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Jesus Made In America By Stephen J. Nicholas

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When I was reading the book Jesus Made in America by Stephen J. Nicholas, I came across a very interesting chapter titled “Jesus on Vinyl”. This chapter discussed in detail the state of the use of Jesus in contemporary music from the 1950s up to the current times. Back 3in the 1950s there were contemporary artists who putting out albums of hymns, like Johnny Cash’s Hymns of Johnny Cash. Not surprisingly, the most significant time for Christian gospel music was during the hippie era in the 1960s. During that time, gospel, youth, and music had merged together into songs that preached about Christ and love. Many people became Christians during that time to protest the ongoing war in Vietnam so it would make sense that they would start to make that a main topic in the music of that time.
Hippies usually referred to themselves as the Jesus People (named by Duane Pederson who was one of the leaders in Los Angeles) which led to this movement called the Jesus Movement. They claimed to not be a part of the hippie culture that they were born out of nor were they a part of the fundamental church. This caught the attention of several media outlets which drew more people do the Jesus Peoples welcoming environment. Many baptisms happened during this time, like in 1967 when Ted and Liz Wise converted four couples into becoming followers of Jesus, usually while on drugs. The people being baptized actually believed that they were being cleansed while still being intoxicated. They

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