| The 1960s through the early 1970s saw widespread social upheaval, political and racial violence, and abandonment of cherished beliefs and traditional values in Western cultures. Social movements stimulated rapid innovation, social experimentation, spiritual rebirth, and the synthesis of alien cultural perspectives with traditional values.;The media and scholarship gave much attention to a new evangelical youth movement, commonly called the Jesus Movement. This study explores the relationship between the Jesus Movement and the counterculture, investigating its cause and impact on traditional culture. It asks why an evangelical awakening occurred at the heart of a subculture, which abandoned the traditional church and experimented with consciousness-altering drugs, communal sexuality, and exotic spirituality from the East. What was the appeal of a "hippie" Jesus and the significance of the Jesus Freaks?;The author, a participant in the politically activist, Australian form of the Jesus Movement, takes an anthropological rather than a sociological approach. Anthropologist A. F. C. Wallace's revitalization theory is the critical tool for analysis of historical documentation and numerous field interviews with participants in the Movement in several countries. The Jesus Movement was a revitalization movement within the fragmenting, collapsing counterculture. Due to its fusion of traditional values with postmodern realities, it impacted a wide spectrum of traditional churches, initiating new denominations and movements.;The dissertation provides a brief overview of the incidence and context of the Movement, choosing the revitalization paradigm to explain its occurrence and social impact. Revitalization occurs when cultural dysfunction produces counterculture rejection of the existing order. Charismatic visionaries lead many dissenters in a "deliberate, conscious, organized effort on the part of some members of a society to create a more satisfying culture" (Wallace 1956b:265). The leadership styles of the counterculture prophets are compared with prophetic charismatics as described by Wallace and Max Weber. It began as a "counterculture within a counterculture," responding to a brief, intense interest in spirituality and religious experimentation.;Conclusions are drawn from case studies of contrasting expressions of the Movement. A mercurial, charismatic prophet, and a middle-class pastor, who defected from traditional Pentecostalism inspired the Calvary Chapel movement, resulting in over 1,000 church plants. Stress reduction resulted for thousands of hippies and baby boomers suffering from anomie and angst. One of the politically activist groups, the Christian World Liberation Front, emerged from Berkeley's radicalism to later embrace Antiochian Orthodoxy. Australian groups are analyzed, revealing the sociohistorical roots beneath politically activist forms of the Movement. Revitalization is the unifying element in leadership, innovation, and organizational conflict in Australia and the United States.;Vital lessons are drawn concerning the strengths and weaknesses of charismatic leadership. Practical implications are proposed for mission, particularly the creative stimulus of positioning the message and activity of the church at the margins of the culture, rather than seeking to establish a "beach-head" in the security of the "high culture."... |
