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Dear Friend,
The 2023 movie Jesus Revolution told the inspiring origin story of the Jesus People, the young California hippies of the 1960s and ’70s who turned to Christ from lives of drug use and free sex. Since the heyday of the movement, considered the last true American revival, the Jesus People have faded into evangelical culture. Observers today debate the long-term fruit of the Jesus Movement, and some even blame it for modern evangelical ills.
But the fruit of the Jesus Movement was neither all good or nor all bad. For her cover story in the new issue of WORLD Magazine, senior writer Mary Jackson met and spoke with several of the original Jesus People. Although tragedies like divorce and sexual sin sometimes occurred in the lives of the movement’s earliest converts, transformation was evident, too: Many new believers set out on a decades-long path of following Christ. In addition, tens of thousands of youth heard the gospel as a result of those converts’ testimonies and evangelistic efforts. As one told Mary, “It’s a hallelujah story, a Greek tragedy, and a cautionary tale.”
Following Mary’s report, author Larry Eskridge writes about how the Jesus People largely steered clear of political activism in the early 1970s—but individual converts took a right turn in later decades.
Also in this issue, Jenny Lind Schmitt reports on the Troubles of Northern Ireland and how, nearly three decades after a truce paused violence between Protestants and Catholics, faithful Christians still work toward reconciliation.
Read on for more in-depth reporting and reviews from our April issue.
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