This year marks the 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love.”
Popular culture remembers the tens of thousands of joyous young hippies
that descended upon San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district to celebrate
personal expression, drug experimentation and easy sexuality.
What’s less known and what I discovered in my own research is that
Haight-Ashbury also proved to be fertile ground for a startling new
combination of the hippie style with conservative evangelical
Christianity – the “Jesus People.”
The reasons behind the rise of the hippie movement were complex: A
rejection of conformity and materialism in American culture and the
emergence of a drug culture both played a part.
The 1960s counterculture also contained a decidedly spiritual
dimension that attracted a great deal of hippie interest. The movement
incorporated meditation, the occult, Native American spirituality and
Eastern forms of religion such as Zen Buddhism and the International
Society for Krishna Consciousness (“the Hare Krishnas”).
However, as writer and observer Charles Perry pointed out in his book
“The Haight-Ashbury: A History,” the Summer of Love brought with it a
number of problems including overcrowding, crime, sexually transmitted
diseases and bad drug trips. Every night thousands of penniless young
people would “crash” in whatever space they could find or simply sleep
on the streets.
'Jesus People' – a movement born from the 'Summer of Love' - WTOP
Welcome to H&C,,, where I aggregate news of interest. Primary topics include abuse with "the church", LGBTQI+ issues, cults - including anti-vaxxers, and the Dominionist and Theocratic movements. Also of concern is the anti-science movement with interest in those that promote garbage like homeopathy, chiropractic and the like. I am an atheist and anti-theist who believes religious mythos must be die and a strong supporter of SOCAS.
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