Jesus Revolution: the 60s hippies who changed the world

Jesus Revolution has taken $40m at the box office, making it highest-grossing film released by the studio Lionsgate since 2019. Andrew Whitman traces the history that inspired the movie 

It was 1967, the year of the Summer of Love and the hippy movement was in full swing. Four years earlier, JFK had been assassinated. Protests were raging against the Vietnam War. The Beatles had just released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – the garish myriad of personalities of the album artwork a snapshot of the social upheaval of the era.

In the thick of this, the seed of the Jesus People Movement was beginning to germinate. The ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ counterculture was discovering a new way to live as many hippies began to embrace the gospel. Within four years ‘The Jesus Revolution’ would be Time magazine’s front cover.