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Christianity Has a Kanye West Problem
Now a professing Christian, many people are ignoring a massive issue with Kanye’s “gospel” message
*This is Part 3 of a 4 part series of personal essays on faith and spirituality. Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4 also available.
The burning albums people tossed into the bonfire popped and hissed. Their bubbling surface reminded me of the way the T-1000 from Terminator 2 melted in vat of molten steel at the end of the movie. A group of us watched the bonfire transfixed.
“You can hear them demons hissing,” one boy mused in a southern drawl. He stood next to a pretty girl many of the boys followed around camp like lost puppies. My eyes flitted toward his direction and I muttered under my breath. I thought about reminding him that plastic hisses when burned, but I was already the outcast. I tried to recall my school history lessons while I held my tongue. Didn’t the Nazis smash Jewish albums or something? Or was that from the Christian Bale movie, Swing Kids? I let those comments slide too, then turned and walked off down the path.
Keeping my eyes on the dirt in front of me, I glimpsed the popular kids sneaking into the woods to smoke weed and make out while they left me alone with my “devil music.” I was a middle schooler at church camp, and the pastors had just encouraged everyone to burn their secular albums. Mine were the worst though. Metal was strictly forbidden in Christian circles and Metallica would earn you a one-way ticket to hell. That was after you murdered your parents and did meth, of course.
Not long after this experience, I discovered the band Nine Inch Nails and resonated with Trent Reznor’s lyrics from the smash hit, “Head Like A Hole.” On line in particular struck a nerve. Reznor growls:
“God money, let’s go dancing on the backs of the bruised”
This lyric hit home because of my religious experience where pastors often preached morality and profiteered off their flocks. The Word of Faith movement — a doctrine that taught Jesus wants you to be happy, healthy, wealthy, and privileged — was the secret sauce of large congregations during the 1980s and 90s. Politics and preachers mingled, lines growing blurrier, while the Moral Majority and…
