Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This March – April 1972 Classic dives into the new ways students reflect on their faith more openly.
Many students at Baylor are not sure what to think of them. They can be seen anywhere on campus: carrying a Bible into a chemistry class, sitting in a group on the steps of Waco Hall praying, witnessing to a friend at the library, or in the Student Union Building wearing a shirt that says “Real Peace is Jesus.”
They are the Jesus people and they are Baylor students motivated to express their faith openly on campus in the same ways as other groups have done on campuses and in cities across the nation. Much has been written about the Jesus movement in hometown newspapers and national magazines as it has moved across the nation. This year it has come to Baylor.
How do you recognize a member of the “Jesus people” when you see one of them on campus? Many of them follow the trend toward more casual dress and hairstyles. They greet their friends exuberantly with a special handshake or with one finger pointed toward heaven, meaning “one way through Christ.” Most of them wear some sort of Christian symbol on a chain, such as a fish or a cross. (The fish was a symbol used by the early Christians.) One of the leaders in the movement has been seen on occasion with a Champion spark plug around his neck. When someone asks him what this means, he tells what Christ means to him as the “champion” of his life.
The Jesus movement did not just suddenly appear this fall on the Baylor campus; there have been evidences for several years. Arthur Blessit, minister to Sunset Strip in California and a strong advocate of the nationwide movement, spoke on campus in the spring of 1970 and received a very warm response. Many of the leaders of the 1972 Jesus movement at Baylor have been working in a coffeehouse sponsored by Columbus Avenue Baptist Church called “The Sign of the Fish” for over two years. Periodically small prayer groups have appeared in dorms and one Bible study group met last year after church services on Sunday night on Founders Mall.
The types of people involved in the Jesus movement are many and varied. One of the leaders estimates that there are between 400 and 500 students on the campus that are active in one or more aspects of the movement. Easily identified are several athletes, including one of the quarterbacks of last year’s football team, several girls active in social clubs, sons and daughters of some prominent Baptist leaders, and many freshmen who were active in some groups of “turned on Christians” in their home churches and high schools.
One of the first signs that there would be a group of “turned on Christians” on campus came at the freshman retreat sponsored by the BSU the first weekend of school. A number of freshmen were anxious to find groups of Christian friends with whom they could share their experiences. At the pep rally at the retreat the crowd quit yelling as the Baylor Golden Wave band struck up the theme of Jesus Christ Superstar and fingers pointing “one way” could be seen across the crowd as people swayed to the beat of the music. As the weeks went on many more Jesus people found each other until they became a noticeable group on campus.
Each Tuesday night, seventy-five to a hundred students gather at the steps of Waco Hall for an in-depth Bible study. News of the Bible study has spread by word of mouth and each week more new people show up. The meeting lasts about an hour as they sing, study and then pray. Each week a different student prepares to lead the group. Sometimes as they are gathered, people walk by not knowing what is occurring and then speed up in embarrassed silence. At the end of the meeting the leader asks for prayer requests and different students tell the group about people they know that aren’t Christians or who have special problems. At the end they sing, “We Are One in the Spirit.”
One of the highlights this fall for the members of the movement was a “Jesus March” in September. About two hundred students participated, singing songs, listening to a band, and hearing testimonies and speakers.
There are some other small groups of zealous Christians who are very interested in receiving special gifts of the Holy Spirit. While the majority of the Jesus people do not speak in tongues, some students claim they are experiencing the “Spirit filled life” through the gift of tongues. These students have Bible studies of their own and many of this group are active in the Berea Church of Waco, a group advocating Pentecostal beliefs.
Although the number of students practicing speaking in tongues (also called glosalolia) is not large, those who do have attracted much attention. Peter McLeod, the popular pastor of First Baptist Church in Waco, talked about tongues in a sermon delivered to the college worship service in his church.
McLeod said, “The conclusion of the matter for me is that if you speak in tongues in accordance with the scriptural directives and the experience helps you to better love God and your fellowman, then I thank God; but do not try to impose upon me or any other believer the erroneous concept that tongues are the test of one’s faith or the infilling of the Holy Spirit. The indwelling Spirit — the birthright of every born again believer — is a lifelong responsibility and joy as Christians allow the Spirit not only to indwell but to master and activate us so that we can become what God intends for us to be.”
One dominant characteristic of the Jesus people at Baylor is their willingness to explain what has happened to them to anyone, anytime. Because some of them are quite vocal about what they believe, they are often asked to explain their faith to other curious students. Other members of the Jesus movement make an effort to witness each day to someone on campus. The student being witnessed to finds that the Jesus person is very well-versed in the Bible and has a wide selection of scripture verses committed to memory.
A witnessing session is approached with a great amount of enthusiasm by the turned-on Christian on campus. He talks about his friends as his “Christian brothers and sisters” and speaks of being “turned on to Jesus.” Approval is voiced often with “Praise the Lord.” Much of the terminology used is familiar to members of the youth subcultures in America today. Sometimes a conversion experience is described as being “high on Jesus.”
The reaction to the witnessing efforts varies from person to person. The student who is a Christian but is not quite so zealous sometimes resents the method used and becomes defensive, even “turned off.” Others listen politely and then simply say, “That sounds great for you but it’s not for me.” Then there are those who are impressed with what they hear and decide that there might be something to it, and join the movement themselves. It appears that usually the reaction depends on the sincerity of the one doing the witnessing. One coed who has been raised in a Baptist church said, “I resent pressure tactics. I’ve been witnessed to several times — once by a boy who didn’t even bother to ask my name and another time by a girl in one of my classes who was real nice. I’m more apt to listen to someone who doesn’t try to sell their way of life like their long hair and hippie dress along with their religion.”
One member of the Jesus movement said, “If they aren’t for us, they’re against us. It’s as simple as that,” when he was asked about the way people react to what he does. Another boy who is known as being more extreme in some of his beliefs said, “If a person believes the wrong way, it’s my responsibility to tell him how he can find peace. I think I’m right and when I see someone cold in his faith, I’ll tell him because God will cast him away from Himself if he’s not hot.”
Dr. W. J. Wimpee, University Chaplain, com¬ pared the movement with some of the other movements of religious fervor in Baylor’s past. He remembers as a student when Dr. George Truett was at Baylor for a campus revival in 1938. Chapel met five days a week then, and the whole student body attended. The Friday morning service lasted until noon and many decisions were made. “Many of the lampposts on Founders Mall are memorials to boys who made decisions in the Truett Revival,” Wimpee said.
He also recalled the youth revival movement of the 40’s as a time of religious impact on Baylor students. Many students then were veterans who had seen much suffering and death and were ready for renewal. He made a trip around the world in 1960 visiting foreign mission fields and recalls from the trip, “At nearly every stop I was greeted by boys that had been in my classes and that had made decisions during the youth revivals and become preachers and foreign missionaries. I really experienced what Dr. Truett meant when he used to say that the sun never sets on the Baylor family.”
The Baptist Student Union at Baylor is trying to involve some of the campus’s newly “turned on” Christians in its program. Many of the students active in the BSU are not directly associated with the Jesus movement, as such, but they are interested in growing as Christians and in becoming sensitive to the needs around them. The BSU is hoping to unite many of the Christian groups on campus.
Baylor BSU director Larry Hodges, a Baylor graduate himself, said, “I think the Jesus movement per se has had some very positive effects on Christians across the nation. There is a new openness to talk about the person of Christ these days. When I was a student, the kick was intellectual discussion of Christianity. If we talked at all, it had to be done in an intellectual atmosphere, and we saw social implications of Christianity in such areas as politics, poverty, race, etc.
He concluded that interest in these areas is valid but in some respects perhaps some of the balance was lost between evangelism and social ministries. He said, “The cynicism among our students is changing to a mood of affirmation and hope, and this is good.”
Hodges cited the recent W.I.N. conference on campus as an evidence of students responding to the need for evangelism. W.I.N. stands for Witness Involvement Now and is a part of a conventionwide program to teach Christians how to share their faith more effectively.
More than three hundred students registered for the conference that was led by Charlie Baker of the Department of Student Work in Texas and Nathan Porter of the Home Mission Board. Baylor had the largest enrollment on a college campus for a W.I.N. conference last fall.
Dr. Dave Johnson, director of the Baylor Health and Counseling Center, began to notice evidence of a definite religious renewal on campus as early as the latter part of last school year. Dr. Johnson, besides being trained as a psychologist, is an ordained Baptist minister. He said that he noticed last year that there were more people taking a more open stand for Christ in day to day conversation.
One of the questions that many observers of the Jesus movement have been asking is, “Will it last? Is there such a thing as a lifelong high?” Dr. Johnson said that from a psychological point of view, “It wouldn’t be desirable, let alone healthy, to have a sustained period of holy ectasy over an extended period of time.” He pointed out that the prophets, John the Baptist, Paul and even Jesus Christ himself had desert experiences.
He emphasized that the message of Christianity does speak to the needs of human
