Lonnie Frisbee Deserved Better

'The Jesus Revolution' is what happens when history is written by those who weren't excommunicated.

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“If you’re the hero of every anecdote you tell, something’s off,” Phil Christman wrote in the latest edition of his highly (and frequently, by me) recommended Substack. That might be something for the makers of The Jesus Revolution to consider, since this cinematic anecdote has to shuffle its characters dramatically to make sure the heroes and villains check all its target audience’s pre-configured boxes. And that’s especially true of one of its central figures, the famed hippie preacher Lonnie Frisbee.

The movie is doing pretty well financially, as Christian movies tend to when shepherded into being by Christian Moviegoers Whisperers Andrew and Jon Erwin. It follows the “true” (we’ll circle back to that) origin story of the Jesus People, the Christian hippie movement that started at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California during the late 60s. The story has it that old fuddy-duddy pastor Chuck Smith crossed paths with counterculture weirdo Frisbee and the two struck up an odd couple friendship that blossomed into a ministry partnership. What followed was, by all accounts, a profoundly meaningful season of spiritual community. 

Among those impacted was a young Greg Laurie, who found not only love but a sense of calling among the Jesus People, and would go on to become a pastor of his own megachurch. He's the central focus of the movie, which makes sense, as The Jesus Revolution is based on his own recollections in the book he co-wrote. 

Over at Religion News Service, Leah Payne has done a good job breaking down some of the heavily selective history at work here. She also highlights weird choices in the casting department (Smith and Frisbee are played by Kelsey Grammar and Jonathan Roumie, both several decades older than the men they’re playing were at the time). 

But the biggest misfire is in the depiction of Frisbee, a man done enormous injustice here. A documentary called Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher, paints a more human portrait of this fascinating figure in American Christianity. Though Frisbee sparked two of American Christianity’s most momentous denominations in the Calvary Chapel movement and Vineyard, he was fired and excommunicated by both when they found out he was having sex with men.