God and the Hippies

Once upon a time, a very ordinary young man, the son of a well-to-do merchant, got a sudden flash of insight. Though friends were shocked and relatives dismayed, he junked his expensive wardrobe and walked out of his father's opulent home to spend the rest of his life singing and telling people about God and love. Lots of people still think Saint Francis of Assisi was some kind of nut. He wanted everybody to stop trying to get rich and to live in joyous poverty. He refused to make any provision for the next day, since he thought that would cast doubts on God's beneficence. He looked with contempt on book learning and put his trust in feelings. He annoyed the religiously orthodox by preaching to the birds, composing canticles to the sun and pandering a whimsical kind of pantheism. Yet he was eventually made a saint.

Eight hundred years later, thousands of American young people stopped cutting their hair, discarded Ivy League suits and walked out of their parents' suburban palaces to prance barefoot through the streets, strum guitars and tell us all to make love instead of war. Fourteen-year-olds who used to attend meetings of Methodist youth groups began to paint their faces chrome yellow, writhe to the rhythm of Indian sitars and wear buttons that tell the world I Love Everybody. A lot of people think they're mad.

Now, there are many differences between the hippies and Saint Francis, but how you feel about one may be a good clue to how you feel about the other. Was Saint Francis a lovable crackpot? If everyone lived that way, would society crumble? Was he the only real Christian since Christ?

Whatever Saint Francis did, he continues to bother and fascinate us. The same with the hippies. Their fervor and vitality and their strange religiousness are forcing theologians to ask some painful questions both about our society and about contemporary Christianity. There is something undeniably attractive about these ragamuffin youngsters; but at the same time, they threaten some of our most cherished ethical precepts. Are the hippies really a religious movement? If so, can we learn anything from them or are they simply badly straying sheep that must be returned to the flock?

I believe the hippie movement does have religious overtones and that its growth in America today has a message for both the church and the society. Hippieness represents a secular version of the historic American quest for a faith that warms the heart, a religion one can experience deeply and feel intensely. The love-ins are our 20th Century equivalent of the 19th Century Methodist camp meetings--with the same kind of fervor and the same thirst for a God who speaks through emotion and not through the anagrams of doctrine. Of course, the Gospel that is preached differs somewhat in content, but then, content was never that important for the revivalist--it was the spirit that counted.

Hippieness has all the marks of a new religious movement. It has its evangelists, its sacred grottoes, its exuberant converts. Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco is the Holy City and pilgrims are welcome. But you don't have to go to Mecca to detect the holy aspiration of hippieism. You can see it anywhere. They chant Hindu mantras in Washington, stroll in threadbare Edwardian finery in Chicago, display vivid face and body paint in Boston. Even in Anaheim, California--that moated bastion of retired Naval officers and dour Birchers--there was a love-in. Why not? Saint Francis once walked through the Saracens' lines to preach to the sultan. The hippie movement is making a religious claim and it is no longer underground. Dripping incense and quoting the Upanishads, it has emerged from the garret-district catacombs. Its devotees now gambol lovingly in parks and city streets all over the country, petting policemen's horses and pelting squad cars with daffodils. On Easter Sunday morning, they held a lovein in Central Park that seemed much closer to the Easter spirit than the parade in front of St. Patrick's. "Jesus was here this morning," one beatific participant told an observer, "and so was Buddha." Unlike the rebels of a previous generation, the hippies are certainly not atheists. Perhaps if they were, they would be more easily dismissed. But they do claim to be religious and they deserve attention from theologians.

The first question to ask is a historical one. Why has the hippie movement, glibly calling on both Jesus and Buddha, emerged at just this moment in Western history, catching off guard those people who had already reconciled themselves to the secular era and the death of the gods? One answer is that only an affluent, highly industrialized welfare society could afford such a movement. The traditional Christian virtue of charity is now a function of the state. We do our alms through Form 1040. Our welfare society has reached a stage where we rarely allow anyone to starve, at least in the U. S. A. itself. Though it annoys some tax-paying over-30ers, in several countries groups have emerged who take advantage of this new security. In Sweden, they are the Raggaren, in Germany the Gammler, in Holland the Provos. All are first cousins to a lovely damsel in Haight who, when I asked her if she ever worried about eating, looked at me with consummate serenity and replied, "But food is."

The hippies represent the first generation of Americans who really don't have to work for a living. No wonder they annoy us. They have dropped the bottom out of the so-called Protestant ethic. And this has painful religious significance for many Americans. If work is no longer the way to find meaning in life, then what is? For the hippies, the answers vary: Think, paint, meditate, play, make love, smoke pot, dance to the loudest music you can generate, get to know yourself and take all the time you need to do so. The hippie movement has been made possible by the very welfare society whose moral credentials it so vehemently questions.

On the religious level itself, however, perhaps the most fascinating challenge posed to Christian theologians by the hippies is their consuming interest in Oriental religions. This interest catches Christianity at an embarrassing moment. In a world where the great religious traditions are rubbing shoulders more closely than ever, Christianity still lacks the viable theology of non-Christian religions. In previous years, this weakness could be swept under the rug. But since the hippies have hit the headlines, that just won't work anymore. Members of the Khrishna Light Society bang tambourines and chant at be-ins, and youngsters chant along. Buddhist prayer beads are in. Copies of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the teachings of Lao-tse sell briskly. Boys in beards and denim talk ecstatically about finding God.

True, the hippie versions of Oriental religions are often weirdly distorted and Orientals themselves often find them virtually unrecognizable. But the interest is still genuine and, in some cases, well informed. Gary Snyder, San Francisco's Zen poet, spent two years in a monastery in Japan. His Buddhist faith is deep and genuine. But why, in their search for God, do hippies turn to Oriental faiths instead of to Christianity itself?

There are many reasons. First, the kind of Christianity that would appeal to hippies has been overlooked so long in churches and Sunday schools that it is no wonder young people know nothing about it. Christianity also has a mystical tradition, but it is scarcely known. Also, to many young people today, Christianity just seems too bland. The Christian Church in America has become, if anything, squarer than American culture. The Church is an enormously wealthy institution, holding vast tracts of real estate and investments. It seems too content to bless society's pursuit of commercial values. It presents few alternative, spiritually challenging life styles for restless youngsters. Some young people feel Christianity, though a commercial success in the modern world, is a spiritual failure--that the Church has sold out to the status quo. Consequently, one reason hippies have turned to Oriental religious practices for inspiration is simply that, whatever else they are, they are not Christian and at least that's something in their favor. Self-conscious subcultures have a way of trying to dramatize their differences from the larger society. Some Negroes are attracted to Islam mainly because they have come to believe that Christianity is a white man's religion. Similarly, hippies see Christianity as the religion of the establishment, a faith for those over 30. They want something else and the Oriental religions, though older than Christianity, are at least visibly different from the faith in which they were reared.

But there is a deeper reason for the hippie interest in Eastern spirituality. After all, for years a main emphasis of Western religion, especially the Protestant variety, has been on the domination of nature and the rebuilding of the earth into the City of God. Western theology has often been activist, extroverted, competitive. In the Eastern faiths, on the other hand, one finds a much deeper interest in the quiet cultivation of the fascinating labyrinth of the unconscious. Also, while Christianity has been suspicious of sexuality, some other faiths--Hinduism, for example--have been much more open in their celebration of the erotic. After years of Saint Paul, it must come as a marvelous discovery when a youngster first opens a copy of the Kama Sutra.

(continued on page 206) God and the Hippies (continued from page 94)

Scholars of the great world religions may be scornful of the pop Zen and teenybopper Hinduism abroad in the land. They have reason to be apprehensive, since hippie versions of these traditions are often bizarre. Still, the coming interaction of the faiths of the world cannot be programed along lines laid down by orthodox theologians. When religions rub shoulders, the result often appears unfavorable to traditionalists. There is no doubt that aspects of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism will find their way into one another's religious practices in future years. The parts of these faiths that are borrowed may surprise and even anger the orthodox of all camps. It has always been so. Whatever else happens, Christianity will have to come to terms with the unavoidable fact that it is no longer the only religious option for young Americans. The choice is no longer Christian, Jew or atheist. Christianity will also have to recognize that in a postindustrial, leisure society, people will have more time for meditation and for cultivating the kinds of religious practices that have been so highly developed in some Oriental countries--and so underdeveloped in the West. Its encounter with these venerable traditions may stimulate Christianity to emphasize again the neglected aspects of its own tradition. Christian mysticism may not be lost forever.

But there are at least three facets of the hippie phenomenon that many people would insist are totally incompatible with Christianity and should be judged in the severest possible terms. Hippies take drugs, derogate work and make love in open defiance of conventional ideas about sexual morality. To those who drop out of the job market, smoke pot and exalt Eros, can Christianity say anything except "No! No! No!"?

What about the drugs? Everyone knows that many hippies puff marijuana and take LSD trips. Surely, here is one place where Christianity can say nothing but a firm and definitive nay. Or should it? It is true that although chemical substances that influence the mind have been used by many religions in the past, Christianity has never sanctioned this practice. Many theologians remain skeptical of the extravagant descriptions of mystical experiences recounted by returnees from psychedelic trips. But the question is more difficult than it first appears. How should the church respond? First, there is little doubt that present drug laws in America are grotesquely discriminatory. They allow us to inhale nicotine and swill alcohol, but clap people in jail for using marijuana. They fail to discriminate between nonaddictive and addictive or between the so-called "mind drugs," such as marijuana, and the "body drugs," such as opium and cocaine. They are unevenly enforced. The thousands of middle-class people who occasionally smoke pot usually get away with it, while kids with beards may end up behind bars for five years. Our drug laws today are panicky and irrational. One thing the church could do, though it probably will not, is to push for a thoroughgoing reform of the whole field of narcotics control. Marijuana, which most authorities believe is no more addictive than alcohol, should probably be legalized.

To get an ounce of grass today, a person must act in defiance of the law, enter into risky, illegal relationships and put his whole career in jeopardy. Though this discourages some curiosity seekers from trying, the intriguing illicitness of the whole thing is just what attracts young people. Some of the allure would disappear if pot were as available as, say, bourbon. LSD is different. We need more research before we know what its real possibilities and dangers are, research that is impossible as long as the present repressive atmosphere obtains.

But the interest in the temporary ecstasy produced by psychedelics raises a much more profound question for the church, perhaps even a theological one. Why has conventional Christianity turned its back on man's age-old quest for the ecstatic and the mystical? Has Western religion and its obsessive interest in doctrinal clarity and rational formulation lost sight of a very significant aspect of religious experience? As conventional religion has squeezed out the irrational and emotional elements, has it forced people to search elsewhere for what may be a persistent need in human life? Early Christians undoubtedly had ecstatic experiences--speaking in tongues and hearing voices. But people who claim to have such experiences today are packed off to a headshrinker. Throughout Christian history, however, there has been a persistent and recurring element of emotionality that has usually been discouraged but has frequently burst out with real power. Mystics, visionaries, seers and holy men have rarely become popes or bishops, but they have often revived the sagging spirituality of the church in times of vacuousness and religious drought. Most of us would be embarrassed by the behavior of our great-grandparents at the camp meetings and revivals of mid--19th Century America. We are so afraid of the emotional element in religion that we may have pushed people in search of the numinous to look elsewhere.

Man cannot live without moments of emotional release, yet our society today is highly rationalized. The bureaucratic niches into which most of our hours are squeezed leave less and less space for that vast world of fantasy and rapture that is still so important in the human psyche. No doubt it would be preferable to find pathways to the ecstatic that do not rely on chemicals--just as it would be nice to induce gaiety and relaxation without martinis--but this would require a society very different from the one we have today. In the meantime, it seems hypocritical for a whole population that is hooked on pep pills, tranquilizers and booze to wreak vengeance on a group that prefers other chemicals--and weeds. If our attitude toward mind changing substances were based on rational research, rather than on fancied effects, the situation would be greatly improved. But the larger question is how we can move toward an age where people like Saint Theresa would not be locked in a psychiatric ward and where the desire to experience a trance would be accepted as a normal human aspiration. Here Christianity is challenged to exhibit a sensitivity to the religious needs of postindustrial man that it has not yet displayed. Until it does, the sugar cube will continue to be a temptation.

Another complaint people frequently make about the hippies is that they are parasites. They make no contribution to society. They live off the sweat of other people's brows. This is a familiar accusation to students of religious history. Gibbon contended that the refusal of the early Christians to participate fully in the life of the Roman Empire contributed to its collapse. In the Middle Ages, many people were resentful of what they took to be sloth and irresponsibility on the part of monks and friars. These critics often asked angrily why hard-working folk should drop coins in the bowls of seedy characters who did nothing but pray and meditate and sing all day. Such resentment of the sycophancy of monks reached its peak with Martin Luther--who closed the monasteries and abolished mendicancy. Calvin felt just as strongly on the subject, and we are all still Calvinists at heart. Our faith in work--and our resentment of people who don't--still colors our attitudes today. Underneath, of course, we may betray a secret jealousy. We have to get up in the morning and catch the 7:42; they don't. And this is enough to make anyone resentful.

The real question, however, is whether our traditional Calvinist work ethic will make any sense in a computer civilization. If technological forecasts are correct, in a few decades machines may take over much of what we now call work. Automation will replace human energy not only in skilled labor but in middle management, merchandising and many of the service industries. The work week will melt to 30 hours, then to 20. Vacations will increase. Retirement will come earlier. Already, some apprehensive observers have begun to ask the disturbing question--what will we do with so much time on our hands?

The usual answer given to this question is that we must outgrow our preoccupation with work as the sole means of achieving human fulfillment. We must embrace leisure and rebuild our civilization not on production values but on a different basis, one that will encourage play, meditation and the cultivation of the aesthetic and artistic sides of man's nature.

Some social critics merely smile sadly when they hear this now-familiar call. They would like to see a postindustrial civilization where the quest for human self-fulfillment replaces the pursuit of an expanding G.N.P. as the basic purpose of the society. But they doubt that ordinary people will ever be able to rise above TV and bowling leagues as an answer to increased leisure. Exactly here, the hippie life style may have something to say to us. Many of these youngsters come from ordinary middle-class families, where the parents bowl and watch TV. They themselves, however, prefer to paint, make movies, write poetry, meditate, frolic in meadows and talk to one another endlessly about God and love and what it means to be human. In doing so, they may be engaging in advanced research for the whole society, devising a new leisure life style. Their mode of existence may seem frivolous and even irresponsible to many of us now, but it could make good sense in the coming automated age.

Can we really stand to live in a workless society? The idea that every able bodied person should be engaged in a productive job is almost a truism today. A generation of labor leaders has worked hard to make "full employment" an accepted goal of national policy. Deeply marked by the Depression memory of the humiliation unemployment can inflict on men's spirits, they are shocked by any suggestion that eventually full employment may no longer be a worth while national goal. Yet there have been societies in the past in which other values--prayer or play or something else-- have been more important than work. True, these values have usually appeared either in societies where nature was generous and food and shelter were not pressing problems or in societies where armies of slaves or serfs did the toiling. But this is just the point. Man may now stand at the beginning of an era in which the struggle for food and shelter need no longer claim his every waking moment. Instead of an elite culture built on the bent backs of peons, we may soon rely on mechanical slaves to do our work. The kind of life that was once the prerogative of a small coterie at the top may become available to all. If this should happen, what would it mean for Christianity?

Christianity claims to be a universal faith, not just an ideology for economies of scarcity or a discipline for industrialization. But the church has rarely been challenged to provide meaning and value for a society of leisure and indescribable abundance. One challenge the hippies present to the church is simply this: If the hippie way of life is not the one for the workless world, what is?

Here again, Christianity may have to delve into aspects of its tradition that no one has taken seriously for centuries. It was Jesus himself, after all, who taught his disciples to take no thought for the morrow, to consider the lilies rather than worry about what they would eat or wear, even to leave behind their fishing nets--their sole visible means of support--and to follow him into a life where they would have no place to lay their heads. Much to the embarrassment of generations of preachers, Jesus commended Mary, who was simply sitting and talking with him, rather than Martha, who was busily preparing supper. It is hard to make Jesus an exemplar of the Protestant work ethic.

Yet another objection people make to the hippies is that they do not pretend to conform to conventional sexual mores. Most of us realize, of course, that the stated sex ethic of society is not the one that is practiced. Yet, for some reason, the hippies' refusal to be hypocritical about sex bothers us as much as their smoking pot or not working. Even in a society as drenched with sexual stimulation as ours, this simple affirmation that making love is good and we should do it often and unhurriedly comes as a shock.

Again, this conventional attitude may betray the provincialism to which Western Christianity has fallen captive. Orientals sometimes slyly suggest that although America may be economically advanced, it is an erotically underdeveloped nation. Some critics lay the blame for our fear and rejection of sexuality almost solely at the doorstep of Christianity. I doubt that this is true. The U.S.S.R. has been going through a period of severe sexual repressiveness for years and the same seems to be true of China. The tendency to suppress sexuality probably has more to do with the discipline and delayed gratification required by industrialization than it does with Christianity, although certain elements of Christianity admittedly lent themselves very readily to this use. Still, there can be no doubt that the combination of religious repression and industrial work schedules has played havoc with the love lives of millions of people. Lewis Mumford once wrote that we will never be able to calculate the damage inflicted on generations of factory workers simply because their long hours and exhausting jobs meant that they could make love only when they were tired or rushed. He is right. It is too bad that during this period, instead of defending the human right to make love to one's mate in unhurried joy, the preacher was ordinarily prodding his listener to work even harder in the sweatshop--and making him feel guilty for the brief bliss he was able to have in bed.

Now, with more time to develop the erotic side of human life, Western post-industrial man finds himself stunted and insecure. He oscillates giddily between suppression and self-indulgence. Sex ethics are in chaos and the hippies respond with a simple affirmation that sex is good and that's that. Their position hardly provides an adequate ethic for our time, but it does challenge the church to devise a sex ethic that will transcend present prudery and hypocrisy. The challenge is comparable with the one posed for the work ethic. Just as the economy of scarcity is disappearing, so the society requiring endlessly delayed gratification may also be expiring. Christian sex ethics in the past have too often been based on the dangers of sex--disease, disgrace and unwanted pregnancy. The hippies seem to want to pull out all the stops, but theirs is an overreaction that should have been expected. What we need now is a sexual ethic based on the goodness of sex--its joy, its beauty and its power to effectuate communication. Promiscuity is to be avoided now not because sex is evil but because sex in the context of a wider, deeper and more enduring relationship is so much more significant. The present crisis in sexual ethics challenges us to redefine marriage not as a license for intercourse, not as a remedy for sin, but as the way to build the permanent and comprehensive context without which the significance of sex is often dissipated.

But does Christianity have the resources to fashion an affirmative sex ethic? To say the least, Christianity is short on erotic literature. There is the sensuous Song of Songs in the Old Testament, which ought to be read--especially by youngsters--much more than it is today. John Donne once wrote some lovely poems that are both erotic and theological. But in its effort to forge a sexual ethic that affirms the goodness and pleasurability of sex and at the same time calls for maturity and accountability in its use, Christianity will have to overcome many elements in its history.

The earliest Christian theologians, shocked by the sexual excesses of the late Roman Empire, recoiled for the most part into a preoccupation with the virtue of chastity. Saint Augustine, whose conversion to Christianity was closely tied up with his guilt feelings about his youthful amours, built an anti-sexual bias into Christian theology very early in the game. Luther was considerably earthier, so much so that for years his coarse remarks about sex supplied juicy fuel for the fires of Catholic polemicists. Still, when one surveys the whole history of Christian sexual ethics, it is clear that much remains to be done. One reason for this is simply that there were other battles to fight first, such as ensuring the position of women. The church fought a centurylong battle to make sure marriages were based on consent and were not mere property transactions. In the past 300 years, Christian sex ethics have been virtually indistinguishable from the mores of bourgeois society. But the hippies are anything but bourgeois. In their effort to find some way to understand sex, they have turned to versions of Hindu sexual mysticism or to indiscriminate orgyism. They often fail to see the enormous powers of self-deception inherent in sex--or to recognize that a focusing of sexual energy into a continuing human relationship can enhance rather than diminish the erotic quality.

Christianity does have something to learn from the hippies, but I do not think the church's attitude toward them should exclude all elements of criticism or even judgment. Like every human movement, the hippies have their weaknesses and are subject to the same corroding corruption that besets us all. Already, there are sectarian disputes among the nonleaders of the different hippie tribes. Father figures such as Timothy Leary have emerged and, despite themselves, often elicit attitudes of dependency in their young followers that are just as constricting as the ones the hippies seek to escape at home. Commercialism has reared its seductive head; the Jefferson Airplane made a musical commercial to sell White Levis. There is an enormous danger that whatever the movement does have to offer will be inundated by overexposure and by America's indefatigable capacity to co-opt its opposition into court jesters.

Perhaps the greatest danger the movement must confront is that its present theology, however confused and eclectic, still contains very little corrective to just plain self-indulgence. Hippies tend to see all sin as part of the world from which they dropped out. Their own tribes are pure and undefiled. This kind of moral chiaroscuro can lead to a terrible arrogance and to a pouty kind of self-righteousness. When softened by love and tolerance, it isn't so bad; but when it gets overzealous, it can be quite ugly. As one ardent young hippie once told me, "Everything I do is an act of love, even if it doesn't seem like it to anyone else." I'd prefer to be delivered from that kind of love and live with people who know that human motives are usually very mixed.

I'm also a little worried about the political naïveté of many hippies. To declare your independence from society doesn't mean society won't be able to devise ways to use you. There have been romantic youth protests in the past that have later become ensnarled in tragic political movements. Never was there a fresher, more innocent or more bucolic youth movement than that which emerged in Germany right after World War One. Deserting city life and the debilitating refinements of society, young people pedaled out to the countryside with knapsacks to find nature, God and purity. That movement disappeared almost without trace into the Hitler-jugend of the 1930s. If the hippie movement grows, it will become interesting to political leaders--including demagogs. Will it be strong enough and sufficiently self-conscious to prevent itself from being exploited? Will it eventually be had?

Finally, there is an element of truth in the assertion that hippie dropoutism represents a refusal to love the hungry neighbor, if that neighbor happens to be in India or Brazil. For the young people of the famine zones, no amount of LSD, pot or barefoot frolicking will get them through the day. They need food, and for them, in contrast to my hippie informant in Haight, food is not. Will the preliminary alienation of the hippies lead eventually to a more sophisticated and creative form of alienation, one that strives for real social change? Or will the hippies be content to wait for an apocalypse, a collapse of the present inhuman order, no matter how long it takes and no matter how many people starve in the interim?

Of course, the hippies are not socially engaged and are not doing much directly about famine in India or apartheid in South Africa. The trouble is that most of the people who voice this criticism of them are not doing much about these things, either. Even those who think they are making a difference may be deceiving themselves. Here, the hippies remind us that for many young people, there just seems to be no way to do anything that will change anything. They have seen the civil rights movement fade and the peace demonstrations fail to accomplish their ends. They see little difference between the political parties and find little to choose between what they know of America and what they hear about the U. S. S. R. It is clear that if young people with this mentality are to be persuaded of the worth of political participation, our political institutions will need major overhauling and our policy options must be real ones. Alternatives must be widened and the number of choices expanded. Otherwise, the dropout culture will burgeon, the society will become more rigid and real citizen participation in American life will become a distant memory, ritually reenacted in New England town meetings.

What will eventually happen to today's hippies? Many adults declare bravely and with a note of wishful thinking that they'll all be back eventually, working for insurance companies, mowing their lawns, watching TV. I doubt it. I think the present generational split is more serious than ones we have had in the past, that the present dropout generation has the wherewithal to stay dropped out and that some undoubtedly will. Others will, of course, return, after a sojourn in the East Village or Haight-Ashbury, to become model citizens. Still others, however--and this may be the largest group--will eventually marry, get jobs and settle down, but only more or less. They will not bring to their occupations that life-and-death earnestness old personnel managers looked for. They will take it much easier at work, will maintain contacts with hippie and semi-hippie groups, will have a much more permissive attitude toward sex and may continue to smoke pot or take an occasional LSD trip. Work will not be their main source of identity and they will raise children who will not have to rebel against the values they rebelled against. But children always have to rebel against something, so the children of today's hippies may eventually enrage their parents by cutting their hair, drinking beer and playing music softly.

Still, whatever eventually happens to the hippie movement, it is a reality today and only the deaf and dumb and blind can avoid responding to it. For Christianity, it poses both a promise and a problem. It demonstrates that man's thirst for God and love and authenticity may take strange forms, but it is never quenched. It also suggests that a church still absorbed in its own internal problems, and often preoccupied with the past, must bestir itself if its discipline and its vision are to mean anything to the young Americans of the Sixties and Seventies. They are hungering for bread. It would be too bad if they had to settle for either a stone or a sugar cube. They deserve better.