When the hippie movement began in the mid-1960s, it seemed a curiosity. What were the Californians up to this time?
The rest of the nation was much as it had been throughout the prior decade: staid, traditional, religious, happy to be home from the war and growing young families. But what began as an outgrowth of the smaller beatnik movement spread beyond its (in)famous San Francisco intersection.
Soon, college kids across the country were coming home for Thanksgiving with ideas so revolutionary they made the Jazz Age look like a chaperoned prom. The counterculture went mainstream, the sexual revolution was well underway, illicit drug use was increasingly normalized, and the proportion of irreligious Americans—though still small—doubled in a decade.
But then something curious happened: Hippies began to become Christians or, as they put it, “Jesus People.”
I’ll return to the history in a moment, but first let me tell you why it’s relevant now. As I think about American Christianity’s present “vibe shift”—think apologetics on The Joe Rogan Experience, reports of rising Bible sales, a simmering revival among young men, and rumors of new interest in liturgy, tradition, and what the prophet Jeremiah called the “ancient paths” (6:16)—I can’t get the Jesus People out of my head.
They were both innovative and reactive, breaking with extant churches and popular culture alike. They both influenced the establishment and became the establishment, and I can’t help but suspect their history offers lessons as we consider what the Spirit might be doing in the American church today.
When the Jesus People came to Jesus, they didn’t meet him in prim and proper churches. They didn’t hear about him from collared priests. They learned of Jesus through peers—peers who looked the part. They studied Scripture outside, hair flowing in the wind. They hitchhiked to music festivals. They even worshiped with that instrument of folk singers and pot smokers: the guitar! Some new converts were miraculously healed of drug addictions. Others struggled on, but there was grace for that. Jesus was catching the fish, and the cleaning would come with time.
For some Christians, this was all very uncomfortable. They worried these newcomers were engaged in a distraction, a concession to the counterculture, even a kind of syncretism. The right way forward, some churchgoers thought, was basically to go backward: to shirts and ties, crewcuts and hymns and all that they signified.
But the Jesus People pressed on, and their creative cross-pollination between Pentecostalism, evangelicalism, charismatic Catholicism, and popular culture brought new energy into the American church. Scholar Alvin Reid has found that the Jesus People movement increased baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) more than any other force in history.
And the SBC was hardly alone in benefiting. If you’ve ever sung along to contemporary worship music, traveled on a short-term mission trip, or been influenced by a campus ministry, you too are likely downstream of the Jesus People.
The movement’s influence wasn’t only cultural, though. With time, it was institutional as well. The enthusiasm of the Jesus People brought a new generation into leadership roles in local churches and, eventually, in many of the most influential and active Christian—and particularly evangelical—organizations in the world. While other branches of the church saw their numbers decline, especially among the young, the Jesus People helped evangelicalism grow, its numbers peaking in the mid-’90s at about 1 in every 3 Americans. The Jesus People movement’s effects are so significant that many scholars believe it should be considered a fourth great awakening, ranked among prior iterations of large-scale American revival.
Now, about today. In some ways, the Jesus People movement was the opposite of the shift we’re seeing now. It was a progressive movement, in tune with popular culture and sensitive to those outside the church. Early projects included homeless ministries and drug rehabilitation outreaches. You might say its flavor was less Romans and more James.
The current vibe shift is more conservative in politics, theology, and lifestyle alike. It’s more interested in catechism than outreach, less James and more Romans. But like the Jesus People, it’s a great movement toward Christian faith. And also like the Jesus People, it’s disproportionately male.
Though church leadership has been predominantly male for centuries, at the lay level, this kind of male enthusiasm is a rare thing in Christian history. Indeed, one of the earliest critiques of Christianity came from the pagan philosopher Celsus in the second century. Reeking with misogyny, he sneered that Christianity was a religion not for properly educated men but for women and children.
Our faith’s welcome to women and the powerless is a good thing, to be clear. The Gospel of Luke opens with Mary praising a God who “has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble,” who has “filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (1:52–53). And to this day, Celsus’ charge rings true in many churches. Our faith has nearly always been majority female.
When a revival movement skews male, then, that’s noteworthy. And though the dust hasn’t settled yet, this vibe shift looks like a change substantially among young men—with wide social and political implications. In the past four years, Democratic pollster David Shor said in March, “young people have gone from being the most progressive generation since the baby boomers, and maybe even in some ways more so, to becoming potentially the most conservative generation that we’ve experienced maybe in 50 to 60 years.”
Insofar as this means a revival of churchgoing in America, a return to Scripture, and a rejection of progressive doctrines, we should welcome it. Gen Z Christians who are part of this vibe shift are rejecting ideologies that paint certain races or classes of people as inherently righteous or wicked. Whether they realize it or not, this is a revival of the theology of the imago Dei.
And Gen Z’s consideration—even embrace—of biblical sexual ethics is particularly important. It unites them not only with generations of Christians who have gone before them but also with Christians in the Global South today. It draws them nearer to both the past and the future of the church. As G. K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, tradition is “the democracy of the dead.” And that vote is a landslide.
On all these matters of faith and practice, older Christians like me should take care to avoid repeating the mistakes the established church made when the Jesus People came around. We should welcome the good of this vibe shift and encourage zoomer Christians bringing a new dedication to their faith.
But we should also give the same reminder that the early church gave a young and zealous Paul: Yes, go and teach good doctrine, but please do “remember the poor” (Gal. 2:10).
As Gen Z swings conservative, it is vital that a biblical understanding of justice is not lost. God commands his people in every generation to “learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” (Isa. 1:17). Attention to injustice is not a progressive cause, and callousness toward the poor and outcast is not a conservative virtue. The Old Testament prophets make this inescapably clear for Christians, as did Jesus (Luke 4:18–21). He is the vine, and we are but the branches. It’s by abiding in him that we bear fruit (John 15:5).
The young men newly coming to church are not yet mature—they need exhortation as much as encouragement. But they are seeking Christ. I pray we’d walk alongside them, love them, and challenge them to read the Prophets alongside the Epistles, to practice pure religion and match faith with deeds (James 1:27, 2:14–20), to be more Peter in Caesarea (Acts 10) than Peter at the fire (Matt. 26:69–75).
Jesus is catching the fish. The cleaning will come with time.
Jordan K. Monson is the author of Katharine Barnwell: How One Woman Revolutionized Modern Missions and is a professor of missions and Old Testament at Huntington University.
