46. Balswick, Jack. "The Jesus People Movement: A Generational Interpretation." Journal of Social Issues 30 (3), 1974: 23-42.
The Jesus People movement was in the rather unusual position of reconciling opposing cultural streams: those of the counterculture and of Christian fundamentalism. Most of its members were "double dropouts": first from the oppressiveness and spiritual vacuity of mainstream culture into the counterculture, then out of that movement because of its rootless hedonism into a brand of fundamentalism that on the symbolic and stylistic level retained many features of the counterculture. This is explained in terms of a the "fresh contact" (Mannheim, 1952) of an age cohort with the principles of fundamentalism. Fresh contact occurs when a new generation encounters a previous tradition from a novel perspective.
In sum, the Jesus people can be seen to have undergone all five
of Glock's (1964) types of deprivation (see item 294.) Balswick
suggests that, following B. Wilson (1970), the Jesus People are
a protesting sect rather than a group based on deprivation.
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