Faithful in much

The Jesus Movement has a complex history, but for many, including WORLD’s Mary Jackson, it birthed a spiritual legacy. Both her parents and her in-laws came to Christ thanks to the fervor of the so-called Jesus Freaks. You can read more about the movement and its mixed legacy in Mary’s story, “Jesus People,” in this issue. I asked her to share some of her own family’s experience.

How did your parents come to know Jesus? My parents were hippies in the Midwest who, despite subscribing to the “free love” mantra, married in 1971. But one year in, my mom was ready to give up. She had started a relationship with another man. My dad strictly adhered to an Eastern religious guru. Jesus People kept knocking on their door, and my dad began reading the New Testament. He couldn’t shake its claims or, no matter what he did, the evil within him. He and my mom surrendered their lives to Christ in 1974.

What about your in-laws? My mother-in-law grew up in Palo Alto and hung out in Jerry Garcia’s garage in the early days of the Grateful Dead. To her parents’ chagrin, she ditched Stanford University and a professional ballet career to join the hippie counterculture in San Francisco in the late 1960s. My father-in-law was raised in a broken home in Southern California. By his late teens, he was a drug-experimenting hippie who spent time in prison for dodging the draft and hitchhiked up and down the coast—and across the country to meet his dad for the first time. He began attending services at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa in 1969, and gave his life to Christ soon after. In 1971, he met and married my mother-in-law at a commune of hippie converts in Oregon where she had come to know Christ.

Do any of them talk much about those days? Yes, it still comes up often. Most recently, our teenage and college-age kids and their friends have wanted to hear the stories. Some nights, we play and sing the old music, from Bob Dylan to Keith Green. My father-in-law gets going on the harmonica, closes his eyes, and it’s like he’s transported right back to those early days.

You met some of the early founders of the movement, who shared the painful reality that not everyone who responded to the call continued walking with Christ. What do you think made the difference in your own ­family’s life? Both sets of parents would describe an initially shaky theological foundation. By God’s grace, they made a lifelong commitment to knowing Christ through God’s Word. Amid ministry fallouts and course corrections, they have stayed committed to Bible-believing churches. I’ve witnessed them obey when it’s costly and repent when they fall short.

Do you still see the effects of the Jesus Movement in Northern California’s Christian community? Many churches and ministries birthed out of the Jesus Movement continue today. In what often feels like a secular wasteland, we’ve attended several 50- and 60-year marriage, church, or ministry anniversaries involving hippie converts. A large portion of the Christian community in the Bay Area, a beacon of light in a dark place, has ties to the Jesus Movement.