Jesus Freaks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoV0p1zI4As

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-r4XbTJrw&feature=related

do you know any?

are these types righteous or just freaks?

The Jesus movement was a movement in Christianity beginning on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s and spreading primarily through North America and Europe, before dying out by the early 1980s. It was the major Christian element within the hippie counterculture, or, conversely, the major hippie element within some strands of Protestantism. Members of the movement were called Jesus people, or Jesus freaks.

--- wikipedia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvHSP3kT16A&feature=PlayList&p=F0622D8FE4A14381&index=11

"I used to be all fucked up on drugs/now I'm all fucked up on JESUS"

there was a little tribe of jesus freaks at my catholic high school in the early/mid 70s. they did the charismatic stuff, talking in tongues etc. one of the priest/teachers was involved with them but I don't think the school officially sanctioned their activities. by graduation in '76 these jesus freaks had disbanded or dissipated or maybe gone disco.

i used to work at a park and let one in for free so he could take a shower at the pool. i also let him in another time to collect cans. he gave me a little pamphlet about finding jesus and a box of nag champa that i still have : )

DC Talk would like to give you a sidehug

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4DeMDjwfZc&feature=related

I used to run across these types back in the 1970s, but to the extent they exist now, they have tons of fundie churches where they would fit right in and not raise an eyebrow. The long hair and sketchy social skills are no impediment to their total acceptance by the Pentecostals, for example.

My parents had one of those Good News bibles from the 70s - I assume that kind of went along with this sort of thing (as well as musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and etc). This bible was littered with b&w photos of young groovy things in flares having a jolly good hippie time for the lord, and it was all shit like "jesus handed out fishes and BREAD, man... right on".

It left me very confused I'll tell you that much.

There are a lot of these types in Nashville, especially in the vicinity of this one prominent former hippie church on Music Row. Half of the original Jesus Freaks seem to have ditched the hippie garb sometime after disco & voted for Reagan, eventually becoming full time conservative christians who only listen to christian hit radio & pass out Chick tracts on Halloween. Well, at least that is the case with a few aging Jesus freaks I've encountered.

I also know a lot of the kids of the the Jesus people and they are pretty mellow. Their religion seems pretty lax, because "Jesus was about love, man" & he doesn't really seem to care if one has premarital sex, gets high, etc. The pentacostal-ish elements such as speaking in tongues are kinda weird though.

Trayce, are you talking about this?

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/6d/9f/d412124128a03b94a0014010.L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

There was a copy of this at my house that belonged to my older sisters, who were teenagers in the 70s, & it sounds a lot like what you're describing. I've seen it around in church libraries & such as well (I come from a deeply Christian family &, as such, have spent more than enough time in church libraries), so I know it must have been popular at the time. Looking back on it, it was probably something piggybacking off the mainstream popularity of Godspell & JCSS to indoctrinate the young & impressionable, those hard-to-reach cool kids who thought "the bible" was for squares.

I think she's talking about this,

http://rgr-static1.tangentlabs.co.uk/images/bau/97803109/9780310927075/0/0/plain/good-news-for-modern-man-new-testament-the-new-testament-in-the-good-news-translation.jpg

the Good News for Modern Man bible, which were all over So Cal in the 70s. A friend forced one on me, but I never read it. I don't remember any pictures in it.

lol @ dubious newspaper titles

No, I'm talking about what Pillbox posted, in fact that was the exact cover our copy had!

And yeah it has photos all the way through it. I should try and dig out mum and dad's copy if they kept it. WTF were they thinking, they were always completely normal people.

Aspects of this trend were no doubt inspired by the Francis Schaeffer & his conflation of protestant ethics & 60s-era utopianism which, oddly enough, also served as the political catalyst for the emerging Christian right (who co-opted Schaeffer's hardline anti-abortionism & omitted any whiff of neo-Marxism). Schaeffer's son (& one-time protege) has published a worthwhile account of this in this book (which I def. recommend): Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. These guys went from palling around with the likes of Warhol's crew to partnering up w/ Pat Robertson in less than the span of a decade. The whole thing is pretty surreal.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/97/Lonnie_Frisbee.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARDNTEWWuRQ&feature=related

Lonnie Frisbee (June 6, 1949 – March 12, 1993) was an American Pentecostal evangelist and self-described "seeing prophet" and mystic in the late 1960s and 1970s.[1][2] Despite his hippie appearance and being a closeted gay man, Frisbee had notable success as a minister and evangelist.

By 1971, the Jesus Movement had broken in the media with major media outlets such as Life, Newsweek and Rolling Stone covering it. Frisbee, due to his prominence in the movement, was frequently photographed and interviewed.

--- wikipedia

Ah yes, this thread is my childhood.

Pill, that Frank Schaefer book Crazy for God was terrific btw. I wished it had more detail about their American Religious Right experience but I guess his point was that it was only a small part of his father's life, and not one they were proud of.

I just think it's crazy how so many of these Jesus people ( & hippie types generally )were able to transition into conservatives in such an effortless fashion later on.

I guess after the "truckin' with jesus" hippie signifiers fell away, the protestant utopianism of the Jesus movement had some commonality w/ the burgeoning neo-conservative thing

... hmmm

anyone familiar with the group Jesus People? they (or some of them at least) live on a commune in chicago.
http://www.jpusa.org/

turning back, she just laughs; the boulevard is not that bad

I just think it's crazy how so many of these Jesus people ( & hippie types generally )were able to transition into conservatives in such an effortless fashion later on.

This. Or...possibly the problem isn't nec that they turned "conservative", as much as that they liked feeling radical. As a result, after they overthrew the staid congregational society of tea parties, craft bazaars, and Mother's bible studies, they got bored and lost their edge...and then regained it with ideas like "God wants you to trust him so much that you don't need life insurance" and "home-school your children to keep them from Earthly influences" and "scientists can tell from planetary alignments that God made the Earth stand still for Moses just like the Bible says".

See also "The Bible is literally true, conveniently the Old Testament doesn't count because Jesus came to fulfill the Law."

"Except the part about Creation, God really did that in 7 days."

See also WHY did people live longer before the Flood than after it?

Don't forget about Leviticus. Those people love them some Leviticus.

There's an anti-science sentiment running through a lot of hippie and fundie ways of thinking so maybe there's a link there. My mum was a Jesus freak type and used to read us the Good News bible when we were growing up, now she's gone creationist and argues with taxi drivers about evolution. We don't have any fundie groups around here for her to get caught up with, thank God, so she's still very hippyish and feminist (and pro choice) with it, but she's never really liked it when me and my brother have shown an interest in science related stuff.

they got bored and lost their edge...and then regained it with ideas like "God wants you to trust him so much that you don't need life insurance" and "home-school your children to keep them from Earthly influences"

yes, this is very OTM

right down to the specific beliefs you mentioned there

feel bad for those homeschool kids kinda

man the band in the first youtube clip are like the proto Fleet Foxes

I would like to point out that I have seen DC Talk in concert, at a stadium show.

Also Amy Grant. I would have loved to go see Stryper, but considering the level of paranoia that metal was the devil's tool to ensnare your teenager, and the accusations of Satanism at every turn, I wouldn't even have been allowed to go to an explicitly Christian hair-metal show.

Ah Stryper. My brother was into Stryper and .. some other more pop-rock band, whose name I forget, though I recall they had a song called "Elevator Music" and were utterly terrible.

Pop-rock Xian band, obv.

Wait, maybe its Petra I'm thinking of.

man the band in the first youtube clip are like the proto Fleet Foxes

song is kinda awesome tbh - very Laurel Canyon altho the Brian Wilson falsetto attempt at the end there is a bit much

http://www.jesuspeoplemovement.com/gallery/images/time-magazine.jpg

whoops

http://www.jesuspeoplemovement.com/gallery/images/time-magazine.jpg

I bought a Stryper album at a gift shop that my parents stopped at while we were out on a Tour-the-Civil-War-Battlegrounds kinda family camping trip. Was it the same store I bought a Confederate Flag keychain thinking that it meant I was a Rebel?

I had a friend who was into Petra and later went to a weekly Young Life group at the local rec center, but even later I saw him onstage in gold lamé undies at a Rocky Horror night, so I guess everything worked out.

I saw Jesus Christ Superstar tour with Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson, and had a much beloved tie-dye from the event.

I guess we do have the Jesus Movement to blame for god awful Christian Rock

which strangely enough started out sort of ok which cats like Larry Norman

who McCartney was fond of (told him to drop the drop the Jesus shtick) & also influenced Frank Black

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAuvq5eduJQ&feature=related

a lot of his stuff is pretty decent classic rock
anyway didn't mean to turn this into a Christian Music C or D necessarily

also see:

Where is the LOVE for all these Christian rock acts who are ripe for hipster reappraisal?

never forget: Norman Fucking Greenbaum

stryper has some of the best/worst album art of all time. their "bee" schtick in the 80s was one of the more hilarious Spinal Tap-isms of the time imo:

http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/5077/sucza8.jpg

(also stumbled upon this, btw)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3539/3363718622_0308711fe5.jpg

I was born in '79 so have no recollection of what a Jesus Freak is, other than a lyric in "Tiny Dancer", of course.

Hah! Stryper lego I have to show that to my brother.

Oh also I see from that other thread luke posted that "elavator muzik" was by some band called Resurrection Band. Hunh. I dont remember them at all but I clearly remember that (terrible) track.

Oh White Cross!

Man.. it's all coming back to me like a bad felafel.

I remember overhearing my parents' disagreement about whether to let me continue listening to Stryper. My dad's position was that nothing that sounded that discordant/loud/evil could be good, my mom thought if the words glorified Jesus Christ, she felt they should allow it and chalk my bad taste up to idiosyncrasy (and being 14). She won. She was also hoping to wean me off Ratt, so she had other motives.

I have a Stryper t-shirt fwiw, got it from Goodwill

I guess it falls under the category of "hipster ironic t-shirt" or whatever

but it actually looks pretty cool. yellow & black attack !