Lonnie Frisbee

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Lonnie Frisbee (born June 6, 1949 in Costa Mesa , † March 12, 1993 in Orange County ) was an American hippie and evangelist . He was a key figure in the Jesus people . As a street preacher to the hippies, who was himself a hippie, he was instrumental in the rise of Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel . With his Pentecostal emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit ("signs and wonders") he made equal contributions to the rise of John Wimber's Vineyard movement . After his homosexuality became known again, he was denied by previous companions and erased from historiography. He died of AIDS . After Markus Spieker, Frisbee was one of the most influential Christians of the 20th century, and yet it has disappeared from the "pious annals".

Early life

Frisbee was born with clubfoot and grew up in a one-parent family . According to his brother, he was raped when he was eight years old. His father ran away with a married woman, after which his mother tracked down the abandoned husband and married. Through his grandmother, Frisbee was introduced to classical Pentecostalism . He showed great interest in art and cooking. His paintings won awards and he once appeared as a dancer on the Shebang television program . He had bohemian traits and ran away from home frequently. His schooling was poor and he could only read and write with great difficulty.

As a hippie to San Francisco

Like many contemporaries, Frisbee took marijuana and LSD for self-discovery. He experimented with hypnosis and called himself a " nudist - vegetarian hippie". He often read the Bible during LSD trips. Once while he was with a group of hippies at Tahquitz Falls near Palm Springs for drug use , he painted a picture of Jesus on a rock, read aloud from the Bible about John the Baptist , and then baptized the group in the river. On another LSD trip in the same place, he had a vision of Jesus who had shown him how he (Frisbee) preached the gospel in front of a huge crowd that was calling on the Lord for salvation . This was too much for his friends and family, so he moved to San Francisco as an art student.

There he met Ted Wise of Evangelical Concerns , the first Christian hippie mission that ran a coffee house called Living Room in Haight-Ashbury and a commune called House of Acts in Novato . When he first met Wise, Frisbee said that Jesus had arrived with a flying saucer . Frisbee moved into the House of Acts. As he read the Bible with the residents of the house, his views became more orthodox. He brought Connie Bremer, a friend from his hometown, to San Francisco and converted her. The couple lived platonically together in the House of Acts and married in April 1968.

Calvary Chapel

In December 1965, Chuck Smith was pastor of a small community threatened by closure called Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. The community grew through his radio sermons. His wife, Kay, helped him overcome his dislike for the Huntington Beach hippies and seek to evangelize them. Through his daughter's friend, Smith met Frisbee, who was passing through in April 1968. As well as being a hippie, Frisbee was a Holy Spirit-filled Christian: Smith was surprised at how much love he exuded. Therefore, he used Frisbee as an unofficial missionary to the hippies of Huntington Beach. In May 1968, Frisbee's wife Connie also moved to Costa Mesa. Frisbee preached all day long, inviting everyone to evening Bible study.

Increasingly, Frisbee Hippies won over to Calvary Chapel. These not only needed a spiritual program, but also shelter and food. Smith founded the House of Miracles - the first of many Calvary Chapel parishes - and put John Higgins and the Frisbees in charge. Frisbee was key to the strong growth of Calvary Chapel at the time. He came from the same counterculture as many of his listeners. His Wednesday night Bible study group in particular was a magnet for young people. Even his friends from San Francisco were amazed at how successful he was: He looked exactly like Jesus, his speech was hypnotic, maybe it was just the Holy Spirit . Other listeners also found most of the individual aspects of his work bad, but the overall result was very convincing. One person he converted was Greg Laurie.

1971 was the height of coverage of the Jesus People , with extensive articles in TIME and other magazines, including pictures of Frisbee. In the summer of 1971 he was a guest on the television show of the TV evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman .

Gradually, Frisbee got the impression that the community wanted to limit its activities. He increasingly emphasized Pentecostal experiments with the gifts of the Spirit . So Smith set up an "afterglow" class after the service as a better place for the exercise of spiritual gifts. In late 1971, the Frisbees left Calvary Chapel. They moved to Florida and joined Bob Mumford of the Shepherding Movement . In 1973 they were divorced.

Vineyard movement

Because of his dynamic, charismatic Bible study group, John Wimber was asked to leave the Quaker Church in Yorba Linda . Therefore, in May 1977, he founded a Calvary Chapel subsidiary there. Wimber used the gifts of the Spirit in his campaigning for the faith, and he also acquired the gift of healing the sick . In 1980, Frisbee began attending the community when it numbered 700 people. In the evening on Mother's Day 1980, Frisbee gave a speech there. He announced that the Holy Spirit would come upon parishioners under 25. It was spoken in tongues and many were slain in the spirit. This event marked the turning point in the rise of Wimber's church to the worldwide Vineyard movement. Frisbee was a powerful influence on the "signs and wonders" theology for which Wimber was best known. Frisbee and Wimber went on mission trips, for example to South Africa and Europe.

Non-person and death

In Haight-Ashbury, Frisbee had entered the gay subculture. At the beginning of his time at Calvary Chapel he openly confessed that God had saved him from homosexuality: but since he was treated like a leper for this, he later left the subject off.

In 1983, a young male Calvary Chapel worshiper confessed that he had had an affair with Frisbee for six months. Shortly afterwards, Chuck Smith's son Wimber asked how the Vineyard dealt with Frisbees homosexuality. Thereupon the Vineyard Frisbee canceled without notice. After his sexuality became known, Frisbee was retouched from the history of movements, to the growth of which he had contributed significantly.

Frisbee then went on mission trips to South Africa and South America and suffered from depression. He got AIDS and died. At the funeral service at Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral, he was compared to the biblical hero Samson .

According to Di Sabatino, Frisbee never claimed that his homosexual tendencies were natural. Stowe, on the other hand, compares Frisbee's fate to that of Marsha Stevens .

Documentary Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher

David Di Sabatino's documentary Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher (2005) is the richest source on Frisbee after Luhrmann . It was accepted by the Newport Beach Film Festival and was shown at the sold out Lido Theater. It was then shown in six other film festivals. In 2007 he was nominated for an Emmy .

Fonts

literature

  • David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . In Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , Appendix III, pp. 377-391.
  • Larry Eskridge: God's forever family: The Jesus people movement in America . Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-532645-1 , in particular pages 33, 38, 70-75, 134, 207, 218-219, 250 .
  • Jane Skjoldli: Charismatic Controversies in the Jesus People, Calvary Chapel, and Vineyard Movements . In: James R. Lewis, Jesper Aa. Petersen (Ed.): Controversial New Religions . 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-931531-4 , pp. 81–100 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed April 7, 2018]).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Lonnie Ray Frisbee according to Find a Grave and this website . After Fahy, the father was called Ray Frisbee.
  2. ^ According to Di Sabatino, Frisbee was born in Costa Mesa on June 6, 1950. According to Balmer, Frisbee was not born until 1951. But the tombstone and other sources give 1949 as the year of birth. According to Fahy, Frisbee was born in Santa Ana on June 6, 1949.
  3. ↑ The Living Room was also frequented by Charles Manson .
  4. ↑ Wise took the Acts (ger .: Acts of the Apostles ) than a practical guide for Christian. Later, when disagreements arose in the community, the Novato house was more likely called The Big House , a slang term for prison.
  5. ↑ Higgins later founded the Shiloh Youth Revival Centers .
  6. ↑ Laurie built the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside into one of the ten largest Protestant megachurches in the USA. He has been called the "evangelist of the MTV era".
  7. ↑ According to another source, he joined the gay subculture of Laguna Beach when he was fifteen .
  8. ↑ For example, Frisbee is “a young man [whose] background was the California 'Jesus People' movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s” in John Wimber's description (1986) of the Mother's Day event constituting the Vineyard. However, Martyn Percy thinks that Wimber has remained faithful to Frisbee under difficult conditions.
  9. ↑ Frisbee does not appear in Chuck Smith's autobiography.
  10. ↑ Di Sabatino's criticism is also directed at Greg Laurie, but his later autobiography names Frisbee and clearly attributes Laurie's conversion to him.
  11. ↑ Marsha Stevens was the singer of the Jesus Music group Children of the Day and wrote their For those tears I died : after Eskridge, the third most popular Jesus Music song ever. After she came out as a lesbian, her songs were torn from hymn books. She later founded Born Again Lesbian Music (BALM) . According to The Christian Century magazine , it is Conservative Christians' worst nightmare.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Paul Fahy: Lonnie Frisbee: The problem of Charismatic hypocrisy. (PDF; 377 kB) Understanding Ministries, 2016, accessed on June 5, 2017 (here p. 3).
  2. ↑ David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . Appendix III in Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , pp. 377-391, here p. 379.
  3. ↑ a b c Randall Balmer: Encyclopedia of Evangelism . Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville (Kentucky) 2002, ISBN 0-664-22409-1 , here pp. 227–228 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 5, 2017]).
  4. ^ Rev Lonnie Ray Frisbee. Find a Grave , accessed May 1, 2017 (With images of Frisbee).
  5. ^ Alan Heaton Anderson: An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity . 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-107-66094-6 , here p. 63 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 5, 2017]).
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Richard A. Bustraan: The Jesus people movement: A story of spiritual revolution among the hippies . Pickwick Publications (an imprint of Wipf and Stock), Eugene (Oregon) 2014, ISBN 978-1-62032-464-6 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 4, 2017] Revised version of his dissertation, University of Birmingham , 2011).
  7. ↑ Markus Spieker : God makes happy: and other pious lies . SCM Hänssler , Holzgerlingen, ISBN 978-3-7751-5504-5 , here pp. 86-87 ( limited preview in the Google book search [accessed on May 1, 2017]).
  8. ^ A b Larry Eskridge: God's forever family: The Jesus people movement in America . Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-532645-1 , here p. 33 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 4, 2017]).
  9. ^ A b c d David W. Stowe: No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism . University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2011, ISBN 978-0-8078-3458-9 , here p. 23 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 3, 2017]).
  10. ^ A b c d David W. Stowe: No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism . University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2011, ISBN 978-0-8078-3458-9 , here p. 24 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 3, 2017]).
  11. ↑ a b c d Greg Laurie with Ellen Vaughn: Lost Boy: My Story . Regal, Ventura (California) 2008, ISBN 978-0-8307-4578-4 , here pages 80-83, 85-89 u. 106 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 11, 2017]).
  12. ^ A b David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . Appendix III in Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , pp. 377-391, here p. 380.
  13. ^ Larry Eskridge: God's forever family: The Jesus people movement in America . Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-532645-1 , here p. 28 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 4, 2017]).
  14. ^ Larry Eskridge: God's forever family: The Jesus people movement in America . Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-532645-1 , here p. 31 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 4, 2017]).
  15. ^ Larry Eskridge: God's forever family: The Jesus people movement in America . Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-532645-1 , here p. 52 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 4, 2017]).
  16. ^ Bill Jackson: The quest for the radical middle . A history of the Vineyard. Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , here p. 34 .
  17. ↑ Chuck Smith : The history of Calvary Chapel. (PDF) Internet Archive , July 16, 2008, accessed June 11, 2017 (an article from the fall of 1981, archived on the Calvary Chapel website).
  18. ^ A b Larry Eskridge: God's forever family: The Jesus people movement in America . Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-532645-1 , here p. 69 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 11, 2017]).
  19. ↑ David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . Appendix III in Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , pp. 377-391, here p. 381.
  20. ↑ Eskridge, pp. 98-100.
  21. ↑ Eskridge, pp. 70-71.
  22. ↑ a b Eskridge, p. 73.
  23. ↑ a b c d David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . Appendix III in Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , pp. 377-391, here p. 383: “Frisbee was upfront about his past life, testifying that 'God had saved him from homosexuality' and other countercultural sins ”.
  24. ↑ Randall Balmer: Encyclopedia of Evangelism . Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville (Kentucky) 2002, ISBN 0-664-22409-1 , here p. 332 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed April 2, 2018]).
  25. ^ Eskridge, p. 134.
  26. ↑ David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . Appendix III in Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , pp. 377-391, here p. 384.
  27. ↑ schriftenmission.de
  28. ^ Bill Jackson: A Short History of the Association of Vineyard Churches . In: David A. Roozen, James R. Nieman (Eds.): Church, Identity, and Change: Theology and Denominational Structures in Unsettled Times . William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids 2005, ISBN 0-8028-2819-1 , pp. 132–140 , here p. 134 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed April 6, 2018]).
  29. ^ Vineyard Christian Fellowship. relinfo.ch: Evangelical Information Center: Churches - Sects - Religions , accessed on May 1, 2017 .
  30. ↑ Marlin Watling: Naturally Supernatural: The History of the Vineyard Movement: From the Beginnings of the Hippie Movement to New Churches in Postmodern Europe . SCM R. Brockhaus , Witten 2011, ISBN 978-3-417-26247-6 , here p. 76 ( limited preview in the Google book search [accessed on May 1, 2017]).
  31. ↑ a b c d Matt Coker: The First Jesus Freak. OC Weekly, March 3, 2005, accessed April 2, 2018 (OC Weekly is a city ​​magazine for Orange County and Long Beach ).
  32. ^ Matt Coker: Ears on Their Heads, But They Don't Hear: Spreading the real message of Frisbee. OC Weekly, April 14, 2005, accessed April 15, 2018 (OC Weekly is a city ​​magazine for Orange County and Long Beach ).
  33. ↑ David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . Appendix III in Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , pp. 377-391, here p. 388: “[W] hile in Haight-Ashbury, Frisbee was recruited by an older male figure into the homosexual lifestyle ".
  34. ↑ Peter T. Chattaway: Documentary of a Hippie Preacher. Christianity Today , April 19, 2005, accessed on May 6, 2017 (Paywall. Long version freely available here ): “His early testimony at Calvary Chapel was that he had come out of the homosexual lifestyle, but he felt like a leper because a lot of people turned away from him after that, so he took it out of his testimony - and I think that's an indictment of the church. "
  35. ↑ TM Luhrmann: When God talks back . Understanding the American evangelical relationship with God. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-307-27727-5 , here pp. 33–34 .
  36. ^ A b David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . Appendix III in Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , pp. 377-391, here pp. 387-388.
  37. ↑ David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . Appendix III in Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , pp. 377-391, here p. 389: “Frisbee is conveniently written out of the spiritual lineage of both corporate histories and individual biographies. […] Frisbee most often shows up in recollections as a 'young evangelist'. [… B] ehind the desire to distance Christian history from someone like Frisbee 'is the notion that God could not possibly use someone struggling with homosexuality' ".
  38. ↑ John Wimber , Kevin Springer: Power Evangelism . 2nd Edition. Regal, Ventura (California) 2009, ISBN 978-0-8307-4796-2 , here p. 58 .
  39. ^ Martyn Percy: Restoration, Retrieval and Renewal: Recovering Healing Ministry in the Church - Some Critical Reflections . In: Darren Sarisky (Ed.): Theologies of Retrieval: An Exploration and Appraisal . Bloomsbury T&T Clark , London 2017, ISBN 978-0-567-66679-6 , pp. 333–350 , here p. 347 ( limited preview in Google book search [accessed on April 8, 2018]): “Wimber, of course, could not possibly acknowledge Frisbee's sexuality in public, as it would have alienated his evangelical followers. But Wimber was nonetheless willing and able to continue describing Frisbee as the channel and agent of God's Pentecostal blessing that had caused the Vineyard churches to become what they were. "
  40. ^ A b Dennis Harvey: Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher. Variety , October 30, 2005, accessed April 15, 2018 .
  41. ↑ David Di Sabatino: Lonnie Frisbee: A Modern Day Sampson . Appendix III in Bill Jackson: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard . Vineyard International Publishing, Cape Town 1999, ISBN 978-0-620-24319-3 , pp. 377-391, here p. 388: “It must be stated unequivocally that Frisbee never believed that homosexuality was a natural inclination. Rather, in line with most conservative evangelicals he always believed that homosexual behavior was the conscious choice of the participant ".
  42. ^ A b David W. Stowe: No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism . University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2011, ISBN 978-0-8078-3458-9 , here p. 201 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed April 15, 2018]): “A similar fate overtook Lonnie Frisbee "
  43. ^ Eskridge, p. 302
  44. ^ Mark Allan Powell: Marsha's tears: An orphan of the church. The Christian Century, March 17, 1999, accessed April 15, 2018 : "She is conservative Christianity's worst nightmare: a Jesus-loving, Bible-believing, God-fearing, lesbian Christian."
  45. ^ David di Sabatino. (2001). Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher  [documentary]. Jester Media.
  46. ↑ TM Luhrmann: When God talks back . Understanding the American evangelical relationship with God. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-307-27727-5 , here p. 17 .
  47. ^ Documentary on Hippie Preacher Receives Emmy Award Nomination. ChristianCinema.com, April 25, 2007, accessed April 15, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Frisbee, Lonnie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American evangelist
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Costa Mesa , United States
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1993
Place of death Orange County , United States