Jesus Movement

From Conservapedia

The Jesus Movement or "Jesus Freaks" was a movement in the late 1960s and 1970s of former hippies, drug addicts, occult and eastern religion practicioners, rock and roll musicians, etc. becoming born-again Christians. The movement stressed personal conversion to Jesus and outreach ministries in places the conventional churches paid little attention to at the time, such as coffee houses in inner cities. One of the important churches of the movement was the Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California founded by Chuck Smith, which later grew into a major Christian denomination. The new young Christian converts were often disparaged as "Jesus freaks" by non-Christian hippies and supporters of the New Left.

Christian Rock started in the Jesus Movement in the early 1970s, with Larry Norman and his 1972 album Only Visiting This Planet, often cited as the most influential and important Christian Rock artist of the Jesus Movement era. Cornerstone magazine had its origins in the Jesus Movement. While not part of the Jesus Movement himself, the tracts from Jack Chick became popular outreach tools. Also popular among the Jesus Movement were the book The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey; and the 1972 film about the end times and the rapture by Russell S. Doughten, A Thief in the Night, which was followed by three sequels.

While members of the Jesus Movement became, for the most part, conventional conservative Christians in their theology after conversion to Christ, they kept the external trappings of their hippie and counterculture backgrounds, including long hair and rock and roll music. In a few cases some of the early Jesus Movement groups tried living communally, much as some secular hippies had tried. In place of the two-fingered peace sign the Jesus Movement used a raised index finger, signifying "One Way". Two songs very popular within the movement were "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", by Larry Norman about the rapture, and "Pass It On", a hymn sung in many Jesus Movement churches.

The movement was not without its pitfalls. Two of the major evangelists in the movement, Lonnie Frisbee and Mike Warnke, are controversial. Two well-known cults, the Children of God and The Way International, recruited their members among converts within the Jesus Movement. But most of the Jesus Movement converts held rather conventional Christian beliefs but merely did not feel at home in the conventional churches and identified with a counterculture style.

The Jesus Movement ended by about 1980 as styles such as long hair and Christian rock music became more accepted in the mainstream churches, and the Jesus Movement churches in turn had evolved into something more closely resembling today's megachurches.

References

• Baker, Paul. Contemporary Christian Music: Where It Came From, Where It's Going. Crossway Books, 1985.
• Graham, Billy. The Jesus Generation. World Wide Publications, 1971.
• One Way, Remembering the Jesus Movement