Hijackers On Board!

Nothing has gripped the souls of Americans like the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The devastation of what happened that day has changed not just America, but the whole world, in ways unimagined before that fateful day…

It is hard to envision the world recovering from the long-lasting ripple effects of that day. The course of history has been set in a direction of bloodshed, violence, and insecurity that seems irreversible. Did you ever wonder what the Black Box would reveal about what happened on those planes before they crashed? Maybe if we knew, we could prevent a tragedy like that from ever happening again.

In the early Seventies, another tragedy occurred in America. It didn’t get the same media attention as 9/11, but its consequences were perhaps even more devastating. It was the crash of what seemed to be a truly radical movement, one that promised to bring peace to the earth. But like a flawed airplane rolling down the runway, it was doomed before it could even lift off the ground.

What Happened to the Jesus Movement?

People have wondered for 35 years what happened to the Jesus Movement and whether there would ever be answers to help us understand its tragic demise. It has taken a long time to sort out the wreckage, but now we are beginning to grasp the magnitude of what the black box reveals. One thing has become painfully clear: unbeknownst to the sincere radicals on the plane, there were hijackers on board!

There has been a masterful conspiracy to cover up the real cause of the crash. Some “experts” even claim that the crash never happened, and that the Jesus Movement actually brought tremendous revival to this country. But what does the evidence reveal? Who was on board disguised as a passenger, but whose motive was to hijack the plane? Were there any warning signs? Where were the pilots and those assigned to protect the safety of the passengers?

Without understanding the contents of the black box, the theories about the cause of the crash are mere speculation. The black box can tell us very clearly what failed and why the Jesus Movement never really got off the ground. Was it a malfunction of one of the flight systems or a departure from the flight plan? What it might reveal could be shocking, stunning… and until we grasp the truth of its incriminating contents, we cannot be set free to embrace the radical truth.

Catastrophic crashes make us insecure, afraid to trust, especially when we don’t know the cause. But if we can know the cause, then perhaps, through God’s wisdom and understanding, we can find the courage to get on a plane again, and finally make it to that ultimate destination our souls long for.

The Beginnings of the Movement

Let’s take a look at some of the facts leading up to the crash. The flight of the Jesus Movement started out as a spontaneous, grass-roots desire to find radical answers to the problems facing a young, hopeful generation. The survivors of the crash of the ’60s Movement were badly injured in their souls and disillusioned by their counter-cultural experiences. But they were still looking for a solution that worked in a world full of hatred, greed, and injustice. They turned to the “Radical of Radicals” to find the answers to their questions about the meaning of life, the meaning of love, and understanding of the world’s perplexing problems. They finally found their answer in Jesus!

A lot of hippies used to read the Bible. They knew there had to be a spiritual aspect to their lives, and that life must mean more than just material comfort and sensual pleasure. Cat Stevens wrote Morning Is Broken about the dawning of creation from the words of an old Episcopal hymn. Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young told us very plainly that we “got to get back to the Garden” to get the life we wanted on earth. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll didn’t get us there, but some were still determined to find true love that would inspire them to really share everything and put an end to the economic injustice they hated in society. They read in the Bible that the first disciples lived together and shared everything they had to meet the needs of their brothers. They knew love meant caring and sharing all you had, but who could get them there besides Jesus who lived His life as an example for us all to follow? This was the heart of those first hopeful ones who boarded the plane called “The Jesus Movement.”

These ex-hippies started giving their lives to Jesus and proudly took on the name “Jesus Freaks.” Little one-house communes started springing up everywhere, starting in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Within a short time, a number of independent communes had sprung up all across North America. By 1971, there were over 3000 of them. These Jesus Freaks wanted life, not doctrine! They knew that if you wanted a better world, you had to live differently from the people who were running the world and were making it a sorry place to live. They had a radical heart. They weren’t afraid to abandon the status quo and take on a life of sharing. The way they saw it, they had nothing left to lose. If Jesus wasn’t the answer, there wasn’t an answer.

Underground Jesus newspapers sprang up all over California and then across the country. These “Jesus Freaks” were not afraid to use the rock & roll music of their generation to proclaim their radical message of the love of Christ, which they saw as the heart of their movement. But even in those early days, the hijackers were beginning to formulate their plans for this movement. They disdained their “devil music” and their long hair, but they saw great potential to convert the naïve ones into their own way of thinking.

The Takeover

Leaders from established denominations of Christianity began to recognize the hunger for direction and leadership in the disillusioned hippies. They saw the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley as an avenue to draw them back into the fold of organized religion. They set aside their three-piece suits and donned more casual attire, slipping in among the Jesus Freaks to bring their gospel to the masses. They even brought some of the hippies into their camp, promising them the radical life of love that Jesus taught. These hip-talking young evangelists1 were the ones they would send out on the front line to reach out to young people on college campuses, city streets, coffee houses, and public beaches.