It began with an encounter, the experience of faith in Jesus Christ among the hippies. Beginning in 1967 many of those formerly involved in the counterculture began to proclaim that their lives had undergone a radical spiritual transformation. Addicts spoke of freedom from drugs, wide-eyed teenagers recounted dramatic healings and miracles, while others joined in choruses of ecstatic utterances wherever two or three devotees were gathered together. Testimony services revealed that something extraordinary was happening.

Common to all of these incidents was a fanatic-like allegiance to the person of Jesus Christ. This wave of spiritual enthusiasm ushered in a grass roots spiritual movement whose street level participants found affinity with the testimony of the early Christian believers. For most of these street Christians it was as if they too had somehow entered the biblical narrative and found themselves walking through similar events as those outlined in the Book of Acts. In an article in Look magazine in 1971 the headline proclaimed what many already knew; “The Jesus Movement is Upon Us.”

The Jesus People Movement was a revival born out of the late 1960s counterculture that stands as a watershed of evangelical history. Many of today’s largest church congregations and most well-known contemporary leaders trace their origins to this time as does the beginnings of the contemporary Christian music (CCM) industry. For any interested in understanding the diversity of the evangelical landscape, the Jesus People Movement is a great place to begin the search.