"Jesus Revolution" movie – a hippie saga, then & now

“You’ll spend tonight in jail. Tomorrow the judge will give you the choice to cut your hair or spend 30 more days in jail.” The "pig," in the caustic vernacular of the time, had just arrested me on the Kansas interstate for hitchhiking.

As he drove me to the Junction City jail, in the back of the police car I contemplated what it’ll be like to spend 30 days in jail. No way I’d willingly submit to cutting my shoulder length hair.

I was deposited into a dark cell where several other inmates were sleeping.

That morning I was subjected to lectures from one of the long-term residents about the fabulous “new man” Fidel Castro was creating in communist Cuba. Finally, late in the morning I was led across the grounds to the courthouse where I pled guilty for hitchhiking within city limits.

Instead of the dreaded haircut, the judge fined me $50, a considerable sum in 1971. I paid the fine and returned to the jail house to retrieve my backpack so I could resume my solo journey to LA and up the West Coast. I then, of course, hitchhiked out of town.

What a long, strange trip it was. What a long, strange era it was.

The counter cultural “hippie movement” of the sixties and seventies was a time perhaps like no other. Fostered by reaction to the Vietnam War, disillusionment over the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, it was characterized by a sense of social disaffection. Long hair, bell bottoms, rock festivals, communes, LSD and other drugs. Political and social protests were constant. Voices like that of Timothy Leary were urging us to “tune in, turn on and drop out”.

There was significant good that emanated from the movement. Critical rethinking of the dubious Vietnam War increased political involvement. The Civil Rights movement awakened awareness of racial bigotry. And there was the bursting asunder of overly narrow social strictures.

A new sense of freedom was fostered, expressed in the lingua franca of the day-- “do your own thing”…“whatever turns you on”…“if it feels good do it”. There was a sense of spontaneity in the air that just might induce one to, well, pick up and hitchhike around the country.

There were also unfortunate effects of the movement as reflected in the new ethos expressed in the two-word catchphrase, “free love”. It turned out neither word was true as indicated by the explosion over the following years in the percentage of children who picked up the tab by growing up in fractured households, resulting in greatly increased rates of childhood poverty, abuse and other vulnerabilities.

Out of this milieu arose a variant spiritual movement-- the “Jesus Revolution”, as a TIME magazine cover story dubbed it in 1971.

The movie of that name currently in theaters, Jesus Revolution, revisits the origins of this phenomenon. Though the film focuses on key figures in 1970s California, viewing it was like watching home movies of the St. Louis “hippie” Jesus groups in which many of us became immersed during the same era.

The looks, demeanor and personalities in the film closely paralleled our experiences of the time. Our Bible fellowship group—we called it Kibbutz-- met regularly in a converted garage. There were “freaks”, “straights”, struggling druggies, and Jewish hippies who had come to faith in Christ as the Messiah and the completion of their Judaism. We sang Jesus songs to the accompaniment of fabulous long haired musicians.

Just as were the characters in the film, we were young, restless, bearded idealists searching for something experiential, transcendent and true. Also, as in the movie, we had no interest in participating in traditional, staid churches with pews and organs.

And, as in the broader hippie culture, things within the Jesus movement were usually offbeat and “crazy”. Another true story might illustrate.

In the early 70s, many from our Kibbutz fellowship group journeyed to a week-long Bible camp in south Florida, traveling together in a rented bus. Though the camp itself was positive and impactful, someone neglected to dump and flush the bus’s restroom waste tank, allowing the accumulated waste to fester for a week in the Florida heat. On the return trip to St. Louis, many heads were desperately extended outside the windows for much of the 1200 miles, to avoid gagging from the stench.

Further complicating things, the bus repeatedly broke down and the whole group of long-haired guys and halter-topped girls had to repeatedly join together to push and jump start it. Finally, after several extended periods of sitting stranded on the side of the highway, I and my girlfriend, Debbie—now my life partner for nearly a half century-- “split the scene,” deciding to hitchhike back to St Louis on our own.

After a couple initial rides, that night we had our thumbs out on a nearly deserted two lane road in an isolated Tennessee cornfield. Out of the darkness a pair of headlights gradually slowed and pulled over. We were “freaked out” to see it was a funeral hearse. We travelled many miles in that dark night with a dead body stretched out right behind us.

That was our Bible camp experience. “Far out,” crazy days.

Offbeat as it was, at the heart of the so-called Jesus Revolution was a single figure. To us, Jesus was the original “hippie”. Deeply compassionate, creative, counter cultural in the most profound sense, he taught & embodied what the music of the era so artistically celebrated. Love.

“Love others as you love yourself,” was his radical teaching and transformative example. With Jesus everyone--including the “straights,” the “pigs,” and the “hippies”—all had a place at the table, or at least on the floor where we generally flopped.

We knew we were broken and needed grace. We believed that the Son of God embodied the ultimate love others only sang about by laying down his life on a torture rack called the cross. We received by faith his love and grace and strove, imperfectly, to extend that grace to one another. It was a counter-cultural brotherhood and sisterhood of those who followed the beautiful outlaw named Jesus.

Critics at the time asserted the Jesus movement was just a passing phenomenon. We were, after all, young and impressionable. As the 1971 TIME article observed, “Some call the Jesus movement a fad or just another bad trip.”

In the ensuing years there arose informal church fellowships reflecting the style and mode of the counter-culture generation. My wife, Debbie, & I were privileged to lead in the founding, and pastoring for decades, of such a church fellowship.

Though successful and vibrant, as in all human laced efforts we failed and faltered at times. But I continue to observe--in old, former hippies and in those much younger--no greater “high” than when we follow Christ’s call to love others and to serve the poor, the disadvantaged, the refugee, the hurting.

As I viewed the Jesus Revolution movie, I found myself alternately laughing at the characters who seemed so familiar and shedding tears of sentimentality over the fond “flashbacks” of how things once were. It was emotional, like viewing my child’s birth—or more particularly, my own.

Back in those crazy hippie days—the days of the Jesus Revolution—Christ was deeply alive and real to us. Back then we were deeply enthralled by his character, his love and his grace.

Fifty long years have passed. He still is. And we still are.

contact the writer at bob_levin@sbcglobal.net