ABOUT THE AUTHOR
& THE MILIEU OUT
FROM WHICH HE CAME

S.R. Shearer is a graduate of the University of California where he earned a Bachelor's degree (1964) and a Master's degree (1967) in history. He also attended the United States Defense Language Institute in Monterey where he studied German. From 1967 to 1972 he served as an intelligence officer in Europe (Central Army Group); Vietnam [Special Intelligence (S.I.) and Phoenix]; and the United States [U.S. Counter-Intelligence (Region I) {Northern California and Western Nevada})]. In 1972 he resigned his commission and left the army to become a co-pastor for a "Jesus People" type church in Washington D.C. which was dedicated to preaching the Gospel to the "street people" in Georgetown (District of Columbia). Since that time, Steve has been involved almost continually in full-time ministry to the Lord. He has been married to his wife, Lucy, for thirty-four years, has three children, and five grandchildren.

Steve came to know the Lord in a small home meeting in Sacramento, California on December 21, 1959 largely as the result of the testimony of one of his college fraternity brothers at Kappa Sigma. It was the height of the Cold War, Dwight Eisenhower was president and what we refer today as "Traditional America" - the America of "Leave It to Beaver" - was still very much an everyday reality to millions of Americans throughout the country. The Vietnam War was still four years away, the Civil Right's Movement had not yet gained national prominence, the Berlin Wall had not yet been built, there was no National Organization of Women, abortion was still illegal, the draft was still a part of every man's "rite of passage," female college students were still subject to on-campus "lockouts" and "curfews," there was still prayer in the school, there was no "Gay Right's Movement" and the country was still ostensibly a "Christian nation."

Eleven days later all that started to change - the 1960s began. Today it's hard to believe that there was ever anything like on-campus "lockouts" and curfews for female college students, school prayer, etc. It all seems so unreal - and countless numbers of today's Christians are prone to look back wistfully to that age as a "simpler and happier" time. But was it really? - or was it just a facade? a chimera? a dream? - a "bill of goods" dreamed up by today's religious right with little bearing on reality. The fact of the matter is, it was probably more facade than reality, more fake than substance.

Yes, outwardly the nation was much more a Christian nation then, than it is today; but how much reality was there behind the outward structure of that era's religion? - not much. People went to church, but most did so more out of convention than conviction; more because "it was the thing to do" than anything else. The term "born-again" was not even a part of the American lexicon, and most so-called Christians of the time wouldn't have had any idea what such a term meant. Most young people of that age had long ago seen through their parent's religious facade, and by the time they began flowing onto the campuses of the nation's colleges and universities, they were ready to "chuck it in." Most wanted nothing to do with the empty life-style and vacuous religiosity of their parents' lives. Eisenhower was a fake, a man who had been willing to leave over two thousand American GIs in communist hands - and lie about it to the American people - in order to secure peace on the Korean peninsula; blacks were a denigrated minority portrayed to millions of American whites as little more than witless, comedic caricatures; countless numbers of American businesses like the United Fruit Company thought nothing of enslaving the people of whole nations in order to turn a profit for their American masters; McCarthy era demagogues thought little of consigning whole classes of people (socialists, labor leaders, etc.) to the trash bin of society on the slightest suggestion that they were "un-American;" etc.

But while the vacuous nature of that era's religiosity produced cynicism, it also produced an insatiable desire on the part of many to search for truth - and while cynicism led many college students of that era into the mindless narcissism of the drug culture and the so-called "sexual revolution," it led others into a search for a deeper meaning to life - a search which finally led to the "Jesus Revolution" of the late 1960s and early '70s - a revolution which owed NOTHING to the established denominations of that day, a revolution which occurred almost totally "outside of religion," and a revolution which was, to a large degree, opposed by most of the denominations of that period - not only by the mainline denominations, but the evangelicals as well.

It is an extremely unfortunate fact of life that much of the history of the "Jesus Revolution" has been rewritten - rewritten largely to accommodate the sensibilities of those evangelicals who had opposed the revolution in the first place. Today the "Jesus Revolution" has - to a large degree - been incorporated by the religious establishment, and "institutionalized" within that establishment. Indeed, if one reads most of today's histories which deal with the "Jesus Revolution" one could very well come away with the view that the revolution had been produced by, and had emanated from, the very religious establishment which had at first opposed it - i.e., Multnomah School of the Bible, Dallas Theological Seminary, Western Seminary, Wheaton, etc. But that simply isn't the case! The "Jesus Revolution" occurred DESPITE these institutions, not because of them. Again, the reality is, leaders like David Wilkerson, Chuck Smith, etc. were forced, to one degree or another, to leave the established denominations they were originally a part of in order to participate in the revolution. Even Hal Lindsey, the author of the Late Great Planet Earth and a graduate of Dallas, was opposed by most at Dallas for "popularizing" Dallas's pre-millennial eschatology.

The truth of the matter is, when the Spirit of God moves, He invariably has to move outside of the religious establishment, not within it. The "Jesus Revolution" had its genesis not within the church buildings of the fundamentalist and pentecostal bodies of that era, but rather in small home meetings scattered across the country. Indeed, the aversion of most of the people who came to the Lord in those days against the religious establishment of that era was so great that there would probably have been no "Jesus Revolution" had it been decreed from somewhere that it had to occur within the church buildings and other confines of the religious structures of that period - and this has always been the case. It's no accident that in His day, Jesus operated from a perspective which was totally outside of and at variance with the established religion of His day - so much so that the religious leaders of that day felt impelled to crucify Him in order to end the perceived threat He seemed to constitute against their security.

So also today! It's futile for people to look to the evangelical establishment of today for their salvation. The fact is, with each passing year it is ever more becoming a part of the world that Jesus came to earth to oppose - so much so that it has even become a part of a movement to take it over. To those former members of the "Jesus Revolution," we would simply say this: remember who originally opposed you. Don't rewrite history. You probably wouldn't even be a Christian today if you had to become one inside religion rather than outside of it. Remember where your roots really are. Don't end up building the very institution which you had at the beginning so vehemently opposed - and which had so vehemently opposed you!!