Film Review: Jesus Revolution
by Ed Aust
I love family stories. My uncles repeat the tale of my grandfather who ran away from an abusive home at the age of ten and overcame impossible hurdles to become a loyal and caring father. It would make a great movie.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite that simple. My grandfather was a complicated man, psychologically wounded by his past, easily triggered into outbursts of rage that hurt his family. At family gatherings, my uncles rarely talk about that. It’s not part of the family story they like to tell. I need that part of the story, though. Knowing my grandfather’s flaws gives me a deeper empathy for him and my extended family.
Biographical movies (otherwise known as biopics), like family stories, often distort the facts. Like a family narrative repeated for generations, biopics often perpetuate mythologies in which key facts are forgotten, chronologies confused, and reputations protected.
The film Jesus Revolution tells the family story of the beginnings of the Jesus Movement, and the evangelical revival that took the Church and the nation by surprise in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. The story the movie tells is mythological in the sense that it’s a simplified and sanitized version of a complex historical moment. I find that the deeper story—what the biopic leaves out—is more compelling than the movie’s storyline. But the real-life story is complex, multifaceted, and often painful. It would take hundreds of movies to tell accurately.
The Jesus Movement did to the evangelical church what Jimmie Hendrix did to the blues—it electrified it. For those of us coming of age in the 1960s and 70s, the Jesus Movement transformed our lives, our worship, our music, and the way we thought about evangelism. It recentered us on Christ as suffering servant and reminded us that we are “a chosen people” (I Peter 2:9) regardless of our race, gender, or abilities. We are all Jesus Freaks.
Historians differ on where the Jesus Movement actually began; it seems to have spontaneously combusted in multiple communities along the West Coast, from Los Angeles to Seattle. Pastor and author Brian Zhand writes, “One of the most interesting aspects of the Jesus Movement was that it was not a geographically centered revival but a kind of demographic revival. The Jesus Movement was not defined by a particular location, but moved primarily among counterculture youth throughout America and parts of the Western world. This is very different than the previous historic revivals which were very localized and usually centered on a few prominent evangelists. Who were the prominent evangelists of the Jesus Movement? Certainly there were various people who gained notoriety during the Jesus Movement (far more musicians than preachers), but they could hardly claim to be responsible for the movement. It was much more like ‘the wind which blows where it wishes.’” (https://brianzahnd.com/2008/04/the-jesus-movement/)
While the Jesus Movement is widely recognized as a Spirit-led evangelistic revival beginning with disengaged youth from the hippie culture, it also transformed churches as it spread across the United States and Europe. It was largely characterized by charismatic preaching, street evangelism, and an openness to experimental forms of worship. In Berkeley, California it expressed itself through Jesus-focused engagement with “street people,” university students, and political activists. Groups like the Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF), led by Jack Sparks, used street theater and improvisational gatherings as evangelism tools. Free street papers such as Right On (now called Radix) published Christian perspectives on racism, world hunger, militarism, and other social issues with a focus on Jesus as the ultimate answer to human yearning.
I remember those days well. Rumors of revival rippled through my rural hometown of Chico two hundred miles north of San Francisco. People in my conservative church began to identify themselves as “God’s Forever Family” (borrowed from CWLF in Berkeley) and embrace one another during church services. Young people started playing guitars during worship. Charismatic preachers came to town and conducted healing services. A converted biker from the Hells Angels spoke at my high school assembly about how Jesus delivered him from addiction and violence, and in response, many of my peers experienced dramatic conversions, kicking drugs and professing Jesus as Lord. Some people in my community felt disturbed by these things, fearing spiritual manipulation. I felt intoxicated by the emotional exuberance of it all, but also confused by its intensity. I trusted God, but could I trust the “Jesus people?”
The movie Jesus Revolution, co-directed by Jon Erwin and Brent McCorckle, evinces the religious zeitgeist of that time even if it doesn’t get all the facts straight. The film is based on the memoir of the same name by Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn. The film weaves together the stories of three protagonists who played major roles in the start of the Jesus Movement in Costa Mesa, California: Greg Laurie (played by Joel Courtney), hippie-evangelist Lonnie Frisbee (played by Jonathan Roumie, who portrayed Jesus in the biblical TV series The Chosen), and Pastor Chuck Smith (portrayed by Kelsey Grammer).
The story opens in 1968 in Newport Beach, where young Greg Laurie lives in a trailer with his depressed alcoholic mother, Charlene (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), who sleeps all day and frequents bars at night. Greg is a lackluster military academy student with growing skepticism about the military-industrial complex. One day he crosses paths with a group of affluent high school students and is smitten with Cathe (Anna Grace Barlow), a buoyant girl who invites him to a Janis Joplin concert, where they drop acid and experience a fleeting hallucinogenic moment together. Predictably, Greg and Cathe quickly hit rock bottom. Cathe’s sister overdoses at a party and nearly dies. Greg panics after a near-fatal joyride crash. Disillusioned by drug culture, they begin searching elsewhere for meaning.
The story switches to Chuck Smith, pastor of Calvary Chapel, a small church of conservative middle-class parishioners in Orange County. Pastor Chuck disapproves of hippies and their corrupting influence on society. “They need a bath,” he grumbles as he watches the TV news. “And a job.”
Chuck’s teen daughter Janette (Ally Ioannides) chides him to show more compassion. Later, she picks up hitchhiker Lonnie Frisbee, a saved hippie “down from San Francisco spreading the Good News to whoever wants to hear it.” Enchanted, she takes him home to meet her father, who warms to Lonnie’s childlike sincerity and cautiously invites him and his long-haired friends into his home and church. Greg and Cathe eventually join the gathering and find Jesus.
The rest is history. Sort of. More like historical fiction, the family story we want to believe, minus the complexities and contradictions of people we love.
One of the film’s distortions is its misrepresentation of Kay Smith, Chuck Smith’s wife. Kay (portrayed by Julia Campbell) is a mere background character in the film, reticent about accepting barefoot hippies into her home. In real life, Kay felt a deep concern for the young druggies and dropouts along the coast, and initiated contact with them. Chuck Smith often gave Kay the credit for nudging him to open his heart to youth. “She’d have me drive to Huntington Beach and park there and watch the kids go by,” he says in one interview. “I had this negative attitude, and she would just be weeping and saying, ‘You know they need Jesus.’” Kay never hesitated to invite young people into their home, let them use their swimming pool for baptisms, and attend Calvary Chapel. She led prayer groups, Bible studies, and retreats for the new converts, and was deeply involved in ministry to young women.
Multiple conflicts arise in the film, though none are explored very deeply, and some resolve so quickly they feel unconvincing. The film touches on the real-life tensions between Lonnie and Pastor Chuck as they struggle with philosophies of ministry. In the movie, Chuck Smith, the experienced pastor and father figure, takes a chance on Lonnie as an acolyte with leadership potential and allows him to preach. Lonnie gravitates toward a dramatic Pentecostal style of preaching that includes laying on of hands and miracles of healing, which Pastor Chuck finds unacceptable. Lonnie accuses Pastor Chuck of feeling jealous of his success; Chuck thinks Lonnie is full of himself. Both men appear to be ego-driven in their own ways. This tension between the two men speaks to issues all too common during the Jesus Movement. Leadership clashes happened all the time, as I remember, and young converts were often placed behind pulpits before they were ready. I wish the filmmakers had explored this conflict more deeply; for me, it was one of the more interesting aspects of the story.
Another character conflict develops between Lonnie and his wife Connie as they navigate Lonnie’s new role in the church. He’s clearly in over his head and wants to succeed, but the ministry distracts him from his marriage. However, we don’t get enough information in the film to fully understand why they are fighting. In a 2005 interview published on godreports.com, Connie talks about how Calvary Chapel ministry took precedence over the needs of married couples in those early days, and said that women were relegated to helping roles. “The mentality was very much the guys run the show and the girls do all the work … I had to ask permission to go to the corner to mail a letter. Lonnie wouldn’t allow me to listen to certain music. It was horrible, actually, for me, because we were living with Christians.”
According to Connie, Lonnie was illiterate, unable to read or write, though he taught himself to read the Bible. He was also so underpaid for his work at the church that Connie had to forage food from dumpsters.
Actor Jonathan Roumie portrays Lonnie as a tender soul who shares the love of Jesus in language young converts can relate to. You can see those qualities in YouTube videos of the real-life Lonnie Frisbee, who had an instinct for communicating with new believers. Lonnie was non-threatening, sincere, and totally approachable. Also, like my grandfather, he carried deep wounds from childhood trauma that haunted him his entire life and affected his ministry, something on which the movie barely touches.
Jesus Revolution is sure to spark strong nostalgic feelings for those who, like myself, experienced those times. It’s not a perfect film, but it accurately captures the vibrant ambiance of the movement in its baptisms, Jesus music, ecstatic praying, and street witnessing. There were moments in the movie that brought me close to tears, such as when Greg Laurie experiences baptism in the Pacific Ocean, captured with exquisite cinematography in a way I didn’t anticipate.
It’s an earnest, moving “forever family” story. The parts we want to remember. But perhaps not all the parts we need to remember.
Ed Aust is a writer, editor, and photographer living in Oakland, CA, and serves as poetry editor for Radix Magazine.