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COPYRIGHT 2006 American Humanist Association
THE YEAR WAS 1972. The young woman seated across from me in my study was the first "Jesus freak" I'd ever met. She was in her early twenties, bright-eyed and assertive, dressed in the thrift-shop motley that was the hippie fashion of the 1960s. She had asked to interview me for a new Berkeley-based magazine called Right On, but she came as much to talk as to listen. She wanted to tell me about the Christian commune that she had helped organize. Though I heard her out politely, it was with a kind of smug dismissiveness. That was, after all, the period when people with any taste for religion were inclined to journey east--towards Zen or Hinduism or Sufism--rather than back to the old rugged cross.
I soon discovered that she had come with a purpose in mind. Would I be willing to let her quote me to the effect that she and her barefoot apostles were the true counterculture of the day? I had recently coined the term to suggest that youthful protest had to do with issues that went beyond standard politics. I had to admit that the Christian populism she was advocating--"Give all you have to the poor and follow me"--was decidedly "counter" with respect to mainstream American...
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