I plan to go see Jesus Revolution soon–the story of the early seventies gospel revival that swept parts of the country. I’ve heard the movie has high production values, acting, story, etc. It appears that the picture has even been tinted slightly yellow to capture the color of golden memories (or, at least mimic the look of aged film). It also sounds suitably historical without hype, something important for a guy who dislikes religious additives the same way he does processed cheese.
Besides, what’s not to like about the most touted American revival in recent history?
Well, plenty. A cursory glance through religious opinions online turns up a lot of negative observations about it. The drugs, sexual immorality, and questionable theology on the periphery of the revival, sometimes cropped up in the ranks of the people who allegedly sparked it.
For instance, Lonnie Frisbee, the charismatic hippie evangelist who seemed to have been the front man for so much blessing, was troubled himself. He left the southern California Jesus People scene not too long after it all got up and moving. His risque lifestyle led to a premature death by AIDS in 1993. Chuck Smith, the celebrated pastor at the heart of the revival, eulogized Frisbee as a Samson, used by God, but a victim of his own internal appetites.
However, none of this should come as any great surprise. The Bible itself doesn’t try to mask the ugly fact of failure during seasons of blessing.
Amidst the explosive new church scene in Acts, a man and wife were still playing make-believe with the amount of money they offered. Their sin was all about lying for the sake of revival masquerade–wanting to look like they were part of the outward thrills without internal reality (Acts 5:1-11). While the Spirit was falling upon the Samaritans, Simon the magician was said to have believed. Then he tried offering Peter money in exchange for miracle-working power (Acts 8:9-24). His lust for spiritual show controlled him to that extent. And while Paul was still present on the ground, and visiting the relatively new church in Corinth, he rebuked its lawless behavior (1 Cor), while also calling out alleged ministers who peddled the word of God (2 Cor. 2:17).
After all this (and more), do I then think it’s possible for so-called revivals today to manifest factors of corruption, even as God is working? You bet. Consider America’s most significant revival, the Great Awakening. The behavior in some of the New England locations was so excessively dramatic, so morbidly strange, that Jonathan Edwards found himself needing to analyze and address it publicly. In his book Spiritual Affections, he sought to discern between genuine repentance and various emotional fudge factors, because apparently both were present in meetings.
Any time God works in the larger setting, Satan attempts to infiltrate and discredit all of it.
I don’t think sanctifying history is ever a good policy, but to maintain that perfection must be present before anything is authentic? If that were the rule, I doubt any event in church history could count as legitimate.
Admittedly, a lot of the believers who hatched out of the early seventies Jesus Movement beached right there. They didn’t make it any further into the faith. The Christian life became an odd ideological memory to them–a religious Woodstock. They went back to drugs, or onward into corporate America, or whatever niche they found for themselves.
Others were hurt by cults. Especially from the late sixties to early seventies, the idea of enlightened gurus, and communal living in general were hot commodities. Even genuine Christian groups found ways to settle into some sort of “churchland” that involved hardened attitudes toward a great many things. They tried to capture revival lightning in a bottle, mass manufacture it, and even establish by legality things the Spirit had been doing just fine already in the lives of the saints.
The new young Christians of the time had to have a premium of wisdom to navigate those deadfalls.
I want to give a big shout-out to the ones who lasted, who escaped the wolves, the besetting sins, destructive personality quirks, and church implosions. They stuck around when the revival fires were over. I don’t think they were qualitatively better than anyone else, but they apparently got ahold of this promise Paul had once spoken to Ephesus when he departed that church for the last time: “Now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). Anyone who survives a complicated religious culture with any degree of spiritual health owes gratitude to that promise.
Anyway, you know what? Not all of those hippie kids went back to drugs. Many moved on to kingdom initiatives under the Lord’s direction, reaching farther and deeper than the event that spawned them.
They also managed to preserve and pass along strands of spiritual health that reached another generation. My wife and I were new believers affected by this kind of mentoring. In time and space we were far from 70’s southern California. But in ways we weren’t even aware of, Jesus People iterations shaped a certain happy openness in our fellowship.
By the mid-eighties, the evangelical scene had rapidly cooled and was trending toward consumer church culture. However, pockets of us were still marked with a lot of spontaneous acoustic instruments, rewriting commercial jingles to have Christian words, evangelizing, and generally being “unreligious.”
I couldn’t help but notice in Jesus People documentaries, the prevalence of ministry houses. My wife and I were the married hosts in a few of these, providing a leadership presence for single folks who were sometimes only a year or two younger than us. The words “difficult” and “awkward” come to mind. Talk about getting a crash course in Body of Christ living. There was no checking out, no retreat to a safe space, only learning how to deal with offenses in real time.
It was frequently challenging, but a number of us who experienced it would never go on to see the church as a mere organizational entity. We were affected for life. Obviously, where this didn’t work so well, it turned radical, weird to outsiders, and toxic even to the people in the groups themselves. I remember being struck with the sheer relevance of Scripture, as it presented itself to those various crises. It’s amazing how the Bible can be as much, if not more, relevant in a troubled fellowship than it can be in a healthy one.
Me? I guess I’ll be okay if I miss out on being in the middle of a big, important revival. It’s enough to survive, and pass along the strands of truth and good church life.
