Jesus Revolution delivers immersive entertainment, a history lesson and a respectful portrayal of the personal, social and spiritual experience of revival. It would prove a great conversation-starter for a group of Christian or non-Christian viewers.
I have tended to avoid evangelical cinema and TV on the strength of the trailers, a lot of them have seemed indistinguishable from John Safran’s ‘Extreme Mormons’ satire. But Jesus Revolution, directed by Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle, and written by Erwin together with past collaborator Jon Gunn, delivers an impressive piece of evangelical filmmaking. The quality of the work is evident in secular critic scores—despite its unashamed Christian sympathies, it received a begrudging 54% score on Rotten Tomatoes.[1] Compare this to Fireproof (2008, 38%) or God Is Not Dead (2014, 12%)!
The movie looks gorgeous, the acting is solid and the script is laugh-out-loud funny. The storytelling is relatively free from awkward exposition and Godsplaining, allowing script, story and visuals to show rather than tell.
The Magic of the Counter Culture; the Wonder of Revival
The film tells a fascinating, but somewhat little-known story of ‘the Jesus Movement’ (also known as ‘the Jesus Revolution’ or ‘the Jesus People Movement’)—a counter-cultural religious movement that emerged in the late 1960s and the 1970s in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and beyond. The Jesus People (or ‘Jesus Freaks’) were a mixture of hippie converts to Christianity and evangelicals who adopted 1960s counter-cultural expressions, often including politics. Evangelicals adopted these expressions sometimes not only to reach members of the counter culture, but also to make a shared cause of cultural renewal.[2]
Through the eyes of the young Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney), Jesus Revolution tells the true story of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, California and the partnership between ‘straight’ pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammar) and ‘Jesus freak’ Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie)[3] in the late 1960s. This story is a textbook example of John Smith’s observation that “[i]t is difficult to find the enduring success of Jesus Movement units where a cultural liaison was not developed between hippies and straights.”[4]
The Jesus Revolution successfully captures both the magic and ugliness of the counter culture. There are gorgeous scenes of freedom and ecstasy, followed by sweaty, giddy and nightmarish moments. So also, the movie portrays the wonder and complexities of being part of a religious revival dynamic. Sequences that tapped into some of my own formative experiences brought tears to my eyes. We see the disruption caused by new converts descending upon a conservative church; the exciting and intimidating moments of coming to faith; the buzz of communal living; the sincere, if somewhat naïve and superstitious, confidence that prayer will do all things, including start the engine of a lemon of a car; the depressing way in which egos and personality clashes quickly spoil the idyll.
Joseph Holmes’ thoughtful critique of the film takes it to task, measured against standards of character arc, motivation and payoff. These are legitimate critiques to a point, however, to some extent they would demand Jesus Revolution be a different film. What it lacks in deep character study, it gains in its impressionistic existential presentation of the events, experiences and personalities.[5]
Portraying History: Complex but Not Complex Enough
My quibbles are mainly historical. I don’t mind films of a religious or non-religious, a conservative or progressive kind getting the facts wrong, or spinning a particular angle. Films are not documentaries. Jesus Revolution can be a complex but celebratory work, it doesn’t need to be all about the problematic right-wing politicisation of American evangelicalism, or the scandal of sexual and spiritual abuse in American megachurches. Even still, sometimes the angle can be frustratingly distorted.
There are smaller historical concerns, such as the sense the audience gets that Calvary Chapel was ground zero of the Jesus Movement. Chuck Smith’s imminent eschatological predictions are left out.[6] An epilogue title card also claims: “Many historians consider it the greatest spiritual awakening in American history.” This strikes me as so implausible as to be silly. Many historians? Do any historians consider this to be the case? A greater awakening than the First or Second Great Awakenings?
More significantly, the ‘where are they now?’ titles and footage at the end of the film frame its message. The implication is that the megachurches that grew out of the Jesus Movement stayed on their counter-cultural trajectory. The reality is that they evolved into suburban consumeristic megachurch movements. As John Smith writes:
where conservative leaders opened their church doors to hippies, there was usually a domestication of the worldview of previous radicals rather than political radicalization of the existing congregation …
Ironically, that which began as an aggressive outreach to an alienated generation gave rise to institutions in which successive generations of young evangelicals could be enculturated into mainstream society in terms of worldview, institutionalized into their own comfort zone.[7]
More, these churches became deeply enmeshed with the Religious Right, with mixed results to say the least. Friends of mine who were involved in the American Jesus Movement report complicated feelings in watching the film. It did capture what was special about those early days. But some felt the triumphal presentation of archival footage of the great rallies of the 1980s and 1990s was as concerning as it was encouraging.
Jesus Revolution also avoids exploring the far more complex biography of Lonnie Frisbee, who died of AIDS in 1993. This is not mentioned even in the historical note during the credits. Frisbee was an abused and conflicted young man, reported to have lived something of a double life even after his conversion, including both drug abuse and homosexual sex. In the light of the reality, his and his wife’s departure from California in the movie, “to work on our marriage” is almost offensively misleading.[8]
The difficulty with telling the stories of the living is that the endorsement and involvement of the real life participants both informs and compromises the production. I wonder if this was the case here. Or perhaps it was more of a marketing decision: that the producers did not believe a story that was too messy would be appealing to an American evangelical audience.
I suspect “evangelicals can’t make good art” is increasingly becoming a dated discourse. As an example of evangelical art done well, Jesus Revolution is superb and bodes well for the future. God-willing many will build on the legacy of the Erwin Brothers, among others, bringing more movies of this standard, or better, to the screen.
[1] Rotten Tomatoes critics ratings calculate the percentage of positive reviews, not the average score of those reviews. Two of the Erwin Brothers’ films received even higher Rotten Tomatoes ratings: I Can Only Imagine (2018): 67%; American Underdog (2021): 76%. It seems the generally positive portrayal of evangelical revivalism in Jesus Revolution especially grated secular critics and contributed to its lower score.
[2] For a detailed scholarly account of the Jesus Movement, see Australian K. John Smith’s: The Origins, Nature, and Significance of the Jesus Movement as a Revitalization Movement, Asbury Theological Seminary Series in World Christian Revitalization Movements in Intercultural Studies, no. 5 (Lexington: Emeth Press, 2011). Smith is well known as one of the founders of The God’s Squad.
[3] Roumie also plays Jesus in The Chosen TV series.
[4] Smith, 121. See also Smith, 266–99.
[5] Holmes is also unimpressed with the way in which a stock standard gospel presentation did not map to the pressing needs of the hippie converts. However, I believe this in fact has a ring of truth to it. While contextualising gospel presentations is rightly a principle of sound missiology, it is nevertheless true that the conversion process also involves internalising formulae that do not directly speak to one’s felt needs and retelling one’s testimony in the light of this.
[6] Smith, The Jesus Movement, 131–3.
[7] Smith, The Jesus Movement, 123, 138–9. See also the ‘Did the Jesus Freaks Come Home Too Soon?’ 140–42.
[8] Smith, The Jesus Movement, 121–3.
