photo by Heinrich und Friedl Winter
Forty years ago today, the cultural phenomenon known as Woodstock was slowly, reluctantly, winding to a close. Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were yet to play, and the world at large was just beginning to understand that this wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill rock concert. It was soon to become the symbol of the ’60s — the embodiment of the decade’s heady idealism, groovy music and drug-inflected culture.
Oh, and by the way: It changed the way church was done, too. At least, that’s what my good friend Steve Rabey suggests in a piece for the Religious News Service.
Full confession: Rabey once filled the very same religion beat that I did at the Colorado Springs Gazette, and we talk shop occasionally over grilled cheese sandwiches. But even if I never met the guy, I’d be impressed with this piece:
During the 1960s, Southern Baptist seminary students had to fight for their right to wear long hair or sandals. By the ‘70s, [author Mark] Oppenheimer says religious leaders realized there was “no virtue in being buttoned-down and square.”
Now, the unbuttoned look is the norm for megachurch pastors like Rick Warren. “No one questions that a burly fellow who stands up front with a beard and a Hawaiian shirt can speak prophetically about the Gospel message,” said Oppenheimer. “That’s not something that would have happened in the 1950s or 1960s.”
GetReligion’s Terry Mattingly fleshes out the themes even further, saying Woodstock arguably helped spawn the Contemporary Christian Music industry and how it helped shift church aesthetics onto new ground. He even tries to tie in a new study from the Pew Research Center — which suggests generations now bond over music, rather than argue over it — for good measure.
It’s all great stuff. But I’d tentatively go a step further. In a way, I believe that that evangelical Christianity has become the real standard-bearer for the Woodstock generation.
I know, I know. It feels preposterous to even write such a thing. But consider: The hippie-inflected Jesus Movement — though certainly around in the days before Woodstock, only really exploded afterward. And, when a few years ago I talked with Duane Pederson, one of the leading lights of the Jesus Movement, he mentioned several key words that would’ve been buzzing around Max Yasgur’s 600 acre farm 40 years ago: Peace. Love. Community. Music.
Woodstock wasn’t, as Oppenheimer says in Rabey’s piece, “about a lot of intellectual content …” The Jesus Freaks, though, found the festival’s ideals echoed in much of what they read in the Bible. Woodstock’s aesthetics joined snugly with the free-wheeling, hippy vibe of Jesus’ disciples and perhaps launched countless young men and women into a deeper relationship with Jesus.
Many of those early Jesus Freaks — thousands, maybe? — are now church leaders. Sure, their hair may be a bit shorter, their guts may be a bit wider. But they still bring to the pulpit a taste of the counterculture. After all, who could really be more countercultural than Christ?
