Category Archives: Music

Christian Pop Star Jennifer Knapp Comes Out


My praise goes out today to the courageous and talented singer Jennifer Knapp , a star of the contemporary Christian music scene, who has come out as a lesbian and a person of faith. The Grammy nominee and Dove Awards winner stopped recording in 2003, and now her fans know why.

Though she is no longer on a “Christian” record label, her statements to the media suggest that she still considers herself a believer. The evangelical magazine Christianity Today ran an exclusive interview that is sure to cause controversy among its largely non-affirming readership. Though interviewer Mark Moring can’t resist calling her orientation a “lifestyle choice”, I think the magazine still deserves props for giving her a respectful forum to discuss an issue that many would like to pretend doesn’t exist. Here’s an excerpt (boldface emphasis mine):

Were you struggling with same-sex attraction when writing your first three albums? Those songs are so confessional, clearly coming from a place of a person who knows her need for grace and mercy.

Knapp: To be honest, it never occurred to me while writing those songs. I wasn’t seeking out a same-sex relationship during that time.

During my college years, I received some admonishment about some relationships I’d had with women. Some people said, “You might want to renegotiate that,” even though those relationships weren’t sexual. Hindsight being 20/20, I guess it makes sense. But if you remove the social problem that homosexuality brings to the church—and the debate as to whether or not it should be called a “struggle,” because there are proponents on both sides—you remove the notion that I am living my life with a great deal of joy. It never occurred to me that I was in something that should be labeled as a “struggle.” The struggle I’ve had has been with the church, acknowledging me as a human being, trying to live the spiritual life that I’ve been called to, in whatever ramshackled, broken, frustrated way that I’ve always approached my faith. I still consider my hope to be a whole human being, to be a person of love and grace. So it’s difficult for me to say that I’ve struggled within myself, because I haven’t. I’ve struggled with other people. I’ve struggled with what that means in my own faith. I have struggled with how that perception of me will affect the way I feel about myself.

Are you beyond those struggles?

Knapp: I don’t know. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. But now that I’m back in the U.S., I’m contending with the culture shock of moving back here. There’s some extremely volatile language and debate—on all sides—that just breaks my heart. Frankly, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t be making any kind of public statement at all. But there are people I care about within the church community who would seek to throw me out simply because of who I’ve chosen to spend my life with.

So why come out of the closet, so to speak?

Knapp: I’m in no way capable of leading a charge for some kind of activist movement. I’m just a normal human being who’s dealing with normal everyday life scenarios. As a Christian, I’m doing that as best as I can. The heartbreaking thing to me is that we’re all hopelessly deceived if we don’t think that there are people within our churches, within our communities, who want to hold on to the person they love, whatever sex that may be, and hold on to their faith. It’s a hard notion. It will be a struggle for those who are in a spot that they have to choose between one or the other. The struggle I’ve been through—and I don’t know if I will ever be fully out of it—is feeling like I have to justify my faith or the decisions that I’ve made to choose to love who I choose to love.

Have you ever felt like you had to choose between your faith or your gay feelings?

Knapp: Yes. Absolutely.

Because you felt they were incompatible?

Knapp: Well, everyone around me made it absolutely clear that this is not an option for me, to invest in this other person—and for me to choose to do so would be a denial of my faith.

What about what Scripture says on the topic?

Knapp: The Bible has literally saved my life. I find myself between a rock and a hard place—between the conservative evangelical who uses what most people refer to as the “clobber verses” to refer to this loving relationship as an abomination, while they’re eating shellfish and wearing clothes of five different fabrics, and various other Scriptures we could argue about. I’m not capable of getting into the theological argument as to whether or not we should or shouldn’t allow homosexuals within our church. There’s a spirit that overrides that for me, and what I’ve been gravitating to in Christ and why I became a Christian in the first place.

Some argue that the feelings of homosexuality are not sinful, but only the act. What would you say?

Knapp: I’m not capable of fully debating that well. But I’ve always struggled as a Christian with various forms of external evidence that we are obligated to show that we are Christians. I’ve found no law that commands me in any way other than to love my neighbor as myself, and that love is the greatest commandment. At a certain point I find myself so handcuffed in my own faith by trying to get it right—to try and look like a Christian, to try to do the things that Christians should do, to be all of these things externally—to fake it until I get myself all handcuffed and tied up in knots as to what I was supposed to be doing there in the first place.

If God expects me, in order to be a Christian, to be able to theologically justify every move that I make, I’m sorry. I’m going to be a miserable failure.


Amen to that! Enjoy this 2008 live performance of her song “Whole Again”:

Daddy, daddy do you miss me.
The way I crawled upon your knee.
Those childish games of hide and seek
Seem a million miles away.

Am I lost in some illusion.
Or am I what you thought I’d be.
Now it seems I’ve found myself
In need to be forgiven.
Is there still room upon that knee?

If I give my Life, If I lay it down
Can you turn this Life around, around
Can I be made clean
By this offering of my soul.
Can I be made whole again?

Have I labored all for nothing.
Trying to make it on my own.
Fear to reach out to the hand
Of one who understands me
Say I’d rather be here all alone.

It’s all my fault I sit and wallow in seclusion.
As if I had no hope at all,
I guess truth becomes you
I have seen it all in motion
That Pride comes before the fall.

If I give my Life, If I lay it down
Can you turn this Life around, around
Can I be made clean
By this offering of my soul.
Can I be made whole again?

Can I offer up this simple prayer.

Pray it finds a simple ear.
A scratch in your infinite time.
Not withstanding my fallings
Not withstanding my crime!

If I give my Life, If I lay it down

Can you turn this Life around, around
Can I be made clean,
By this offering of my soul.
Can I be made whole again?

If I give my Life, If I lay it down

Can you turn this Life around, around
Can I be made clean
By this offering of my soul.
Can I be made whole again?

(Lyrics courtesy of allthelyrics.com)

Easter Hymn: “Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain”


A belated happy Easter to my readers! (The liturgical season of Easter is actually 50 days long, so this post is not as untimely as it might appear.)

NetHymnal.org has posted a list of 188 Easter hymns, with lyrics and music to sing along. This is one of my favorites. Listen to the melody here.

Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness;
God hath brought forth Israel into joy from sadness;
Loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters,
Led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.

’Tis the spring of souls today; Christ has burst His prison,
And from three days’ sleep in death as a sun hath risen;
All the winter of our sins, long and dark, is flying
From His light, to Whom we give laud and praise undying.

Now the queen of seasons, bright with the day of splendor,
With the royal feast of feasts, comes its joy to render;
Comes to glad Jerusalem, who with true affection
Welcomes in unwearied strains Jesus’ resurrection.

Neither might the gates of death, nor the tomb’s dark portal,
Nor the watchers, nor the seal hold Thee as a mortal;
But today amidst the twelve Thou didst stand, bestowing
That Thy peace which evermore passeth human knowing.

“Alleluia!” now we cry to our King immortal,
Who, triumphant, burst the bars of the tomb’s dark portal;
“Alleluia!” with the Son, God the Father praising,
“Alleluia!” yet again to the Spirit raising.

Holy Week Non-Random Song: Graham Kendrick, “To You O Lord” (Psalm 25)


Not all of Graham Kendrick’s music is my style, but this praise chorus based on Psalm 25 wonderfully uplifts and comforts me. During this Holy Week, when I hear the line “No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame,” I think of Jesus’ humiliation on the cross. Because he took on the worst shame, out of love for us, and triumphed over it, we don’t have to be so afraid of any defeat, mockery, or prejudice we encounter in our lives. Not that it doesn’t hurt, in the moment, but we should remember that God’s love for us is more significant than any human judgments.

(Copyrighted lyrics available on Graham Kendrick’s official website, and in the video.)

I’ll be vacationing without my computer this weekend, so no more blogging for a few days. Have a blessed Easter and Passover, everyone.

Palm Sunday Non-Random Song: “My Song Is Love Unknown”


This is one of my favorite hymns for Holy Week. Both the music and the lyrics are complex, and the message goes straight to the heart. Words by Samuel Crossman (1624-1683), tune by John Ireland (1879-1962). Sing along at Oremus Hymnal, an online version of the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal.

Here’s an intimate, low-key performance by Barbara Dickson, against the beautiful backdrop of Lindisfarne island.

My song is love unknown,
my Savior’s love to me,
love to the loveless shown
that they might lovely be.
O who am I
that for my sake
my Lord should take
frail flesh and die?

He came from his blest throne
salvation to bestow,
but men made strange, and none
the longed-for Christ would know.
But O my friend,
my friend indeed,
who at my need,
his life did spend.

Sometimes they strew his way,
and his strong praises sing,
resounding all the day
hosannas to their King.
Then “Crucify!”
is all their breath,
and for his death
they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
he gave the blind their sight.
Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these
themselves displease,
and ‘gainst him rise.

They rise, and needs will have
my dear Lord made away;
a murderer they save,
the Prince of Life they slay.
Yet steadfast he
to suffering goes,
that he his foes
from thence might free.

Here might I stay and sing,
no story so divine:
never was love, dear King,
never was grief like thine.
This is my friend,
in whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend.

Saturday Random Song: Brenton Brown, “Lord, Reign in Me’


Tomorrow our church begins a two-week class on contemporary Christian music. This praise song was on the CD included with the class materials, and I’ve been listening to it every day. After a long spell of numbness, I don’t yet feel the creative energy of God moving in me again, but I’m almost ready to ask Him for it. That’s always a good sign.

Over all the earth, You reign on high
Every mountain stream, every sunset sky
But my one request, Lord, my only aim
Is that You’d reign in me again

Lord, reign in me, reign in Your power
Over all my dreams in my darkest hour
You are the Lord of all I am
So won’t You reign in me again

Over every thought, over every word
May my life reflect the beauty of my Lord
‘Cause you mean more to me than any earthly thing
So won’t You reign in me again

Thursday Random Song: Scissor Sisters, “Intermission”


I discovered the Scissor Sisters in a (possibly apocryphal) forwarded email in which a conservative pastor was warning parents about cultural influences that would turn their children gay. It’s working.

(The song is only 2:36 minutes but all the videos I could find on YouTube were 3:51 minutes, with an extra minute of dead air at the end. Is it meant to symbolize The Void? Listen and decide.)

Intermission

When you’re standing on the side of a hill
Feeling like your day may be done
Here it comes, strawberry smog
Chasing away the sun
Don’t let those precious moments fool you
Happiness is getting you down
A rainbow never smiles or blinks
It’s just a candy colored frown

You were going on at half-past seven
Now it’s going on a quarter to nine
All the angels want to know
Are you lost or treading water?
And you’re going on your fifteenth bender
But you’ve only got a matter of time
Yes we’ve all got seeds to sow
Not everyone’s got lambs to slaughter

When the night wind starts to turn
Into the ocean breeze
And the dew drops sting and burn
Like angry honey bees
That is when you hear the song falling from the sky
Happy yesterday to all
We were born to die
Sometimes you’re filled with the notion
The afterlife’s a moment away
You want to tell someone the way that you feel
But then you ain’t got nothing to say
You fight for freedom from devotion
A battle that will always begin
With somebody giving you a piece of advice;
By the way you’re living in sin

Now there’s never gonna be an intermission
But there’ll always be a closing night
Never entertain those visions
Lest you may have packed your baggage
First impressions are cheap auditions
Situations are long goodbyes
Truth so often to living dormant
Good luck walks and bullshit flies

When the headlights guide your way
You know the place is right
When the treetops sing and sway
Don’t go to sleep tonight
That is when you see the sign
Luminous and high:
Tomorrow’s not what it used to be
We were born to die
Happy yesterday to all
We were born to die


Lyrics courtesy of
Sing365.com

Friday Non-Random Song: Emmy Rossum, “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”


I offered some brief thoughts on the sublime in my last post, honoring fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who committed suicide last week. “Every angel is terrifying,” wrote the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, expressing how we feel when art touches us with something more than mere beauty, something so far beyond mortal experience that it leaves us feeling brushed by the corner of Death’s robe.

Perhaps it’s a myth that artistic geniuses are more affected by depression and suicide than the general population. Nonetheless, I wonder whether they push themselves to walk that tightrope between this world and the next…and some fall off.

This scene from the 2005 film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “The Phantom of the Opera” seems to me to express the artist’s dilemma. Christine must choose between the sinister, disfigured, passionate Phantom, her musical mentor, and Raoul, her rather bland but aristocratic childhood sweetheart. Like thousands of other female fans, when I first saw this musical at the impressionable age of 18, I felt she’d made the wrong choice.

Though my crush on the Phantom lingers, I saw a different dimension when I watched the film 15 years later. Christine appears to turn away from the source of her musical inspiration, toward a safer life as a conventional upper-class wife, because she fears where this romance with grief, darkness and death might lead. As W.B. Yeats wrote:

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

That’s not to say that one must live a dangerous or sensually excessive life in order to produce great art. (Sorry to disappoint you.) I think it does mean that we have to be willing to enter the dark places in ourselves.



Thursday Non-Random Song: Steve Taylor, “This Disco (Used to Be a Cute Cathedral)”


According to the liner notes for this satirical 1980s Christian rock song, Steve Taylor was inspired by a visit to New York City’s legendary Limelight nightclub, which was housed in a deconsecrated church:

“…I started to imagine it was Sunday night, and that the church elders had devised all this as a way to attract new members.

Most of us, myself included, are guilty of wishing Christianity was more fashionable. But the Apostle Paul’s example of becoming ‘all things to all men’ in order to reach across cultural barriers can sometimes be used as an excuse to dilute the Gospel message, and hopefully draw a trendier, more affluent flock.”

Sunday needs a pick-me-up?
Here’s your chance
Do you get tired of the same old square dance?

Allemande right now
All join hands
Do-si-do to the promised boogieland

Got no need for altar calls
Sold the altar for the mirror balls
Do you shuffle? Do you twist?
‘Cause with a hot hits playlist, now we say

This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the year
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where we only play the stuff you’re wanting to hear

Mickey does the two-step
One, Two, Swing
All the little church mice doing their thing

Boppin’ in the belltower
Rumba to the right
Knock knock, who’s there? Get me out of this limelight

So, you want to defect?
Officer, what did you expect?
Got no rhythm, got no dough
He said, “Listen, Bozo, don’t you know”

This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the week
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
But we got no room if you ain’t gonna be chic

Sell your holy habitats
This ship’s been deserted by sinking rats
The exclusive place to go
It’s where the pious pogo, don’t you know

This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the year
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where we only play the stuff you’re wanting to hear

This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the week
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
But we got no room if you ain’t gonna be chic

(Lyrics and liner notes courtesy of YouTube.)
****

Taylor’s line “Where we only play the stuff you’re wanting to hear” sticks in my mind. We’re all familiar with the pressure on pastors to please their congregations with easy, flattering messages. Liberals pride themselves on being inclusive, conservatives on walking the straight and narrow. Both attitudes are uncomfortably similar to the exclusivity that’s the chief pleasure of club-going. Are you hot enough to get into the Kingdom?

Some serious Christians, therefore, are instinctively skeptical of any religious message that doesn’t increase our pain and self-sacrifice. When Rev. Peter Gomes, the openly gay Harvard University chaplain, gave a Bible lecture here at Smith College last year, he described the core of Jesus’ message as change that leads to liberation. Afterward an evangelical acquaintance of mine disparaged the lecture by quoting 2 Tim 4:3-4: “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” Christianity Today cited the same verse to dismiss the legitimacy of the Human Rights Campaign’s Out In Scripture series of GLBT-inclusive reflections on the weekly lectionary.

But if the Word we’re hearing is not something we can “receive with joy” (Mt 4:16), is it really the gospel? Yes, we are eager to hear that the love we feel for one another in our bodies and souls is not a sin. We are also, all of us, too happy to be told that we’re better than someone else, especially if we don’t have to do anything to gain this privileged status. Whose ears are really itching for flattery here?

I’m tired of Grape-Nuts theology. Sacrifice for the sake of proving your toughness is merely pride. Wherever people feel joy, connection, integration of body and spirit, freedom and fellowship, Jesus is present. Maybe the cathedral can learn something from the disco.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Song: The Boyer Brothers, “Step by Step”


Horace Clarence Boyer (July 28, 1935-July 31, 2009) was a renowned scholar of African-American gospel music who taught at U Mass Amherst. He was the editor of “Lift Every Voice and Sing II“, the African-American hymnal now widely used in Episcopal churches. Before his last illness, he used to come to St. John’s in Northampton once a year and guest-conduct our choir, steering us with gentle humor to break out of the staid rhythms of the 1982 Hymnal and add some swing to tunes like “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit”. This 1952 recording features him and his brother James, who recorded several gospel albums in the 1950s and 1960s.

Our minister yesterday gave a good sermon on the tragedy of the Haitian earthquake. She encouraged us to build a bridge between those who despair of finding God’s presence in a world of suffering, and those who seek meaning by blaming the victims for “God’s wrath”. Where is God in all this? We are God’s hands in the world. God is present when we see different nations and religions working together to give humanitarian aid.

You can help by donating to Partners In Health. PIH has been advocating for economic justice and providing community-based health care in Haiti for over 20 years. Follow their efforts on their Stand With Haiti blog.