What’s the Jesus Movement’s impact 45 years later?

What’s the Jesus Movement’s impact 45 years later? January 30, 2016

JOSH’S QUERY:

[Referring to “Time” magazine’s 1971 cover story on the youthful “Jesus Revolution”]  A lot has happened since then — culturally, religiously, movement-wise — and I’d be fascinated to see you revisit your journalistic and theological mind.

THE RELIGION GUY’S RESPONSE:

This interests Josh because his parents were members of Love Inn, which typified the youth-driven “Jesus Movement” of those days. It was a combination church, commune, Christian rock venue and traveling troupe, based in a barn near the aptly named Freeville, New York (population 500).

As a “Time” correspondent, the Religion Guy figured this revival, which was hiding in plain sight, was well worth a cover story, managed to convince reluctant editors to proceed, and did much of the field reporting including a visit to Love Inn. Arguably, that article — by the Guy’s talented predecessor as “Time” religion writer, lay Catholic Mayo Mohs — put the “Jesus freaks” permanently on the cultural map.

The following can only sketch mere strands of a complex phenomenon and offers as much theorizing as hard fact. For some of the history, the Guy is indebted to the valuable “Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism” by Randall Balmer of Dartmouth College.

Quick summary: The Jesus Movement developed pre-existing phenomena into a youth wing that energized and reshaped U.S. evangelical Protestantism as a whole. This occurred just as evangelicalism was clearly emerging as the largest segment of American religion while beginning in the mid-1960s moderate to liberal “mainline” Protestant groups began inexorable decline.

The Jesus Movement was related to and influenced by the “Charismatic Movement,” which first reached public notice around 1960. This wave took a loosened version of Pentecostal spirituality into “mainline” Protestant and Catholic settings and, especially, newer and wholly independent congregations, along with free-floating gatherings akin to the secular Woodstock (August, 1969).

Early “street Christians” clustered around hot spots such as the Living Room in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, the Christian World Liberation Front adjacent to the University of California at Berkeley, Seattle’s Jesus People Army, and His Place on the Sunset Strip (led by Arthur Blessitt who later evangelized his way across the nation pulling an outsize wheeled cross).

The first and foremost impact of the movement was upon the lives of individual teens and young adults who turned to robust Christian faith in those years. There’s no way of calculating the number of those affected by these scattered phenomena. Many were enabled to escape the bonds of substance abuse and other aspects of the youth culture’s underside. Some later popped up as ministers and lay leaders.

Love Inn is an example of a second aspect, a Jesus haven that eventually turned into a conventional congregation complete with a Christian school. Its founder in 1969 was “Scott” Ross, a noted rock D.J. who was “born again” in an era of drug-related deaths and other tragedies. One early Love Inn participant was star guitarist Phil Keaggy, one of many Christian rock and pop artists who were emerging.

The third result was groups that grew into megachurches. In a couple California cases megachurches grew into quasi-denominations. In 1965, “Chuck” Smith chucked his Pentecostal denomination after 17 years of modest frustration and went independent as pastor of the 25-member Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. Though reluctant, Smith felt a Christian duty to reach local “hippies.” A pivotal moment occurred one Sunday when traditionalists posted a “No Bare Feet Allowed” sign at the church entrance and Smith tore it down. Gradually the influx of colorfully clad kids swelled and swelled again.

A typical scruffy recruit was Lonnie Frisbee, who appeared in 1968, became an important leader, and later joined John Wimber at a Calvary branch church in Yorba Linda. Another noted Calvary alumnus was Greg Laurie who created the Harvest Christian Fellowship megachurch in Riverside. In 1982 Wimber desired more flamboyant expressions of charismatic “signs and wonders” than Smith was comfortable with and aligned with Anaheim’s Vineyard Fellowship, which then grew exponentially.

Smith and Wimber alike practiced uncompromising and plain-spoken Bible preaching, personal evangelism, and church planting. Today the Calvary Chapel Association unites 1,500 daughter churches around the U.S. and abroad [disclosure:  The Guy’s daughter and grandkids happily attend Calvary branches]. Similarly, the Association of Vineyard Churches counts some 1,500 branches worldwide.

The new congregations reflected an anti-establishment rebellion against denominations and controls in favor of flamboyant individualism and experimentation. In some instances these instincts led to authoritarian excesses, heresies, and downright creepiness. For instance, David “Moses” Berg’s Teens for Christ evolved into the Children of God. His idiosyncratic end-times proclamations mingled with abuses like manipulation of girls to evangelize via promiscuity.

There were some political effects, but the Jesus Movement as a whole did not merge with the evangelical sector that embraced the partisan “religious right.” However, youths’ activism and biblical conservatism undergirded church opposition to legalized abortion and certain other causes.

The youth influx and overlapping charismatic surge affected the broader evangelical subculture. In many successful new congregations traditional church trappings were cast aside. A whole new body of Christian music became popular inside and outside worship. Weekend services became far more informal, planned around evangelization of seekers more than nurturing of disciples, with an entertainment-oriented focus on heavily amplified onstage performers.

Such techniques doubtless built up evangelical statistics. But there are gathering signs that the secularizing undertow that earlier hit more liberal Protestants is now catching up with the biblical conservatives.

 


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