WANTED

JESUS CHRIST

ALIAS: THE MESSIAH, THE SON OF GOD, KING OF KINGS, LORD OF LORDS, PRINCE OF PEACE ETC.

* Notorious leader of an underground liberation movement

* Wanted for the following charges:

-- Practising medicine, winemaking and food distribution without a licence

-- Interfering with business in the Temple

-- Associating with known criminals, radicals, subversives, prostitutes and street people

-- Claiming to have the authority to make people into God's children...

~~~

So began Time's (June 21, 1971) lead article on the 'Jesus Revolution'.

In the first para. they reminded us of John Lennon's casual remark in 1966 that the Beetles were more popular than Jesus Christ: 'now the Beetles are shattered, and George Harrison is singing "My Sweet Lord".'

Later: 'Some of the fascination for Jesus among the young may simply be belated hero-worship of a fellow-rebel, the first great martyr to the cause of peace and brotherhood. Not so, however, for the vast majority in the Jesus Movement. If any one mark clearly identifies them it is their total belief in an awesome, supernatural Jesus Christ, not just a marvelous man who lived 2,000 years ago but a living God who is both Saviour and Judge, the ruler of their destinies. Their lives revolve around the necessity for an intense personal relationship with that Jesus, and the belief that such a relationship should condition every human life...'

Time quotes a couple of pastors: 'Jesus is a marvelous father-figure [for these young converts]. The kids are searching for authority, love and understanding - ingredients missing at home. Jesus is what their fathers aren't.' 'I'm amazed at how many people I've counseled who have never heard their fathers say "I love you".'

'If it is a fad,' Billy Graham said, 'I welcome it.'

These young people, the article says, often speak 'disparagingly of the blandness and hypocrisy of their former churches.'

~~~

The 'pop explanation' for the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s was that its members, at one time or another, went through eastern philosophies, vegetarianism, religious cults, and drugs - all in a quest for "truth and spiritual fulfillment." The 'Spiritual Sixties' also produced the Black Panthers, Peaceniks, hippies, Yippies, Weathermen, women's liberationists, Diggers, New Leftists, and campus radicals for whom Vietnam was a convenient rallying-point for their anger at The Establishment. (Remember 'Don't trust anyone over 30'?).

Arthur Blessitt, was the self-proclaimed minister of the Sunset Strip. One of his gospel slogans was "Get loaded on Jesus, 24 hours a day, you can be naturally stoned on Jesus!"

(He carried a cross around the world. When he left Australia we bought his car: add that to your store of worthless information! I can't remember if he tried to sell us his cross :-)

~~~

A favorable observer of the movement, Edward Plowman, wrote that though much of the media attention dwindled in 1973, the movement was in transition, from street evangelism to personal development and social responsibility, from action to introspection. American churches like Calvary Chapel (pastor Chuck Smith) harnessed the ethos of the movement and grew to 15,000 attendeers.

Another commentator, Gerhard Adler [2] argued that the Jesus People Movement was polymorphous although its one common tenet was the experience of God as a 'living, personal reality'. Though his essay cautioned against the excessive emotionalism and anti-intellectualism of the revival, - including the vulgar commercialization of the One-Way symbol and "Christian underclothes" - Adler asserted that the return of 'fundamental Christian beliefs' must be acknowledged. The 'movement arose. . . outside the usual church framework'. 'The ultimate meaning of the Jesus People Movement was a defiant challenge against technocracy and the quest for reality beyond the material plane'. He concluded by asking 'whether the Jesus freaks did not know something hidden from the wise and clever' (cf. Mt. 11:25).

We'll return to that, in future articles.

As a participant/observer of all this, I reckon the 1960s witnessed, as someone put it, 'the emergence of a wholly new culture, based on a new spirituality and that furthermore, the great event of the decade was not political, but was the coming of the Love Generation, the Aquarian Age, or secular Christianity.'

In seminary I had to read Harvey Cox, The Secular City when it came out in1966. He heralded the metropolis and technology as the new loci of religious devotion. Cox later (fortunately) recanted a lot of his secularization thesis, but maybe he was on to something. Looking back we note two other contemporary 'movements': the rise of charismatic renewal in non-Pentecostal churches all over the world, with its reprioritization of emotive spirituality over propositional theology; and the brief 'God is dead' theologies which asked some important questions but gave us no substantive answers.

And now... it's all morphed into liberal churches for the intellectuals/aesthetes; conservative evangelical churches for those fearful of cognitive dissonance; and pentecostal/charismatic groups which major on 'experience'...

Would Jesus recognize any of these as exclusively authentic expressions of his life and teaching? I doubt it (see http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/9664.htm )

In these articles I'd like to suggest another route to a more authentic 'Jesus Revolution'...

~~~

References:

[1] Plowman, Edward E. "Whatever Happened to the Jesus Movement?" Christianity Today 20 (24 October 1975): 102-4.

[2] Adler, Gerhard. "The Jesus People and the Churches." in Jesus Christ and Human Freedom eds., Edward Schillebeeckx and Bas van Iersel, 129-34. New York: Herder and Herder, 1974.

[3] History of the Jesus Movement: http://www.one-way.org/jesusmovement/