-splattered, over-spiritualized self-loathing?
Apart from the fact that this movie apparently radicalized Jim Caviezel (aka Jesus), my main gripe is that we never got a follow-up series of shockingly graphic cinematic productions based on lesser-known Bible stories. If the same superheroes can get 47 movies made about them every year, why couldn’t we have enjoyed an R-rated flick about Jael putting a tent peg through a dude’s head, the Levites slaughtering their own friends and relatives, or the bear that killed 42 kids for making fun of a bald prophet? And that’s just the violent stuff — don’t get me started on all the biblical IP that would get an R rating for far more salacious reasons (Bathsheba, anyone?).
- Verdict: I’m sure Jesus is thrilled that a film about his execution grossed over $600 million.
- Rating: 3 Mel Gibson hammer strikes out of 10.
VeggieTales
Did you proudly wear a Bob the Tomato t-shirt as a college student? Did you go see the 2002 Jonah VeggieTales movie in theatres as a 17-year-old? Could you at one point recite every word of “His Cheeseburger” and “The Water Buffalo Song”? If so, you should stop copying me. Sure, I might have pretended that my VeggieTales fandom was merely ironic at the time (just like the goofy Goodwill clothes I wore back then), but deep down I did truly enjoy these high-fiber tales of morality and religion.
In hindsight, it’s probably not ideal that my generation’s formative theological training came by way of animated vegetables on a television screen. And upon further consideration, it’s probably not the best idea to anthropomorphize asparagus for children who already struggle to incorporate enough fruits and vegetables into their diets. But hey, it could have been worse, right? At least I wasn’t watching Bibleman.
- Verdict: I still wish I had been allowed to watch the Simpsons in my youth, but CGI vegetables were a close second.
- Rating: 8 chocolate bunnies out of 10.
Purity Culture
Books have been written about this phenomenon, so there’s no way I can even scratch the surface in just a few paragraphs. But how can we not talk about the joys of being taught to fear our sexuality at the very time we were clumsily trying to discover it? For guys, it was all about bouncing the eyes, pretending every female was our sister (um, gross), and making sure we didn’t use the dial-up internet connection on our home computer to sneak a peek at boobies when nobody was watching.
But girls got a whole different level of craziness. And if you don’t believe me, just dig out an old youth group photo from beach day on the mission trip that shows a few dozen adolescent females sitting around awkwardly in their baggy shorts and oversized t-shirts, not a single bodily curve in sight. The guilt, confusion, and repression in the eyes of those young women will tell you all you need to know. Not only did they have to deal with intolerable teen boys who didn’t know how to use deodorant; they also had to cope with the fact that their own bodies had been weaponized against them by the spiritual authorities in their lives — most of whom were male and likely harboring their own twisted and misguided notions about sex.
- Verdict: Burn it to the ground. And dance on its ashes. Naked.
- Rating: 0 purity rings out of 10.
Alternative Super Bowl Halftime Shows
If you haven’t been to a Super Bowl party where the halftime show was replaced by some poorly produced evangelistic video, then I have serious doubts about your credibility as a church kid. This was a rite of passage. There you are, watching the big game, eating Doritos, laughing with your buds. And then halftime comes, and out of nowhere the channel gets changed, and some crusty old geezer with a Bible starts telling you that Jesus scored a heavenly touchdown for you if only you’ll sack your own sin and let him intercept your life. If you’re lucky, maybe a retired second-string NFL lineman showed up at the end to tell you how his life was changed by his own religious conversion. Even at their best, these shows were the absolute worst.
The hilarious thing is that three decades later, this all came back — and somehow Kid Rock is now at the center of it? I don’t even know where to start with that one. I just know that I missed out on a lot of iconic musical performances (and several GoDaddy commercials) which I resent to this day. I never even had the chance to see Janet Jackson’s malfunctioning wardrobe.
- Verdict: They were as weird then as they are now.
- Rating: 15-yard penalty for unnecessary stupidity.
Youth Group Lock-Ins
Speaking of unnecessary stupidity, what on earth were the adults in our lives thinking when they decided it would somehow bring us closer to Jesus if they summoned all the youth to the church building on a Friday night, ordered a truckload of cheap pizza, served up an endless supply of soft drinks, and then turned us loose for an entire night of absolutely unhinged chaos? Nobody left those events the next morning as a better person in any way whatsoever.
This is why church kids did so well when they got into freshman English and had to read “Lord of the Flies.” We might not have had a conch, but we knew exactly what it was like to watch a group of kids descend into lawlessness and anarchy. Every lock-in was its own unique horror story, but the constants were someone getting injured, someone getting sent home early, and someone falling asleep at 9 p.m. and having terrible things done to his unconscious body.
- Verdict: Our grandparents fought at Normandy. We survived the Nerf battle of ’99 in a completely dark church sanctuary at 2 a.m.
- Rating: 1.5 hours of sleep out of 10.
Focus on the Family
To be fair, James Dobson was around long before the early 2000s. But you can’t talk about evangelical youth culture without talking about the man who sold over 40 million copies of books on how to raise kids — the vast majority of which were purchased and read by our parents as manuals on how to raise us. For those who are unfamiliar with Dobson’s work, this is the man who asserted, “The central goal of parenting is to break the stubborn will of a self-centered child.” As it turns out, some of us were broken a little too well.
But Dobson’s Focus on the Family didn’t just shape us indirectly through our parents. It also got its tentacles directly into our lives by (among other things) making sure we weren’t lured away by secular entertainment. Does anyone remember Breakaway magazine? Or its female counterpart Brio? How about those prudish Plugged In reviews that would count the number of times a movie used the Lord’s name in vain? I’ve yet to meet a normal adult who says, “Boy, am I glad I was surrounded by Focus on the Family teachings as a kid.”
- Verdict: Let’s call it what it is — propaganda.
- Rating: 2 really firm (but loving?) spankings out of 10.
Although these are some of the primary artifacts of evangelical youth culture that left the biggest impression on me, there are still plenty of notable ones I’ve left out: the Power Team, Ken Ham lectures, Nooma videos, the Left Behind series, Sports Spectrum, See You at the Pole, unspoken prayer requests, and of course “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” — just to name a few.
Ultimately, I consider myself lucky that I can look back at most of these experiences and laugh. I had a weird adolescence, but certainly not a traumatizing one. My parents loved me and seemed way more reasonable than most of the other church parents I knew. I had a great group of friends who shared my quirky interests and mostly kept me out of trouble. And like all teenagers, I eventually grew out of my youthful infatuations once I hit my 20s and realized I was never going to attract a mate by quoting Christian rap lyrics (although what I grew into during young adulthood was arguably much worse — another discussion for another day).
It’s all just part of my story. Maybe I’d like to rewrite certain aspects of it if I could, but in the words of the great Christian rock band Switchfoot, “Yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead.” And last I checked, wrinkles are hard to get rid of.
So let’s raise a glass to the evangelical youth culture of yesteryear. And let’s salute all the millennials who lived to tell about it.
Drew Thomas Humphrey 