Was Explo '72 the "Christian Woodstock"?

The Christian Woodstock

Excerpt:

Explo .... saw evangelicals shedding some of their cultural conservatism. Every night, Christian rock music had the delegates in the Cotton Bowl swaying and singing before Mr. Bright or Mr. Graham took the stage. On the final night of the event, tens of thousands of other Dallas residents joined the students for a "Jesus Music Festival" featuring the music of Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. The young people in attendance danced to the music and pointed their index fingers to the sky in the "one way" symbol of the Jesus Movement.

Looking back, it is hard to appreciate just how revolutionary these steps were for evangelicals in 1972. Crusade's Mr. Bright, one of the most influential evangelicals of the post-World War II generation, had long rejected rock music -- along with long hair and dancing. Less than a year before Explo, he told a reporter that rock 'n' roll "wasn't for us . . . because of the complaints of ex-addicts." At the time, conservative evangelicals strongly associated rock music with drug abuse. Mr. Bright's son Zachary remembers telling his father: "You can have a conservative view of music and keep what worked for you, or you can win [young people to Christ]." "I'd rather win," Campus Crusade's president responded.

The organization's embrace of rock music at Explo '72 went a long way toward revolutionizing evangelicalism's relationship with popular culture. Only a few fundamentalists seriously swim against the cultural tide today. Explo may not have changed the world, but it changed American evangelicalism.

Comment: Article is about how Mike How Huckabee became "a hip evangelical politician". I was with Campus Crusade for Christ in '71-72, but left before Explo '72.