Authors: Jennifer Knapp
It was difficult to watch as people's faces went from smiling to gloomy, once I confessed that my return was not the prodigal tale they imagined. It was my first round of experiencing the disappointment aimed at my spiritual character. I didn't want to sing about Jesus anymore, and that made me suspect to some.
I did several interviews with Christian journalists who sought to make sense of my departure and return. Reporter after reporter stuttered and stammered on the other end of the line, asking every question under the sun, probing to ascertain if anything legitimate remained of my faith, but when they would reach the moment where they had the opportunity to ask about my sexual orientation, no one was able to pull the trigger and ask me plainly. On more than one occasion, I was reminded that there were many rumors surrounding why I had left CCM. I always acknowledged that I was aware of speculations, but I offered no confessions. It was important to me that
people understood the one thing I had left to say to a Christian audienceâthat I couldn't work in a world where I felt pressure to be anything other than myself. I couldn't believe that no one asked me what self I needed to be! I thought I was throwing the door
wide
open, but not once did anyone actually ask me to clarify whether I was gay.
One of the CCM journalists printed that I had purposefully lied to him when I failed to offer a confession without a direct question to the effect. I was livid when Jesus R. Murrow reckoned it any business of his, or anyone else's for that matter, to expect me to reveal personal information, if he wasn't brave enough to ask the question in the first place. I'm not saying that I'm proud of that attitude, but therein lies the rub.
Is it anybody's business to ask something so deeply personal about someone else? When is it appropriate or necessary for me to disclose intimate details about my private life to a complete stranger? What difference does it make to my calling as a musician to reveal what genders I do and don't find sexually attractive? By not publicizing the truth about my sexual orientation, was I complicit to a conspiracy that implies being gay is in any way something to be ashamed about? What should it matter whether I was in or out? Was there truly a need to declare such things so publicly?
I wanted to know if there were answers to those questions, but I had to live it out to start learning.
It bothered me when that reporter called me a liar. I didn't lie. I didn't feel too great about taking advantage of his lack of skill either, but if he imagined using me to advance his own career, I figured he should at least have to work for it and ask the direct question.
Here we all were, hemming and hawing, like we didn't know the score. I wasn't ashamed of who I was, so why didn't I just say it? We both knew that Christianity, as a religious and corporate body, struggles with homosexuality, but if he wanted to write about it, then I hoped he would ante up and face the topic head on.
My previous fears started to get pushed aside by the part of me that was itching for a good, honest fight. I was done moving sideways. If I expected people like Jesus R. Murrow to be direct with their intentions, then I needed to back it up by living up to my own expectations of honesty.
That was the thing. Honesty. The rocky road to discovering myself had nearly loosened all my screws, but the time away afforded me the space to tighten them up again. I was comfortable enough in my own skin to be frank about what I saw. I knew that choosing to be honest had the potential to cost me a livelihood, but I wasn't going backward and having it cost me a life. It was a hard path, but it was good to learn: I am me and I am not ashamed. Why should I keep that bottled up inside?
I couldn't.
When I am set free, when I am myself, the truth of it shows up in my music. There have been times when I wished that I could hide it, but I've never been able to. The passions of my heart have always spun themselves into the fabric of the music. The God I see, the God that captures my amazement and imagination, always shows up. The God I doubt, the God I fear, heckles me and dares me to reach for a light in the darkness. The people I love, the dreams I dream, the person I am, has always flowered most in the fertile soil of truth.
I had hidden away for too long, fought too hard to find
peace with my own person to give up by going back to a place that was less than honest. All I have ever wanted is to create a safe space for people to find a pathway to hope. Murrow had at least one point that I began to appreciate. Right or wrong, the Christians that had supported my music career, those who still called themselves fans, wanted to know if I was still the same kind of soul-searching person that they had once known. Now, they were about to find out.
By the spring of 2010, the loose plan started to take shape. In March, I'd start touring nationally. In April, I'd do some Âinterviews during which I specifically discussed my sexuality. Then, in May, we'd release
Letting Go.
My first record in nearly a decade.
My first tour back was going to be a three-month stretch with a rabble-rousing, fringe Christian artist named Derek Webb. I wasn't all that keen on the idea in the beginning. I really wanted to get away from the CCM scene, but Derek insisted that we get together and chat about it over coffee. He emailed me a copy of his latest record,
Stockholm Syndrome,
and said I should give the idea a chance before I blew him off.
I didn't know it, but Derek was getting in some hot water for openly encouraging Christians to rethink their religious bias toward LGBT people. In particular, he wrote a song to none other than Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist infamy to get his point across:
How could you do this to me
How could you tell me you love me when you hate me
Freddie, please
âDerek Webb, “Freddie, Please,”
Stockholm Syndrome
I found it interesting that Derek didn't seem to be angling for me to make any confessions. It was unusual for most of my conversations at the time. He didn't ask me if I were gay. He didn't ask me to explain how I could call myself a Christian. We just sat down and started talking. We talked about what our experiences had been like in CCM. We talked about music and our faith. But, mostly, he wanted to welcome me back to the life of an artist.
He encouraged me to remember that many of our fans were cut from the same cloth and that I didn't need to be afraid to be myself. He wanted me to know that he was a friend who wanted to help me reconnect.
Derek's gesture was a genuine invitation unlike any I had received in my career. He was offering his hard-earned platform for me to get back on my feet. We really didn't know each other that well. He didn't owe me anything, yet there he was, standing up as a Christian man in Nashville, a known CCM artist, willing to put his reputation on the line to do his part in helping a fellow artist and friend succeed.
I could hardly believe that a person could do such a thing without ulterior motives. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something bad to happen, or for Derek to pull out. Instead, in the lead-up to the tour, we found ourselves jostling over who was going to open the show. Normally, artists fight to be the closing act, but Derek and I argued that the other should take it.
I said that I hadn't done a tour in years and there was no reason for me to close the night. Not only did I fear I lacked the stamina to play a closing set, I worried that audiences would be disappointed if Derek wasn't treated as the main attraction. I didn't think I was a strong enough artist to warrant the arrange
ment. Derek disagreed all the way to sound check of our first show.
“Yeah,” he said with an easy grin, “I think it's better that I open.” With that, he finished his sound check and the order was settled. He played his set and I sat in the dressing room chewing at my fingernails, imagining the whole time that the audience was going to walk out after Derek had finished.
I don't remember the city of our first show. I just remember the picture of walking out onto the stage, my knees a little wobbly, the stage bright, the room dark. My name was announced and, as usual, the applause started as I walked to the center and put on my guitar.
When I looked up, I realized that this was no ordinary welcome. The crowd was on their feet, clapping and cheering with electric enthusiasm. I stepped up to the mic to say “Thank you,” to quiet the crowd so that I could start, but the crowd wouldn't stop. They kept cheering and cheering. Before I could sing a single note, the room had risen to a standing ovation to welcome me back. I tried to quiet them, but they wouldn't be denied. It went on longer than any applause I can ever remember receiving. I tried several times to get on with things, but still they made me stand there and accept their appreciation.
Part of me didn't want such a big deal to be made because, when I finally allowed myself to take in the extraordinary scene, my eyes welled up with tears and my throat tightened to the point that I feared I wouldn't be able to sing at all. The raucous reception continued until the crowd knew I had fully received it. I had to put my hands over my face to try to keep all the emotions from spilling out.
After so many years of self-imposed silence, after years of
thinking I had no more music to offer nor any good thing to give back to the world, I found myself in a room full of people who seemed to acknowledge that I had returned from a very dark place and survived.
It was humbling. To receive their support was a privilege and an honor. I was so overwhelmed that they invited me back to do such a seemingly simple, yet life-giving, thing. They asked me to sing. It was the one thing that I feared I might never be given the chance to do again and it was theirs, for the moment, to make possible.
Though the news of my sexual orientation had yet to be confirmed, it was clear to many that I was not the same artist that had left those years ago. I had done several interviews in which I spoke about why I was moving on from Christian music, and even tried to talk a bit about how my faith was evolving. I could talk about my CCM burnout and my experience with Christian culture with relative ease, but when asked about what my spiritual evolution was
exactly
, I found myself tongue-tied as to how to respond. It was true, I had stopped going to church entirely (a news item I was careful to omit), but I had never stopped contemplating my spiritual life. The truth was, I had shifted away from the Evangelical Christian theology and practice, but I was terrified to talk about my specific personal views in public. Simply leaving the Evangelical tradition was grounds enough for the Christians who raised me to say I wasn't Christian anymore. But gay? Everything that I had ever been taught said that was a deal-breaker.
One might argue that I had lost my religion, but no one could take away my faith. I struggled (and still do) with the language of how to express the inner, holy, transformative experience
I had when I decided to follow Jesus. This kind of following is an act of
faith
that is different from
belief
.
Beliefs
are the certainties you're encouraged to hold
about
Jesus so that you can stay a voting member in your church (orthodoxy, according to Harvey Cox in
The Future of Faith
), but faith is the thing that changes the human heart.
When I saw
that
Jesus, I wanted to be like Him. Loving. Created. Good. Mindful. Open to the miraculous. Forgiving. Giving. Gracious. Loved. Compassionate. The day that I opened my heart to the invitation to accept, receive, give, and honor those sacred, holy things was the day that my life changed forever.
How could I ever have imagined how that one spiritual experience could have led me on such an odyssey? I had always tried to follow. I had always tried to listen. Now I was back in America, back on the road, and back on the firing line.
On stage, I didn't say much about Christianity. I was happy to play a few of the old songs, but mostly, I needed to get onto the new stuff. By the end of my set, you could feel people leaning in, urging me on to tell my secrets, if I had any, or explain more, but I kept mostly to the music and expressions of gratitude.
After the show, the pressure of our weighty reunion continued to build. I barely played for an hour on stage, but the conversations with folks after would go on for even longer.
I listened to story after story of how others had made journeys similar to my own. Many people talked about how they fought to keep hold of their personal spiritual experiences while others in their church insisted on judging their validity. Some were kicked out because of supposed sin, others for differing theologies, and more than enough just left because they felt like they couldn't trust their faith community to love them when the going
got tough. In all, they were the collective stories of the times when we need hope, faith, and our communities most.
Some shared stories about how they had moved on from the church after nightmare divorces, others disgruntled by the way those who shared the label
Christian
simply made them embarrassed to use the term. But the most personally heartbreaking of them all were the countless number of LGBT people who told how revealing their sexual orientation had cost them so dearly.
Even those who had never had sex, and had only admitted to being same-sex attracted, were getting pushed out of their churches. Singers were getting kicked out of choirs. Teenagers were being ostracized from their youth social groups and Bible studies. In extreme cases, adults and teens alike who sought a so-called God's correction were subjected to reparative therapies and exorcisms.
On more than one occasion, I had a young adult share with me how their religious parents told them that it would be better for them to douse themselves in gasoline and light a match than to be gay.
How can that possibly be okay? What can you say to soothe that kind of suffering except to hold a person in your arms and help them grieve? The only thing I could think to do was wrap my arms around those damaged souls and whisper my own confession, “I know; I get it. I'm gay too.”