Hi everyone, I apologize for the audio issues in the last part of the video. During the clips from the AWANA presentation (starting at 14:38), the sound is only coming through on the left side. I didn't notice this when I uploaded the video, so I appreciate the comments pointing it out. If you're listening to this video with headphones, please be sure that your left earbud is in. You can also turn on the closed captions if that works better for you. I will be more careful to check the audio of external clips next time. Thanks again for letting me know!
Do you still have your book? I remember looking in a friend's son's book and there was a section in there about the soon coming acceptance of a chip or RFID chip to be put in our hands- I don't have the book now to look but I do remember reading it....
What you should really apologize for is using the term trans phobic you can’t be afraid of something that isn’t real a man can’t become a woman anymore than I can become a shark in the ocean that is a fact facts don’t care about your feelings
I am sorry you got indoctrinated by the secular world and made to feel ashamed of your faith. It is terrible how you now devote so much time to Christian discrimination. I pray you heal from the shame the secular world has thrust upon you and change your bigoted heart. I pray you find your way back to your savior.
I wasn't the best at memorizing scripture as a kid, so I didn't earn too many AWANA bucks. I did, however, know how to use my parents' photocopy machine. Ultimately I learned more about laundering money than the verses of the bible.
@@jamiejay7633 See my problem is any space where I have to spend eternity with you and others like you is my own personal hell. So I'm in a bit of a catch 22 here, you understand. I'll take hell along with all the boys jeffery dahmer assaulted, and you can take heaven with dahmer himself. Cheers
I am German and even before you said anything about white surpremacy I knew what was coming. That "theme song" and their first concept scream hitler youth...I wonder if the founders had any Nazi ties...
In my years of Awana... Each age group had a specific uniform. We had to stand in perfect lines from like tallest to shortest. Thinking back it was very hitler youth esque.
We really need more places for teens to hangout and exist and make friends that isn’t church-based. Everything costing money when you have none, or being proselytized to meet new peers really do be wild
I remember as a kid I had a friend who invited me to his Youth Group but I was just like nah I'm not really religious. I'm sure he was encouraged to invite prople even though I didn't think much about it at the time.
@@PrincessNinja007 i loved 4h but at least where I was it was still very white and churchy. I'm a pasty white latina so I know from my profile you wouldn't know most of my family is from Mexico but idk, it was a little alienating as a kid even though I grew up on a farm and raised animals. Definitely an in and out group, cliques formed. Idk.
I did Awana in elementary school, and as someone with disabilities that make memorization hard, it was literally traumatizing for me. Every week was so stressful because the pressure was so high. On the “graduation” day, to the middle school program i believe, there were tests of memorized verses and the books of the bible, and I failed. I was sent into the hallway alone for the rest of the session while everyone else had their ceremony, after being told I would be “held back” and stay at that level while all the other kids my age were moving on to the next program. It was humiliating. I have bpd and reacted to that rejection so intensely, that i was sobbing so hard when I finally got picked up that my parents immediately decided the family was quitting awana, and it remains the only thing from the program I have clear memories of.
1. JUNKO!! 2. SAMME DUDE!! i cried sooo much from trying to recite verses but my parents never did anything other than sit me down and force me to “try harder” :/
That was something I noticed. You have to "fit in" and be just like everyone else to be accepted. If you are the "square peg," and you cannot round off those edges, then too bad for you. It's certainly not a Christian attitude.
Ohhh same. I can totally relate, I had really bad adhd as a kid and not so much once I was a teenager and not much at all as an adult but I do have very bad bpd and I have a hard time controlling it, and the anger that comes with it. so I can totally relate, I hated awana with a passion
Speaking as someone outside the US - pledging allegiance just to the American flag is culty enough, let alone adding additional flags with even more intense 'military to change minds' ideologies.
I personally always get very bad vibes when I see that, I only have seen pledge of allegiance to flags and stuff in documentaries and history class (and I'm German, so you can imagine what kind of automatic association I have)
Having grown up in the US, I wasn't terribly comfortable with the pledge but shrugged it off mostly until I hosted an Austrian exchange student. They found it so strange and I was finally able to understand how problematic it actually is.
I am black.. I went to Awana and it was a great experience... More positive clubs like Awana are needed... Note : also went to other young organizations...and they also had pledges
I remember that coloring page from when I was a kid. And my first thought was, “those aren’t really the skin colors though”. Our group was pretty intense and used the old curriculum until I was in 6th or 7th grade- we were really pressured to win at the Awana Olympics, where you compete at the games against other clubs. It very militaristic, and you got big prizes for bringing friends (bonus points if they are from a “non-Christian home”). I remember being so proud that I filled up my progress bar with arrowheads, since I was really good at memorizing verses lol. One of the weirdest things I remember (besides the cringy songs), were the girls doing “color guard”/flag twirling activities, and the boys parading around toy rifles while we sang the the “I’m in the lords army, yes sir!” song. Crazy how I hadn’t thought of this as one of the more traumatic and formative elements of my childhood until now. Since it was also one of my main social outlets, it ensured that shame was one of my most fundamental feelings and beliefs about myself (to this day, tbh, though it’s gotten a lot better).
Former Pal here, from about '79-'83. Can confirm I had the workbook with the racist coloring page. I distinctly remember having to ask what the "red" race was.
I remember doing the Awana Olympics. I hated it because I was the slow kid. I was last to get picked, often skipped over, and normally was that kid that cried because I hated it.
I hadn't thought about it until it was shown here, but I definitely saw it. I didn't see anything racist about it at the time, but I certainly wouldn't give it to my kids now.
I got gold at the AWANA Olympics, was so damn proud, I also now remember the coloring book, memories are flooding back after watching this. They hated me because I believed in evolution and thought God would want a system for creatures to adapt and change. I once got beat at my Christian school with a paddle for challenging my teacher on evolution when they told us Satan put the dinosaur bones in the ground to confuse scientists, But I freaking loved dinosaurs so I was not ok with that explanation. I was so mad after being beaten I kicked a big hole in the bathroom drywall and never said a word about it.
they really hardcore pressured kids to memorize, like, it wasn't optional. leaders would give you a hard time if you didn't make progress. this video brought back so many memories, i really appreciate your work as always.
And it was only the verse given from the work books, without context, and it didn't matter if you understood it, just so long as each was word for word. At least that's how it was for us.
She has abandoned the truth of Christ and now is a Left wing cult member who thinks obsession with skin color and sexual orientation is her new anti Christ theology. Awww the Indian images scarred her....what a weak traitor of the truth. Sickening.
It didn’t help that I have a learning disability and increasingly became less interested into my teens. Pretty much was forced to go by my mom until she grew distant from the church for some reason.
as a Jewish kid who was forced to go by converted Christian family members.. I'm so glad someone's finally talking about this. The amount of homophobia and shaming of other religions was terrifying, even as a kid.
if you read the bible you would see God was homophobic and shamed other religions. Your problem is with God, not christianity. Don't likeit? Go back to being a jew
I’m Oglala Lakota, and-yes, unfortunately, this kind of racist nonsense is way too familiar to me. We, as Native Americans, are so used to the Christian, Manifest Destiny, white “right” to our indigenous homeland. I absolutely love your honesty, and for laying bare your life journey. Christianity is still really difficult for me, mostly as a traditional ceremonial Lakota. Christianity has hurt my people and my family, and I learn a lot from your courageous honesty.
During that time period, racist stereotypes of Native Americans were absolutely everywhere. Heck, even when I was a kid, it seemed like half of TV shows and movies were "Westerns". Honestly, AWANA might have just been copying the Boy Scouts with that theming. They didn't need to promote the more insidious and harmful aspects (White Manifest Destiny crap, ect.), because that stuff was just pervasive
I'm truly sorry we live in a world, in a country that has allowed the arrogance, hatred and racism of one religion to destroy so many lives. Unfortunately, it's still going strong in many sects, areas and churches. The arrogance it takes to believe that they are divinely inspired and have the authority of some God to decide for themselves that only they get to decide what is and isn't legitimate. Manifest destiny is the perfect example of this, the Spanish conquistadors in South America is another. We've watched recently the US government ignore native Americans beliefs in pushing the oil pipeline thru reservation land. Even after being told it was sacred land. It's no different than tearing down Baptist churches to build a pipeline. But they wouldn't do that, because it's Christian, and they've decided that is the only God they will accept was legitimate. I truly believe that religion will be what takes this country down if not stopped
The line about “life and liberty to all…” is great, until they add that horrific phrase: “who believe.” Makes the whole organization an even grosser thing.
I was in Sparks Awana as a kid and when I questioned, “Is Heaven real?” “Is God real?” I got in trouble and got yelled at and they had a talk with my parents. Definitely cult-like.
I wasn’t in Awana but I had god used as a weapon against me too. I’m not religious at all and I don’t believe in god but from my experience growing up going to church this all just seems like a normal church group
Yesss, EXACTLY! I was a very inquisitive person as well and Awana HATED me asking questions. 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 For an activity which was marketed as being fun, it really involved a lot of reprimand and punishment. I was forced to crawl on nasty, smelly youth group carpet under chairs with a painful open wound (which later got painfully infected in the exact area i crawled on) with a fresh scab on my knee for a 'reward' why is there a reward if you can't refuse?? 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 There is no hate like christian love. **puke 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 I'm so sorry you had to go through that too! Much love
Sometimes I feel religious again and tricked into by default as god does whatever he wants to us and self hatred and victim blaming feeling like the enemy and bad guy just because you're told to but wonder if God is evil and better megatron than Satan 🤔.
I remember visiting one of my friends' AWANA group. It was anything but "fun." My brothers and I were the only black kids there, and we knew it for sure. The leaders were actually quite intimidating and made me feel horrible for not knowing scripture by memory, or even for simply being shy and reserved (AKA "effeminate"). Honestly, there are so many more aspects that my mind refuses to unlock, but it's safe to say that although I am still a devout Christ follower who desires for others to know and love Him, I have an extreme aversion to mainstream discipleship/evangelism as we know it (especially Christian nationalism). Thank you for this video confirming one of the foundational reasons why.
I was the only black kid at the church I went to as well. I went with my white neigbors and their 5 homeschool very sheltered kids. They didn't like me because I was going to homeschool and I did a better job at the games and especially memorizing the versus
That's an identity argument. I was called a racial slur in high school by a black classmate while the whole class laughed and teacher ignored it. Does that mean that I indict the whole system??? No!!!! That is am anecdotal experience backed up by 0 evidence
I tried blocking out my time in Awana, but facing all of this and acknowledging the cult like behavior I was indoctrinated into is helping recover. Thank you for your videos.
I’m glad you were able to break from the cycle! It’s not easy when being indoctrinated, especially as a kid. I hope nothing but peace reaches you in your life. A peace untied to any deity or leader
The indoctrination of children is far more aggressive by the alphabet movement. You were destined to be on the side of evil. Now you call good bad and bad good. Pathetic.
It is traumatic. You are so strong to become vulnerable enough to understand that what was done to you was wrong. I've blocked quite a lot out myself, which has made coming to terms with it and making peace with it is a lifetime's journey. I hope you are able to find real love and acceptance in your life.
@soap man starves Better than being indoctrinated with the alphabet community perversion. priDEMONth 😈. Does your secular religion have you calling men women and women men yet?
I literally completely blocked AWANA from my memories until about a month ago, after a few sessions with a new psychologist inspired me to make a time-line of events in my life, and suddenly AWANA popped out of my head onto the page like a fully-formed Athena...and how could I have possibly forgotten about those three years in elementary school completely stuffed with memorizing scripture and singing marching songs and playing awful, uninteresting group games? I have something resembling fond memories of the time I spent there, tucked away in a bubble in the back of my brain...but now reckoning with the complete fever dream of what those memories actually are...realizing the layers of indoctrination in my childhood that built the foundation for the things I do remember about the charismatic evangelical church of my teenage years... AWANA is f***ing weird.
I had those terrible memories locked away too. Until I saw the thumbnail of this video I forgot it even existed, but now that I'm writing out replies in the comments section, I'm remembering more and more about it. No wonder I have always carried around unexplained guilt, rage, and lacked the ability to set boundaries or say 'no'. 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 The authoritarian disregard for bodily autonomy and consent by that organization, not to mention the near-constant (for me) reprimands and punishments is terrifying to realize as an adult. I am so grateful my parents pulled me out after they witnessed a leader force me to spend most of two hours memorizing a silly little passage I kept forgetting just 1 or 2 words to. 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 Whew, those are some new terrible memories I can now reflect on. I feel like such a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, although my gut is still crunching up at the thought of those memories, and how angry I am that they are a tool of YT supremacy. Absolutely repulsive! 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 I'm sorry you had to lock away those memories too. Much love!!
WOW!!! I was thinking about trying therapy and was hoping it could unlock some memories. So your hidden memories just automatically came up from your subconscious during a session? The brain is truly an amazing thing.
@@andrewortiz5797 It didn't come up for me in session - it happened while I was at home, thinking about different phases in my life, and trying to remember how I spent my time. It was quite overwhelming, and I was actually really glad to be alone at the time, so I could take my time to process what I'd just remembered before talking to my therapist about it.
Awana seemed like an alternative to girl scouts which was "too liberal and feminist". I now know that not all girl scout troops were liberal like mine. My troop had Christians, atheist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, black, white, Asian, native American, Hispanic the whole spectrum. But the Awana girls I knew implied that us girl scouts were "worldly". This was in the 80s-90s.
I remember (2005) there being an RA club and it's girl version as the scouts alternative. The boys got to race pine cars, the girls got to talk about spreading love to thy neighbor
@@laurenconrad1799 you know it really was, until I was writing this out I took it for granted how diverse and inclusive my troop was. We were a public school troop.
Years ago, my (then) neighbors sent their youngest child across the street to try to "invite" my child to their AWANA group. I thought, *"Not only no, but HELL NO."* I politely said, "no, thank you". I tried to be gentle as possible. It was not the kid's fault she was born to Evangelical indoctrinator bullies, after all. But this kid was *_INSISTANT_* and kept asking "why?", in the most annoyingly pleading tone you can imagine, all the while refusing to leave my front doorstep. I finally said, firmly, "NO. Because we don't share your beliefs and I don't want my kid to belong to your club. Please do not ask us again." The child looked absolutely shocked. Then I sat my kid down and carefully explained why I had refused the "invitation" to the "fun club" this kid had talked nonstop about the past week 🙄(unbeknownst to yours truly). My kid was raised secularly (with an basic understanding of the major world religions). Now that I've seen this video, wow, I now know that we really dodged a bullet. This neighbor family was seriously Evangelical. Their kids (all of whom had names that started with the same first initial as one of their parents ...gag, just like the Duggars) were allowed to go to the same local public school as all the kids in the neighborhood (at least for a while). I used to walk my kid to the school bus stop and chat with the other moms who walked their kids to the stop. One morning, the neighbors youngest (again) started showing us all a poster done as a homework project that they had to present with an oral report in class that day. They were learning about the structure of a cell. The teacher wanted them to try to find an analogy that compared something with a cell. Like " my classroom is like a cell because... "the teacher is like the nucleus, the students are like the rhizomes, the walls of the class room are like a cell's outer membrane, blah blah blah, etc.". You get the picture. What analogy did the little pushy proselytizer choose? _" The cell is like my Bible because... "._ Holy hobbling Christ on a crutch. The following year, the mother started homeschooling this kid because they had matriculated to middle school and the teachers there had no patience for this child's "all Jesus, all of the time" brainwashed mentality.
I’ve known people like this too. They can be exhausting. I now watch the Simpsons with my kids and I ironically (or unironically, depending on how you look at it) think, “I wish more Christians were actually like Ned Flanders”. Sure, he’s an indoctrinated character/caricature, but at least he’s kind and not a bully.
When I was a kid,5-6, I was told as an Arab male it was my destiny to be martyred in the mission field preaching in Muslim countries. Still stayed in all the way through and even became a game time leader. The whole trans thing blew all that up quick.
@@AprilBytheBay oh god and getting screamed at for crying at being told you’re calling is to be murdered. My mom was excited that I would have the honor of dying for Christ.
My mom and dad were both AWANA leaders throughout my K-12 tenure in the program. My Dad ended up as games director and my Mom led Cubbies, before they ran Sparkies together. I’ll never forget my mom in that yellow polo. One thing I wanted to add from my experience. I carried the idea for a long time that I needed to finish the program so I could earn a scholarship the program offered. I was told that going from cubbies all the way through, you’d learn to recite the entire bible. So it just hit me hard watching the video that it was one of the earliest times I remember that existential crisis we were all given, coming to my real life. I knew from a young age I needed to memorize the entire bible to save my parents money for college (money they had). Overall, my experience in AWANA was pretty tame, but it makes me think if that was just because how normal it was in our house. Thank you for your video ❤ my first one but I’m going to be watching more.
my awana experience was pretty tame too. Our town was pretty small so we only had the cubbies, sparks, and truth and training programs, and all we did was sing songs, play games, and have bible time. The highlights i remember was the awana store and the fun nights we'd have (like crazy hair night, pie your leader night, dressing up for halloween, and things like that) and of course the pine wood car races we had. My family moved out of that town by the time i was in the last year of truth and training so at the time I was pretty pissed i didn't get to finish the program because i was only a couple months away from finishing. (I got over it pretty quickly though XD) From what I've watched in the video and read in these comments I think that a lot of the issues stem from the people who are running the program in their churches, such as the awana pledges and anthem, hitting kids with rulers if they don't do verses, etc. Thankfully my Awana experience was a positive one, and I feel terrible for those who had traumatic experiences
Ooooo I wanted to join the AWANA club at the southern baptist church in my town soooo badly. But my parents wouldn’t let me; they felt like it was “too liberal.” They’re big fans of Christian nationalism so it would’ve fit right into our beliefs, but I think they were fooled by how happy and fun everything looked. Happy and fun = too liberal. 🤣
@@DaveCM Happiness and the idea that we were all born into sin and without a savior we are nothing are just a tad antithetical towards each other. It’s not that my parents didn’t want us to be happy, it’s just that their idea of “happiness” was very narrow. Just look at these rubes in video trying to define “fun.” It’s so very revealing.
I'm curious what denomination you ended up going to for Sunday services? Maybe it was something to do with them being Baptist? Baptist I would say are pretty conservative now if it was the United Methodist I could see that perhaps things might be more liberal.
I was in AWANA… most of it was blocked out of my memory. Hearing the pledge and song brought it all back. I remember memorizing scripture for candy and participating in the AWANA Olympics. I liked the sports but didn’t care for the teachings. I asked my mom to withdraw me after a year. I was 11 and it was 1987. You are spot on, btw.
I am having an intense morning remembering all this stuff, I won a gold medal at awana loved to run around in circles, but also remember being beaten with a paddle for arguing about the existence of evolution and dinosaurs, I kicked a hole in the bathroom wall at my Christian school because I was so mad about it, never said a word either and got away with it.
Hey Elly! Not sure if you remember me, but me and my brother love watching your videos. We are also ex-fundies/went to your AWANA group, and these are super cathartic videos for us. I blocked out a lot of my childhood, so it's kinda bringing up a lot haha, but enjoying it none the less. Thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing your stories.
Hi Emily! Yes, I totally remember you! Our families did that Bible study small group thing together too, right? Where we met at different houses? I'm so glad to hear that my videos are cathartic for you and your brother! It's great to hear that you two are also ex-fundies. Thank you so much for commenting and saying hi! :)
@@ExFundieDiaries Yes! I remember you and Annie would come to our house when we were young. Must have been a parent bible study. And no problem! It's great to see you got out as well. I know it's hard to deconstruct all that. Go you! :)
Ohh the whole “VBS is free babysitting!” Thing kills me. There is a Baptist church that I pass every day on my way to work that advertised VBS this summer with “DINNER IS PROVIDED!” As one of the big main reasons to send your kids there. I live in a community that is struggling and the lure of a free meal to indoctrinate your kids is a hard one for some to pass up. “Oh it’s VBS, it’s harmless! Gives me a week of my evenings being free from 5-8:30 at night AND they will feed my kids..” it’s awful to see the manipulation
One time in high school a friend invited me to an after school activity at her church, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was Awana - it wasn't super preachy or anything, but it seemed to be a guest night where the members were supposed to bring in kids from school to encourage them to keep coming back. Luckily for me, they decided their fun activity to get random kids to join their club was to make us lie on our backs and try to eat an ice cream cone from the bottom up. Around friends, and without the weird pressure the youth leaders were putting on us, it probably could have been a fun, wacky thing to do as a young teen. But I only knew one person there, and the situation just made me feel awkward, self-conscious, and physically uncomfortable. I laughed because I didn't know how else to respond, but I never had even the slightest desire to go back.
ugh, wow… this just reminded me of how many times I tried to get the very limited friends I had outside of the church to join my family for an evening at the “church”… mortifying.
That sounds like exactly the kind of humiliating task that Awana would have kids perform. I remember having a pretty fresh big scab from skinning the point of my kneecap during a race and being told to hands-knees crawl under chairs for some little reward... but the crawling was mandatory. When I showed my injury to the adult running the activity, they tried to convince me that it couldn't possibly be **that painful and that I HAD to do it. Like beastie, I was NOT worried about how much it hurt even close to as much as I didn't want an infection from the gross church group carpet everyone was walking on in the same shoes they just walked in from the parking lot wearing. I ended up behaving like a rabid animal so that I hopefully didn't have to crawl, but it just got me a severe talking to by some church parent I didn't know until I cried, and was forced to craw, and every time I rolled onto my back and started scooting through the chairs that way, I was reprimanded by the group leader. I got an angry infection on just the lower part of the wound a few days later... the part which kinda touched the floor. The way they talked to me like a prisoner.. It scared me so badly and my evil little self plotted to burn the place down for a few weeks afterward... but my brain could NOT for the life of me rationalize what was happening. And I only complained about it to my friends, who empathized with me on how terrible it sounded, but I never went to an adult about it because I didn't know words like bodily autonomy, consent, and gaslighting. Now that I think of it, I remember my best friend and I calling the adults at Awana N@tzees, how interesting that their pious, nationalist rhetoric is very similar to that of some other authoritarian yt supremacists we know of... The next week, that same activity leader forced me to look them in the eyes and give them a hug, then sat me down to test how well I could recite a list of cringey jesus passages and the pledge of allegiance, and when I got one out of the several slightly wrong she had me go practice again sitting on my own with a notecard of all the passages for the rest of the hour and then tested me again at the end of the club. To my parents credit, they did remove me after that night because they were there that night and didn't like that they were paying for a woman to make me sit in a corner and memorize a few throwaway lines the whole 3 hours long instead of play and learn like had been promised. It was my lucky break, but almost 20 years later I am still traumatized. I hated the way people in children's activities did not afford kids rights to think for themselves or set boundaries or have consent before something humiliating or unsafe or stifling was forced upon us. Disgusting. No wonder we hear reactionaries still banging the drum that children should not be taught about consent. I couldn't believe what I was hearing until now... it makes sense thinking back on these painful memories I have blocked out for decades. 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 I'm so glad you didn't get wrapped up in it too. How humiliating to have to eat something arguably unhealthy like ice cream in front of peers. I was chunky and trying to not overeat that would have been my NIGHTMARE! 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 At least we are still here. Even tho I still have to learn how to set boundaries and not take sh*t from other people, at least it taught me firsthand what to NEVER do to a child. Much love!!!
I was raised by an atheist mom but my babysitter took me to awana. It took a lot of therapy to work past the issues it gave me. I remember going from being a hard tomboy who only wore boys clothes, to forcing myself to wear dresses and do my hair, I was terrified if I didnt Id go to hell for being gay. That was essentially what they told me, if I dont dress like a girl, Im a sinner, Im gay, and Im going to hell. It was bad. And on top of that I got yelled at all the time because I wasnt raised religious and struggled a lot memorizing things. It was just a lot of trauma that was hard to get beyond at such a young age.
My mom put me in Awana's when I was 8. On the third meeting I climbed over a fence and ran away. I don't remember what it was as a kid that made me hate it. Maybe it was my little rebellious atheist agnostic self trying to break free. Thankfully after that my mom got the hint and took me out. lol Thank you for these videos, Elly! As an afab who was raised conservative Christian, they are incredibly helpful and relatable.
@@reinasherman8009 crazy how our brains do that. It makes me wonder if the reason we forget/block it out is because it was ultimately forgettable or because it was too hard/unpleasant to continue to remember.
You're my hero! I wanted to escape so bad too! The authoritarian supervision was too strong at my Awana I couldn't get away with anything. They punished me for rolling my eyes at their lack of care when I came to the adult leaders about my concerns. 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 FTP and the authoritarian youth groups like Awana, which train little order-followers up to join their ranks later. The Awana in my area was a HARDCORE pol1ce simp. Gross. 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 Seriously. My HERO!! Much love!!
You described the segment towards the end where everyone in the room was struggling to describe “fun” as funny, and as an outsider who was raised mostly/relatively secular I think its ‘funny’ too but in a more strange sense of the word instead of the humorous sense. Hearing grown adults speak about fun as if they’re all aliens who’ve only been observing human behavior for maybe a day or so is really unsettling. To think some people are so closed off from the rest of society because a cult runs their whole life is truly heartbreaking.
I grew up in relatively conservative Christian church and attended a pretty seriously conservative evangelical church during my 20s. I'm now very progressive and still Christian. I thought I had just about seen it all but it freaks me out to learn there was a Christian flag that you had to pledge allegiance too. I find that horribly blasphemous.
I wasn't in AWANA, but a very cultish church. "Non Denominational" but we were still forced to commit idolatry in VBS by pledging to the Christian flag. You've got me thinking that maybe I should speak up about it more. I've briefly covered it on my channel, but it boils down to me crying myself to sleep a lot as a teen worrying my salvation didn't stick. I'd also have panic episodes if I woke up and everyone was outside thinking I'd been left behind in the rapture. I understood at a very young age the concept of eternity, so thinking I'd go there for having doubts left me with PTSD and a lot of other problems. The preacher was always angry and always purposely trying to instill fear in the kids. In VBS he was describing to us about nails thru the wrist and how there are a lot of nerves there. Had us taste vinegar because they gave it to Jesus in lieu of water. Dude had nine or ten kids, all bible names. I could write a book on that guy.
@@halfbakedmedia in his words "so we can understand what he went through so we wouldn't have to go to hell" then yelled about fiery pain that would be brought down upon us if we didnt repent, even used the ABC jesus song
Awana seemed like one of the most innocuous things we did as fundie homeschoolers, but wow this just brought back so many memories of how indoctrinated we really were. Deep memories surfaced watching this. How proud I was to have memorized more verses than the other kids, how we saved up our allowances to fund a missionary trip to Azerbaijan (as if kids in Illinois in 2004 knew where that was or what that meant), and the damn theme song! I thought “surely, we didn’t do that” and yet I still knew some of the lyrics!! Anyway, I just found your channel a few days ago and I’m loving your gentle, fact-based approach to deconstruction. I walked away from the church entirely about a decade ago, but I will probably be deconstructing the rest of my life. So glad there are more and more of us challenging this cultish upbringing and less kids will have to grow up to deal with this kind of trauma.
I'm a 'Citation Award Winner' aka: I have completed all the books/material from the 3rd Grade through 12th Grade. My mom discovered AWANA when I was in Kindergarten, so I started as a Sparky in the 1999/2000 schoolyear. I was good at the memorization and it was fun, AWANA along with Sunday School were my primary social interaction (I was homeschooled in Kinder). I made it all the way through the book twice, plus the review book, and the 'take it to heart' passage...all three years, by the end of 2nd grade they had me working backwards through the Cubbies material. My mom ended up memorizing with me (We received our Citations at the same time) by the time I was in 3rd Grade, starting T&T or Truth and Training, my mom became a Leader. I hit Jr. High during another curriculum change, and did 2 years in Trek. HS was Journey 24/7, and I was probably depressed, so it was rough. I only stayed in the program because earning my Citation would potentially net me a college scholarship at various Christian universities. We would pledge to the Christian Flag, then the American Flag, then the AWANA Flag, then sing the anthem (man listening to that brought back memories), then we'd split up into our age (and gender) groups to rotate through Lesson Time, Small Group Time/Snack time, & Games. We were allowed to memorize in KJV or NKJV up until I was in T&T, some of my friends who had just joined, started memorizing in NIV.
I attended Awana as a child, and when I was a teenager volunteered as an assistant group leader for VBS and kids church services for a couple of years. It was always important to me to give the kids a place to just sit and draw or read or chat if they didnt want to play games or do the physical activity (it had pushed me away as child, which I'm now grateful for, to be forced to play tag and other physical activities, and guilted by leaders when I tried to refuse, when I was extremely socially anxious and terrified throughout the games). Every year, older leaders would scold me for not doing my job and being lazy for trying to make the kids comfortable and not forcing them to do the prescribed activity. Eventually I got tired of it, and realized why it made me so uncomfortable - they wanted to teach the kids that they had to do exactly what they were told, and *enjoy* doing it. But it only ever fit the mold of what they thought they *ought* to consider fun, which got more and more dangerous and rhetorical as time went on. My telling the kids "it's okay if you dont want to play tag, come sit with me and we'll draw a picture until they're playing a game you're comfortable with" threatened that. And my church was actually taking care to be *less* cult like than many
YES! Why tf did we even have a 'gym' portion anyway? I always hated that part. And being guilted into doing your memorizations and they had to be signed like school.
@@ckat13 gym portions are pretty common with kids activities, even in the secular world, kids are just not great at sitting still so you gotta get their wiggles out
Oh my goodness... as an autistic girl with social and generalized anxiety disorders, poor coordination, and no competitive or "team" spirit, those overstimulating environments (especially physical activities,) were the last places I wanted to be. I dropped out of youth group in eighth grade because of it and never went back. Even though I've probably never met you in person, I'm so glad there's someone out there who understands and genuinely wanted to help kids like me. Thank you so much. (PS - I am 21 now :) )
@@ckat13 It was to allow the kids to burn off energy I think, which I get. But I always felt like if a child was just sitting quietly while all their friends were running around playing, isolating themselves from the "fun", it was kind of an indictator that they didnt *need* to burn any off. They certainly weren't the ones who were wiggling and moving during lessons, at any rate. Some kids need to run a bit between other activities, and some just arent as energetic as others!
Honestly, I think being resistant to AWANA indoctrination was the one time being an autistic loner actually helped me as a kid. I was always kind of on the outside of the AWANA group, and didn't really make many friends there. If anything, I saw it as a waste of a Friday night where I would much rather have been playing video games. As such I never was as indoctrinated into the cult as I could've been, and made my religious deconstruction that much easier.
@@thighble69 I am puzzling, & scratching my head like a monkey trying to unfold the meaning of "tism", without resorting to use of a search engine or any web communities dedicated to the discussion of colloquial expressions, but it seems like I am too old to keep up with what you young whippersnappers are saying… but that couldn't be, because in my own self-image I haven't aged a day since that one perfect day when I was simultaneously fit & able to buy beer at the supermarket, back in the primitive times of 2002, when cellphones ran out of minutes, marijuana came from that guy from Mendocino County who drove back home every week, & the United States was complicit in atrocities on the opposite side of the world. Just when my curiosity was about to swallow me whole, I just now figured out that 'tism is an abbreviation, not an acronym! Thanks for letting me talk my way through this! P.S. In my view, the 'tism bestows us with highly esoteric superpowers.
We didn't have AWANA in my church, we made our own weird creepy children's indoctrination club bc AWANA was the "wrong kid of christian" and we were definitely the only ones ACTUALLY being christian correctly
We didn’t have it-because THANK GOD-I was raised in a church that embraced feminism, LGBTQ persons, and believed that dissent was patriotic (and required of a citizen of the United States) amongst other things. The more I learn about Christian Fundamentalism the more blessed I fell!
I have tears in my eyes listening to the part where he's talking about making sure to indoctrinate them while they're young. This messaging was so ingrained in me as a child and teen. As an adult, I'm healing from this world and realizing what a cult it is. Thank you for sharing, I didn't even remember how bad a lot of this stuff was
I attended awana from cubbies to T&T and then immediately, as a 13 year old, began to watch toddlers in puggles. I was the sole caretaker of at least 2 toddlers every Wednesday. I can still remember every theme song for every club. I remember being shamed in my sparks group for never having “shared the gospel” with a non-believing child. But my entire community was from the church so I remember approaching a random little boy on a playground at about 7 years old to evangelize to him. I would also spend hours in my closet preparing for those Wednesday nights, memorizing everything. I finished all of the sparks books and went through three extra tracks during a school year. I totally forgot about all of this until now. Thank you for this video.
My parents had a lapse in judgement for about two years where we attended a very… intense baptist church. They were the “Harry Potter is the devil” type of church. We were/are Harry Potter fans but kept that to our selves. I was in AWANA for those two years and I dreaded it. I have ADHD so memorizing and reciting bible verses was a nightmare. The instructors would call me horrible names and humiliate me in front of my group for forgetting a few words, or reciting the verse too slow. I blocked a lot of it out but I’m really glad I came across your video because I never realized how hitler youthesque the whole thing is. Absolutely wild that I didn’t see the cultiness of it until now. I’m glad my parents decided to leave that church and distance themselves from such twisted “Christianity”. I’m also glad to know from reading the comments and from your video that I’m not alone in the uncomfortableness of reflecting on the AWANA times (that’s what I’m calling those dark days lolol) Thank you for sharing!
I don't believe you that they called you names you like all others on here are group lying. I believe you may have been nervous but why lie and claim they tried to humiliate you and call you names. The leaders I assume love the Lord ans are Born again unlike sadly unlike All those on here!
The same thing happened to me. I have very bad adhd and the more stressed I was the worse my focus and ability to pay attention got and because the leaders were so horrible to me it created unnecessary stress and performance anxiety. My parents involvement in the church is very cyclic, meaning my dad will decide when he wants to be more worldly or more involved depending on what suits him, I distinctly remember the pastor he liked and was friends with left and he deemed this new pastor too soft so he pulled back from it really hardcore but still hold all the practices and beliefs, but my dads a diagnosed narcissist from his time in the navy before he found god
I grew up in a family of missionaries associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. While I definitely was raised with fundamentalist beliefs, my family and the other missionary families near us largely lacked Christian Nationalist rhetoric. Maybe being surrounded by very different people dissuaded that kind of thought? Anytime we returned Stateside and we interacted with the churches that supported us, I always found a lot of the trappings of Christian Nationalism in those churches strange. Especially pledging to the Christian flag and the Bible - it always felt so Americanized, like it not only showed a desire to tie faith to the U.S., but also distancing fundamentalists from other Christians around the world. AWANA was one of those things that I never took part in, but most of my family members in the U.S. did. In a lot of ways, I can be thankful I grew up on the mission field because it kept me out of the fundamentalist echo chamber I would have been in had my family never moved abroad.
I had a few friends in college who’s parents were missionaries, one was definitely Southern Baptist, they were some of the strongest critics of American churches.
My single mother took advantage of all the church camps and programs as free babysitting. I went to Baptist vacation bible school, I was in Awana clubs at another church... but we weren't religious. We never once prayed in the home. We didn't attend church. Biblical morals weren't expected. It was seriously just a way for her to save a little money on child care while she worked because we were poor. And the churches/groups know that's how it's being used -- heck, Awana had buses that picked up and dropped kids off at their houses -- and they don't care because it's still a potential new evangelist/disciple. I am so glad it never hooked either of us and I am able to laugh at the few years of random church groups I was sent to. Mom was in a tough spot, but I also think she knew I wasn't susceptible.
All I can say is wow! I am 42 years old and I was one of those kids that needed "free child care." My neighbor took me to awana every Wednesday. I remember coloring that page and singing that stupid verse highlighted above it. This group saved and baptized me and I remember wondering why my parents weren't there? Years later as an adult I asked my mom and she never even knew about it. I also remember at the time my mom was working in the kitchen at a local bar. The leaders had me feeling so ashamed. I remember one of them praying with me while I cried and saying "it's okay we need those kind of people too. Maybe you can talk to your mom and see if she can find a way to serve God." Thanks for this video I am so much happier today free from this guilt.
I’m so glad you’re healing. I am always so disgusted with how Christian nationalists prey on those who’s needs aren’t properly met by society and actively work to put as many kids in your situation as possible. Best of luck with your healing journey!
I think that was why I was in AWANA, to be honest. It was hosted at a church that I didn't go to. I don't remember anything from AWANA, except the vests and Indigenous imagry. I'm glad it didn't stick with me.
Your experience is an example of what I find truly sinister about evangelical groups like AWANA, the Happy Days Club, and the way most evangelical churches do Vacation Bible School: It is a form of spiritual kidnapping. Not just a way of passing along their beliefs, values and culture to their own children; all human beings feel a desire to do that, and also have a natural tendency to see their own efforts to do so wholesome while finding other groups' efforts less attractive. But for evangelicals, the focus really is on "outreach" to the "unsaved," that is, to the children of people with different beliefs from their own. When they brag about their programs being open to all children, not just members of their own church, it's not because they're being ecumenical. Quite the opposite. It's because they want to convince children to repudiate the beliefs of their parents and become evangelicals.
I am 37 literally most of my memories about AWANA and the church cult I grew up in have been trauma blocked but this video brought them to the surface, I am shaking right now.
This video trash of someone who was brainwashed by a therapist. Some day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. If we feel guilty in life it is because the Holy Spirit is guiding us in All truth and loves you enough to tell you when you are sinning (grieving the Spirit of God) or if you are walking in fellowship with the Lord. Those kind of people may have just ment cooks.... Nothing more nothing less! Jesus loves you and died for your sins and mine! Read in the book of John! Learn how to recognize the voice of the Lord! Be discipled, Jesus walked with His disciples for three years and commanded us to do the same with others, Read Matthew 28:19-20 and you tell me are those AWANA missionaries in 135 countries each week and loving well oner 5 million children and discipling and helping them grow in the LOrd is that fufilling "The Great Commission" which is what they call Jesus Christ's last words before retutning to Heaven (Read to the end of Matthew chapter 28).
I was in awana for a couple years when I was elementary school age. My singular persisting memory from my time there was an activity where we were supposed to make a little comic about the seven days of creation: For god's day resting, I drew him lounging back and relaxing! I was proud of myself and showed one of the leaders. I was told that this was a "disrespectful" way to represent god. Still baffles me to this day why they had that reaction, but I was so deeply ashamed that I remember it decades later.
Forced. Very true. At the Awana I attended, all activities were mandatory even in cases of humiliation, exhaustion, and injury. The reprimanded and punishments were so severe for minor infractions. I remember calling the leaders there N@tzees when I would complain about the 'club' to my normal friends and WHOOO is it interesting to see how on the dot that is with the YT supremacist, nationalist rhetoric they used. 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 Innocent kids don't deserve to be indoctrinated into something so hateful and authoritarian at such a critical time in their development. 🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤 I'm sorry you had to experience their bullshit too! Much love!!!
I remember this! My mom’s “non-denominational” (see: evangelical, but we could wear pants) church tried to bring when I was a kid. I remember hating it and refusing to participate, if only because I didn’t want to memorize all the new pledges, etc. They didn’t do it for very long, I don’t know why.
I’m a mid 1980’s kid that was subjected to IFB indoctrination in my home and school. In the 90’s, the logo was different, but the message is still the same. 30 years later, I can still quote the pledge to the Bible, Christian flag, and AWANA flag. I completed Cubbies and Sparkies, and I just loved the sparkly jewels we would earn for our 3 levels of crowns. When I graduated from Sparkies, the theme of the level was reflective of indigenous women (and men for the “boys”). We would earn feathers for this bar on our club shirt. Much of that time in my life is repressed, but I’m absolutely sure this program embraced racist and colonizer views to the teaching. It’s so gross.
And all those memory verses are still tattooed on my brain. Do you guys remember the OBEDIENCE song? We were basically trained to be little fundie soldiers. In raising my own daughter, I’ve been teaching her critical thinking since she was able to understand decision making. I relate to all of these diary videos way too much….
Lets do the maths. The average AWANA year is 30 meetings at two hours per meeting so sixty hours a year (I commute 60hs a month) times 14 years, 840 hours and maybe a few summer camps. The average public school year is about 1200 hrs times 13 years for over 15000 hours. Then a few years immersed college not daring to oppose the campus culture. Plus thousands of hours of internet media and advertising, Indoctrinating politics, churches, clubs, business and media with Orwellian doublespeak. We must deprogram all the oppressed AWANA students and leaders!
My evangelical church did the girl version called Missionettes. I went through the entire program and finally “graduated” when I was like 14. The “graduation” was very similar to a wedding where your dad walks you down the aisle and you’re wearing a white, sparkling dress with a satin blue cape with a tiara. Looking back it’s TOTAL cringe and so culty. Glad I escaped that and am proudly a ex-evangelical and agnostic.
Yes girl I did this too!! I graduated at 12 because we didn’t have the next level at our church for some reason but I remember being so annoyed about even having to do the graduation with the white dress I was so bent 😂
I was involved in Missionettes as well (in my later years it was called Girls Ministries) at my church. I remember our Stars Club instructor would give us a soda each week during the summer if we read ten chapters of the New Testament in our journey towards being an “honor star”. I lied about having read verses in order to give into the social pressures, and so I could be an honor star. Thankfully they didn’t make us wear the capes and white dresses though. After graduating from Stars, I quit the program and taught Rainbows (for preschool boys and girls) for 7 years. As I am currently deconstructing my own experiences as an ex-evangelical, it is sad to think back on how those years went because I loved those kids. But I never fully felt like my heart was in it and I was “putting on a show” when I was struggling with my own belief. I was also getting paid for my last two years as a preschool ministry lead, so that was a motivator as well.
@@saffronw-b7425 omg. “Honor Star” I totally forgot about that term. Now I remember the acronym: Susannah Tabitha Anna Ruth. I remember when I started missionettes seeing the honor stars “graduate” I couldn’t wait for that to be me. We did a huge convention at the state level to be honored then a ceremony at my home church. So much to unpack from all that.
@@saffronw-b7425 I went to brownies and girl guides (I never got too do rainbows as I was too old for it) growing up and I’ve always wondered if it was actually a cult. I’d love to know your view on it since you actually worked amongst the girl guides. I always felt it was very off, especially as an atheist. H
I thought my childhood church was the only one to do Awana, I've literally never heard anyone else ever mention it. This is so insane, as a former child member myself thank you so much for bringing this to light. As a part-Native American, I'm stunned that neither myself nor my parents ever questioned it, given its racist indoctrination of Manifest Destiny.
Not gonna lie man.. even though I heed the trigger warnings that you so kindly and abundantly supply to us, I’m always surprised by how much I actually do feel triggered by a lot of the things you discuss. That said, I love your channel and how much it helps me learn about myself. Thank you ✨
Make sure you’re taking care of yourself and have access to professional support or a solid emotional support team behind you if you’re feeling overwhelmed. I’ve been in a similar boat and reaching out for support helps a lot. You’re definitely not alone. But yeah I also really appreciate these videos because it calls out things that were messed up in my fundie childhood but in a compassionate and not angry way that makes me feel better about the place I’m in now. My past might’ve been messed up but my future doesn’t have to be. 💕
This hit me way too hard. I went through a rough time in middle school and ended up being homeschooled my eighth grade year. Thanks to a ton of bullying and the like, I didn’t really have any interaction with anyone my age during that time until I was invited to come to an Awana meeting by one of my mom’s friends (her kids went regularly). It always felt off to me, but it was the only socialization I really had for over a year. The church leaders knew that and took advantage of the fact that I was so lonely. It’s disgusting looking back on that now.
In other videos, you mentioned how you’re working in therapy on allowing yourself to feel anger since you repressed anger for so long while being indoctrinated. I noticed what I guess I might call your “angry face” a few times in this video like at 5:42. I loved it. I’m completely serious. You have every reason to be angry and it’s amazing to see that passion shine through. ❤️❤️❤️
My sister did Awana when it was at my church. They had a “bring your sibling pajama party” thing and I went. She was 10 and I was 15. It was a lot to take in and I was soooo uncomfortable watching the kids pledge allegiance to America, the Bible, and Christianity. There was a child who attended who had severe autism and he was so mistreated by the teacher, it broke my heart. Why would you volunteer to teach kids and treat them so harshly? So I started volunteering to try and protect that kid from her. It was a lot for my 15 year old brain to handle. So much indoctrination and lies from the adult volunteers to get more parents to let their kids to join the program. They stopped awana about a year after I started volunteering. However, this kid indoctrination is still very prevalent in churches all over. How many times have I heard “if your kid doesn’t accept Christianity by the time they are 12, they will never know God!!” It’s not only troubling and damaging to the child to be indoctrinated like this, it’s also damaging to parents who “fail” at making their kids “stay Christians”. They feel a lot of shame from their friends in the same circles. It’s an awful thing to watch happen.
11:40 "Marriage is between one biological man and one biological woman". Huh. Where do people with Turner Syndrome fall? With only one X chromosome, we're not exactly biological (i.e. genotypic) females, even if we appear to be (i.e. phenotypic) female.
It's been 15+ years since I was part of AWANA, and yet when I saw the video title, I recalled the entire theme song immediately. Definitely gonna have the spend unpacking this one in therapy.
Growing up, I saw plenty of Native American cultural appropriation at my secular summer camp, where age groups were named after Native American tribes, and in secular children’s theater productions of Peter Pan. But these programs never seemed to give the idea that whites are better than Native Americans. If anything, the camp tried to act like Native American was a super cool theme kids should enjoy (as opposed to an actual group of people with history and rights that were taken away.) It is fascinating to see the differences between these programs and the lines drawn between problematic and downright horrific.
I definitely encountered that kind of racism as a kid, too, though, at this distance, I'd find it hard to say exactly where. It doesn't feel like a bad thing from the inside, thinking Indians were totally cool and had secret knowledge, and how sad they're all gone now... I read and enjoyed a lot of books that straddled the line between cultural appropriation and cultural exploration, and sometimes fell off. But it really obscures the reality and personhood of these incredibly diverse and varied groups of people who still exist and still experience oppression and marginalization to this day. I remember being on some kind of family road trip where we were going to be close to a reservation, and it came up that we could route through it or around it. I remember feeling deeply conflicted between these two ideas I had learned from separate sources: first, that a Real Live Indian reservation must be some kind of tourist attraction, and, second, that this was a place where real people lived, and intruding on them would be rude. In the end, I asked to go around, and we did.
@@Amanda-C. I think one of the main reasons people still treat American Natives and Indigenous people like they're some wired mystery is the reservation system keeps them sequestered away from the rest of the population. When you don't have a chance to meet people from other cultures it fosters and reinforces the "otherness" stereotypes. America can do so much better., For example, i'm from Alaska and we don't have separate reservations, we have villages and for the most part our native population can move around a lot more freely- they are just another part of your community.
I am suddenly reevaluating many childhood memories. The song and books were a weird, weird flashback. I was raised in the liberal Presbyterian church, and ended up going to AWANA to spend time with a friend from a far more conservative, evangelical tradition. I can’t imagine that my family was aware of this BS. I do remember putting up with and only mouthing the pledge and song, and only memorizing bible stuff to win the prizes and bucks. My favorite all time prize was a bottle of Avon’s ‘Sweet Honesty’ perfume in a bottle shaped like a Christmas tree ornament. I am deeply disturbed now, but I appreciate this awareness. I’m so glad I got out so quickly (maybe 2 yrs?). Knowledge is power.
This video unlocked a lot of early childhood memories for me. My family was Lutheran from my birth until I was about 8 years old. I went to private Lutheran school and remember pledging to the Christian flag and American flag everyday (starting in kindergarten). I also went to Awana for a few years and remember the pins with the little jewels and workbooks for memorizing scriptures. I'm very thankful I ended up in public school and my family fell out of religion. I can't imagine how harmful it would have been to continue that indoctrination. After about two years of us being inactive I tried reading the Bible myself and realized even if this God was true he was a mean spiteful God I didn't want to worship. Thanks for all the information and perspective your channel brings!
I feel this! I was raised Baptist and I left after disagreeing with LGBT+ issues, abortion, and a few other things. As an adult I’m currently reading the Bible to give Christianity another go. However, the further I got into the book I’ve come to realize that even if the Christian God is real I don’t want to worship him anyway. He was so horrible in the Old Testament and overall the Bible is so messed up.
@@jenna7437 is the Bible a reflection of society or society a reflection of the Bible? Isn’t society messed up? People tend to get hung up on how “mean” the Old Testament God is but it’s the same one from the New Testament. People just don’t realize that.
@@EJ-gx9hl To be fair, I haven't gotten to the New Testament yet, and most of what I learned when I was younger I forgot. So, I can't really answer your question lol.
@@jenna7437 the old is in the new revealed and the new is in the old concealed. In other words, one has to pay close attention to see how Jesus is actually being pointed to in the Old Testament and the mercy and love that God has for people does in fact show in the Old Testament. People, including many Christians, tend to label God is either merciful and loving Or just and righteous. When both the old and new show all those behaviors.
So growing up with a single dad who was a police officer he was always joining different "churches". Since he worked all the time and my older brother was in sports it left me with nothing to do. Enter in a family of his co worker that had 5 kids. They were white and homeschooled and very much sheltered. I would go to their house every morning while waiting for my bus and eat breakfast. I felt loved and safe. They started taking me to Awana which I loved. Their oldest daughter was my age and were killing it when it came to memorizing versus. I remember feeling cool in middle school because I had all these versus to throw at people. I didn't witness to a ton of people at my school because I could see one girl getting teased. So I was quiet about it. Funny how you mention this because here we are 27 years later I remember the song, pledge, Christian flag and all of that. I was the only black kid in the whole place and they swore I was adopted and jealous that I went to "public school". I still have those bible versus stuck in my head as well. I honestly don't know why I stopped going. But I can tell you I was upset at first. But then got over it. These videos make me laugh and showing my husband who grew up a JW he is shocked on how many of these videos I relate to. Great job. Thanks for the laugh and I you have a new watcher.
During my evangelical years I did put my kids in Awana for 2 years because the church in our neighborhood had a huge and popular program. I wasn't raised evangelical (i was raised Mainline) so I didn't know much about awana. Let's face it I was looking for a free, fun activity for my kids on Wednesday nights. I always thought the patches and vest were ridiculous and I really didn't like the memorize a verse get a treat design of the program, as it just felt competitive and weird to me. I kept those feelings to myself because it felt anti Jesus to say "I don't like Awana." But finally I admitted to myself. My kids were happy to leave because the pressure to memorize was too much for them. I did not know the origins of Awana until you shared this and wow! I had no idea the racist roots. How horrible.
ps adding to say the church we did Awana at skipped the songs and pledges to Awana...because if they had done that I wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes! "Hail Awana"? Um, that should be crazy problematic for the typical evangelical, they should not be pledging allegiance to anything beyond Jesus....
OMG I USED TO BE IN ONE OF THESE GROUPS! Literally just spoke to my father about how cult like I felt it was as an adult now. I was dragged into it by someone who was my first friend at 7 years old, and for a while i was the only black person there. I felt a bit uncomfortable about it but i wasn't sure why. I was also the only person who bothered to question the lessons, all of the other kids looked like they were bored, disconnected, and accepted what they were told. They started bringing other people that weren't white after the fact, and I find it concerning that it took for me to be invited for anyone else to start doing that... I haven't watched the video yet, but I wonder if our experiences are similar...
This dug up some old memories. I wasn't raised in a Christian home but there was a period where my mom tired to be. I was forced to be in Awana at some point and I just absolutely hated it. They had two old ladies that oversaw my troop and they found a reason to shame everyone for something at every meeting. They were particularly hard on my sisters and I and now I think that they saw us as morally failing because my parents were no longer together. They had us actually stand up at that part when we said the pledge and I remember some smoke signal part of the princess book being a small controversy at some point for our church (they had us scratch out some part and write something else) but I couldn't say why when the whole book was questionable. The whole thing just makes me cringe when I look back on it. I was so glad when the church stopped the program because the leaders were all elderly and just couldn't do it anymore and younger adults didn't have the time.
I tried Awana briefly at my Baptist church in the 1980s & found it unfun. If it had just been wholesome games & crafts, it would have been great. That would have kept me off the streets & out of trouble. But trying to use it to make children memorize bible verses & whatnot is self-defeating. It all felt very 1950s. I disagree about the racism, tho. Use of Native American imagery and the lyrics of “Jesus Loves the Little Children” was their attempt at inclusion & tolerance. Sure, they still believed in manifest destiny (it's in Schoolhouse Rock, even), & they certainly were prejudiced, but even attempting to be inclusive was a HUGE step in those days. And if you think Awana is a cult, then you don’t know about social organizations like the Boy Scouts, Jaycees, Lions Club, & Kiwanis. All those organizations are full of pledges, uniforms, singing, prayer, & whatnot. That was American culture in the early part of the 20th century, & it persists in plenty of places.
I went to Awana for a brief period as a kid mostly because my parents couldn’t be bothered to drive me. My most vivid memories are being made fun of at the sermon and crying violently about not getting as many awana bucks as my cousin.
When I was a kid I wanted to be in AWANA so bad, but they wouldn't accept me because I have cerebral palsy and use a wheelchair. Now I realize I actually dodged a bullet.
@@evaschroeder4020Maybe they believed that illnesses and diseases are like a punishment from God or something. And that they didnt want to have anything to do with this child. These people are insane so this wouldnt surprise me if it was the case.
Ok I wasn't exactly fundamentalist growing up but was in a very similar faith and very clearly remember "Jesus Loves All the Little Children." I came to the realization watching this video that I, as a little red-headed child, always assumed the line, referring to races, was referring to hair color. I don't know why I am still shocked by the amount of racism that flows through religions like this. Our version of AWANA was Caravan.
I also grew up attending Nazarene churches. I remember Caravan back when the youngest children were sorted into " Chippewa " . The symbol they used was a caricature of an American Indian boy and girl. Now , from what I understand, they have since changed it to " Benson's Buddies" . But yeah, I am sure that if some outside observers had wanted to, they could walk away from witnessing the program thinking that we were being indoctrinated into some sort of extremist Christian right ideology, especially given that we were instructed to not lean unto our own understanding, citing a verse from the Book of Proverbs, plus looking back, our hand sign did bear some resemblance to the Nazi salute.
Im sorry you had these experiences. The religion itself is not racist. It’s the people using it to justify their own racism. God created all colored equally, end of story. The Bible never advocates for racism like people claim. I know because I grew up on an agnostic family but then became a Christian and I read the Bible everyday now and study it online.
“Red and yellow black and white they are precious in his sight” You were on a way higher level thinking than me .. I just thought Jesus didn’t have a fav color lol
I learned in adulthood that I have ADHD. I remember Awana game time being so overstimulating that I would freeze up and not really participate. I dreaded game time every week and my brain made socializing very difficult. Thankfully my parents pulled me out after only a year or two.
Also, when I was in 4th or 5th grade, my favorite Awana leader told my group that when babies die, they go straight to heaven, but that when a kid turns 10, they're old enough to be judged and sent to hell by God. I was already afraid of hell, but hearing her say that triggered a deeper anxiety and fear than before that stuck with me for most of my adolescence. I actually asked to be baptized right after I turned 10, specifically because of that "lesson." I barely understood what baptism signified - I just wanted to feel safe
16:10 "Their minds are fertile and their hearts are so ripe" sounds SO SKETCHY and gross. How to tell me you are a cult without actually telling me 101...
I went to AWANA one year with my Dads best friend. My Mom was not big on it. I loved it and didn't understand why my Mom hated it. Now I understand why she disliked it.
Oh my God! I was in AWANA and couldn't recall there having been a pledge or anything like that, until it started playing. I'm absolutely amazed because I still remember every word despite literally 5 minutes prior not even remembering that it existed. This stuff stays crazy deep in the memory sometimes
Thank you for addressing AWANA, barely anyone seems to have, and it really should be talked about more. (tldr I realized they were bs and took pics of 8 years of shitty book moments to prove I wasn't imagining it) I was in AWANA till 15 and left after this one assignment where we had to ask our not-christian friends about like theological questions, and instead of this being a learning experience to see what other people believe, it turned out to be an entire night of putting down, mocking, "those poor souls"ing our friends who so kindly let us interview them and I was PISSED. That was the final nail in the coffin. They were always so condescending to anyone who didn't completely conform, one of those "oh those poor souls who haven't found the light" kind of environments. And in elementary school it was mandatory to bring two guests throughout the year (implied that they should be non-believers), and anyone who didn't had to go thru this long work around to get approval to still complete the year (unspoken shaming basically). Another memorable traumatizing event was one assignment which required us to write down a time we were filled with the holy spirit and (word for word,)"If you can't think of a time, then you either aren't obeying what the Bible says, or you may not have the Holy Spirit in you. In that case, you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior." which prompted me to have a panic attack because I couldn't think of an experience that matched their expectations. They also kinda pushed the whole serving others idea which didn't help when a (prosperity gospel) family friend had to live with us and took out their frustrations of having to live with us on any little thing I did and guilted me for not maintaining her emotional wellbeing by not annoying her (a purposely impossible task so she could keep using me as an emotional punching bag), which resulted in the worst three years of my life. Once I realized her bs and we got her to move out, after then, as I swore to never be emotionally abused again, I realized the similarities between her and AWANA. I still have all but one of my books from 8years old (2010) till 15 (2017): Ultimate Adventure/Challenge for elementary school, Trek for middle school, and Journey for High School. I went through them all a while back because I wanted to know just how messed up it had been and highlighted all the shitty things from them, and then took pictures and keep em in a google drive for some reason, I guess to be able to prove their shittyness if need be? I guess Ex-Fundie Diaries hit me up and I'll share the folder of somewhat more-recent awana books (though I hear that they changed their curriculum in 2018) if that's something you're interested in
I was a volunteer leader/helper at my local church's awana program, and as an English major, it frustrated and infuriated me that they insisted on using KJV/NKJV translations. Most kids had no idea what the verse actually meant in the outdated phrasing/vocab of those translations, so if a leader wasn't simultaneously doing free English tutoring, the kids were just rotely memorizing the verses to get their bucks. On one hand, that may be for the best, as Christianity and the Bible are pretty severely flawed, but on the other, they're just being conditioned to view church and the Bible positively without actually having any significant understanding of it. That leaves them prone to falling for any con that pays lip service to the church and Bible.
Haven't even started the video yet, but I'm looking forward to watching this later. A kid tried to get me, a little Jewish kid, into attending Awana with my family. We only ever attended one day and never again, so it'll be interesting to find out more about what it was like from the perspective of someone who had experience with it. *Edit:* So this is certainly the mess I remember it being. You bringing up that pledge and theme brought back a vivid memory of my visit. In recent years, remembering Awana, I recall it being odd, but I didn't realize it was *this* bad. I can see why my parents got out as fast as we could after the Awana program was over. As much as I was friends with this girl, I have to wonder what her and her parents thoughts were, trying to pull in a Jewish family into their church and kid's program. It's definitely uncomfortable, from the use of Indigenous imagery to in essence programming kids, it's. Worrisome, to put it simply. This was so interesting to listen to as someone who was pulled into this for that brief day as a memory that just felt. *Off.* Now I see why it felt so strange to me as a child.
They believe it's their Christian duty to bring as many souls to Christ as possible. It would have been a big feather in their collective cap (indigenous pun intended) to succeed in "saving" an entire Jewish family,or even just you. Of course, even if they had succeeded in indoctrinating you, you would have never been fully accepted by the congregation anyway. Most conservative and evangelical Christians are still very antisemitic.
I earned a Citation award from AWANA (10 years of AWANA, memorizing a full workbook a year) and the pledge/song are still burned into my brain, but I do want to point out that AWANA has workbooks with multiple versions of the Bible--NIV, NKJV, and KJV. I did NKJV and the Chums stuff (it changed the year I went to the next level). I ended up converting Judaism in my late 20s and my friends are amazed by how much Torah I can quote (Judaism focuses a lot more on analysis vs memorization, and quoting Torah from memory is actually highly discouraged because you might quote it wrong). In positive news, the church that I used to go to AWANA at was bulldozed a decade ago and turned into a pharmacy. So now that plot of land is actually benefitting people.
I went to a total of 1 Awana session, invited by a friend. All I really remember about it is memorizing the books of the New Testament. I was left to tackle that (very quickly, I still remember most of them and it's been more than 15 years) while my friend was moving on to the Old Testament. At the time I didn't really have an opinion, but as I was raised Catholic, and didn't have youth groups growing up, I never had to go again. Now, I'm glad I didn't get tangled into it.
Same here, I went a few times with a friend off and on .. Never was my thing. I do remember a strong pioneer/Native American themes from those meetings.
A few thoughts that popped into my head while watching this, regarding my own Awana experience: -I'm glad that I learned all those Bible verses. It helps to know what the Bible actually says, and you can fight the bigots with their own weapon. For that, I'm grateful. Also the Bible does have some good stuff in it. And I genuinely enjoyed memory work as a kid, so that was super fun for me. -totally never picked up on how the settlers and natives theme was racist. Oops. Got more unpacking to do here...stay tuned...but for starters, am I correct in remembering that you "started out" as a lowly native "character" in grades 3-4 (chums and pals) and then "leveled up" to the "superior" white settler characters (guards and pioneers) in grades 5-6? Oof. -I have been realizing recently that the phrase "Biblical worldview" is triggering for me. I've been trying to unpack why, and I appreciate what you said--I can't remember how you worded it exactly, but yeah, it's basically a dog whistle for conservative, white-centric, in my experience
My kids were invited to this by my sons public School teacher. They went once, I read the material they came home with and threw it out. They never went back
I only went for a short time with a school mate in around 3rd grade. She “saved” me (even though I was already baptized as a Lutheran) in the bathroom of our elementary school. I became a Wiccan around age 30 and in the last 6-10 ish years, I’ve become fully an atheist. As a child, I learned to believe I was inherently bad and that if I were assaulted, it was my fault. I learned to hate my body. I learned to hate sex (or be hypersexual) and in the end I developed an auto immune disorder (which is a very common thing for people with trauma history). Shedding all the toxic and oppressive beliefs from religion has been so much effort, with YEARS of therapy needed to even begin recovering. Non religious blessings to you for being here and talking about your experience! ❤️
I’m so glad to have raised my kids as pagan/agnostic/atheist. They are socially just, anti racist, members of the queer community and I’m so pride of who they are!
I attended awanas when I was really little. I think cubbies or sparks, if I remember the vests right. I barely remember it besides the flag, when I was picked up, and trying to memorize the books of the Bible. I think I won a pinecar derby race. Once I got older, my parents transitioned me to VBS, and I think it was only due to the cost of awanas being excessive. I don't remember the pledge at all, which is frightening. But at that age, I would have loved that song. I likely accepted christ at an awanas meeting. It probably set the stage for my entire childhood. It's genuinely chilling to learn all of this. Thank you for doing a deep dive on this and breaking it down in such a measured way. Your videos are incredibly helpful in breaking down my own religious indoctrination without getting overwhelmed.
This video showed up in my recommended and slapped me in the face with my own religious trauma. What a wild time awana was, I went ages 5 to 12 and it caused issues I still deal with today. Thank you for talking about it cause it feels like I’m one of 2 people who know the trauma this caused
There is so much de-programming you have to go through when leaving the Fundie cult. I definitely remember AWANA, and i went during the 70s and early 80s -- the racist times. The thing that made my mother the most proud of me was when I was around 5-ish and thanks to AWANA I proclaimed that I was going to dedicate my life to being a missionary. Needless to say, that never happened. Through a combination of my father's abuse, spending time with my aunt and uncle and cousins in their very insular homeschooling strict 1800s-ish upbringing and small, ultra religious town, along with a developing ability to think critically about religion and the world, I was made so uncomfortable that I was able to reject the cult and seek my own meanings. I guess I wasn't really cut out for cult the lifestyle and anti-intellectual way of thinking and submitting.
Oh my god, I had zero idea the entirety of awanas went this deep. As an autistic kid who was already very overwhelmed in my racist, sexist, and homophobic church environment awanas was pure hell for me. I literally only went to see my friends but that's where the fun ended. The rest of a Wednesday night at awanas was me being told by old people that I'm behind and that I was slow, I thought I was just a bad, unruly kid up until my late teens because of their influence but I always chocked it up to other reasons, only now realizing other people have similar experiences. I'm appalled by how I, and many others were treated. Thank you for spreading the info and getting the word out
I joined Awana around the time you did and I remember the racist “cowboys and Indians” material! Of course the curriculum was segregated by gender. The boys were the colonizers and the girls were native women. So yeah the intersection of their archaic gender roles and racism really shows you who they expected to be “active” and “passive” in that relationship.
I worked at a Baptist daycare for two years (which as a Jewish trans guy was uh. An experience in and of itself) and I was always so fascinated by the Awana kids who'd show up to the church every Wednesday after closing. The club felt extremely cult-like to me, but as an outsider to the culture I didn't know if I was just being judgmental or not. Distressed to learn that I was not exactly wrong in my assessment.
My parents made me do this when I was a child. I only did it for a year and hated it. They didn’t make me go back. Moral of the story is... Give your kid religious freedom. At the end of the day I chose to follow god because I wasn’t forced into it.
Several of my close friends through the years have been some level of homeschooled. One family loved completely isolated in Wisconsin, only church friends, and we were always so excited to see each other. Could spend days alone in the woods out there with them, nobody preaching at us, just silence in the woods watching birds, making forts and sleeping in the dirt. It says a lot that I was happier sleeping in cold mud with a lonely friend than anywhere near my family. I was the Fundie in your Christian groups that was allowed to watch Star Wars and could be alone in the library without my parents. That made it a lot easier for me. Some of my only friends were kind librarians who gave me Terry Pratchett books to read and let me occasionally keep an old book that they thought was "too damaged" to lend anymore. Usually a pristine new book and not a damaged old one, I would hide them in my lockers when I went to public school or keep them at a friend's house, so my parents wouldn't confiscate it. There were days when I was the only kid in my small town in that library, often the only person. If I had been trapped only in VBS, AWANAs, and the Lutheran academy I may have lost my mind. Luckily my family was "new-age" enough to let me go to public school and it was often a massive point of contention with my family and the fundamental churches my father would preach at or the ones he helped form. Sometimes I am so thankful that my father simply wasn't a very good fundamentalist, but he wasn't white, so he was never fully welcome to begin with. My heart feels so heavy for you and all of your videos bring me back to those thoughts and feelings that I don't always think about now that I'm out and away from family like that. I thought I had done a lot of deconstructing, I realize now how much I suppressed. I spent several years in AWANAs and I remember the curriculum being phased out in the early 2000s, my older sister went through the really racist stuff and talked about it once. Being mixed race helped inoculate us from some of it, I think. We always knew that we weren't the white kids they were talking about, we weren't white enough, at least. Even though I look like snow LMAO. I wish you had those friends you wanted as a kid, I wish I did too. I wish that hadn't been taken from us.
Ugh the second hand trauma. I remember sparks but my church did it for older kids. like 5th -7th grade and we didn't do their flag.We did a pledge to the Bible and we did the Christian flag pledge instead. And for some reason my church changed when I was in 8th grade to something called Kings kids which combined every kid from about 6 -14 and a separate teen group The pledge to the Bible we said was this : I pledge allegiance to the Bible , gods holy word. I will make it a lamp unto mine feet and a light unto mine path , I will hide it's words in my heart that I might not sin against god.
We did that one! My stepmother made us all memorize and go to all the meetings she ran, and then would take us home to beat, starve and s-x-ally degrade us :)
I cringe at the thought of it. I grew up in Awana and my favorite part was going to regional Bible quiz competition. I wasn’t ever good at anything, so excelling in Bible quizzing made me feel good about myself. My whole self value was put into being a good Christian and being seen as such.
Man... My siblings and I all can still recite the awana pledge and sing the songs by heart. As a fellow homeshooler, awana was also my only social outlet growing up.
This actually means so much to me and a ton of other kids who went to awana im sure, i was in awana from kindergarten to about forth or third grade, and it always felt really strange that we had a pledge and flag. My least favorite assignment that we had in our books was that you had to bring a friend who wasn’t christian to the clubs with you. I always felt so guilty asking people to come with me but i had to do it in order to move onto another book. Awana would also constantly lie about public school and tell all the homeschooled kids that it was an evil place where christian’s were persecuted and it always really confused me and the other public school kids. I was able to stop going once i started therapy and i’m so thankful my mom agreed that it was more important for me to get better than to keep going. my dad, who was one of the leaders, and brother left a few years later and we found out recently a ton of other people left because they weren’t having mask mandates during the pandemic. I have a ton of more stories and really off putting stuff that happened while i was there but just wow thank you so much for this i’m so glad i’m not the only one who felt Awana was really culty and manipulative
Thanks for the very helpful video! I was raised mostly secular, and hadn't heard of Awana until I began homeschooling my kids. Unsurprisingly, many homeschooling families near us are quasi-fundi. There's definitrly a lot of "clubbers" and wr have been invited to join once or twice. Having this up-close look at awana had helped SO much, and I now feel better able to navigate our relationship with our Christian friends, who we love!
Oh man. How terrible to teach children the values of grace, truth, love, and loyalty to their Creator and loving God. 😂 Honestly, thanks for putting this info together. I never knew much about Awana. After sifting through all of the straw man attacks in this video, I really gained a lot of respect for this institution. Seems really well thought out and focused on spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. Obviously, none of this is meant to make light of specific evils may have been done to you or others by people in the AWANA system, but the system itself sounds pretty awesome.
There is ALOT of trauma surrounding my time as a "Christian" child. It never felt right to me, even as a kid who knew nothing I never liked the flag parts and singing the songs, even at school I didn't stand for the pledge of allegiance. You talking about all of this really opened a part of my brain that I blocked out, and I thank you for this. Sharing your experiences and shining light on these bad groups.
All we did was sit in a room and memorize verses and then go out and do a PE kind of class. We said the pledge to the American flag, the Christian flag, and to the Bible. Ours was a very lazy AWANA. They also kept our awana bucks and gave them to us at christmas to buy presents for our families. I was also in the hospital for a couple of months and when I came back, everyone was ahead of me and I was crying in the corner because I felt so left out. The leaders didn't really care and wouldn't let me go to the chapter that everyone else was on.
I grew up going to AWANA and although I wasn't a fan of going at the time, mainly because I am an introvert, I am 37 now and am SO glad my parents made me go. All the verses I memorized served me very well throughout my life. I didn't understand them much at the time, or their great significance, but throughout every chapter in my life these verses would come to mind and be like an Ah Ha moment for me! They would comfort me, guide me, help me make decisions and I am SO grateful they are forever there. I am able to pop up the perfect verse at any moment to comfort others as well. Memorizing the books of the Bible also has been an extremely helpful tool throughout my life. I can flip to any book of the bible quickly! My church did not use the KJV, we used the NIV. I'm sure every church does AWANA a little differently. My sister and I did wear our vests to school once a week. We didn't think anything of it and very little was mentioned about it from anyone. We weren't trying to lure anyone in. We just told people it was like Scouts but at church. When you're in elementary school, you don't think at all about the underlying purposes of things, you just do what adults ask of you. I am a gay Christian with no children, but if I had children I would definitely send them to AWANA. It is one of the most valuable things I ever did in my life and I'm so grateful for it. I believe any evil that may have been attached to it, God didn't give it any power... at least in my experience. In High School we had Christian hang outs called YoungLife and K-Life that were also a blessing to me and a lot of kids who's home lives were so negative. They weren't perfect but very positive.
I was raised an atheist and I occasionally went to Awana with my best friend- who was a baptist- when I was little. I remembered always thinking it was weird.
I have a similar story.. Dad an atheist, mom a Christian but never went to church, our neighbors had a girl my age that was one of my best friends. I went to AWANA with her. At that time I wanted to believe God was real but never really bought it. I remember "testing" God once by instead of praying writing him a note and leaving it on the lawn. If he was real surely he could take the letter, or at least know what I had put in the letter. I did this with the neighbor kid on the other side of us, he was younger I was 9 he was about 5 or 6. The next morning I went outside first because I was pretty sure they'd still be there and I didn't want him to see and cry. They were obviously still there, and neither of our prayers were answered
@@zuglymonster Same. Dad atheist, mom vaguely Christian but best friend and a bunch of other kids from school went. I get what you mean about wanting to believe and finding out believing doesn't work like that. I remember feeling bad sometimes because I knew early on that there was no chance that I'd ever buy any of what they were selling but continued to go anyway...which felt kind of disrespectful. However, I did have a very good time with the games. Plus they handed out candy like they owned stock in insulin. We moved at the end of 6th grade and that was the end of that.
@@zuluzeit7191 And with me it was THEY moved and my AWANA days were over. I don't remember it being so racist, but I went in the mid 90s so it had to have been. Although I don't really remember much other than looking forward to the fun stuff and trying to memorize stuff to earn AWANA bucks
Raised atheist, and am 17 now. my mom had another kid, shes 4 as of rn, and became super christian in the last two years. she sends her here now and its kind of unsettling how my mom tries to lie to me about the programs she supports. she tried to get me to support a “humanitarian organization” that when i looked up advocated for the “peaceful conversion” of middle eastern jews
I am SO GLAD this video was recommended to me. I've been binging your videos now for the last 3 days since seeing this! I'm an ex-evangelical transmasc (they/he) who has been deconstrucing for years and while I've gotten to a pretty comfy place now, there was always something with AWANAs that really didn't sit right with me, but I couldn't figure it out. As soon as that theme song started playing, the words just fell out of my mouth from deep in the recesses of my mind, and I realized just how indoctrinating the program is meant to be. I'm almost 26 years old now and I still remember all the pledges and theme songs (the main one, and the ones for each of the clubs!), and it is shocking to realize exactly how awful the program is and why it's been eating at me all these years. Thank you so much for making this video!!
![grooming minds | the abuse of child indoctrination [cc]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RlbUw5hjeKI/mqdefault.jpg)
Hi everyone, I apologize for the audio issues in the last part of the video. During the clips from the AWANA presentation (starting at 14:38), the sound is only coming through on the left side. I didn't notice this when I uploaded the video, so I appreciate the comments pointing it out. If you're listening to this video with headphones, please be sure that your left earbud is in. You can also turn on the closed captions if that works better for you. I will be more careful to check the audio of external clips next time. Thanks again for letting me know!
Do you still have your book? I remember looking in a friend's son's book and there was a section in there about the soon coming acceptance of a chip or RFID chip to be put in our hands- I don't have the book now to look but I do remember reading it....
What you should really apologize for is using the term trans phobic you can’t be afraid of something that isn’t real a man can’t become a woman anymore than I can become a shark in the ocean that is a fact facts don’t care about your feelings
@duppsydaisy5622 the birth of QANON
I am sorry you got indoctrinated by the secular world and made to feel ashamed of your faith. It is terrible how you now devote so much time to Christian discrimination. I pray you heal from the shame the secular world has thrust upon you and change your bigoted heart. I pray you find your way back to your savior.
I wasn't the best at memorizing scripture as a kid, so I didn't earn too many AWANA bucks. I did, however, know how to use my parents' photocopy machine. Ultimately I learned more about laundering money than the verses of the bible.
Proud of you
thank you jesus
Wave the alphabet sin flag, sheep! Let group think have your soul and reject the truth of God.
@@jamiejay7633 See my problem is any space where I have to spend eternity with you and others like you is my own personal hell. So I'm in a bit of a catch 22 here, you understand. I'll take hell along with all the boys jeffery dahmer assaulted, and you can take heaven with dahmer himself. Cheers
@@jamiejay7633 Christians complaining about groupthink is incredibly ironic.
I am German and even before you said anything about white surpremacy I knew what was coming. That "theme song" and their first concept scream hitler youth...I wonder if the founders had any Nazi ties...
Thanks for pointing this out!
Thank God I'm not the only one who cought that!
In my years of Awana... Each age group had a specific uniform. We had to stand in perfect lines from like tallest to shortest. Thinking back it was very hitler youth esque.
THATS WHAT I THOUGHT
nah it got to the "Hail Awana on the march for youth" bit (or however it goes) and I was like 🤨 a bit on the nose are we
We really need more places for teens to hangout and exist and make friends that isn’t church-based. Everything costing money when you have none, or being proselytized to meet new peers really do be wild
yeah. I agree.
I remember as a kid I had a friend who invited me to his Youth Group but I was just like nah I'm not really religious.
I'm sure he was encouraged to invite prople even though I didn't think much about it at the time.
Local library has a space, and the soroptimist has one for girls, I feel so lucky
4H is pretty good, and it's free. It'll vary place to place but Iremembered mine fondly
@@PrincessNinja007 i loved 4h but at least where I was it was still very white and churchy. I'm a pasty white latina so I know from my profile you wouldn't know most of my family is from Mexico but idk, it was a little alienating as a kid even though I grew up on a farm and raised animals. Definitely an in and out group, cliques formed. Idk.
I did Awana in elementary school, and as someone with disabilities that make memorization hard, it was literally traumatizing for me. Every week was so stressful because the pressure was so high. On the “graduation” day, to the middle school program i believe, there were tests of memorized verses and the books of the bible, and I failed. I was sent into the hallway alone for the rest of the session while everyone else had their ceremony, after being told I would be “held back” and stay at that level while all the other kids my age were moving on to the next program. It was humiliating. I have bpd and reacted to that rejection so intensely, that i was sobbing so hard when I finally got picked up that my parents immediately decided the family was quitting awana, and it remains the only thing from the program I have clear memories of.
1. JUNKO!!
2. SAMME DUDE!! i cried sooo much from trying to recite verses but my parents never did anything other than sit me down and force me to “try harder” :/
@@xpa-beads501 So very sorry for you - So much for the love and understanding most average Christian’s will tout is the basis of their belief system.
That was something I noticed. You have to "fit in" and be just like everyone else to be accepted. If you are the "square peg," and you cannot round off those edges, then too bad for you. It's certainly not a Christian attitude.
Ohhh same. I can totally relate, I had really bad adhd as a kid and not so much once I was a teenager and not much at all as an adult but I do have very bad bpd and I have a hard time controlling it, and the anger that comes with it. so I can totally relate, I hated awana with a passion
I am so sorry that happened to you.
Speaking as someone outside the US - pledging allegiance just to the American flag is culty enough, let alone adding additional flags with even more intense 'military to change minds' ideologies.
I personally always get very bad vibes when I see that, I only have seen pledge of allegiance to flags and stuff in documentaries and history class (and I'm German, so you can imagine what kind of automatic association I have)
I had to do it in church as a kid..and it is the most cringe I have ever felt about myself 🤣
Plenty of other countries do it as well, I grew up pledging alliance to the Mexican flag and singing the anthem every Monday
Having grown up in the US, I wasn't terribly comfortable with the pledge but shrugged it off mostly until I hosted an Austrian exchange student. They found it so strange and I was finally able to understand how problematic it actually is.
"I pledge allegiance, though I'm five years old!"
I am black.. I went to Awana and it was a great experience...
More positive clubs like Awana are needed...
Note : also went to other young organizations...and they also had pledges
Just because you had a great experience it doesn't mean it wasn't a traumatic or bad for the next person remember that.
5 y/o me in sparks collecting those tiny plastic jewels for my crown pin like they were infinity stones
Oh my gosh yes trying to get the little red, green and blue jewels like they were real👀
@Sawtooth Waves this made me laugh out loud! :)
I LOVED THOSE LITTLE GEMS SO BADLY
Oh my god core memory unlocked
Yep, I remember those things. I filled mine
I remember that coloring page from when I was a kid. And my first thought was, “those aren’t really the skin colors though”. Our group was pretty intense and used the old curriculum until I was in 6th or 7th grade- we were really pressured to win at the Awana Olympics, where you compete at the games against other clubs. It very militaristic, and you got big prizes for bringing friends (bonus points if they are from a “non-Christian home”). I remember being so proud that I filled up my progress bar with arrowheads, since I was really good at memorizing verses lol. One of the weirdest things I remember (besides the cringy songs), were the girls doing “color guard”/flag twirling activities, and the boys parading around toy rifles while we sang the the “I’m in the lords army, yes sir!” song. Crazy how I hadn’t thought of this as one of the more traumatic and formative elements of my childhood until now. Since it was also one of my main social outlets, it ensured that shame was one of my most fundamental feelings and beliefs about myself (to this day, tbh, though it’s gotten a lot better).
I remember this skin color page as well! I can’t believe it. I remember feeling weird about it even as a kid.
Former Pal here, from about '79-'83. Can confirm I had the workbook with the racist coloring page. I distinctly remember having to ask what the "red" race was.
I remember doing the Awana Olympics. I hated it because I was the slow kid. I was last to get picked, often skipped over, and normally was that kid that cried because I hated it.
I hadn't thought about it until it was shown here, but I definitely saw it. I didn't see anything racist about it at the time, but I certainly wouldn't give it to my kids now.
I got gold at the AWANA Olympics, was so damn proud, I also now remember the coloring book, memories are flooding back after watching this. They hated me because I believed in evolution and thought God would want a system for creatures to adapt and change. I once got beat at my Christian school with a paddle for challenging my teacher on evolution when they told us Satan put the dinosaur bones in the ground to confuse scientists, But I freaking loved dinosaurs so I was not ok with that explanation. I was so mad after being beaten I kicked a big hole in the bathroom drywall and never said a word about it.
they really hardcore pressured kids to memorize, like, it wasn't optional. leaders would give you a hard time if you didn't make progress. this video brought back so many memories, i really appreciate your work as always.
And it was only the verse given from the work books, without context, and it didn't matter if you understood it, just so long as each was word for word. At least that's how it was for us.
this brought back memories of stressfully reciting bible shit as a kid
@@ghostpoint uuuhhhggg... That was the worst thing about going.
She has abandoned the truth of Christ and now is a Left wing cult member who thinks obsession with skin color and sexual orientation is her new anti Christ theology. Awww the Indian images scarred her....what a weak traitor of the truth. Sickening.
It didn’t help that I have a learning disability and increasingly became less interested into my teens. Pretty much was forced to go by my mom until she grew distant from the church for some reason.
as a Jewish kid who was forced to go by converted Christian family members.. I'm so glad someone's finally talking about this. The amount of homophobia and shaming of other religions was terrifying, even as a kid.
if you read the bible you would see God was homophobic and shamed other religions. Your problem is with God, not christianity. Don't likeit? Go back to being a jew
I’m Oglala Lakota, and-yes, unfortunately, this kind of racist nonsense is way too familiar to me. We, as Native Americans, are so used to the Christian, Manifest Destiny, white “right” to our indigenous homeland. I absolutely love your honesty, and for laying bare your life journey. Christianity is still really difficult for me, mostly as a traditional ceremonial Lakota. Christianity has hurt my people and my family, and I learn a lot from your courageous honesty.
My apologies for the history and atrocities done upon your people
During that time period, racist stereotypes of Native Americans were absolutely everywhere. Heck, even when I was a kid, it seemed like half of TV shows and movies were "Westerns".
Honestly, AWANA might have just been copying the Boy Scouts with that theming. They didn't need to promote the more insidious and harmful aspects (White Manifest Destiny crap, ect.), because that stuff was just pervasive
@stone inyan Thank you for sharing, and for your kind words!!
I'm truly sorry we live in a world, in a country that has allowed the arrogance, hatred and racism of one religion to destroy so many lives. Unfortunately, it's still going strong in many sects, areas and churches. The arrogance it takes to believe that they are divinely inspired and have the authority of some God to decide for themselves that only they get to decide what is and isn't legitimate. Manifest destiny is the perfect example of this, the Spanish conquistadors in South America is another. We've watched recently the US government ignore native Americans beliefs in pushing the oil pipeline thru reservation land. Even after being told it was sacred land. It's no different than tearing down Baptist churches to build a pipeline. But they wouldn't do that, because it's Christian, and they've decided that is the only God they will accept was legitimate. I truly believe that religion will be what takes this country down if not stopped
@@ExFundieDiaries
The unfortunate part about your channel👇
🌬️🌀ua-cam.com/video/9g2PutZlwEs/v-deo.html
The line about “life and liberty to all…” is great, until they add that horrific phrase: “who believe.” Makes the whole organization an even grosser thing.
Well yeah, its called faith. or Belief. I don't think you were raised to understand things
Belief should not be a prerequisite for life and liberty@@friendlytwoleg8331
I think that you don't understand what " equality"is supposed to mean. You don't get it.@@friendlytwoleg8331
I was in Sparks Awana as a kid and when I questioned, “Is Heaven real?” “Is God real?” I got in trouble and got yelled at and they had a talk with my parents. Definitely cult-like.
It is those kind of questions that can lead to a person being saved. I'm very disappointed that that church would not give you a response.
So they didn't just say yes?
I wasn’t in Awana but I had god used as a weapon against me too. I’m not religious at all and I don’t believe in god but from my experience growing up going to church this all just seems like a normal church group
Yesss, EXACTLY!
I was a very inquisitive person as well and Awana HATED me asking questions.
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For an activity which was marketed as being fun, it really involved a lot of reprimand and punishment.
I was forced to crawl on nasty, smelly youth group carpet under chairs with a painful open wound (which later got painfully infected in the exact area i crawled on) with a fresh scab on my knee for a 'reward' why is there a reward if you can't refuse??
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There is no hate like christian love.
**puke
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I'm so sorry you had to go through that too!
Much love
Sometimes I feel religious again and tricked into by default as god does whatever he wants to us and self hatred and victim blaming feeling like the enemy and bad guy just because you're told to but wonder if God is evil and better megatron than Satan 🤔.
I remember visiting one of my friends' AWANA group. It was anything but "fun." My brothers and I were the only black kids there, and we knew it for sure. The leaders were actually quite intimidating and made me feel horrible for not knowing scripture by memory, or even for simply being shy and reserved (AKA "effeminate"). Honestly, there are so many more aspects that my mind refuses to unlock, but it's safe to say that although I am still a devout Christ follower who desires for others to know and love Him, I have an extreme aversion to mainstream discipleship/evangelism as we know it (especially Christian nationalism). Thank you for this video confirming one of the foundational reasons why.
I was the only black kid at the church I went to as well. I went with my white neigbors and their 5 homeschool very sheltered kids. They didn't like me because I was going to homeschool and I did a better job at the games and especially memorizing the versus
That's an identity argument. I was called a racial slur in high school by a black classmate while the whole class laughed and teacher ignored it. Does that mean that I indict the whole system??? No!!!! That is am anecdotal experience backed up by 0 evidence
I tried blocking out my time in Awana, but facing all of this and acknowledging the cult like behavior I was indoctrinated into is helping recover. Thank you for your videos.
If you can afford a therapist, they are incredibly helpful. Good luck on your journey, and I hope you find peace.
I’m glad you were able to break from the cycle! It’s not easy when being indoctrinated, especially as a kid. I hope nothing but peace reaches you in your life. A peace untied to any deity or leader
The indoctrination of children is far more aggressive by the alphabet movement. You were destined to be on the side of evil. Now you call good bad and bad good. Pathetic.
It is traumatic. You are so strong to become vulnerable enough to understand that what was done to you was wrong. I've blocked quite a lot out myself, which has made coming to terms with it and making peace with it is a lifetime's journey. I hope you are able to find real love and acceptance in your life.
@soap man starves Better than being indoctrinated with the alphabet community perversion. priDEMONth 😈.
Does your secular religion have you calling men women and women men yet?
I literally completely blocked AWANA from my memories until about a month ago, after a few sessions with a new psychologist inspired me to make a time-line of events in my life, and suddenly AWANA popped out of my head onto the page like a fully-formed Athena...and how could I have possibly forgotten about those three years in elementary school completely stuffed with memorizing scripture and singing marching songs and playing awful, uninteresting group games?
I have something resembling fond memories of the time I spent there, tucked away in a bubble in the back of my brain...but now reckoning with the complete fever dream of what those memories actually are...realizing the layers of indoctrination in my childhood that built the foundation for the things I do remember about the charismatic evangelical church of my teenage years... AWANA is f***ing weird.
I had those terrible memories locked away too.
Until I saw the thumbnail of this video I forgot it even existed, but now that I'm writing out replies in the comments section, I'm remembering more and more about it. No wonder I have always carried around unexplained guilt, rage, and lacked the ability to set boundaries or say 'no'.
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The authoritarian disregard for bodily autonomy and consent by that organization, not to mention the near-constant (for me) reprimands and punishments is terrifying to realize as an adult. I am so grateful my parents pulled me out after they witnessed a leader force me to spend most of two hours memorizing a silly little passage I kept forgetting just 1 or 2 words to.
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Whew, those are some new terrible memories I can now reflect on. I feel like such a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, although my gut is still crunching up at the thought of those memories, and how angry I am that they are a tool of YT supremacy.
Absolutely repulsive!
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I'm sorry you had to lock away those memories too.
Much love!!
WOW!!! I was thinking about trying therapy and was hoping it could unlock some memories. So your hidden memories just automatically came up from your subconscious during a session? The brain is truly an amazing thing.
@@andrewortiz5797 It didn't come up for me in session - it happened while I was at home, thinking about different phases in my life, and trying to remember how I spent my time. It was quite overwhelming, and I was actually really glad to be alone at the time, so I could take my time to process what I'd just remembered before talking to my therapist about it.
Awana seemed like an alternative to girl scouts which was "too liberal and feminist". I now know that not all girl scout troops were liberal like mine. My troop had Christians, atheist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, black, white, Asian, native American, Hispanic the whole spectrum. But the Awana girls I knew implied that us girl scouts were "worldly". This was in the 80s-90s.
Oh no, the American Heritage Girls are the Christian alternative to Girl Scouts. Less entrepreneurship, more evangelism.
That sounds like an awesome scout troop.
I remember (2005) there being an RA club and it's girl version as the scouts alternative. The boys got to race pine cars, the girls got to talk about spreading love to thy neighbor
@@laurenconrad1799 you know it really was, until I was writing this out I took it for granted how diverse and inclusive my troop was. We were a public school troop.
Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts foundered in my area growing up for the same reason… everyone sent their kids to awana
Years ago, my (then) neighbors sent their youngest child across the street to try to "invite" my child to their AWANA group. I thought, *"Not only no, but HELL NO."*
I politely said, "no, thank you". I tried to be gentle as possible. It was not the kid's fault she was born to Evangelical indoctrinator bullies, after all.
But this kid was *_INSISTANT_* and kept asking "why?", in the most annoyingly pleading tone you can imagine, all the while refusing to leave my front doorstep. I finally said, firmly, "NO. Because we don't share your beliefs and I don't want my kid to belong to your club. Please do not ask us again." The child looked absolutely shocked. Then I sat my kid down and carefully explained why I had refused the "invitation" to the "fun club" this kid had talked nonstop about the past week 🙄(unbeknownst to yours truly). My kid was raised secularly (with an basic understanding of the major world religions). Now that I've seen this video, wow, I now know that we really dodged a bullet.
This neighbor family was seriously Evangelical. Their kids (all of whom had names that started with the same first initial as one of their parents ...gag, just like the Duggars) were allowed to go to the same local public school as all the kids in the neighborhood (at least for a while). I used to walk my kid to the school bus stop and chat with the other moms who walked their kids to the stop. One morning, the neighbors youngest (again) started showing us all a poster done as a homework project that they had to present with an oral report in class that day. They were learning about the structure of a cell. The teacher wanted them to try to find an analogy that compared something with a cell. Like " my classroom is like a cell because... "the teacher is like the nucleus, the students are like the rhizomes, the walls of the class room are like a cell's outer membrane, blah blah blah, etc.". You get the picture.
What analogy did the little pushy proselytizer choose? _" The cell is like my Bible because... "._
Holy hobbling Christ on a crutch. The following year, the mother started homeschooling this kid because they had matriculated to middle school and the teachers there had no patience for this child's "all Jesus, all of the time" brainwashed mentality.
I’ve known people like this too. They can be exhausting.
I now watch the Simpsons with my kids and I ironically (or unironically, depending on how you look at it) think, “I wish more Christians were actually like Ned Flanders”. Sure, he’s an indoctrinated character/caricature, but at least he’s kind and not a bully.
Well, in fairness, the Bible is sometimes like a cell.
Never went to AWANA but I did go to Vacation Bible School. It was cringey. Pretty sure your kid didn’t miss anything.
When I was a kid,5-6, I was told as an Arab male it was my destiny to be martyred in the mission field preaching in Muslim countries. Still stayed in all the way through and even became a game time leader. The whole trans thing blew all that up quick.
Sounds like a wild ride Kate
“We value your life so little that your purpose is dying, but in a way that still makes us look good! :) “
@@AprilBytheBay oh god and getting screamed at for crying at being told you’re calling is to be murdered. My mom was excited that I would have the honor of dying for Christ.
@@gracehaven5459 it’s been crazy, but you can’t change the past.
@@kate8612 please take care of yourself, homie.
My mom and dad were both AWANA leaders throughout my K-12 tenure in the program. My Dad ended up as games director and my Mom led Cubbies, before they ran Sparkies together. I’ll never forget my mom in that yellow polo.
One thing I wanted to add from my experience. I carried the idea for a long time that I needed to finish the program so I could earn a scholarship the program offered. I was told that going from cubbies all the way through, you’d learn to recite the entire bible. So it just hit me hard watching the video that it was one of the earliest times I remember that existential crisis we were all given, coming to my real life. I knew from a young age I needed to memorize the entire bible to save my parents money for college (money they had).
Overall, my experience in AWANA was pretty tame, but it makes me think if that was just because how normal it was in our house.
Thank you for your video ❤ my first one but I’m going to be watching more.
my awana experience was pretty tame too. Our town was pretty small so we only had the cubbies, sparks, and truth and training programs, and all we did was sing songs, play games, and have bible time. The highlights i remember was the awana store and the fun nights we'd have (like crazy hair night, pie your leader night, dressing up for halloween, and things like that) and of course the pine wood car races we had. My family moved out of that town by the time i was in the last year of truth and training so at the time I was pretty pissed i didn't get to finish the program because i was only a couple months away from finishing. (I got over it pretty quickly though XD)
From what I've watched in the video and read in these comments I think that a lot of the issues stem from the people who are running the program in their churches, such as the awana pledges and anthem, hitting kids with rulers if they don't do verses, etc. Thankfully my Awana experience was a positive one, and I feel terrible for those who had traumatic experiences
Ooooo I wanted to join the AWANA club at the southern baptist church in my town soooo badly. But my parents wouldn’t let me; they felt like it was “too liberal.” They’re big fans of Christian nationalism so it would’ve fit right into our beliefs, but I think they were fooled by how happy and fun everything looked. Happy and fun = too liberal. 🤣
So, your parents literally believed that kids shouldn't be happy? That is so sad.
@@DaveCM Happiness and the idea that we were all born into sin and without a savior we are nothing are just a tad antithetical towards each other. It’s not that my parents didn’t want us to be happy, it’s just that their idea of “happiness” was very narrow. Just look at these rubes in video trying to define “fun.” It’s so very revealing.
I'm curious what denomination you ended up going to for Sunday services? Maybe it was something to do with them being Baptist? Baptist I would say are pretty conservative now if it was the United Methodist I could see that perhaps things might be more liberal.
Blimey!
@@kandyjo The doctrine of Original Sin is the absolute WORST thing a parent can inflict on their child.
I was in AWANA… most of it was blocked out of my memory. Hearing the pledge and song brought it all back. I remember memorizing scripture for candy and participating in the AWANA Olympics. I liked the sports but didn’t care for the teachings. I asked my mom to withdraw me after a year. I was 11 and it was 1987. You are spot on, btw.
I am having an intense morning remembering all this stuff, I won a gold medal at awana loved to run around in circles, but also remember being beaten with a paddle for arguing about the existence of evolution and dinosaurs, I kicked a hole in the bathroom wall at my Christian school because I was so mad about it, never said a word either and got away with it.
Omg I had forgotten about the song until I saw this comment and then ALL THE TUNE AND LYRICS CAME RUSHING INTO MY HEAD. WHYYYYYY
Hey Elly! Not sure if you remember me, but me and my brother love watching your videos. We are also ex-fundies/went to your AWANA group, and these are super cathartic videos for us. I blocked out a lot of my childhood, so it's kinda bringing up a lot haha, but enjoying it none the less. Thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing your stories.
Hi Emily! Yes, I totally remember you! Our families did that Bible study small group thing together too, right? Where we met at different houses? I'm so glad to hear that my videos are cathartic for you and your brother! It's great to hear that you two are also ex-fundies. Thank you so much for commenting and saying hi! :)
@@ExFundieDiaries Yes! I remember you and Annie would come to our house when we were young. Must have been a parent bible study. And no problem! It's great to see you got out as well. I know it's hard to deconstruct all that. Go you! :)
Ohh the whole “VBS is free babysitting!” Thing kills me. There is a Baptist church that I pass every day on my way to work that advertised VBS this summer with “DINNER IS PROVIDED!” As one of the big main reasons to send your kids there. I live in a community that is struggling and the lure of a free meal to indoctrinate your kids is a hard one for some to pass up. “Oh it’s VBS, it’s harmless! Gives me a week of my evenings being free from 5-8:30 at night AND they will feed my kids..” it’s awful to see the manipulation
One time in high school a friend invited me to an after school activity at her church, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was Awana - it wasn't super preachy or anything, but it seemed to be a guest night where the members were supposed to bring in kids from school to encourage them to keep coming back. Luckily for me, they decided their fun activity to get random kids to join their club was to make us lie on our backs and try to eat an ice cream cone from the bottom up.
Around friends, and without the weird pressure the youth leaders were putting on us, it probably could have been a fun, wacky thing to do as a young teen. But I only knew one person there, and the situation just made me feel awkward, self-conscious, and physically uncomfortable. I laughed because I didn't know how else to respond, but I never had even the slightest desire to go back.
That sounds like AWANA's, but also youth groups in general.
ugh, wow… this just reminded me of how many times I tried to get the very limited friends I had outside of the church to join my family for an evening at the “church”… mortifying.
What a wacky way to eat ice cream
That sounds like exactly the kind of humiliating task that Awana would have kids perform.
I remember having a pretty fresh big scab from skinning the point of my kneecap during a race and being told to hands-knees crawl under chairs for some little reward... but the crawling was mandatory.
When I showed my injury to the adult running the activity, they tried to convince me that it couldn't possibly be **that painful and that I HAD to do it. Like beastie, I was NOT worried about how much it hurt even close to as much as I didn't want an infection from the gross church group carpet everyone was walking on in the same shoes they just walked in from the parking lot wearing.
I ended up behaving like a rabid animal so that I hopefully didn't have to crawl, but it just got me a severe talking to by some church parent I didn't know until I cried, and was forced to craw, and every time I rolled onto my back and started scooting through the chairs that way, I was reprimanded by the group leader.
I got an angry infection on just the lower part of the wound a few days later... the part which kinda touched the floor.
The way they talked to me like a prisoner.. It scared me so badly and my evil little self plotted to burn the place down for a few weeks afterward...
but my brain could NOT for the life of me rationalize what was happening. And I only complained about it to my friends, who empathized with me on how terrible it sounded, but I never went to an adult about it because I didn't know words like bodily autonomy, consent, and gaslighting.
Now that I think of it, I remember my best friend and I calling the adults at Awana N@tzees, how interesting that their pious, nationalist rhetoric is very similar to that of some other authoritarian yt supremacists we know of...
The next week, that same activity leader forced me to look them in the eyes and give them a hug, then sat me down to test how well I could recite a list of cringey jesus passages and the pledge of allegiance, and when I got one out of the several slightly wrong she had me go practice again sitting on my own with a notecard of all the passages for the rest of the hour and then tested me again at the end of the club.
To my parents credit, they did remove me after that night because they were there that night and didn't like that they were paying for a woman to make me sit in a corner and memorize a few throwaway lines the whole 3 hours long instead of play and learn like had been promised.
It was my lucky break, but almost 20 years later I am still traumatized.
I hated the way people in children's activities did not afford kids rights to think for themselves or set boundaries or have consent before something humiliating or unsafe or stifling was forced upon us.
Disgusting.
No wonder we hear reactionaries still banging the drum that children should not be taught about consent. I couldn't believe what I was hearing until now... it makes sense thinking back on these painful memories I have blocked out for decades.
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I'm so glad you didn't get wrapped up in it too.
How humiliating to have to eat something arguably unhealthy like ice cream in front of peers. I was chunky and trying to not overeat that would have been my NIGHTMARE!
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At least we are still here.
Even tho I still have to learn how to set boundaries and not take sh*t from other people, at least it taught me firsthand what to NEVER do to a child.
Much love!!!
Edit, the meetings were neither 1 nor 3 hours long... they were 2 hours long, 4-6
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Much love!
I was raised by an atheist mom but my babysitter took me to awana. It took a lot of therapy to work past the issues it gave me. I remember going from being a hard tomboy who only wore boys clothes, to forcing myself to wear dresses and do my hair, I was terrified if I didnt Id go to hell for being gay. That was essentially what they told me, if I dont dress like a girl, Im a sinner, Im gay, and Im going to hell. It was bad. And on top of that I got yelled at all the time because I wasnt raised religious and struggled a lot memorizing things. It was just a lot of trauma that was hard to get beyond at such a young age.
Were you gay?
Did your mom allow this? Did they know what the babysitter was doing to you? I'm so sorry you were psychologically abused that way. Screw them.
You should've told your mother to get a new babysitter.
My mom put me in Awana's when I was 8. On the third meeting I climbed over a fence and ran away. I don't remember what it was as a kid that made me hate it. Maybe it was my little rebellious atheist agnostic self trying to break free. Thankfully after that my mom got the hint and took me out. lol
Thank you for these videos, Elly! As an afab who was raised conservative Christian, they are incredibly helpful and relatable.
I went as a kid, I am not sure how long I was in I blocked it all out. Until watching this video and realizing the name is familiar from my childhood.
@@reinasherman8009 crazy how our brains do that. It makes me wonder if the reason we forget/block it out is because it was ultimately forgettable or because it was too hard/unpleasant to continue to remember.
You're my hero!
I wanted to escape so bad too!
The authoritarian supervision was too strong at my Awana I couldn't get away with anything. They punished me for rolling my eyes at their lack of care when I came to the adult leaders about my concerns.
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FTP and the authoritarian youth groups like Awana, which train little order-followers up to join their ranks later.
The Awana in my area was a HARDCORE pol1ce simp.
Gross.
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Seriously. My HERO!!
Much love!!
@@reinasherman8009 same all I remember was a firefly thing
You described the segment towards the end where everyone in the room was struggling to describe “fun” as funny, and as an outsider who was raised mostly/relatively secular I think its ‘funny’ too but in a more strange sense of the word instead of the humorous sense. Hearing grown adults speak about fun as if they’re all aliens who’ve only been observing human behavior for maybe a day or so is really unsettling. To think some people are so closed off from the rest of society because a cult runs their whole life is truly heartbreaking.
I grew up in relatively conservative Christian church and attended a pretty seriously conservative evangelical church during my 20s. I'm now very progressive and still Christian. I thought I had just about seen it all but it freaks me out to learn there was a Christian flag that you had to pledge allegiance too. I find that horribly blasphemous.
Most Christian schools pledge to the American flag and Christian flag every morning.
I still can't choose which felt worse as a kid. Pledge to the Christian flag, or pledge to the Bible.
@@-Ghostess the VBS flashbacks 😭
@@-Ghostess you pledged to the bible?!??!?
I always felt that way too, even when I was Evangelical.
I wasn't in AWANA, but a very cultish church. "Non Denominational" but we were still forced to commit idolatry in VBS by pledging to the Christian flag. You've got me thinking that maybe I should speak up about it more. I've briefly covered it on my channel, but it boils down to me crying myself to sleep a lot as a teen worrying my salvation didn't stick. I'd also have panic episodes if I woke up and everyone was outside thinking I'd been left behind in the rapture. I understood at a very young age the concept of eternity, so thinking I'd go there for having doubts left me with PTSD and a lot of other problems. The preacher was always angry and always purposely trying to instill fear in the kids. In VBS he was describing to us about nails thru the wrist and how there are a lot of nerves there. Had us taste vinegar because they gave it to Jesus in lieu of water. Dude had nine or ten kids, all bible names. I could write a book on that guy.
My VBS did this, and also had us pinching and pressing where jesus had the nails as hard as we could in order to "better understand his pain"
@@idork7302 Oh wow, I'm so sorry to hear that. Geez, wasn't the whole point of the crucifixion that he felt it so nobody else had to?
@@halfbakedmedia in his words "so we can understand what he went through so we wouldn't have to go to hell" then yelled about fiery pain that would be brought down upon us if we didnt repent, even used the ABC jesus song
Awana seemed like one of the most innocuous things we did as fundie homeschoolers, but wow this just brought back so many memories of how indoctrinated we really were. Deep memories surfaced watching this. How proud I was to have memorized more verses than the other kids, how we saved up our allowances to fund a missionary trip to Azerbaijan (as if kids in Illinois in 2004 knew where that was or what that meant), and the damn theme song! I thought “surely, we didn’t do that” and yet I still knew some of the lyrics!! Anyway, I just found your channel a few days ago and I’m loving your gentle, fact-based approach to deconstruction. I walked away from the church entirely about a decade ago, but I will probably be deconstructing the rest of my life. So glad there are more and more of us challenging this cultish upbringing and less kids will have to grow up to deal with this kind of trauma.
IKR. What really is actual truth? Is it really worth it anymore to praise such a god for joy? Or truth?
I'm a 'Citation Award Winner' aka: I have completed all the books/material from the 3rd Grade through 12th Grade. My mom discovered AWANA when I was in Kindergarten, so I started as a Sparky in the 1999/2000 schoolyear. I was good at the memorization and it was fun, AWANA along with Sunday School were my primary social interaction (I was homeschooled in Kinder). I made it all the way through the book twice, plus the review book, and the 'take it to heart' passage...all three years, by the end of 2nd grade they had me working backwards through the Cubbies material. My mom ended up memorizing with me (We received our Citations at the same time) by the time I was in 3rd Grade, starting T&T or Truth and Training, my mom became a Leader. I hit Jr. High during another curriculum change, and did 2 years in Trek. HS was Journey 24/7, and I was probably depressed, so it was rough. I only stayed in the program because earning my Citation would potentially net me a college scholarship at various Christian universities.
We would pledge to the Christian Flag, then the American Flag, then the AWANA Flag, then sing the anthem (man listening to that brought back memories), then we'd split up into our age (and gender) groups to rotate through Lesson Time, Small Group Time/Snack time, & Games. We were allowed to memorize in KJV or NKJV up until I was in T&T, some of my friends who had just joined, started memorizing in NIV.
I attended Awana as a child, and when I was a teenager volunteered as an assistant group leader for VBS and kids church services for a couple of years. It was always important to me to give the kids a place to just sit and draw or read or chat if they didnt want to play games or do the physical activity (it had pushed me away as child, which I'm now grateful for, to be forced to play tag and other physical activities, and guilted by leaders when I tried to refuse, when I was extremely socially anxious and terrified throughout the games).
Every year, older leaders would scold me for not doing my job and being lazy for trying to make the kids comfortable and not forcing them to do the prescribed activity. Eventually I got tired of it, and realized why it made me so uncomfortable - they wanted to teach the kids that they had to do exactly what they were told, and *enjoy* doing it. But it only ever fit the mold of what they thought they *ought* to consider fun, which got more and more dangerous and rhetorical as time went on. My telling the kids "it's okay if you dont want to play tag, come sit with me and we'll draw a picture until they're playing a game you're comfortable with" threatened that. And my church was actually taking care to be *less* cult like than many
YES! Why tf did we even have a 'gym' portion anyway? I always hated that part. And being guilted into doing your memorizations and they had to be signed like school.
@@ckat13 gym portions are pretty common with kids activities, even in the secular world, kids are just not great at sitting still so you gotta get their wiggles out
Oh my goodness... as an autistic girl with social and generalized anxiety disorders, poor coordination, and no competitive or "team" spirit, those overstimulating environments (especially physical activities,) were the last places I wanted to be. I dropped out of youth group in eighth grade because of it and never went back. Even though I've probably never met you in person, I'm so glad there's someone out there who understands and genuinely wanted to help kids like me. Thank you so much.
(PS - I am 21 now :) )
@@ckat13 It was to allow the kids to burn off energy I think, which I get. But I always felt like if a child was just sitting quietly while all their friends were running around playing, isolating themselves from the "fun", it was kind of an indictator that they didnt *need* to burn any off.
They certainly weren't the ones who were wiggling and moving during lessons, at any rate. Some kids need to run a bit between other activities, and some just arent as energetic as others!
Literally checked your username to see if I knew you and if we grew up in the same circle haha
Honestly, I think being resistant to AWANA indoctrination was the one time being an autistic loner actually helped me as a kid. I was always kind of on the outside of the AWANA group, and didn't really make many friends there. If anything, I saw it as a waste of a Friday night where I would much rather have been playing video games. As such I never was as indoctrinated into the cult as I could've been, and made my religious deconstruction that much easier.
✊ Autistic Loner Irreligious Solidarity
fr! the one time the tism worked out for the better. long term at least 😂
@@thighble69 I am puzzling, & scratching my head like a monkey trying to unfold the meaning of "tism", without resorting to use of a search engine or any web communities dedicated to the discussion of colloquial expressions, but it seems like I am too old to keep up with what you young whippersnappers are saying… but that couldn't be, because in my own self-image I haven't aged a day since that one perfect day when I was simultaneously fit & able to buy beer at the supermarket, back in the primitive times of 2002, when cellphones ran out of minutes, marijuana came from that guy from Mendocino County who drove back home every week, & the United States was complicit in atrocities on the opposite side of the world.
Just when my curiosity was about to swallow me whole, I just now figured out that 'tism is an abbreviation, not an acronym!
Thanks for letting me talk my way through this!
P.S. In my view, the 'tism bestows us with highly esoteric superpowers.
We didn't have AWANA in my church, we made our own weird creepy children's indoctrination club bc AWANA was the "wrong kid of christian" and we were definitely the only ones ACTUALLY being christian correctly
We didn’t have it-because THANK GOD-I was raised in a church that embraced feminism, LGBTQ persons, and believed that dissent was patriotic (and required of a citizen of the United States) amongst other things. The more I learn about Christian Fundamentalism the more blessed I fell!
@@MountainPearls oof, you really hit the lottery there😬that's the exact opposite of my upbringing
Samesies. It was “too liberal” for them.
@@MountainPearls I wish I went there instead of AoG growing up.
@@kandyjo whoa. Too liberal how?
I have tears in my eyes listening to the part where he's talking about making sure to indoctrinate them while they're young. This messaging was so ingrained in me as a child and teen. As an adult, I'm healing from this world and realizing what a cult it is. Thank you for sharing, I didn't even remember how bad a lot of this stuff was
I attended awana from cubbies to T&T and then immediately, as a 13 year old, began to watch toddlers in puggles. I was the sole caretaker of at least 2 toddlers every Wednesday.
I can still remember every theme song for every club. I remember being shamed in my sparks group for never having “shared the gospel” with a non-believing child. But my entire community was from the church so I remember approaching a random little boy on a playground at about 7 years old to evangelize to him.
I would also spend hours in my closet preparing for those Wednesday nights, memorizing everything. I finished all of the sparks books and went through three extra tracks during a school year.
I totally forgot about all of this until now. Thank you for this video.
My parents had a lapse in judgement for about two years where we attended a very… intense baptist church. They were the “Harry Potter is the devil” type of church. We were/are Harry Potter fans but kept that to our selves. I was in AWANA for those two years and I dreaded it. I have ADHD so memorizing and reciting bible verses was a nightmare. The instructors would call me horrible names and humiliate me in front of my group for forgetting a few words, or reciting the verse too slow. I blocked a lot of it out but I’m really glad I came across your video because I never realized how hitler youthesque the whole thing is. Absolutely wild that I didn’t see the cultiness of it until now. I’m glad my parents decided to leave that church and distance themselves from such twisted “Christianity”. I’m also glad to know from reading the comments and from your video that I’m not alone in the uncomfortableness of reflecting on the AWANA times (that’s what I’m calling those dark days lolol) Thank you for sharing!
I don't believe you that they called you names you like all others on here are group lying. I believe you may have been nervous but why lie and claim they tried to humiliate you and call you names. The leaders I assume love the Lord ans are Born again unlike sadly unlike All those on here!
The same thing happened to me. I have very bad adhd and the more stressed I was the worse my focus and ability to pay attention got and because the leaders were so horrible to me it created unnecessary stress and performance anxiety. My parents involvement in the church is very cyclic, meaning my dad will decide when he wants to be more worldly or more involved depending on what suits him, I distinctly remember the pastor he liked and was friends with left and he deemed this new pastor too soft so he pulled back from it really hardcore but still hold all the practices and beliefs, but my dads a diagnosed narcissist from his time in the navy before he found god
I grew up in a family of missionaries associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. While I definitely was raised with fundamentalist beliefs, my family and the other missionary families near us largely lacked Christian Nationalist rhetoric. Maybe being surrounded by very different people dissuaded that kind of thought?
Anytime we returned Stateside and we interacted with the churches that supported us, I always found a lot of the trappings of Christian Nationalism in those churches strange. Especially pledging to the Christian flag and the Bible - it always felt so Americanized, like it not only showed a desire to tie faith to the U.S., but also distancing fundamentalists from other Christians around the world. AWANA was one of those things that I never took part in, but most of my family members in the U.S. did. In a lot of ways, I can be thankful I grew up on the mission field because it kept me out of the fundamentalist echo chamber I would have been in had my family never moved abroad.
That's an interesting perspective. I never did AWANAs either....idk if I was better off without it or not.....not sure 🤔
I had a few friends in college who’s parents were missionaries, one was definitely Southern Baptist, they were some of the strongest critics of American churches.
My single mother took advantage of all the church camps and programs as free babysitting. I went to Baptist vacation bible school, I was in Awana clubs at another church... but we weren't religious. We never once prayed in the home. We didn't attend church. Biblical morals weren't expected. It was seriously just a way for her to save a little money on child care while she worked because we were poor. And the churches/groups know that's how it's being used -- heck, Awana had buses that picked up and dropped kids off at their houses -- and they don't care because it's still a potential new evangelist/disciple. I am so glad it never hooked either of us and I am able to laugh at the few years of random church groups I was sent to. Mom was in a tough spot, but I also think she knew I wasn't susceptible.
All I can say is wow! I am 42 years old and I was one of those kids that needed "free child care." My neighbor took me to awana every Wednesday. I remember coloring that page and singing that stupid verse highlighted above it. This group saved and baptized me and I remember wondering why my parents weren't there? Years later as an adult I asked my mom and she never even knew about it. I also remember at the time my mom was working in the kitchen at a local bar. The leaders had me feeling so ashamed. I remember one of them praying with me while I cried and saying "it's okay we need those kind of people too. Maybe you can talk to your mom and see if she can find a way to serve God." Thanks for this video I am so much happier today free from this guilt.
I’m so glad you’re healing. I am always so disgusted with how Christian nationalists prey on those who’s needs aren’t properly met by society and actively work to put as many kids in your situation as possible. Best of luck with your healing journey!
I think that was why I was in AWANA, to be honest. It was hosted at a church that I didn't go to.
I don't remember anything from AWANA, except the vests and Indigenous imagry.
I'm glad it didn't stick with me.
Your experience is an example of what I find truly sinister about evangelical groups like AWANA, the Happy Days Club, and the way most evangelical churches do Vacation Bible School: It is a form of spiritual kidnapping. Not just a way of passing along their beliefs, values and culture to their own children; all human beings feel a desire to do that, and also have a natural tendency to see their own efforts to do so wholesome while finding other groups' efforts less attractive. But for evangelicals, the focus really is on "outreach" to the "unsaved," that is, to the children of people with different beliefs from their own. When they brag about their programs being open to all children, not just members of their own church, it's not because they're being ecumenical. Quite the opposite. It's because they want to convince children to repudiate the beliefs of their parents and become evangelicals.
I am 37 literally most of my memories about AWANA and the church cult I grew up in have been trauma blocked but this video brought them to the surface, I am shaking right now.
This video trash of someone who was brainwashed by a therapist. Some day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. If we feel guilty in life it is because the Holy Spirit is guiding us in All truth and loves you enough to tell you when you are sinning (grieving the Spirit of God) or if you are walking in fellowship with the Lord. Those kind of people may have just ment cooks.... Nothing more nothing less! Jesus loves you and died for your sins and mine! Read in the book of John! Learn how to recognize the voice of the Lord! Be discipled, Jesus walked with His disciples for three years and commanded us to do the same with others, Read Matthew 28:19-20 and you tell me are those AWANA missionaries in 135 countries each week and loving well oner 5 million children and discipling and helping them grow in the LOrd is that fufilling "The Great Commission" which is what they call Jesus Christ's last words before retutning to Heaven (Read to the end of Matthew chapter 28).
I was in awana for a couple years when I was elementary school age. My singular persisting memory from my time there was an activity where we were supposed to make a little comic about the seven days of creation: For god's day resting, I drew him lounging back and relaxing! I was proud of myself and showed one of the leaders. I was told that this was a "disrespectful" way to represent god. Still baffles me to this day why they had that reaction, but I was so deeply ashamed that I remember it decades later.
That is so sad. From a child’s perspective I would have laughed it off too, it’s so innocent and genuine.
Children's didn't flock... parents forced them 😡 I hate the word trained. Like they aren't dogs. They have their own atonomy. Disgusting.
Forced. Very true.
At the Awana I attended, all activities were mandatory even in cases of humiliation, exhaustion, and injury.
The reprimanded and punishments were so severe for minor infractions.
I remember calling the leaders there N@tzees when I would complain about the 'club' to my normal friends and WHOOO is it interesting to see how on the dot that is with the YT supremacist, nationalist rhetoric they used.
🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤
Innocent kids don't deserve to be indoctrinated into something so hateful and authoritarian at such a critical time in their development.
🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤
I'm sorry you had to experience their bullshit too!
Much love!!!
I remember this! My mom’s “non-denominational” (see: evangelical, but we could wear pants) church tried to bring when I was a kid. I remember hating it and refusing to participate, if only because I didn’t want to memorize all the new pledges, etc. They didn’t do it for very long, I don’t know why.
I’m a mid 1980’s kid that was subjected to IFB indoctrination in my home and school. In the 90’s, the logo was different, but the message is still the same. 30 years later, I can still quote the pledge to the Bible, Christian flag, and AWANA flag. I completed Cubbies and Sparkies, and I just loved the sparkly jewels we would earn for our 3 levels of crowns. When I graduated from Sparkies, the theme of the level was reflective of indigenous women (and men for the “boys”). We would earn feathers for this bar on our club shirt. Much of that time in my life is repressed, but I’m absolutely sure this program embraced racist and colonizer views to the teaching. It’s so gross.
And all those memory verses are still tattooed on my brain. Do you guys remember the OBEDIENCE song? We were basically trained to be little fundie soldiers. In raising my own daughter, I’ve been teaching her critical thinking since she was able to understand decision making. I relate to all of these diary videos way too much….
It was the jewels that got me too
Lets do the maths. The average AWANA year is 30 meetings at two hours per meeting so sixty hours a year (I commute 60hs a month) times 14 years, 840 hours and maybe a few summer camps. The average public school year is about 1200 hrs times 13 years for over 15000 hours. Then a few years immersed college not daring to oppose the campus culture. Plus thousands of hours of internet media and advertising, Indoctrinating politics, churches, clubs, business and media with Orwellian doublespeak. We must deprogram all the oppressed AWANA students and leaders!
My evangelical church did the girl version called Missionettes. I went through the entire program and finally “graduated” when I was like 14. The “graduation” was very similar to a wedding where your dad walks you down the aisle and you’re wearing a white, sparkling dress with a satin blue cape with a tiara. Looking back it’s TOTAL cringe and so culty. Glad I escaped that and am proudly a ex-evangelical and agnostic.
Yes girl I did this too!! I graduated at 12 because we didn’t have the next level at our church for some reason but I remember being so annoyed about even having to do the graduation with the white dress I was so bent 😂
I was involved in Missionettes as well (in my later years it was called Girls Ministries) at my church. I remember our Stars Club instructor would give us a soda each week during the summer if we read ten chapters of the New Testament in our journey towards being an “honor star”. I lied about having read verses in order to give into the social pressures, and so I could be an honor star. Thankfully they didn’t make us wear the capes and white dresses though. After graduating from Stars, I quit the program and taught Rainbows (for preschool boys and girls) for 7 years.
As I am currently deconstructing my own experiences as an ex-evangelical, it is sad to think back on how those years went because I loved those kids. But I never fully felt like my heart was in it and I was “putting on a show” when I was struggling with my own belief. I was also getting paid for my last two years as a preschool ministry lead, so that was a motivator as well.
@@saffronw-b7425 omg. “Honor Star” I totally forgot about that term. Now I remember the acronym: Susannah Tabitha Anna Ruth. I remember when I started missionettes seeing the honor stars “graduate” I couldn’t wait for that to be me. We did a huge convention at the state level to be honored then a ceremony at my home church. So much to unpack from all that.
@@saffronw-b7425 I went to brownies and girl guides (I never got too do rainbows as I was too old for it) growing up and I’ve always wondered if it was actually a cult. I’d love to know your view on it since you actually worked amongst the girl guides. I always felt it was very off, especially as an atheist. H
I did the boys program- Royal Rangers
I thought my childhood church was the only one to do Awana, I've literally never heard anyone else ever mention it. This is so insane, as a former child member myself thank you so much for bringing this to light. As a part-Native American, I'm stunned that neither myself nor my parents ever questioned it, given its racist indoctrination of Manifest Destiny.
Not gonna lie man.. even though I heed the trigger warnings that you so kindly and abundantly supply to us, I’m always surprised by how much I actually do feel triggered by a lot of the things you discuss. That said, I love your channel and how much it helps me learn about myself. Thank you ✨
Make sure you’re taking care of yourself and have access to professional support or a solid emotional support team behind you if you’re feeling overwhelmed. I’ve been in a similar boat and reaching out for support helps a lot. You’re definitely not alone.
But yeah I also really appreciate these videos because it calls out things that were messed up in my fundie childhood but in a compassionate and not angry way that makes me feel better about the place I’m in now. My past might’ve been messed up but my future doesn’t have to be. 💕
This hit me way too hard. I went through a rough time in middle school and ended up being homeschooled my eighth grade year. Thanks to a ton of bullying and the like, I didn’t really have any interaction with anyone my age during that time until I was invited to come to an Awana meeting by one of my mom’s friends (her kids went regularly). It always felt off to me, but it was the only socialization I really had for over a year. The church leaders knew that and took advantage of the fact that I was so lonely. It’s disgusting looking back on that now.
In other videos, you mentioned how you’re working in therapy on allowing yourself to feel anger since you repressed anger for so long while being indoctrinated. I noticed what I guess I might call your “angry face” a few times in this video like at 5:42. I loved it. I’m completely serious. You have every reason to be angry and it’s amazing to see that passion shine through. ❤️❤️❤️
My sister did Awana when it was at my church. They had a “bring your sibling pajama party” thing and I went. She was 10 and I was 15. It was a lot to take in and I was soooo uncomfortable watching the kids pledge allegiance to America, the Bible, and Christianity.
There was a child who attended who had severe autism and he was so mistreated by the teacher, it broke my heart. Why would you volunteer to teach kids and treat them so harshly? So I started volunteering to try and protect that kid from her. It was a lot for my 15 year old brain to handle. So much indoctrination and lies from the adult volunteers to get more parents to let their kids to join the program. They stopped awana about a year after I started volunteering. However, this kid indoctrination is still very prevalent in churches all over. How many times have I heard “if your kid doesn’t accept Christianity by the time they are 12, they will never know God!!”
It’s not only troubling and damaging to the child to be indoctrinated like this, it’s also damaging to parents who “fail” at making their kids “stay Christians”. They feel a lot of shame from their friends in the same circles. It’s an awful thing to watch happen.
11:40 "Marriage is between one biological man and one biological woman". Huh. Where do people with Turner Syndrome fall? With only one X chromosome, we're not exactly biological (i.e. genotypic) females, even if we appear to be (i.e. phenotypic) female.
People with Turners Syndrome are female. DSDs are sex-specific conditions.
That’s not even getting into De La Chapelle Syndrome and Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.
We have to remember that religious extremists either do not care, or are uneducated or did not finish basic school in the name of Jesus.
It's been 15+ years since I was part of AWANA, and yet when I saw the video title, I recalled the entire theme song immediately. Definitely gonna have the spend unpacking this one in therapy.
Growing up, I saw plenty of Native American cultural appropriation at my secular summer camp, where age groups were named after Native American tribes, and in secular children’s theater productions of Peter Pan. But these programs never seemed to give the idea that whites are better than Native Americans. If anything, the camp tried to act like Native American was a super cool theme kids should enjoy (as opposed to an actual group of people with history and rights that were taken away.) It is fascinating to see the differences between these programs and the lines drawn between problematic and downright horrific.
I definitely encountered that kind of racism as a kid, too, though, at this distance, I'd find it hard to say exactly where. It doesn't feel like a bad thing from the inside, thinking Indians were totally cool and had secret knowledge, and how sad they're all gone now... I read and enjoyed a lot of books that straddled the line between cultural appropriation and cultural exploration, and sometimes fell off. But it really obscures the reality and personhood of these incredibly diverse and varied groups of people who still exist and still experience oppression and marginalization to this day. I remember being on some kind of family road trip where we were going to be close to a reservation, and it came up that we could route through it or around it. I remember feeling deeply conflicted between these two ideas I had learned from separate sources: first, that a Real Live Indian reservation must be some kind of tourist attraction, and, second, that this was a place where real people lived, and intruding on them would be rude. In the end, I asked to go around, and we did.
@@Amanda-C. I think one of the main reasons people still treat American Natives and Indigenous people like they're some wired mystery is the reservation system keeps them sequestered away from the rest of the population. When you don't have a chance to meet people from other cultures it fosters and reinforces the "otherness" stereotypes. America can do so much better., For example, i'm from Alaska and we don't have separate reservations, we have villages and for the most part our native population can move around a lot more freely- they are just another part of your community.
Sounds like the Hitler Youth.
I am suddenly reevaluating many childhood memories. The song and books were a weird, weird flashback. I was raised in the liberal Presbyterian church, and ended up going to AWANA to spend time with a friend from a far more conservative, evangelical tradition. I can’t imagine that my family was aware of this BS. I do remember putting up with and only mouthing the pledge and song, and only memorizing bible stuff to win the prizes and bucks. My favorite all time prize was a bottle of Avon’s ‘Sweet Honesty’ perfume in a bottle shaped like a Christmas tree ornament. I am deeply disturbed now, but I appreciate this awareness. I’m so glad I got out so quickly (maybe 2 yrs?). Knowledge is power.
This video unlocked a lot of early childhood memories for me. My family was Lutheran from my birth until I was about 8 years old. I went to private Lutheran school and remember pledging to the Christian flag and American flag everyday (starting in kindergarten). I also went to Awana for a few years and remember the pins with the little jewels and workbooks for memorizing scriptures.
I'm very thankful I ended up in public school and my family fell out of religion. I can't imagine how harmful it would have been to continue that indoctrination. After about two years of us being inactive I tried reading the Bible myself and realized even if this God was true he was a mean spiteful God I didn't want to worship. Thanks for all the information and perspective your channel brings!
I feel this! I was raised Baptist and I left after disagreeing with LGBT+ issues, abortion, and a few other things. As an adult I’m currently reading the Bible to give Christianity another go. However, the further I got into the book I’ve come to realize that even if the Christian God is real I don’t want to worship him anyway. He was so horrible in the Old Testament and overall the Bible is so messed up.
@@jenna7437 is the Bible a reflection of society or society a reflection of the Bible? Isn’t society messed up? People tend to get hung up on how “mean” the Old Testament God is but it’s the same one from the New Testament. People just don’t realize that.
@@EJ-gx9hl To be fair, I haven't gotten to the New Testament yet, and most of what I learned when I was younger I forgot. So, I can't really answer your question lol.
@@jenna7437 the old is in the new revealed and the new is in the old concealed. In other words, one has to pay close attention to see how Jesus is actually being pointed to in the Old Testament and the mercy and love that God has for people does in fact show in the Old Testament. People, including many Christians, tend to label God is either merciful and loving Or just and righteous. When both the old and new show all those behaviors.
So growing up with a single dad who was a police officer he was always joining different "churches". Since he worked all the time and my older brother was in sports it left me with nothing to do. Enter in a family of his co worker that had 5 kids. They were white and homeschooled and very much sheltered. I would go to their house every morning while waiting for my bus and eat breakfast. I felt loved and safe. They started taking me to Awana which I loved. Their oldest daughter was my age and were killing it when it came to memorizing versus. I remember feeling cool in middle school because I had all these versus to throw at people. I didn't witness to a ton of people at my school because I could see one girl getting teased. So I was quiet about it. Funny how you mention this because here we are 27 years later I remember the song, pledge, Christian flag and all of that. I was the only black kid in the whole place and they swore I was adopted and jealous that I went to "public school". I still have those bible versus stuck in my head as well. I honestly don't know why I stopped going. But I can tell you I was upset at first. But then got over it. These videos make me laugh and showing my husband who grew up a JW he is shocked on how many of these videos I relate to. Great job. Thanks for the laugh and I you have a new watcher.
During my evangelical years I did put my kids in Awana for 2 years because the church in our neighborhood had a huge and popular program. I wasn't raised evangelical (i was raised Mainline) so I didn't know much about awana. Let's face it I was looking for a free, fun activity for my kids on Wednesday nights. I always thought the patches and vest were ridiculous and I really didn't like the memorize a verse get a treat design of the program, as it just felt competitive and weird to me. I kept those feelings to myself because it felt anti Jesus to say "I don't like Awana."
But finally I admitted to myself.
My kids were happy to leave because the pressure to memorize was too much for them.
I did not know the origins of Awana until you shared this and wow! I had no idea the racist roots. How horrible.
ps adding to say the church we did Awana at skipped the songs and pledges to Awana...because if they had done that I wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes!
"Hail Awana"? Um, that should be crazy problematic for the typical evangelical, they should not be pledging allegiance to anything beyond Jesus....
@@nikkio.9990 I like that last point...
OMG I USED TO BE IN ONE OF THESE GROUPS! Literally just spoke to my father about how cult like I felt it was as an adult now. I was dragged into it by someone who was my first friend at 7 years old, and for a while i was the only black person there. I felt a bit uncomfortable about it but i wasn't sure why. I was also the only person who bothered to question the lessons, all of the other kids looked like they were bored, disconnected, and accepted what they were told. They started bringing other people that weren't white after the fact, and I find it concerning that it took for me to be invited for anyone else to start doing that... I haven't watched the video yet, but I wonder if our experiences are similar...
This dug up some old memories. I wasn't raised in a Christian home but there was a period where my mom tired to be. I was forced to be in Awana at some point and I just absolutely hated it. They had two old ladies that oversaw my troop and they found a reason to shame everyone for something at every meeting. They were particularly hard on my sisters and I and now I think that they saw us as morally failing because my parents were no longer together. They had us actually stand up at that part when we said the pledge and I remember some smoke signal part of the princess book being a small controversy at some point for our church (they had us scratch out some part and write something else) but I couldn't say why when the whole book was questionable. The whole thing just makes me cringe when I look back on it.
I was so glad when the church stopped the program because the leaders were all elderly and just couldn't do it anymore and younger adults didn't have the time.
I tried Awana briefly at my Baptist church in the 1980s & found it unfun. If it had just been wholesome games & crafts, it would have been great. That would have kept me off the streets & out of trouble. But trying to use it to make children memorize bible verses & whatnot is self-defeating. It all felt very 1950s.
I disagree about the racism, tho. Use of Native American imagery and the lyrics of “Jesus Loves the Little Children” was their attempt at inclusion & tolerance. Sure, they still believed in manifest destiny (it's in Schoolhouse Rock, even), & they certainly were prejudiced, but even attempting to be inclusive was a HUGE step in those days.
And if you think Awana is a cult, then you don’t know about social organizations like the Boy Scouts, Jaycees, Lions Club, & Kiwanis. All those organizations are full of pledges, uniforms, singing, prayer, & whatnot. That was American culture in the early part of the 20th century, & it persists in plenty of places.
I went to Awana for a brief period as a kid mostly because my parents couldn’t be bothered to drive me. My most vivid memories are being made fun of at the sermon and crying violently about not getting as many awana bucks as my cousin.
When I was a kid I wanted to be in AWANA so bad, but they wouldn't accept me because I have cerebral palsy and use a wheelchair. Now I realize I actually dodged a bullet.
That seems really suspicious to me! Why wouldn't they accept someone's with cebral palsy?
@@evaschroeder4020Maybe they believed that illnesses and diseases are like a punishment from God or something.
And that they didnt want to have anything to do with this child.
These people are insane so this wouldnt surprise me if it was the case.
Ok I wasn't exactly fundamentalist growing up but was in a very similar faith and very clearly remember "Jesus Loves All the Little Children." I came to the realization watching this video that I, as a little red-headed child, always assumed the line, referring to races, was referring to hair color. I don't know why I am still shocked by the amount of racism that flows through religions like this. Our version of AWANA was Caravan.
I also grew up attending Nazarene churches. I remember Caravan back when the youngest children were sorted into " Chippewa " . The symbol they used was a caricature of an American Indian boy and girl. Now , from what I understand, they have since changed it to " Benson's Buddies" . But yeah, I am sure that if some outside observers had wanted to, they could walk away from witnessing the program thinking that we were being indoctrinated into some sort of extremist Christian right ideology, especially given that we were instructed to not lean unto our own understanding, citing a verse from the Book of Proverbs, plus looking back, our hand sign did bear some resemblance to the Nazi salute.
Im sorry you had these experiences. The religion itself is not racist. It’s the people using it to justify their own racism. God created all colored equally, end of story. The Bible never advocates for racism like people claim. I know because I grew up on an agnostic family but then became a Christian and I read the Bible everyday now and study it online.
“Red and yellow black and white they are precious in his sight”
You were on a way higher level thinking than me .. I just thought Jesus didn’t have a fav color lol
I learned in adulthood that I have ADHD. I remember Awana game time being so overstimulating that I would freeze up and not really participate. I dreaded game time every week and my brain made socializing very difficult. Thankfully my parents pulled me out after only a year or two.
Also, when I was in 4th or 5th grade, my favorite Awana leader told my group that when babies die, they go straight to heaven, but that when a kid turns 10, they're old enough to be judged and sent to hell by God. I was already afraid of hell, but hearing her say that triggered a deeper anxiety and fear than before that stuck with me for most of my adolescence. I actually asked to be baptized right after I turned 10, specifically because of that "lesson." I barely understood what baptism signified - I just wanted to feel safe
Gods evil probably.
Same here.
16:10 "Their minds are fertile and their hearts are so ripe" sounds SO SKETCHY and gross. How to tell me you are a cult without actually telling me 101...
I went to AWANA one year with my Dads best friend. My Mom was not big on it. I loved it and didn't understand why my Mom hated it. Now I understand why she disliked it.
Oh my God! I was in AWANA and couldn't recall there having been a pledge or anything like that, until it started playing. I'm absolutely amazed because I still remember every word despite literally 5 minutes prior not even remembering that it existed. This stuff stays crazy deep in the memory sometimes
Thank you for addressing AWANA, barely anyone seems to have, and it really should be talked about more.
(tldr I realized they were bs and took pics of 8 years of shitty book moments to prove I wasn't imagining it)
I was in AWANA till 15 and left after this one assignment where we had to ask our not-christian friends about like theological questions, and instead of this being a learning experience to see what other people believe, it turned out to be an entire night of putting down, mocking, "those poor souls"ing our friends who so kindly let us interview them and I was PISSED. That was the final nail in the coffin. They were always so condescending to anyone who didn't completely conform, one of those "oh those poor souls who haven't found the light" kind of environments. And in elementary school it was mandatory to bring two guests throughout the year (implied that they should be non-believers), and anyone who didn't had to go thru this long work around to get approval to still complete the year (unspoken shaming basically).
Another memorable traumatizing event was one assignment which required us to write down a time we were filled with the holy spirit and (word for word,)"If you can't think of a time, then you either aren't obeying what the Bible says, or you may not have the Holy Spirit in you. In that case, you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior." which prompted me to have a panic attack because I couldn't think of an experience that matched their expectations.
They also kinda pushed the whole serving others idea which didn't help when a (prosperity gospel) family friend had to live with us and took out their frustrations of having to live with us on any little thing I did and guilted me for not maintaining her emotional wellbeing by not annoying her (a purposely impossible task so she could keep using me as an emotional punching bag), which resulted in the worst three years of my life. Once I realized her bs and we got her to move out, after then, as I swore to never be emotionally abused again, I realized the similarities between her and AWANA.
I still have all but one of my books from 8years old (2010) till 15 (2017): Ultimate Adventure/Challenge for elementary school, Trek for middle school, and Journey for High School. I went through them all a while back because I wanted to know just how messed up it had been and highlighted all the shitty things from them, and then took pictures and keep em in a google drive for some reason, I guess to be able to prove their shittyness if need be? I guess Ex-Fundie Diaries hit me up and I'll share the folder of somewhat more-recent awana books (though I hear that they changed their curriculum in 2018) if that's something you're interested in
I was a volunteer leader/helper at my local church's awana program, and as an English major, it frustrated and infuriated me that they insisted on using KJV/NKJV translations. Most kids had no idea what the verse actually meant in the outdated phrasing/vocab of those translations, so if a leader wasn't simultaneously doing free English tutoring, the kids were just rotely memorizing the verses to get their bucks. On one hand, that may be for the best, as Christianity and the Bible are pretty severely flawed, but on the other, they're just being conditioned to view church and the Bible positively without actually having any significant understanding of it. That leaves them prone to falling for any con that pays lip service to the church and Bible.
Haven't even started the video yet, but I'm looking forward to watching this later. A kid tried to get me, a little Jewish kid, into attending Awana with my family. We only ever attended one day and never again, so it'll be interesting to find out more about what it was like from the perspective of someone who had experience with it.
*Edit:* So this is certainly the mess I remember it being. You bringing up that pledge and theme brought back a vivid memory of my visit. In recent years, remembering Awana, I recall it being odd, but I didn't realize it was *this* bad. I can see why my parents got out as fast as we could after the Awana program was over. As much as I was friends with this girl, I have to wonder what her and her parents thoughts were, trying to pull in a Jewish family into their church and kid's program. It's definitely uncomfortable, from the use of Indigenous imagery to in essence programming kids, it's. Worrisome, to put it simply. This was so interesting to listen to as someone who was pulled into this for that brief day as a memory that just felt. *Off.* Now I see why it felt so strange to me as a child.
They believe it's their Christian duty to bring as many souls to Christ as possible. It would have been a big feather in their collective cap (indigenous pun intended) to succeed in "saving" an entire Jewish family,or even just you. Of course, even if they had succeeded in indoctrinating you, you would have never been fully accepted by the congregation anyway. Most conservative and evangelical Christians are still very antisemitic.
I earned a Citation award from AWANA (10 years of AWANA, memorizing a full workbook a year) and the pledge/song are still burned into my brain, but I do want to point out that AWANA has workbooks with multiple versions of the Bible--NIV, NKJV, and KJV. I did NKJV and the Chums stuff (it changed the year I went to the next level).
I ended up converting Judaism in my late 20s and my friends are amazed by how much Torah I can quote (Judaism focuses a lot more on analysis vs memorization, and quoting Torah from memory is actually highly discouraged because you might quote it wrong).
In positive news, the church that I used to go to AWANA at was bulldozed a decade ago and turned into a pharmacy. So now that plot of land is actually benefitting people.
I went to a total of 1 Awana session, invited by a friend. All I really remember about it is memorizing the books of the New Testament. I was left to tackle that (very quickly, I still remember most of them and it's been more than 15 years) while my friend was moving on to the Old Testament. At the time I didn't really have an opinion, but as I was raised Catholic, and didn't have youth groups growing up, I never had to go again. Now, I'm glad I didn't get tangled into it.
Same here, I went a few times with a friend off and on .. Never was my thing. I do remember a strong pioneer/Native American themes from those meetings.
A few thoughts that popped into my head while watching this, regarding my own Awana experience:
-I'm glad that I learned all those Bible verses. It helps to know what the Bible actually says, and you can fight the bigots with their own weapon. For that, I'm grateful. Also the Bible does have some good stuff in it. And I genuinely enjoyed memory work as a kid, so that was super fun for me.
-totally never picked up on how the settlers and natives theme was racist. Oops. Got more unpacking to do here...stay tuned...but for starters, am I correct in remembering that you "started out" as a lowly native "character" in grades 3-4 (chums and pals) and then "leveled up" to the "superior" white settler characters (guards and pioneers) in grades 5-6? Oof.
-I have been realizing recently that the phrase "Biblical worldview" is triggering for me. I've been trying to unpack why, and I appreciate what you said--I can't remember how you worded it exactly, but yeah, it's basically a dog whistle for conservative, white-centric, in my experience
My kids were invited to this by my sons public School teacher. They went once, I read the material they came home with and threw it out. They never went back
12:07
The Christian flag: can I copy your pledge?
The American flag: sure, just change it up a bit
I only went for a short time with a school mate in around 3rd grade. She “saved” me (even though I was already baptized as a Lutheran) in the bathroom of our elementary school. I became a Wiccan around age 30 and in the last 6-10 ish years, I’ve become fully an atheist.
As a child, I learned to believe I was inherently bad and that if I were assaulted, it was my fault.
I learned to hate my body. I learned to hate sex (or be hypersexual) and in the end I developed an auto immune disorder (which is a very common thing for people with trauma history).
Shedding all the toxic and oppressive beliefs from religion has been so much effort, with YEARS of therapy needed to even begin recovering.
Non religious blessings to you for being here and talking about your experience! ❤️
I’m so glad to have raised my kids as pagan/agnostic/atheist. They are socially just, anti racist, members of the queer community and I’m so pride of who they are!
I attended awanas when I was really little. I think cubbies or sparks, if I remember the vests right. I barely remember it besides the flag, when I was picked up, and trying to memorize the books of the Bible. I think I won a pinecar derby race. Once I got older, my parents transitioned me to VBS, and I think it was only due to the cost of awanas being excessive.
I don't remember the pledge at all, which is frightening. But at that age, I would have loved that song.
I likely accepted christ at an awanas meeting. It probably set the stage for my entire childhood.
It's genuinely chilling to learn all of this. Thank you for doing a deep dive on this and breaking it down in such a measured way. Your videos are incredibly helpful in breaking down my own religious indoctrination without getting overwhelmed.
This video showed up in my recommended and slapped me in the face with my own religious trauma. What a wild time awana was, I went ages 5 to 12 and it caused issues I still deal with today. Thank you for talking about it cause it feels like I’m one of 2 people who know the trauma this caused
There is so much de-programming you have to go through when leaving the Fundie cult. I definitely remember AWANA, and i went during the 70s and early 80s -- the racist times. The thing that made my mother the most proud of me was when I was around 5-ish and thanks to AWANA I proclaimed that I was going to dedicate my life to being a missionary. Needless to say, that never happened. Through a combination of my father's abuse, spending time with my aunt and uncle and cousins in their very insular homeschooling strict 1800s-ish upbringing and small, ultra religious town, along with a developing ability to think critically about religion and the world, I was made so uncomfortable that I was able to reject the cult and seek my own meanings. I guess I wasn't really cut out for cult the lifestyle and anti-intellectual way of thinking and submitting.
Oh my god, I had zero idea the entirety of awanas went this deep. As an autistic kid who was already very overwhelmed in my racist, sexist, and homophobic church environment awanas was pure hell for me. I literally only went to see my friends but that's where the fun ended. The rest of a Wednesday night at awanas was me being told by old people that I'm behind and that I was slow, I thought I was just a bad, unruly kid up until my late teens because of their influence but I always chocked it up to other reasons, only now realizing other people have similar experiences. I'm appalled by how I, and many others were treated. Thank you for spreading the info and getting the word out
NO WAY I FOUND YOU
I joined Awana around the time you did and I remember the racist “cowboys and Indians” material! Of course the curriculum was segregated by gender. The boys were the colonizers and the girls were native women. So yeah the intersection of their archaic gender roles and racism really shows you who they expected to be “active” and “passive” in that relationship.
Ewwww. We all know the relationship between male colonizers and indigenous women.
I worked at a Baptist daycare for two years (which as a Jewish trans guy was uh. An experience in and of itself) and I was always so fascinated by the Awana kids who'd show up to the church every Wednesday after closing. The club felt extremely cult-like to me, but as an outsider to the culture I didn't know if I was just being judgmental or not. Distressed to learn that I was not exactly wrong in my assessment.
My parents made me do this when I was a child. I only did it for a year and hated it. They didn’t make me go back. Moral of the story is... Give your kid religious freedom. At the end of the day I chose to follow god because I wasn’t forced into it.
Glad they didn't force you to do it longer than you wanted to, I was forced to until I was in sixth grade and hated every second of it
Several of my close friends through the years have been some level of homeschooled. One family loved completely isolated in Wisconsin, only church friends, and we were always so excited to see each other. Could spend days alone in the woods out there with them, nobody preaching at us, just silence in the woods watching birds, making forts and sleeping in the dirt. It says a lot that I was happier sleeping in cold mud with a lonely friend than anywhere near my family. I was the Fundie in your Christian groups that was allowed to watch Star Wars and could be alone in the library without my parents. That made it a lot easier for me. Some of my only friends were kind librarians who gave me Terry Pratchett books to read and let me occasionally keep an old book that they thought was "too damaged" to lend anymore. Usually a pristine new book and not a damaged old one, I would hide them in my lockers when I went to public school or keep them at a friend's house, so my parents wouldn't confiscate it. There were days when I was the only kid in my small town in that library, often the only person. If I had been trapped only in VBS, AWANAs, and the Lutheran academy I may have lost my mind. Luckily my family was "new-age" enough to let me go to public school and it was often a massive point of contention with my family and the fundamental churches my father would preach at or the ones he helped form. Sometimes I am so thankful that my father simply wasn't a very good fundamentalist, but he wasn't white, so he was never fully welcome to begin with.
My heart feels so heavy for you and all of your videos bring me back to those thoughts and feelings that I don't always think about now that I'm out and away from family like that. I thought I had done a lot of deconstructing, I realize now how much I suppressed. I spent several years in AWANAs and I remember the curriculum being phased out in the early 2000s, my older sister went through the really racist stuff and talked about it once. Being mixed race helped inoculate us from some of it, I think. We always knew that we weren't the white kids they were talking about, we weren't white enough, at least. Even though I look like snow LMAO.
I wish you had those friends you wanted as a kid, I wish I did too. I wish that hadn't been taken from us.
Ugh the second hand trauma. I remember sparks but my church did it for older kids. like 5th -7th grade and we didn't do their flag.We did a pledge to the Bible and we did the Christian flag pledge instead. And for some reason my church changed when I was in 8th grade to something called Kings kids which combined every kid from about 6 -14 and a separate teen group
The pledge to the Bible we said was this : I pledge allegiance to the Bible , gods holy word. I will make it a lamp unto mine feet and a light unto mine path , I will hide it's words in my heart that I might not sin against god.
We did that one! My stepmother made us all memorize and go to all the meetings she ran, and then would take us home to beat, starve and s-x-ally degrade us :)
I cringe at the thought of it. I grew up in Awana and my favorite part was going to regional Bible quiz competition. I wasn’t ever good at anything, so excelling in Bible quizzing made me feel good about myself. My whole self value was put into being a good Christian and being seen as such.
Man... My siblings and I all can still recite the awana pledge and sing the songs by heart. As a fellow homeshooler, awana was also my only social outlet growing up.
This actually means so much to me and a ton of other kids who went to awana im sure, i was in awana from kindergarten to about forth or third grade, and it always felt really strange that we had a pledge and flag. My least favorite assignment that we had in our books was that you had to bring a friend who wasn’t christian to the clubs with you. I always felt so guilty asking people to come with me but i had to do it in order to move onto another book. Awana would also constantly lie about public school and tell all the homeschooled kids that it was an evil place where christian’s were persecuted and it always really confused me and the other public school kids. I was able to stop going once i started therapy and i’m so thankful my mom agreed that it was more important for me to get better than to keep going. my dad, who was one of the leaders, and brother left a few years later and we found out recently a ton of other people left because they weren’t having mask mandates during the pandemic. I have a ton of more stories and really off putting stuff that happened while i was there but just wow thank you so much for this i’m so glad i’m not the only one who felt Awana was really culty and manipulative
Thanks for the very helpful video! I was raised mostly secular, and hadn't heard of Awana until I began homeschooling my kids. Unsurprisingly, many homeschooling families near us are quasi-fundi. There's definitrly a lot of "clubbers" and wr have been invited to join once or twice. Having this up-close look at awana had helped SO much, and I now feel better able to navigate our relationship with our Christian friends, who we love!
Oh man. How terrible to teach children the values of grace, truth, love, and loyalty to their Creator and loving God. 😂
Honestly, thanks for putting this info together. I never knew much about Awana. After sifting through all of the straw man attacks in this video, I really gained a lot of respect for this institution. Seems really well thought out and focused on spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.
Obviously, none of this is meant to make light of specific evils may have been done to you or others by people in the AWANA system, but the system itself sounds pretty awesome.
It's so awesome! I'm an Awana game director and the kids love Awana so much ❤️
There is ALOT of trauma surrounding my time as a "Christian" child. It never felt right to me, even as a kid who knew nothing I never liked the flag parts and singing the songs, even at school I didn't stand for the pledge of allegiance. You talking about all of this really opened a part of my brain that I blocked out, and I thank you for this. Sharing your experiences and shining light on these bad groups.
All we did was sit in a room and memorize verses and then go out and do a PE kind of class. We said the pledge to the American flag, the Christian flag, and to the Bible. Ours was a very lazy AWANA. They also kept our awana bucks and gave them to us at christmas to buy presents for our families. I was also in the hospital for a couple of months and when I came back, everyone was ahead of me and I was crying in the corner because I felt so left out. The leaders didn't really care and wouldn't let me go to the chapter that everyone else was on.
I forgot this existed... my therapist is gonna have a hell of a time this week
I grew up going to AWANA and although I wasn't a fan of going at the time, mainly because I am an introvert, I am 37 now and am SO glad my parents made me go. All the verses I memorized served me very well throughout my life. I didn't understand them much at the time, or their great significance, but throughout every chapter in my life these verses would come to mind and be like an Ah Ha moment for me! They would comfort me, guide me, help me make decisions and I am SO grateful they are forever there. I am able to pop up the perfect verse at any moment to comfort others as well. Memorizing the books of the Bible also has been an extremely helpful tool throughout my life. I can flip to any book of the bible quickly! My church did not use the KJV, we used the NIV. I'm sure every church does AWANA a little differently. My sister and I did wear our vests to school once a week. We didn't think anything of it and very little was mentioned about it from anyone. We weren't trying to lure anyone in. We just told people it was like Scouts but at church. When you're in elementary school, you don't think at all about the underlying purposes of things, you just do what adults ask of you. I am a gay Christian with no children, but if I had children I would definitely send them to AWANA. It is one of the most valuable things I ever did in my life and I'm so grateful for it. I believe any evil that may have been attached to it, God didn't give it any power... at least in my experience. In High School we had Christian hang outs called YoungLife and K-Life that were also a blessing to me and a lot of kids who's home lives were so negative. They weren't perfect but very positive.
I was raised an atheist and I occasionally went to Awana with my best friend- who was a baptist- when I was little. I remembered always thinking it was weird.
I have a similar story.. Dad an atheist, mom a Christian but never went to church, our neighbors had a girl my age that was one of my best friends. I went to AWANA with her. At that time I wanted to believe God was real but never really bought it.
I remember "testing" God once by instead of praying writing him a note and leaving it on the lawn. If he was real surely he could take the letter, or at least know what I had put in the letter. I did this with the neighbor kid on the other side of us, he was younger I was 9 he was about 5 or 6. The next morning I went outside first because I was pretty sure they'd still be there and I didn't want him to see and cry. They were obviously still there, and neither of our prayers were answered
@@zuglymonster Same. Dad atheist, mom vaguely Christian but best friend and a bunch of other kids from school went. I get what you mean about wanting to believe and finding out believing doesn't work like that. I remember feeling bad sometimes because I knew early on that there was no chance that I'd ever buy any of what they were selling but continued to go anyway...which felt kind of disrespectful. However, I did have a very good time with the games. Plus they handed out candy like they owned stock in insulin. We moved at the end of 6th grade and that was the end of that.
@@zuluzeit7191 Yes. The games and the crafts are what I went for 😅
@@zuluzeit7191 And with me it was THEY moved and my AWANA days were over. I don't remember it being so racist, but I went in the mid 90s so it had to have been. Although I don't really remember much other than looking forward to the fun stuff and trying to memorize stuff to earn AWANA bucks
Raised atheist, and am 17 now. my mom had another kid, shes 4 as of rn, and became super christian in the last two years. she sends her here now and its kind of unsettling how my mom tries to lie to me about the programs she supports. she tried to get me to support a “humanitarian organization” that when i looked up advocated for the “peaceful conversion” of middle eastern jews
I am SO GLAD this video was recommended to me. I've been binging your videos now for the last 3 days since seeing this! I'm an ex-evangelical transmasc (they/he) who has been deconstrucing for years and while I've gotten to a pretty comfy place now, there was always something with AWANAs that really didn't sit right with me, but I couldn't figure it out. As soon as that theme song started playing, the words just fell out of my mouth from deep in the recesses of my mind, and I realized just how indoctrinating the program is meant to be. I'm almost 26 years old now and I still remember all the pledges and theme songs (the main one, and the ones for each of the clubs!), and it is shocking to realize exactly how awful the program is and why it's been eating at me all these years.
Thank you so much for making this video!!