Within the second weekend on the field workplace, Jesus Revolution far surpassed expectations with a cumulative earing of $30 million. The film is effectively completed by Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Firm and stars Kelsey Grammer, Joel Courtney and Jonathan Roumie. It’s based mostly on the account of Greg Laurie as instructed in his guide Jesus Revolution: How God Remodeled an Unlikely Era and How He Can do It Once more As we speak.
The guide and film are based mostly on the historic occasions of Laurie rising up within the late Sixties in Southern California, his encounter with a hippie road preacher and the mentoring he obtained from a neighborhood pastor — all formative occasions within the growth of Laurie and his future megachurch, Harvest Christian Fellowship.
Kelsey Grammar as Chuck Smith
The pastor, Chuck Smith (performed by Grammer) is drawn to the acceptance, love and charisma of the younger road preacher and chooses to open the doorways of his languishing church to the free-spirited hippies who observe Lonnie Frisbee (performed by Jonathan Roumie, the actor who performs Jesus in The Chosen).
What unfolds in Southern California is the start of one of many biggest religious awakenings in American historical past, touching tons of of hundreds if not thousands and thousands of younger folks throughout the nation within the late Sixties and early Seventies.
Very like the early Christians, who have been mockingly named “Little Christs” as a consequence of their allegiance to Jesus, those that grew to become part of the Jesus Motion have been referred to as “Jesus Freaks,” a reputation they embraced with full acceptance. They wished to unite their want for love, peace and riot towards the institution with their newfound ardour to observe Jesus.
“This movie has a number of the greatest appearing and cinematography of any Christian film in recent times.”
The film is a touching illustration of a few of what occurred by means of the affect of Frisbee, Smith and later Laurie and lots of others. As attested by its field workplace success and Rotten Tomatoes viewers rating (99% with 2,500 critiques thus far), this movie has a number of the greatest appearing and cinematography of any Christian film in recent times.
Nevertheless, with the film launch falling close to the time of the Asbury revival in Wilmore, Ky., many Christians are eager for one other religious awakening comparable to what’s dramatized on the display in Jesus Revolution.
So as to higher perceive this hope and the truth of what comes with it, we have to dig deeper into the storyline of what occurred within the Jesus Motion and what meaning for an additional, comparable religious renewal.
Jonathan Roumie as Lonnie Frisbee
Lonnie Frisbee was not Jesus. Definitely, Roumie was the perfect candidate to play the position of Frisbee. Not solely does he share an identical look, he additionally brings lots of his followers to the theater with the persona of enjoying the position of Jesus in The Chosen, which additional identifies him as a Christ-like determine in Jesus Revolution.
But the film side-steps lots of Frisbee’s private struggles. Frisbee was raised in a single-parent household, probably molested as a younger baby, and repeatedly ran away from house. He was closely concerned within the drug tradition each earlier than and through his involvement within the Jesus Motion. The truth is, his evangelistic affect started whereas on an LSD journey, and he usually was excessive when studying the Bible.
He was on acid on the time of his well-known imaginative and prescient of a sea of individuals crying out to the Lord for salvation as he was preaching the gospel. Frisbee struggled together with his sexual id all through his life. He was a closeted homosexual man (or at the least dappled with a bisexual way of life) and struggled together with his marriage to Connie, whom he divorced in 1973.
Tragically, Frisbee died of AIDS in 1993 on the younger age of 44. His marital battle is just briefly alluded to within the film, which by-and-large avoids exposing a lot of Frisbee’s private struggles.
Chuck Smith grew to become enamored with the eschatology of Hal Lindsey. Hal Lindsey’s 1970 guide, The Late Nice Planet Earth, was one of many bestselling nonfiction books of the last decade. Lindsey espoused a premillennial dispensational view of the tip occasions and commenced to supply his interpretation of modern-day occasions, anticipating the tip of the world inside a technology. This led readers to start to establish the precise dates of Lindsey’s interpreted finish occasions occasions.
Smith, pastor of Calvary Chapel, emphatically believed and taught for a decade that Jesus would rapture believers from the earth in 1981, dismissing anybody who didn’t agree with him as naysayers. An enormous gathering occurred on New 12 months’s Eve in 1981 at Calvary Chapel through which many in attendance didn’t anticipate they might return to their properties.
When midnight got here and went, so did the disillusioned folks, returning to their earthly homes. Many by no means returned to Calvary Chapel, a devastating blow to the church and to the Jesus Motion.
Anna Grace Barlow as Cathe
The best lasting affect of the Jesus Motion was within the arts. The Jesus Revolution film solely briefly shares concerning the band Love Tune, however the influence of early rock reward bands is the best lasting affect of the Jesus Motion.
By the mid-Seventies, up to date Christian music was born and on the rise. Christian recording artists comparable to Keith Inexperienced, Phil Keaggy, Larry Norman, John Michael Talbot and Don Francisco helped pave the best way for later Christian musicians. The broadening of the Christian music style ultimately paved the best way for up to date reward and worship bands, that are in lots of church buildings right this moment.
Furthermore, the theater and movie started to discover a broader understanding of Jesus by means of depictions of Christ as a hippie within the 1973 musical Godspell and the controversial depiction of a really human Jesus in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Celebrity in 1971. Different motion pictures have been made that evangelistically addressed the drug tradition of the early Seventies comparable to the event of David Wilkerson’s novel, The Cross and the Switchblade. These are merely examples of the best way American tradition started to see Jesus by means of the lens of the Jesus Motion that was inundating varied facets of the social panorama.
The success of the church lies past its partitions. Frisbee, Laurie and others steadily ministered to folks alongside the seashores of Southern California, baptizing them within the ocean. Their draw to folks to enter the church occurred concurrently with an intentionality to attach with others outdoors the church. This additionally accompanied a willingness to embrace, settle for and welcome folks of their current actuality relatively than anticipating them to vary and conform earlier than and even after coming into Christianity.
One of the vital transferring scenes within the Jesus Revolution is when Chuck Smith washes the naked ft of the hippies coming into the church after receiving complaints that they’re dirtying the carpet of the sanctuary.
All through the Jesus Motion, folks embraced Frisbee’s assertion, “Activate, tune in, drop out.” They discovered neighborhood amongst individuals who have been damaged, struggling and hurting however who additionally have been looking for which means, in search of hope and keen to search out goal.
The success of the Jesus Motion peaked on the wave of the hippie resistance to struggle, craving for peace and embracing the social justice motion of the Sixties. The transformation went from the sanctuary to the streets.
For these desperate to expertise the following Jesus revolution, we should bear in mind leaders are flawed, theology will be distracting and deceptive, and religious transformation should lengthen past the partitions of the church into the neighborhood and world. We additionally should combat the temptation to mix non secular religion with political energy.
As we speak, the most important deterrent to the expansion of the American church and the best risk to our nation’s democracy is Christian nationalism. But folks like Greg Laurie (and different influential evangelical leaders) proceed to keep up that the US has a particular covenantal relationship with the Judeo-Christian God, ought to declare America as a Christian nation, and advocate for the development and desire of Christian ideas and values in public areas (Christian prayer in faculties, Christian symbols in courthouses and parks).
Evangelical leaders like Laurie, who got here out of the Jesus Motion rebelling towards the institution of church and authorities, have turn out to be the very factor they revolutionarily opposed.
“Revival seeks to dismantle the structural hierarchies and methods that trigger oppression and injustice.”
A religious awakening just like the late Sixties Jesus Motion should stem from outdoors the institution and never from our governmental or non secular management. It should be sparked by a tradition that’s anticipating change to the rigidity and monopolizing energy of the elite. Revival seeks to dismantle the structural hierarchies and methods that trigger oppression and injustice.
Persons are drawn to who Jesus is relatively than what the church has turn out to be, and this adjustments the church to turn out to be extra like Jesus — strolling in Jesus’ methods and referring to all folks with the love and compassion modeled by Christ.
In no matter approach that revival is being reborn in America, we should now not be involved concerning the stains on the carpet introduced in by the hurting, marginalized and outcast who come by means of the doorways of the church. Coming down from our ivory towers of judgment, we should do because the Savior did: Take up the basin of water, welcome all and wash their ft. That is revival.
Patrick Wilson has served as a pastor for 25 years in Dallas and Austin, Texas, and most just lately in in Rolla, Mo., the place he’s beginning a brand new neighborhood of religion, CrossRoads. He’s a graduate of Baylor College, earned two grasp’s levels at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a health care provider of ministry diploma from Logsdon Seminary.
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