The Jesus Movement of the 60’s – Jesus Freaks

The Jesus movement was a movement in Christianity beginning on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s and spreading primarily throughout North America and Europe, before subsiding by the early 1980s. It was the major Christian element within the hippie counterculture, or, conversely, the major hippie element within some strands of Protestantism. Members of the movement were called Jesus people, or Jesus freaks.

Its predecessor, the Charismatic Movement, had already been in full swing for about a decade. It involved mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics who testified to supernatural experiences similar to those recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, especially speaking in tongues. Both these movement were calling the church back to primitive Christianity and recovery of the gifts of the Spirit.[1]

The Jesus movement left a legacy of various denominations and other Christian organizations, and had an impact on both the development of the contemporary Christian right and the Christian left. Jesus music, which grew out of the movement, greatly influenced contemporary Christian music, helping to create various musical subgenres such as Christian rock and Christian metal