God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America. By Larry Eskridge. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 400 pp. $35.00 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)God's Forever Family: People Movement in America . By Larry Eskridge . New York : Oxford University Press , 2014. 400 pp. $35.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesJesus was first hippie. Or so say subjects of Larry Eskridge's excellent new book, which focuses on rise of colorful and eclectic People movement. In late 1960s and early 1970s, People represented confluence of a hip form of evangelical religion and counterculture. They sometimes smoked joints while studying their Bibles, and occasionally went on LSD trips in search of Holy Spirit. People wore jeans, bellbottoms, and beads to church, and men grew out their hair. They also played music. Rock music. Loudly. Their bodies, their clothes, and their actions represented a powerful challenge to post-war, middle-class white evangelicalism.Eskridge boldly argues, The People movement is one of most significant American religious phenomena of postwar period. People, he explains, played a pivotal role in resurgence of evangelicalism in latter part of twentieth century by shaping the development and direction of larger evangelical subculture (7). To tell this story, Eskridge focuses first on Jesus freaks of northern California. These were men and women who in late sixties were immersed in counterculture and all of its trappings who then converted to a form of evangelical (and often charismatic) Christianity. Although they worked with local churches, they found that mainstream evangelical leaders proved unable to deal adequately with youth of era. Wanting to share with others what had done for them, they set out as hippie evangelists, spreading their message first to Southern California and then beyond. As grassroots movement spread, People opened coffee houses, established intentional communities, and learned to turn popular music to evangelical ends. They also became so skilled at drawing media attention that historian Martin Marty warned that for sake of movement it might be better off retreating from national spotlight.In early 1970s movement evolved, peaked, and then dissipated. height of People movement came at 1972 youth EXPLO rally in Dallas, which attracted over 180,000 people. By that time, majority of People were no longer hippie converts from Haight-Ashbury or Huntington Beach, but were instead church-raised young people rebelling again their parents' and middle class culture without rebelling against (Eskridge counts himself among this group). From 1971 on, he writes, the pure hippie dimension of phenomenon was increasingly eclipsed by a grassroots, high-school-age cohort of youth--frequently church kids--who were claiming People name and image (155). Eskridge also touches briefly on more controversial groups that emerged from People movement, including Alamo Foundation, David Berg's Children of God, and Shepherding Movement. Ironically, these groups and movements revealed that a strong authoritarianism defined some aspects of People movement. …