I watched two movies on a recent trip on an airplane, coming and going. The first was “Just Mercy,” which I’ll address in the next blog. The other was “Jesus Revolution.” “Jesus Revolution” is about the spiritual revival that took place among the hippies beginning in California but moving across the United States. The movie centers on the ministry out of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa under the ministry of Chuck Smith and Lonnie Frisbee. The plot of the movie was something I experienced in my late teens, though in Illinois rather than California. Check out the movie trailer:
I went to Wheaton College to find God. I’d planned to go to Miami University in Ohio, but when I visited the campus I was repulsed by the spiritual emptiness I found in both the ROTC students (I planned to join) and the anti-war activists holding demonstrations. That spiritual emptiness was so compelling it felt like I was driven away to try to find God somewhere. On the steps of the chapel at Wheaton College after a special service a classic Jesus freak led me to Christ.
I attended a Pentecostal Church for three years, experiencing the dynamism depicted in “Jesus Revolution.” I went to Jesus rock concerts seeing well known bands. I went to O’Hare Airport to share “The Four Spiritual Laws” and lead people to Christ. I studied the Bible regularly in a small group. On summer break back in my home town we put on a Jesus festival. My brother and I hitchhiked to Kansas City to line up the Hallelujah Joy Band to be our headliner act. It was great!
The movie depicts that spiritual restlessness that drew people out of the various movements of the 60s seeking something of spiritual substance, something with true love and long-lasting hope. What the movie doesn’t depict is what happened to a lot of us in the following years. The problems of the ’60s and early ’70s were still there, demanding attention: Racism, poverty, and the War in Vietnam. These matters weren’t being addressed by the leaders of the Jesus movement. There was involvement of the Black Church and some of the “liberal” churches, which we perceived as stuffy, but not much that was visible in the Jesus movement.
That lack of social concern in the Jesus Revolution led many of my friends to leave their new faith altogether. They had embraced Christ out of a desire for more than the spiritual emptiness that they found in sex, drugs, and rock and roll (I’d only been swept up in the latter). Some of them became very cynical toward Christianity, especially its evangelical expressions that were so prevalent in the Jesus movement. It was sad to see cynicism become the spiritual landing place for these friends who had hungered for truth and spiritual vitality.
But the answer was right there at the core of the Jesus movement even if many did not realize it. The issues of racism, poverty, and war are addressed extensively in profound and radical ways in the Bible. In that Pentecostal church I attended a Bible study on racism led by Henry Souls, an African-American Pentecostal preacher. When I got into an argument about the War in Vietnam with a woman from my Bible group (I was for it), she challenged me to read what Jesus said. That night I plunged into the gospels and discovered the teachings of Jesus related to war and violence. I had my “second conversion” to the ways of peace. My journey as a born-again Christian engaged in peace and justice began. (Click here to read Bible study guides on War & Peace and the Poor.)
Every revolution has to address the deeper issues of discontent at its roots well or it will peter out or become corrupt. The U.S. Revolution led to democracy but didn’t bring justice for those enslaved, leading to the Civil War and on-going systemic racism. The Russian Revolution overthrew the corrupt, self-enriching czars but established the brutality of Communism, an idealism gone horribly astray. The French Revolution turned on itself, devoured its children, then opened up to the autocracy and militarism of Napoleon. The Iranian Revolution threw out the Shah but brought in a brutal religious dictatorship. Where did the Jesus freaks go?
The Jesus Revolution was great for those of us in it, but getting “high” on Jesus wasn’t sustainable. Some drifted away into cynicism and the next “thing.” Some got into churches, renewing those churches, and continued with lives of passion for mission in many different forms. Some wedded their conservative evangelical spirituality with conservative politics, in the short term leading to the religious fervor behind Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, then later into the embrace of Donald Trump. For me, however, the Jesus Revolution brought me into a dynamic relationship with the living Christ who showed me that love, justice, peace, and the gospel are all interwoven. The community of people who read The Post-American and later Sojourners was a place for people living out that kind of a gospel. God transforms individual lives, then as we work together we can become God’s agents for change, that God’s Kingdom might come on earth as it is in heaven. That doesn’t mean that we bring in any particular political power as God’s Kingdom but that we engage in the works of liberation and love in the face of racism, poverty, and violence that make God’s love tangible in our broken world. The Jesus Revolution introduced me to the living Christ who would energize and direct my life and ministry for all the years to come. That Jesus turned me into a Global Peace Warrior!
My Bible study group at Wheaton during Jesus movement
Dan Buttry is retired from his years of service as the Global Consultant for Peace and Justice with International Ministries of the American Baptist Churches. For more about Dan and other Global Peace Warriors, click here.
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