The U.S. has seen its share of revivals and awakenings over the past few hundred years. The recent happenings at Asbury University just so happen to coincide with the release of Jesus Revolution, a new film on religious revival that swept from California throughout the country in the ’60s and ’70s.
Based on a true story about a young man with a troubled past, a barefoot hippie turned Jesus freak, and a straight-laced pastor who decides to welcome them into his church, Jesus Revolution is the latest effort by director Jon Erwin to tell a story about faith in America.
FORGET TIKTOK TRENDS. THESE YOUTH WANT RELIGIOUS REVIVAL
“This film has been a passion project,” Erwin told the Washington Examiner. “It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had making a movie.”
Responsible for recent films such as American Underdog, I Still Believe, and I Can Only Imagine, Erwin worked with co-director Brent McCorkle to bring the story of faith in the flower child era to the big screen.
Victims of sappier Christian films may be surprised that Jesus Revolution is actually an entertaining watch, and it boasts an impressive cast, with Fraiser’s Kelsey Grammer playing pastor Chuck Smith, Super 8’s Joel Courtney playing youth Greg Laurie, and The Chosen’s Jonathan Roumie playing hippie Lonnie Frisbee.
Erwin worked with real-life Greg Laurie and his wife Cathe, bringing Jesus Revolution to life from the pages of their book of the same name.
Pastor Chuck Smith has no patience for hippies until his daughter finds one on the side of the road and brings him, recently converted to Christianity and ready to spread the good news, into Chuck’s home. Chuck slowly welcomes Lonnie and his barefoot compatriots into his church, a move that discomfits some of his more traditional attendees, but one that lights a fire in his congregation as it grows to include thousands.
Greg becomes a congregant after meeting Laurie and finding that faith fills his life in a way drugs never could. Real-life Greg now pastors his own church boasting four campuses and weekly attendances of over 14,000.
While certainly a feel-good film, the movie admits that the movement wasn’t always full of peace and love. Eventually, Chuck and Lonnie have a falling out that leads to Lonnie leaving the movement.
The film seems to be designed for family-friendly viewing; the story about the age of sex, drugs, and alcohol is notably light on the sex, particularly when it comes to Lonnie’s backstory. While Lonnie was married to a woman for several years, he was sexually active as a gay man for much of his life, and he and his wife divorced in 1973 after she had an affair with their pastor in Florida.
While these salacious details are left out of the film, it does allude to trouble in paradise. Connie, Lonnie’s wife, begs him to focus on their marriage as his fervor for the movement pushes their relationship to the back burner. And Chuck and Lonnie part ways over a battle of egos, with Lonnie making the movement all about himself.
“I really wanted to tell a story that explored imperfect people that did extraordinary things together,” Erwin said. “So many of us think we can’t make contributions because we’re not good enough.”
Ultimately, the story that Jesus Revolution sets out to tell is not one that delves into every detail of the movement, but one that focuses on the positive impact it made on a few individual lives. When it comes to revival and its skeptics, there may be a lesson there.
Erwin said he had Generation Z, and particularly his 14-year-old daughter, in mind while making the film. “The amazing thing about this story is how relevant it is to the moment we’re in,” he said. Just like the hippies of yesteryear, today’s youth are “dissatisfied” with the current era.
“I wanted to make a movie that said this happened before and it can happen again,” he said.
Enter Asbury. The news of a spiritual awakening at Asbury University in Kentucky has recently reverberated through Christian communities. Thousands have traveled from all over the country to attend the chapel service that ran nonstop for two weeks. It only ended on Wednesday after university leaders decided it was in the best interest of students that thousands of strangers stop descending upon their campus.
Local seminary student Bennet Ellison told the Washington Examiner that what began as a time of prayer and healing for students quickly, in the age of social media, became something else. People were showing up “like storm chasers,” he said. “They just want to go wherever revival’s at.”
Asbury has been the hub for many revivals over the past years, and this kind of cyclicality may give some skeptics pause. It can be easy to be cynical about these revivals; as one review of Jesus Revolution points out, a great number of self-identified Christians were declining and continued to decline even after the Jesus movement gatherings drew crowds of thousands.
It’s understandably difficult to quantify and define “revival” beyond “a surprising number of people showed up for praise and worship, something I didn’t think anyone was into anymore.” But what we miss when we focus on sheer numbers is that these kinds of movements have undeniable effects on individual lives.
“[I]f 20th-century revivals focused on healing physical pains and disabilities, accounts of healing at Asbury are overwhelmingly about mental health, trauma and disillusionment,” the New York Times noted.
At Asbury, Ellison said, “People [were] huddling in small groups to pray, having conversations with each other. It wasn’t about getting hype; it was this somberness, deep repentance, the presence of God that humbles us to the point of tears.”
Who knows if Jesus Revolution, which came out Friday, will have any spiritual effect on its viewers. But even if there are no more great gatherings, the film is already leaving a mark.
Erwin said that while filming the baptism scenes in Pirate’s Cove Beach, Roumie, who had been performing baptisms for his role as Lonnie, was discovering that the extras in the film wanted to get baptized for real.
“The idea of all you’re carrying being washed away, a moment of renewal: It became very real,” Erwin said. “That was probably the most special day of filming I’ve had in my career.”