As we live through somewhat of a repeat performance of the societal upheaval of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s (recall Joan Didion’s famous allusion to W.B. Yeats: “the center will not hold”), pundits, priests and politicians wonder how we will get out of the dysfunctional mess we are in.
The hit film Jesus Revolution, which has grossed over $50 million even after getting short shrift from mainstream media critics, provides a hopeful answer. A spiritual reawakening is likely around the corner.
The film stars Kelsey Grammer as Chuck Smith, a staid pastor with a dwindling flock, and Jonathan Roumie as Lonnie Frisbee, the charismatic Jesus Movement preacher who convinces Smith to open his church doors to the “huddle masses” of the hippie generation. For a religious film, Jesus Revolution is refreshingly nuanced.
Instead of constructing a flimsy narrative around preachy sermons, it allows an engaging story to wag a spiritual tale. It is well acted and has a catchy and somewhat eclectic soundtrack.
The heart of the story is that the hippies found themselves floundering and drug-addled in their search for meaning in life. So, naturally, they turned to the deeper nourishment of spirituality to fill the void. Lonnie Frisbee led them out of the desert and Chuck Smith gave them a home in the promised land.
What lessons does this have for today? Who are the lost hippie sheep of the 2020s? And how can they be led out of confusion and into fulfillment? Jesus Revolution offers some clues.
At the beginning of the film, Chuck Smith looks at the hippie weirdos and sees depravity. He is alarmed when his daughter brings Lonnie Frisbee home and tells her dad he will like the message Frisbee is dishing. Smith doesn’t want hippie types anywhere near his church or his daughter. But it is his love for his daughter, and his desire for continued connection with her, that breaks down the wall of resistance and impels Smith to hear Frisbee out. We see a similar dynamic play out with Dick Martin whose daughter Cathe wants to make her life’s journey with the aspiring Jesus Movement pastor Greg Laurie, author of the book on which the film is based.
So the first lesson is that conservatives must remain open to the hearts and minds of their children, even when they may not discern the new spiritual path that is emerging from the younger generation. The future is theirs, not ours, and it’s okay if it looks different, culturally, than the world we grew up in.
Who are the lost ones looking for spiritual nourishment in contemporary times? We certainly have a drug problem in the culture, but this time it is a combination of illegal opiates, legal cannabis, and prescribed pills of all kinds. Many have lost the rock solid “faith of our fathers” and turned to drugs when a cornucopia of consumer goods and technological gadgets has proved a poor substitute.
But this time around, the stranglehold of Darwinian theory on social consciousness has eliminated God as a viable alternative to drugs among the so-called educated. They are the authors of their own existence and thus have free license to do and be whatever they please. On the eighth day, God turned man into woman and called it they/them!
The confused young folks of today are searching for God but in our narcissistic society they have only found themselves. They have been led astray by irresponsible adults and, in some extreme cases, mutilated by physicians untethered from a traditional moral framework in which the body is the temple.
The second lesson is we need to foster the emergence of a renewed relationship with God rooted in modern scientific understandings of the world that challenge the simplistic Darwinian “random evolution” paradigm we have allowed to permeate the culture.
My hope is that the overwhelming evidence of the “fine tuned universe,” as explained by Eric Metaxas in his book Is Atheism Dead? will provide an intellectual foundation for harmonizing our trust in the scientific method with our belief in God. If you do not have time to read Metaxas’s book, I highly recommend the Red Pilled America podcast episode “Fine Tuned” for an outstanding distillation of the subject.
Jesus Revolution is wrapping up its run at the box office but is available for purchase on various streaming channels. I highly recommend it as a both an enjoyable film and an antidote to the pessimism that can set in from living through a period of religious and moral confusion.