Ronald M. Enroth

This book was on my husband’s bookshelf for years, and he pulled it out to show me during a conversation we were having the other day about a church we used to attend in San Francisco in the 1970s and 80s. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. Published in 1972, it’s about a “movement” of young evangelical Christians that emerged in the late 1960s-early 1970s. This was about me and “my people,” and I was curious about how our story fit in with the book’s research on the beliefs, the cults, and the churches of that time.

In our late teens, we eloped and joined a Christian commune in early 1973 in Southern CA, after first attending Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, CA in 1972. The commune turned into a cult not long after we all moved to Vancouver, WA and my husband and I soon escaped. (Could have been an example from this book). A few years later my husband and I were living in San Francisco and cautiously began attending a church called Park Presidio Bible Church, which coincidentally was formerly pastored by Edward E. Plowman, who is mentioned in this book and was strongly involved in the “Jesus Movement.” In fact, he wrote a book similar to The Jesus People, mentioning many of the same people and documenting the same facts about hippies who gave up drugs for Jesus, and lived in communes and cults.

I found The Jesus People to be engrossing from a historical point of view, but disappointing to me as it ended too soon. So much happened after 1972 related to the various Christian churches and leaders. The “movement” began in the late 1960s and there was so much more to be written after this was published in 1972. For instance, Calvary Chapel and its founder Chuck Smith (and Lonnie Frisbee) are mentioned in passing, while today the church is a well-established international foundation of 1,800 churches. The authors had no idea at that time which groups would become cults and which would go on to become healthy, lifechanging organizations. The perspective of time makes a difference!

There are some black and white photos scattered throughout the book, but I would have liked more images. Nonetheless, this is a valuable and fascinating historic snapshot of a unique time of idealistic believers, sincere leaders, and manipulative cults.… (mere)