Street Christians: Jesus as the Ultimate Trip

On Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, a fiercely bearded hippie buttonholes a passerby: "If you ain't saved by the blood of Jesus, man, forget it. You're damned to the pits of hell." Along Broadway in San Francisco's honky-tonk North Beach, hirsute zealots plead with gawking conventioneers to bypass the topless-bottomless shows. Outside Atlanta, amid the acid rock, nude bathing and casual lovemaking of a rock festival, a young couple and their friends man two "Jesus tents" for the lost and lonely. In Boise, beaded and bell-bottomed converts wade into the river for a mass baptism; some onlookers are so charmed that they join in.

Jesus freaks. Evangelical hippies. Or, as many prefer to be called, street Christians. Under different names--and in rapidly increasing numbers--they are the latest incarnation of that oldest of Christian phenomena: footloose, passionate bearers of the Word, preaching the kingdom of heaven among the dispossessed of the earth. Their credentials are ancient, for they claim to be emulating Christ and his Disciples. They often build their lives on the Book of Acts, living in common like the early Christians. They abjure drugs, proscribe sex outside marriage, pray and preach incessantly among drifters, addicts and homosexuals and even, occasionally, in conventional churches and schools. They evoke images of St. Francis of Assisi and his ragged band of followers, or of the early Salvation Army, breaking away from the staid life of congregations to find their fellow man in the streets.

Temple Custodian. David Hoyt, 24, is one of them. Two months ago Hoyt founded the House of Judah in Atlanta's hippie district. The two-story frame house, once home to a hippie commune, now shelters young runaways and others who have been unable to cope with the surrounding drug culture. It was Hoyt and his wife Virginia who had sat patiently in one of the Jesus tents at Atlanta's rock festival, waiting to help. "The whole scene was a disaster," says Hoyt. "We have one boy who flipped out. Satan got his soul."

Like many street Christians, Hoyt came to his vocation by a circuitous route. Born a Roman Catholic, he was once an altar boy. His well-to-do parents were divorced when he was young, and he and a brother were sent to separate boys' homes. He began to sniff glue, drink wine, steal cars. He spent six years in a California reformatory, two more in jail for smuggling narcotics. Paroled at 20, he drifted to the flowering world of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, where he became a member of the Hare Krishna cult and custodian of the Radha Krishna temple. But the surrounding Hashbury mi lieu disturbed him: "I felt the hip scene was filled with plastic love and plastic peace. Their love was lust and their peace was a finger sign." Finally, Hoyt encountered one of the first of the new "Jesus people," a Baptist seminarian named Kent Philpott, now 28. Philpott was one of several young evangelicals who were becoming concerned about the Haight.

Back from Sin. One of the earliest efforts was a store-front ministry called the Living Room. It was the joint creation of three Bay Area evangelical ministers, John MacDonald of First Baptist Church in Mill Valley, John Streater of First Baptist in San Francisco, and Edward Plowman of Park Presidio Baptist Church in the city. To communicate with the hip settlers in Haight-Ashbury, the three hired Ted Wise, now 33, a burly Sausalito sailmaker and former drug user who had been converted through MacDonald. Before long, Wise decided that "to bring them back from sin," he first had to change the environment of his converts. So he and his wife, together with four other couples, opened a Christian commune in nearby Novato called the House of Acts.

Others followed rapidly. Kent Philpott and a few fellow seminarians at Golden Gate Baptist Seminary opened their own houses, Soul Inn and Berachah House, and those, in turn, produced other spinoffs. Success in the Bay Area prompted attempts elsewhere: Dave Palma, 20, founder of the House of Pergamos there, is now trying to introduce the idea to New York City. There are now, by conservative estimate, more than 200 communes in California, and still others in the Pacific Northwest, Chicago, Detroit and other cities.

In Berkeley, a former Penn State statistics professor, Jack Sparks, 40, launched one of the more colorful new groups, the Christian World Liberation Front. When derisive radicals dubbed them "Jesus Freaks," the Berkeley group adopted the epithet as its own, and now shares it with the movement. The Front publishes perhaps the best of the new underground Christian newspapers, Right On. In psychedelic typography, the paper urges its readers to foreswear promiscuity, drugs and alcohol.

Visions and Demons. Such prohibitions rarely extend to other aspects of the youth culture, which often lends itself remarkably well to the fundamentalist lifestyle. Jesus has always been prominent in hippie mythology, and the ideal of the shared life draws much of its inspiration from the Bible. Edward Plowman also observes that "in the drug scene, many kids develop a spiritual awareness that the alcohol culture, for example, doesn't have. They believe in a spiritual reality. They've seen visions and demons. Thus a conservative Christianity, which hasn't mythed away God and angels, appeals to them." Moreover, notes Plowman, street Christianity shares the conviction of early Christians that Doomsday is around the corner. "They see the world coming to a condition of hopelessness that only God can straighten out."

Though most street Christians share such a fundamentalist streak, no two houses or communes are exactly alike. On Sunset Strip, for instance, Evangelist Tony Alamo, a onetime record promoter, preaches hellfire and damnation to anyone who refuses to live by the Gospel. He and his wife Susan guard their flocks rigidly at Christian Foundation, their church and commune.

But up the block at His Place, a combination nightclub and crash pad run by Southern Baptist Arthur Blessitt (TIME, Dec. 26), the message is simply love. In Washington, D.C., Blessitt is now conducting a 40-day "evangelical blitz" to mark the end of a 3,000-mile cross-country trek during which he and three companions hauled a 100-lb. cross. Part of Blessitt's message is in the little red Day-Glo stickers (JESUS LOVES YOU, TURN ON TO JESUS) that he and his followers plant everywhere. Part of the message is in the drug argot that he raps out to his street audiences: "You don't need no pills. Jes' drop a little Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Christ is the ultimate, eternal trip."

Ancient Boldness. Moreover, say the street Christians, Christ can liberate the addict from other trips. They claim that genuine conversion can keep an addict off drugs as no other "cure" can, and the witness of their followers, like the testimony at faith-healing tent meetings, is filled with tales of needle-scarred young lives healed by Jesus. But in contrast with many conventional fundamentalists, their approach is open and joyful, notably lacking in self-righteous stiffness. The prevailing attitude is ecumenical. Many come from Roman Catholic or Jewish backgrounds.

So far, the street Christians have met with little opposition, possibly because their primary concern is not politics but the Gospel (most are pacifists, but they rarely demonstrate). Policemen love them. Businessmen contribute generously. Even a conservative evangelical theologian like Carl F.H. Henry applauds their "1st century boldness." Perhaps the major hurdle street Christians will have to overcome is the eternal temptation to turn spontaneity into drill.

Clayton House, one of San Francisco's earliest, seems to have succumbed already. Founder Richard Key and his entourage now tape broadcasts for ten radio stations, publish a newsletter soliciting contributions, and maintain a 24-hour prayer room to forward the petitions of their benefactors. Meanwhile, Clayton House has abandoned the now largely black Haight-Ashbury scene just down the hill. "God has taken us out of the street ministry," explains one member. Of the potential converts still remaining in the Haight, he says: "Their hearts are hardened."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.