Has it really been 40 years since Woodstock? It seems like barely a decade ago that Limp Bizkit exhorted hippies to “Break Stuff,” the Chili Peppers encouraged their fans to set things on “Fire,” and Kid Rock convinced the audience that they should “Turn on, tune in, and Bawitdaba out.”
But, historians argue, it has been forty years, making it just the right time to reconsider Woodstock as a “spiritual” experience:
“Spirituality may not be the first thing people associate with Woodstock,” says Fornatale, who recently talked about his book at the Museum at Bethel Woods, situated on the site of the festival. “But young people were searching for an identity and for a meaning that they found there that weekend.”
Fornatale sees the festival as a massive communion ceremony featuring hymns like Amazing Grace and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot performed by Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez, sermons by musical prophets the likes of Sylvester Stewart of Sly and the Family Stone, and a modern-day re-enactment of Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fishes exhibited in the communal ethos of festival goers who shared food with hungry “brothers and sisters.”
My memories of the event revolve more around $4 bottles of water and $12 mini-pizzas, which I certainly don’t remember transsubstantiating into the blood and flesh of Christ, although things are a little bit hazy from the brown acid, which I heard might have been bad.
What’s more, these historians argue, the aesthetic permissiveness of the festival helped lay the groundwork for a new generation of “cool Christian” preachers:
Now the unbuttoned look is the norm for megachurch pastors such as Rick Warren. “No one questions that a burly fellow who stands up front with a beard and a Hawaiian shirt can speak prophetically about the Gospel message,” said Oppenheimer. “That’s not something that would have happened in the 1950s or 1960s.”
So, in addition to all the other things that filthy hippies deserve blame for, we need to add Rick Warren. Thanks, jerks!
