Lonnie

ETRELIGION has posted a rather interesting article on a movie coming out about Lonnie Frisbee, the 70s evangelist that helped start the whole Hippie Jesus Freak thing. Some readers here will know of my continued fascination with that part of Christian History in this country - closer readers of the blog may see the ties between the Jesus Movement, the AEOM and my own conversion to Orthodoxy via the discovery of a wonderful Christian book from 1970 called Love is Now and a Google on the author, some Jesus Freaky evangelist by the name of Gillquist.

Anyway, the GR article noted a forthcoming movie on the life and death of Lonnie Frisbee... called, happily enough, Frisbee: the Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher. The movie asks the sad question, "What do you do when the Jesus freak who started your church dies from AIDS? Simple. Erase him from history." As you may well guess, with an intro like that I got hooked.

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The initial article in the OC Weekly well-documents the spiritual power of Lonnie Frisbee. People were willing to come with him to see this man, Jesus.

He peppered his testimonies with "far out" and "we're blowing people's minds." Witnesses say Frisbee blew their minds by walking into large crowds, yelling, "Jesus" and suddenly being surrounded by strangers. He'd stop random people on the street and engage them in gentle conversation; pretty soon, they were having long one-on-ones about God. A conservative-Christian intellectual swears that when he was a young man, he saw Lonnie—like Jesus—actually make a blind man see. They call that being "anointed" by God.

Lonnie's ability to reach people for Christ even comes across through the movie. An interviewer even notes to Lonnie's ex-wife (in 2005), "It's like I was telling Connie: if people were exposed to more people like her and Lonnie instead of the Christians we see today in the mainstream media, there would be more Christians."

Connie replies, "People would come from all over the world to sit in our living room and talk to us like we were some kind of gurus. Lonnie and I would look at each other and break out giggling. They would come all this way to hear us say love is the door you open to reach God."

Lonnie's outreach grew churches - not just churches, but three whole denominations (Vineyard, Calvary and Harvest are all denominations that claim to be "non-denominational").

His ministries enrolled thousands of kids. Some were so turned on they'd soon set out to become preachers themselves; many today are evangelical pastors at churches around the world. Time and Life magazines ran cover stories in 1971 on the so-called Jesus People—known in less polite circles as Jesus Freaks; words and images of Frisbee figured prominently in both. People would yell out his name when he walked the streets of Denmark, South Africa and Great Britain.

Lonnie left after about four years as Calvary's unofficial youth pastor and, after a brief time in the Shepherding movement, wound up at the soon-to-become Vineyard Church of Yorba Linda. Same thing happened there: his presence sparked a worldwide movement. Calvary and Vineyard have each propagated about 1,000 churches across the planet. Along for the ride in the early years was Greg Laurie, who was so taken by his mentor Lonnie that he'd dress in the same David Crosby-style faded leather jacket with fringe hanging off the arms. Laurie is more conservatively attired these days as he leads Riverside's Harvest Church, whose annual Harvest Crusades pack stadiums nationwide like mainstream rock tours.

But then comes the kicker. Lonnie, despite all his valued input into the movement, is totally missing from any of these denominations' history: he's barely a footnote at all or, a nameless sidelight.

Besides inciting excitement, Frisbee could be volatile, argumentative and disrespectful toward authority. But that is not what has made him the invisible man of God. Turns out he was a special kind of sinner. Christians could overlook his past drug use, but at age 17—the year he accepted Christ—Lonnie was already immersed in Laguna Beach's gay scene. He succumbed to AIDS in 1993 at age 43.

The filmmaker well sums it all up: "It's like John the Baptist walked through Southern California," says Lake Forest historian David Di Sabatino, "and nobody wants to talk about him because he died of AIDS."

There is a crucial difference I think, between these sects that Lonnie founded and the way the Church has always dealt with sin (although some within the Church today have also been led astray by sectarian teaching on the topic).

Protestants seek to "cure" someone. Having named him "cured" of his sin, he becomes an "ex-gay" and God protect him from his sisters and brothers if he should backslide.

For the Church sin is an on-going struggle. Same Sex Attraction is a temptation - one that can be made stronger or weaker, yes, but it's a temptation from the evil one. It's not what one is.

Sin is giving in to temptation - not having a temptation.

A temptation can also be one's cross. God doesn't take away one's cross - rather one must "take up his cross daily and follow" Christ. When one realises his problem, one comes to the Church for healing - yes - from the many wounds inflicted by sin and from the sinning - but also for help and strength in struggling with one's temptation. One seeks the Church to be a St Simon of Cyrene, bearing the Cross alongside Jesus. Instead, in the sects, one gets trounced: the Director of the Movie notes, One of the ladies in the movie says, "If I'm sick of my own sin, don't heap more scorn on me when I come to you with my problem."

We are all sick with sin - but we don't have different sicknesses, just different temptations, different manifestations of sin. The Church can help us stop sinning - but until there is no evil one to tempt, there will still be temptations.

I know a couple of people who were subjected to the religious abuse known as "ex-gay 'ministries'" such as Exodus International and other organizations. You can even find these organizations listed on some Orthodox websites. While these organizations claim success in dealing with the sin itself, rather like 12-step programs, one needs to realise the temptation continues. One may be "clean" for days, weeks, years. But the possibility of a relapse is ever there. In dealing not only with a sexual sin, but one that concentrates the pleasure-seeking hedonism and self-centeredness of our society, serving it all up in one dose of "civil rights" activism and fun, the cross becomes rather difficult to fight on one's own. Even the proffered cure of "laying on hands" and heterosexual marriage only gives one more excuse to have sex - and to fantasize.

The people I know from the "ex-gay 'ministries'" are now ex-Christians. They call themselves "ex-ex-gays" and oddly, easily understand the Orthodox teaching, but want nothing to do with their Protestant former coreligionists. They are also ex-Christians, having, in their own heads - been exposed to the whole kit-and-caboodle and wanting nothing to do with it. Little do they know they've not yet seen Christianity, but only the slimmest shadow of it.

Lonnie's life and death is a product of that movement. When you get "cured" you're not supposed to relapse. When you do relapse, you have become "sick" again. Watch the gay media for stories of "ex-gays" who have fallen. When you struggle with temptations - as in the Church's model - you may fall and, may God be merciful, that falling may happen less and less over time. But the stories of the saints are filled with saints who wrestled with their temptations for much of a lifetime. St Mary of Egypt did so for 15 years. Do those temptations ever leave? The lives of the saints say - clearly - only sometimes.

Thus the on-going prayer, care and support of the community is needed for the duration of the struggle - not just for a one-time laying-on-of-hands that - POOF! - takes away the thing that troubles you. that is rather more like magic and witchcraft than Christianity.

The idea that one of the greatest natural evangelists of all time was shunned by supposed Christians because he was dealing with Same Sex Attraction annoys the 70s historian in me. What if Lonnie had been in San Francisco instead of LA? What if He had come across St John and Blessed Father Seraphim? Both were well known for their oddity and their contacts with the unwashed. Both would have well understood the Jesus that Lonnie met:

I recently interviewed Ted Wise, who was Lonnie's mentor from the House of Acts in that first hippie Christian community, and he talked about this. He said, "I used to think, from the way I saw Christians talk and act, that Jesus was like a guard in the merchant marine. Or at the very least a Republican.” He told me many of the Christians he came into contact with were so worried about "where I stood on the issues." Wise admitted that he never read the New Testament because of this, but when he did, he was "completely surprised." He commented that "Jesus was so cool and totally different than I’d been told."

One is made to wonder not only about Lonnie and his fellow hippies coming into Orthodoxy - but also the shape of things later. The communes and the home worship groups of the Jesus Movement grew into the "mega-churches" of today. What if those groups had been guided by Orthodoxy? They need never have fallen into the heresy of the prosperity gospel, of "seed faith", or the lunacy of tongue speaking.

Ah, the whatifs.

Movie's Website
OC Weekly Article
Followup interview with Frisbee's ex-wife
Get Religion Article
Calvary Chapel's Website
Vineyard Fellowship Website

(The noted Google of Peter Gillquist resulted in finding the Antiochian Website which resulted in hearing about "St Raphael of Brooklyn" which resulted in finding out about St Raphael's letter on Anglicans...)