Jesus Freak

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Jesus freak is a term arising from the late 1960s and early 1970s counterculture and is incorrectly used as a pejorative for those involved in the Jesus movement. As Tom Wolfe illustrates in the Electric Koolaid Acid Test, the term freak with a preceding qualifier was a strictly neutral term and described any counter-culture member with a specific interest in a given subject; hence acid freak Jesus freak. The term freak was in common enough currency that Hunter Thompson's failed bid for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado was as a member of the Freak Power party. However, many later members of the movement, misunderstanding the counter-cultural roots believed the term to be negative, and co-opted and embraced the term, and its usage broadened to describe a Christian subculture throughout the hippie and back-to-the-land movements that focused on universal love and pacifism, and relished the radical nature of Jesus' message. Jesus freaks often carried and distributed copies of the Good News for Modern Man, a 1966 translation of the New Testament written in modern English. In Australia, and other countries, the term Jesus freak, along with Bible basher, is still used in a derogatory manner. In Germany there is a Christian youth culture, also called Jesus Freaks, that claims to have its roots in the American movement.