Kelsey Grammer got emotional when he talked about his own faith and his new movie, in which he plays a pastor who lets hippies join his church congregation.
Kelsey Grammer, who most people know from his work on Frasier or his iconic role as Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons, will play Chuck Smith, an American pastor who decided to bring some rock and roll to his church to get people excited again.
He got some hippies and a street pastor named Lonnie Frisbee to help him do this. Jonathan Roumie plays Lonnie Frisbee in this movie.
It’s called Jesus Revolution, and Kelsey Grammer says that when his wife Kayte Walsh first saw it, she was so moved by it that she started crying.
The 68-year-old star said:
It’s really uplifting. It’s a good movie,
My wife and I saw it together. She was just dissolved in tears and said, ‘It’s the best thing you’ve ever done.’
Kelsey Grammer was raised as a Christian Scientist, but he later became a protestant and says he remembers the Jesus hippies from the 1960s and 1970s.
They were energized and optimistic, and I thought that was a great thing to see,
he said.
Kelsey Grammer talked to USA Today about how his character brought new life to his religion by including people who had been on the outside.
What Chuck did went back to one of the basic precepts of Christianity, which is inclusion,
he said.
He thought, ‘Well, I’m doing it this way and people aren’t listening,’ so he finally surrendered. He said, ‘You show me a hippie and I’ll listen.’
Sure enough, it became a very dynamic relationship between him and Lonnie Frisbee.
It became a great adventure, which is still going on.
His [Calvary Chapel] church branched into 1,000 churches around the country and it still exists.
Christian contemporary music is going gangbusters and (the Jesus movement) put that at his doorstep.
Grammer, whose faith is very important to him, saw the role as more than just a way to make money.
Grammer continued:
I’ve had hiccups. I’ve had some tragic times,
I have wrestled with those and worked my way through them: sometimes rejecting faith, sometimes rejecting God even, in a period of being pretty angry about it, like, ‘Where were you?’ That kind of thing.
But I have come to terms with it and have found great peace in my faith and in Jesus.
It’s not cavalier — Jesus made a difference in my life. That’s not anything I’ll apologize for.
Jesus Revolution is out in cinemas now.
