Shiny Happy People: It's Closer Than You Think

My experience with Bill Gothard's teachings, one step removed

Source: IMDb

Last week, I sat down for a couple afternoons with one of my kids and watched the four episode docuseries Shiny Happy People on Amazon Prime. Like many people who have a history with white, American evangelicalism, I found it to be a genuinely difficult watch. I did not grow up in the Bill Gothard ecosystem of ATI or IBLP, but I did grow up in a conservative church and came into adulthood in the 90’s when Gothard’s work was gaining a wider reach through the widespread use of the internet. So even though I never attended an IBLP conference, his teachings crept into much of my church experience.

Sometime around 2001, my then-husband and I found our way to a Foursquare church in the town where we lived. We had two young children and were looking for a church that was a bit more pentecostal than the one we had been attending. We settled on this one because the pastor was a pretty great musician and we were both interested in that. Because I was the woman, I ended up spending more time in the nursery than playing on the praise team, but my husband became immediately involved, playing drums.

We discovered quickly that our pastor was a significant figure with Cleansing Stream Ministries. He wrote several songs that were performed at the conferences. Cleansing Stream Ministries (often abbreviated to CSM) was an inner healing organization that focused heavily on “alignment” and “submission.” Every ill in your life was a result of a misalignment between your will and the will of God. CSM was here to deliver you from the evils that misalignment might be causing, through an ecstatic weekend event where the demons that caused these misalignments were cast out.