
Drunken Glory
Brandon Barthrop is a former meth addict turned YouTube preacher in Minneapolis, running a ministry called Red Letter Ministries built around getting spiritually drunk on God. VICE follows him and his circle of former addicts as they mimic intoxication without substances, sniffing invisible "diamond oil," smoking imaginary spliffs, and swaying to Barthrop's online sermons in a house his followers call the crack house. The film traces this behavior back to the Toronto Blessing of 1994 and the Florida Outpouring of 2008, earlier revivals where congregants reported feeling drunk or high purely from religious ecstasy, and shows how YouTube and God TV let a fringe practice become a movement with a real following. Minneapolis itself is part of the story, a city the film notes has one of the country's highest concentrations of both churches and drug addicts, and it visits a Christian EDM rave nearby where DJs try to convert clubbers already high on drugs. The camera stays close to Barthrop's followers, letting their sincerity and their oddness sit side by side without resolving which one wins out.