Jesus Revolution is a Good Story that Needs an Honest Frame.

It has to be said that Lonnie Frisbee was a gay man who died of AIDS in 1993.  

Lonnie was also one of three major protagonists (together with Chuck Smith and Greg Laurie) in the recent religious/historical drama Jesus Revolution about the Southern California originis and beginning of the Jesus People movement. The movie faithfully and, sometimes humorously sometimes tenderly, portrays Lonnie as a the goofy, prophetic, hippie preacher who was instrumental in convincing Chuck Smith to give the hippies a chance at god and who moved his Calvary Chapel church into an era of love and inclusion that marked the beginning of the Southern California Jesus People movement. In the movie Lonnie is played compellingly by Jonathan Roumie who, based on the accounts I have read and footage I  have watched of Frisbee, ably captures his trippy-hippie demeanor and his intense passion for Jesus and for "his people". And in Jesus Revolution there is no mention of the fact that Lonnie Frisby was gay and died of AIDS, not even in the final summary of his life at the end of the film. They tell us he died in 93, they don't say how. That is why it has to be said that Lonnie Frisbee was a gay man who died of AIDS in 1993.

I wanted to foreground that fact because watching Jesus Revolution was, for me, an agony of conflicting emotions, informed by what I already knew about Lonnie Frisbee. Part of my own spiritual jouney includes seven or so formative years in the Vineyard movement and the story told in this movie and Lonnie's part in it were already very much on my radar. Because of my experience with the Vineyard I have been reading through the three part co-authored autobiography of Lonnie Frisbee and
appreciated the 2005 documentary on his life. I have also managed to get several conversations with people (all within the Vineyard movement) who knew Lonnie and, as a queer Christian it has been hard not to see Lonnie and his story as a bit of a portent for other LGBTQ+ christians vis-a-vis the Vineyard.*

Going into the movie I told my wife that I was intrigued to watch it particularly because so many of the people I know have been divided in their response to the film and that the division doesn't seem to fall along any predictable lines. Some progressive Christians like it, while others very much don't; some Vineyard people who were there either for the events of the film or for the Vineyard centered version a decade later involving many of the same people and ground liked it while others didn't. I wanted to understand why. 

It makes sense to me now. At its heart the surface message of the film is that Jesus is for everyone, that trying to gatekeep access to Church and to the Holy Spirit is wrong, that the Holy Spirit moves in ways we wouldn't predict among people we wouldn't predict and that loving and including the socially marginalized and alienated is central to the call of the church. While there might be a few theological quibbles (the salvation narrative in the movie is rather notably individualistic but that is accurate to the theology of Calvary Chapel) by and large that message is absolutely one that progressive and affirming Christians can get behind. At one dramatic moment about halfway through they include a powerful (if slightly on-the-nose) scene in which two out of three of Chuck Smith's stodgy "square" original attenders march out of the church in protest after Smith (magnificently played phenomenally by Kelsey Grammer) overcomes some of his own prejudices as declares that the doors to Calvary Chapel are open to any who want to enter and to all who want to leave. The third attender stands up as if to leave and then re-seats himself among the hippies. I started to weep. 

But I wept at that scene for two reasons. All throught the scene, the camera keeps panning over to Lonnie, smiling at Chuck, affirming and blessing his decision. For those of you have have also been watching The Chosen it is worth noting here that Jonathan Roumie is the same actor who plays Jesus in that series and I found it almost impossible in that scene not to see Frisbee through the sort of double vision linked both to the character's role in the movie and the actor's portrayal of Jesus in a separate series. The scene feels like Jesus is blessing Chuck Smith and welcoming him deeper into God's beutiful kin-dom as Chuck chooses inclusion over comfort and "clean carpets". Under any circumstances that scene would have moved me. But it was deeper than that.

In storytelling we often encounter the mechanic of a frame narrative in which the central story is presented as a story within a larger story (the frame). In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien presents himself not as the author (though of course he is) but as the translator and compiler of The Red Book of Westmarch and other fictional material. In The Canterbury Tales the stories are are presented as travelling tales told by a diverse party who are all on pilgrimage together. You get the picture. In Jesus Revolution the strory-wthin-the-story is all about people coming together to find that God is Love and that the mission of the Church necessarily involves the inclusion of the marginalized, outcast, and alienated. But the frame of the story is heartbreaking. 

Chuck Smith, and John Wimber after him, both used Lonnie as a powerful vessel of the Holy Spirit (Lonnie was, for the record, a really strange man with some bad tendencies who rubbed some good people the wrong way—he wasn't an angel) and who both then effectively wrote him out of the history of the movements they used him to start once they had rejected him. In Chuck Smith's case my understanding is that he rejected Lonnie based on some personality conflicts (which are showcased in the film) and some theological differences which the film barely nods to. John Wimber rejected and erased Lonnie Frisbee from vineyard history for being gay and for all that came with being an honest but closeted Christian gay man in the early to mid 80s. When Chuck Smith gave a eulogy at Lonnie's funeral, the most he could manage was that Lonnie had been "like Sampson", full of potential, too much of which was squandered. 

The frame around the beautiful story the film tells is a different story. That frame is a story of rejection; a story of limited inclusion sold as full inclusion; a story of spiritual abuse, of hiding who you are. The story-within-the-story of Jesus Revolution is one that is all to familiar to queer Christians. Far too often we have been invited in with gospels of inclusion, radical love, deep community, and full belonging only to find that, when we inevitably failed to be "cured" of the holy queerness that was never a sin to begin with, that love, inclusion, welcome, and acceptance are inevitably revoked. Jesus Revolution is the story of boomer hippie Christians finding God's radical love and acceptance framed within an ultimate rejection of queer Christians. For Gen Xers and Millennials, that story played out during the emergent, welcoming, and missional church movements of the early-mid 2000s. The Vineyard Movement in the US didn't officially restrict the full participation of gay, lesbian, and bisexual Christians until 2014** though they had been running/sponsoring "soft" conversion therapy programs for a long while before that. The pain of rejection by those who claim to follow the God who loves and accepts queer people, who affirms us as we are, is very deep and very real. And so is the history of erasing that.

In some ways then, Jesus Revolution, when taken together with its frame, tells a deeply true and honest story. It is the story of a church who has used queer Christians so long as our queerness remained invisible, has damaged us in the process, and has ultimately worked to wall us off from any work of inclusion the Holy Spirit may perform among them—even works that the Spirit uses us to initiate. The true and honest story of how the church also shamefully tries to erase us and to hide the evidence both of its dependence on us (who sings Vicky Beeching songs anymore?) and of its rejection. Our cries outside of the church doors give lie to their acceptance of the Gospel of peace; when Chuck Smith invited the hippies in, he also shut a part of Lonnie out. 

Before I went to the movie, knowing what it was about, a friend of mine asked on social media, what the story meant to different people. I said that to me, the story of Lonnie Frisbee represents a heartbreaking lost opportunity. I invited those in that conversation to imagine how things today might have been different if Chuck Smith or John Wimber had stopped to wonder what it could mean that the Holy Spirit chose to work so powerfully though a gay man while he was in a relationship with another man. To wonder why the Holy Spirit who had miraculously healed people through Lonnie and delivered them from addictions and oppression, never "healed" Lonnie of his homosexuality and had realized that God does not fix what was never broken. I asked them to think about a world where Lonnie's death of AIDS drove the Vineyard to sponsor a chaper of ACT UP in every Vineyard Church. To me this is a heartbreaking story of a lost opportunity and what might have been.

Ultimately Jesus Revolution without its historical frame is a mostly beautiful and compelling picture of what the Church is called to be; with it's frame it is a deeply troubling picture of what the church actually is: messy, harmful, healing, broken, and growing whole. I am encouraged by what is there and I hope in Christ that the Spirit will make up in Her power what the Church has not yet learned to do.

Footnotes

*For a fuller account of Lonnie's story I really recommend Matt Nightingale's piece HERE 

** In its Position Paper 7: Pastoring LGBT Persons Vineyard USA prohibits the ordination of anyone in a same-sex marriage and forbids pastors from performing same-sex marriages in their capacity as Vineyard pastors. In keeping with the theme of this review, VUSA has elected to remove Position Paper 7 from its website but has not recinded it.

How and Why I Left My Vineyard Church—or was I kicked out?

In April of 2015 my wife at I met our pastor and his wife at a bar near the church. We had asked our friends and small group to pray for us and for the meeting because we anticipated that it might be tense. At that time, our relationship with the pastor and his wife would probably best be described as a strained friendship. We all (I think) still liked one another as individuals but had come to realize that we were leaning in different directions spiritually and theologically. At least that is the way I would have characterized the relationship. Those disagreements though, they were coming to a head.

A week or so earlier my wife Ashley, who was serving* as the church's worship leader had asked why the leadership team (at the time I think we were referring to it as the Pastoral Council) hadn't met in quite a while and the pastor had responded that he had chosen to disband/dissolve the council. As Ashley and I were both members of that council and had not found out about its dissolution in any formal way until that communication, we were alarmed enough to ask to meet with the pastor and his wife to discuss things.

Thinking about that meeting I had thrown together a list of items of concern that Ashley and I had developed over time. In preparation for writing this piece I went back and reviewed the list. My concerns at the time involved concerns over leadership structures, over Ashley's treatment as the worship leader, over my own administrative weaknesses as the children's ministry leader at the church, and over two theological differences, one having to do with LGBTQ+ folks and the other having to do with a growing acceptance of word-of-faith/name-it-and-claim-it** type ideas within our congregation which, in my view, reduce the Holy Spirit to a divine magic wand. At the end of my concerns I wrote these questions as entries into conversation for the evening:

• What is your vision for VCCCM [the name of our church at the time (Vinyeard Community Church of Central Maryland), it is now called The Well] for the near and long term future, where are you trying to take us?
• How do you envision loyal, critical, dissent at VCCCM?
• If you have been confused about “where I am [on LGBTQ theology]” why have you never asked me?
• How do you understand the leadership and authority structure in the Vineyard?
• [The Pastor's wife] has often repeated the phrase “we need to believe it” from the front. What, specifically, is the “it” that we need to believe?

We notified our small group*** about our upcoming meeting and asked them for prayers. We never did end up discussing most of those concerns though.

---I started this piece several years ago but found myself unable to complete it in a satisfactory way while I was still closeted. Everything prior to this (aside from some formatting) was pulled from drafts of versions I wrote before coming out.
The material from here forward I wrote after coming out as a trans woman---

The pastor (let's call him Mark) opened by telling us that he had indeed dissolved the leadership team unilaterally and without actually mentioning it to anyone on that team. He didn't give much of an explanation at first and to this day I don't know his full reasons, but what came next did clarify some of it. He went on to tell us that he had come to the conclusion that my presence, specifically as a vocally LGBTQ+ affirming person on our leadership team was preventing a significant move of the Holy Spirit in the church. He "reassured" me that I was still welcome to keep teaching Sunday school and that Ashley was still welcome to lead (he had resisted making her a worship pastor) worship but was clear that when he reconstituted a leadership team I would not be on it. 

That paragraph needs context. 

A perennial concern or desire among many Vineyard churches is the arrival of a significant revival movement marked by supernatural occurrences. Because those don't break out particularly often (the Vineyard was founded as part of one) many pastors and congregations can tend towards a preoccupation with figuring out why they aren't at the center of one of these revivals. A common framework for this (and one our pastor seems to have subscribed to) is the idea, derived from a particular passage in the book of Joshua, that certain people who are guilty of particular "unconfessed sins" will prevent said revival from taking place. Our pastor at the time was increasingly convinced that one of these revivals (commonly referred to as variously large "moves of the Holy Spirit") was right around the corner for our church if he could only identify what it was that was interfering. 

At the same time, I was engaged in a protracted formal online debate with a Vineyard pastor on the West Coast over the status of LGBTQ+ people before God (That debate eventually became my series on why God affirms same-sex marriage which you can find HERE) and the Vineyard USA had very recently published a denominational Position Paper, declaring same-sex marriage, and the ordination of people in same-sex marriages invalid before God. The Vineyard has since unpublished the paper (Position Paper 7 Pastoring LGBT Persons) and, from what I understand, has directed all Vineyard USA pastors to hedge when asked about the Vineyard USA's position on LGBTQ+ people and to redirect any/all media questions to the central offices, but as of this writing my understanding is that it is still in effect and that any Vineyard church which performs a same-sex marriage or ordains a same-sex married person will be kicked out of the denomination****

I was acutely aware of the denomination's now official position on same-sex marriage (their position on trans folk remains undefined and I hope to write a good bit about that in the future) and had even spoken with Mark about my disagreement with it. He had assured me at the time (maybe 3 months before this meeting) that I was fine. I had been particularly worried after seeing the denomination force out (I think they called it "disfellowshipping") a long time movement elder and a lesbian pastor after the two of them (prior to the adoption of PP7) had publicly embraced a the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in their church—you can read that pastor's reflection on those events HERE. After some encouraging conversations with Vineyard associated scholars from around the country I had started to think of myself as occupying a "loyal opposition" sort of role in the Vineyard. I loved the movement, I wanted it to improve, I knew they were wrong about same-sex marriage, and I would be part of a nascent movement pushing them towards full inclusion. 

And I thought that was sustainable. In fact only a few months earlier Mark had laughingly recounted that several people from around the country had emailed him after reading my debate pieces just to make sure he knew what his congregant was doing. We both shook our heads at how ridiculous that was. I knew he disagreed with my position but I thought he had my back.

That is the context.

So there we were sitting across the table from a pastor—our pastor—and his wife, telling me that my position in leadership was, or had been, the reason they believed that God had not sent a big revival and miracles to our church. The offer of teaching Sunday School felt like an insult. They were willing to use me and my labor but trusting me with any leadership role—that was a bridge too far. Ashley jumped in at that point and informed them that if they weren't willing to have me in leadership, she wasn't interested in continuing as their worship leader. They accepted this with some grace and we fell into the nuts and bolts of what our separation from the church was going to look like. I wasn't any more interested in attending a church whose leader believed I was stopping God from healing people than I expected anyone else to be and I told them so. I was struck by how my situation—I wasn't even out to myself at the time, in trans parlance my "egg hadn't cracked"—paralleled that of LGBTQ+ folk in the denomination as a whole: "serve: yes; lead: no; and oh by the way we think you are a contaminant in our church". I had already started warning queer people that the Vineyard was not a place where they would be fully included; now that was true for me too*****.

To this day I don't know whether we handled the next step well. Oh I know we were right to leave; I just feel odd about the "how". Ash and I talked about it and decided to give them a month or so so that they would have time to find a new worship leader. I think that was fair, though we certainly weren't under any obligation to do it. The part I feel "some kind of way" about is the reason we gave. We told a half truth. We discussed it with Mark (I honestly can't remember how much of this was our idea, how much of it we just sort of let happen, and how much was a surprise the day the announcement was made) and on the last Sunday we attended, he announced that we would be shifting to attend a church in Baltimore, "closer to where they live and where they have felt more and more of a calling of late". That wasn't strictly untrue—Ash and I had talked about finding a church in the city a number of times before all of this went down but had always decided against it—but we knew, and Mark knew, that that was also not reason we were leaving. I remember feeling conflicted that day. The congregation prayed for us (that was the weekend of the Baltimore Uprising and one or two lines in their prayers for us as we "ministered in the city" was as much attention as the Vineyard Community Church of Central Maryland paid to those events) and it was over. I chose not to "make a scene" or challenge the narrative and we left. 

Given that I am writing this now I don't think I made the right choice there. I should have said something. I should have been public about what had happened. I know that we shared our story with some of our friends before and after we left but I don't know who ended up hurt by that church who might have avoided some pain if they had heard the story earlier.

I don't have a lot to add to that. It is in the past and we are in a very good place at a very good church. We are OK but I want the story out there. 

Footnotes:

*Ashley was unpaid and her hints and questions about being ordained as a worship pastor had been largely ignored.
**This is a simplification as this particular theological debate is not the focus of the post. More specifically I was concerned that the pastor was embracing a over-inaugurated form of Charismatic theology mostly informed by the Bethel folks in lieu of a more classically Vineyard-esque now-and-not-yet theology and practice. As I understand it this has continued to be a significant discussion within Vineyard USA circles.
*** A close knit spiritual community which met several times a week for shared meals and once a week for prayer and bible study.
**** The Vineyard USA (and International) does not consider itself a denomination but a "movement" but for our purposes "denomination" gives a better understanding of what they are and how they are organized and operate.
*****If you have been following my story recently, yes the parallel was deeply uncomfortable for me because even recognizing it felt like appropriating a queerness I felt I had no right to. "Blessed are you when they persecute you for My sake unless you have been so scarred that accepting that blessing makes you feel shame".

An Experience I Had with the "Vineyard Theological Forum (unofficial)" or "One Reason I Worry About Christian Nationalism"

In 2017 I was kicked out of the Vineyard Theological Forum (unofficial) on Facebook—and let me emphasize that it really is unofficial, these folks do not represent the Vineyard USA or the Vineyard movement internationally in any official capacity; I have even been informed that the group was asked, and refused, to take "Vineyard" out of its title—because, after years of interactions and conversations, the forum administrators decided that my continued advocacy for LGBTQ+ acceptance within the Vineyard movement specifically and Evangelical Christianity more broadly, was too divisive, and was out of line with the forum's stated theological non-affirming position on the subject(1).

Just so that you have a good idea of what I am talking about, the Vineyard Theological Forum (unofficial)—VTF(u)—is basically a collection of theologically charismatic conservative evangelicals—think The Gospel Coalition but they also speak in tongues. Now I am not at all saying that it was somehow horribly wrong or unfair for this little group to kick me out over my LGBTQ+ advocacy. It is their private forum and they can exclude or include whomever they choose for any reason they find compelling. What stood out to me then, and now, is not that I was booted, but rather the contrast between their approach to me and approach the administrators took to some of the other participants on the forum. To put it plainly: that forum (and I suspect many like it) is a breeding ground for online extremist Christian radicalization, and it represents a tendency within white American Evangelicalism which is still insufficiently understood.

When I was kicked from the forum, I contacted one of the administrators and asked him for the reasons. He gave the answer which I have summarized above. Now, I had been involved in discussions on that forum for quite a few years and had interacted with many, many people over various aspects of theology as it relates to LGBTQ+ poeple. In that time I found that a significant majority of the forum participants basically held to the position which the American public seems to expect from Evangelicals: the "love the sinner hate the sin", "gay marriage is wrong", "transgender identities are not valid cuz—God made people" pabulum; essentially they are big fans of the Nashville Statement(2). These are the folks I was frequently arguing with. After that there were also (I have no idea whether they are still there) a smallish minority of participants who were theologically affirming of LGBTQ+ folks. All of that is what I think the US public would expect to find in that context. What I was shocked and appalled to discover is that there was (and likely still is) a vocal minority of participants who believe and advocate for the death penalty for LGBTQ+ folks. Further, they were clear on that forum (I have the receipts—screenshots are forever) that in public they do not yet advocate for their draconian punishments of LGBTQ+ people because they realize that the public isn't ready for "truly Biblical governance" yet. They believe that they have a responsibility to play a waiting game, and to shift the laws and social beliefs gradually to a point where they will be able to publicly advocate for their position.

My surprise was not that these people exist—we have likely all read about them or encountered their depraved vitriol in one context or another—my surprise was that their advocacy was tolerated in what I had taken to be a mainstream white Evangelical context. The point I want you to catch is that in 2017 the administrators of that forum felt like my position (the full equality, participation, and inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in society and the life of the church) was too divisive and extreme for their forum but that advocacy for killing (one man literally hopes to bring back stoning to death) LGBTQ+ folks was not.  I need to bottom-line this before moving on:

In the eyes of these conservative evangelicals, it is worse to advocate for the full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people than it is is to advocate for the death of LGBTQ+ people. 

Hold that thought. Sit with it if you need to.



(1) FWIW The Vineyard USA is of the position that Lesbian and Gay Christians who are in sexual relationships (married or otherwise) with someone of their own sex are not eligible for ordination within VUSA and that Vineyard pastors are prohibited from officiating same-sex marriages (at least insofar as they do so acting in their capacity as VUSA pastors). VUSA is officially silent on all questions relating to transgender identities and church participation. The VTF(u) takes a significantly more restrictive position condemning all same-sex sexual relationships as sinful, and denying the validity of transgender identities.
(2) In fairness VTF(u) does contain a number of participants who take the more nuanced "gay sex is sinful but being gay/lesbian as such is not sinful" position.
(3) It is worth keeping in mind that neither Hitler nor Mussolini came to power by winning majority popular support in free and open elections, and Franco used a civil war. That doesn't mean it is at all impossible for a fascist to gain power by fully winning a fair election (some of the new-fascists may have managed to do just that), only that the original fascists didn't.