Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 120 minutes
Release Date: February 24th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Lionsgate
Director(s): Jon Erwin & Brent McCorkle
Writer(s): Jon Gunn & Jon Erwin / Ellen Vaughn & Greg Laurie (book)

Fortunately, God has a long history of using flawed people.

There is something undeniably beautiful about faith and the power it has to change lives for the better. And there’s also something to the comparison made in Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle’s film Jesus Revolution (adapted by Erwin and Jon Gunn from Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn’s book) between God and drugs.

The first half of this story concerns Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie) and Pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer) working together to recruit hippies to church—to give them the high of peace and love they were chasing with LSD via scripture instead. Why? Because it saved Lonnie’s life. He was everything the “squares” feared. He was on his last leg. And then God awoke a new strength from within. A gift he sought to share with the world.

The movie appropriately approaches the idea that Calvary Church was turning into a cult. It mentions it in passing before brushing it away since “cults” carry a negative connotation. These kids were getting clean. They were being saved. How could that be negative? You only have to witness Lonnie’s progression from drifter to rockstar and the looks those on the outside give him once his rhetoric begins shifting from “we” to “me” to understand.

We’re watching as the drug that is God takes hold. How it consumes him and alters his consciousness from sheep to butcher. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t excited for a second act portraying a monumental downfall. How could I not when Lonnie’s theatrics and ego start to push away his biggest champion (Smith) and most devoted pupil (the aforementioned Greg Laurie, played by Joel Courtney)?

Sadly, that’s not the case. All those pointed sideways glances? Oh. I guess we’re supposed to just read them as confusion. Because those figures who see through what’s happening aren’t actually seeing through it. The film wants us to believe they’re merely seeing through Lonnie’s weakness and steeling themselves to not follow that path. But reality—at least for this agnostic cynic—shows they’re really seeing through their own demise.

They’re seeing the path to implosion and learning the game that must be played to prosper. Because whether or not an Evangelical started his/her congregation with good intent, looking at pictures of Laurie’s Harvest events (he’s now an Evangelical Baptist pastor) only reveals profit to my eyes. And this film, regardless of those few moments of skepticism, becomes an advertisement towards raising revenue.

That said: it’s an effective ad. It hits all the right beats with Smith finding the room to change his heart and see that his purpose was about more than preaching to an aging congregation that had learned to shut its doors to those in real need. It goes hard on God saving addicts and leaves ample room to allow their transformations to be about the willingness of the person to latch-on rather than a divine power wiping the slate clean.

And how can you not enjoy a love story between a rebel from the affluent establishment (Anna Grace Barlow’s Kathy) and a poor dreamer with counter-culture passions (Laurie)? If it wasn’t all in service of public relations, I might even say it’s good. But we currently live in an era where government officials proclaim that America should be a Christian nation. Where bigots and racists hide behind religion to persecute, control, and kill.

Good propaganda might be well-made, but it’s still propaganda.

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(L-R) Kelsey Grammer as Chuck Smith and Jonathan Roumie as Lonnie Frisbee in the film, JESUS REVOLUTION, a Lionsgate release. Photo courtesy of Dan Anderson.