Diksha Sundriyal
Based on the autobiographical book of the same name by Greg Laurie and Ellen Santilli Vaughn, ‘Jesus Revolution’ is set in the 60s and follows the true story of the Jesus movement, which started in Southern California and spread across the world. The story focuses on the journey of Lonnie Frisbee, Chuck Smith, and Greg Laurie, whose paths collide as they try to find a place for themselves and their beliefs.
It begins with a chance meeting between Lonnie and Chuck’s daughter, Janette. In the movie, she picks up the hitchhiker hippie, who turns out to be Lonnie and introduces him to her father, Chuck. Their collaboration leads to a movement that changes the face of Christianity, the effects of which are seen even now.
Janette Smith is Enjoying Her Post-Retirement Life
Born on June 30, 1945, Janette was one of the four children of Kay and Chuck Smith. In 1974, she married Gregory Manderson, who passed away in December 2005 after a long battle with brain cancer. They have four children: Caitlyn, Camberlyn, Brittany, and Cameron. Now in her late 70s, Janette Smith Manderson lives in Costa Mesa, California, and is enjoying her retirement.
In the movie, Janette is open-minded about the hippies, even though her parents think they are drug-using young people who have strayed from the path of the Lord. She meets Lonnie on the way and picks him up, believing it to be a sign her father was looking for. In reality, Janette came in contact with Lonnie through her then-boyfriend. By then, Lonnie had already started sharing his thoughts on Christianity and his love for Christ. Janette thought it would be interesting to introduce him to her parents, especially her mother, who wanted to meet a hippie and know more about them.
Talking about the movement and how it overturned the perception of the hippies, Janette revealed that they were looking for something that would add meaning to their lives and give them the answers they were searching for. “They just said it was a quest for satisfaction. They wanted ‘peace and love.’ That was a big motto (and mantra) of theirs,” she said. She believes her father helped them find those answers. She feels grateful for growing up in a household where she “already had peace in [her] heart, being with the Lord since [she] was a little girl.”
Much like her father, Janette became an important part of the movement and continued working on it after he passed away. For the most part, she lived a quiet and peaceful life but had to take a stand that brought the limelight to her family and the church under scrutiny when she stood up for her father. In 2014, she filed a lawsuit against her brother-in-law, Brian Brodersen, and the church board, alleging that they “hastened the pastor’s death, took control of the Costa Mesa-based ministry, and cheated Smith’s wife and family out of money they were owed.”
According to Janette, the board and Brodersen were in charge of her father’s in-home care, and on his last day, the nurse refused to call the paramedics. They were called hours later and believed they could have saved her father if they had been called earlier. “It’s still a shock. I can’t really process it. Why didn’t they help my dad?” she said, expressing her dismay on the matter. She also added that she was out of town and was not notified about his deteriorating health and how close he was to taking his final breaths.
Janette holds her parents in high regard and sees their contribution to the Jesus movement as significant in turning around many lives. She approved of the movie, even though it makes some changes for dramatic effect, and has encouraged people to see it if they “want to see what it was like 50 years ago, what the culture was like, what the young people were looking for, and why they were so lost.” Looking back at those years, Janette said the hippies experienced “a complete transformation of what God wanted to do inside them.”
She added: “They didn’t have to change their clothing. They didn’t have to change their life, as far as living on the streets, but once they belonged to the Lord, then He transformed them. For those of us that were Christ followers, it was very satisfying to see broken lives built back better.” She believes the movie does a great job of bringing that reality to life on the screen all these years later.
Read More: Jesus Revolution: Is Chuck Smith a Real Person? How Did He Die?
