Part I: Playing White Jesus in Ethiopia

In 2008, I was a teenager in Ethiopia with Teen Mania Ministries—a Christian youth organization I thought was about service, faith, and adventure.

Season 2 of the Amazon docuseries Shiny Happy People reminded me what it really was: a cult.

I once performed one of the infamous Teen Mania “dramas” on foreign soil.

___

July in Garden Valley, Texas. Day one of training for the coming month in Ethiopia.

They had us stand in a big circle, all facing inward.

Leaders walked around with clipboards, calling out various emotions for us to act out.

I figured it was an icebreaker and just rolled with it.

After a while, they huddled, whispered, and turned back to the group.

“The lame man will be Adam.

The sick woman will be Ruthie.

The blind woman will be Brit.

And our Jesus will be played by…”

They paused for dramatic effect.

“Sam!”

Everyone clapped.

I just stood there, confused.

“Me? Are you sure?”

Above: Excerpts from my journal entries.

We drama recruits stayed under the tent to rehearse.

Over and over and over again—again and again—until leadership was satisfied.

The drama was The Ragman—a depiction of Christ aiding three ailed characters who later crucify him (spoiler alert: he comes back).

The whole thing was set to the strange, ethereal Ameno by ERA.

Every time we made a mistake, they’d start the song over, beginning with:

“Dori me! Dori me! Dori me!”

That weird-ass Gregorian-sounding, medieval chant is forever burned into my consciousness.

We were told this was the only way to communicate the gospel to people who didn’t speak our language—

through this drama, to this weird fucking song.

We practiced all day in the Texas desert in July.

The stage was black, fiberglass walking path that connected the Honor Academy campus. and in the drama, we had to throw

ourselves onto it repeatedly.

By the end of the day, my arms, legs, and face were covered in fiberglass dust.

When we asked if it would wash off, the leaders told us:

“Yes—it’ll burn in the shower, but that’s okay.

It’ll help you connect with the suffering of Christ and get into character.”

____

In Ethiopia, my group only performed the drama once.

We hosted an event in Gondar, filling a theater with hundreds of people. The group did a stomp number, and then it was my turn—

my first and only time performing in front of an actual audience.

A third of the way through, at a moment when I was supposed to fall—or be pushed—I can’t remember which—I hit my head hard

on the wooden stage.

My vision went white.

My ears filled with a high-pitched eeeeee.

I had given myself a concussion.

I stumbled through the rest of the performance: onto the cross, dying, rising again. The crowd erupted in applause, and I stood there

dazed, blinking into the lights.

___

Backstage, James, one of the leaders, jerked me aside by the arm.

His exact words were, angrily, “What happened?! You looked like a dead fish up there!”

I didn’t get the chance to explain. The scolding came fast and sharp—messing up meant people might not get the Gospel, which

could mean their eternal damnation. And it was my fault.

From that moment on, I never performed the drama again.

“We’re gonna have Parker do it from now on,” they said, with a facial expression that added an unspoken, “…and it should be

obvious to you why.”

I felt awful. Embarrassed. Like I’d ruined something important.

That night I journaled and thought to myself over and over: “I don’t know why God picked me to do this.”

And I’ve wondered why all these years.

___

Cut to present day— I watched the documentary.

One interviewee, Mika, said:

“If you watch footage of a lot of these dramas, you’ll see there’s a trend: all of the Christ figures are portrayed by good-looking, blonde, white boys.”

I paused the show and felt nauseated.

I had always wondered why they chose me, but I’d never considered it might be because of racism—that they wanted a blonde white boy to represent the Savior to East Africans.

In that moment, I pictured the crowd in Gondar again, faces lit dim orange by the stage lights. I remembered feeling proud, thinking I was bringing them something good.

Now I saw what they saw: not a savior, but the white boy chosen to play one.

It hurts. It’s sad.

And it feels like a slap in the face to realize I was made complicit in something so harmful—fueled by white supremacy and nationalism—when all I wanted was to help people who were hurting.

Sam Richardson is a mental health counselor in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the founder of and a contributor to The Harthwood Collective.

Names and minor details were altered to protect the identities of those who may prefer not to be included in this account.

Season 2 of Shiny Happy People is now streaming on Amazon Prime. You can watch it here.