Some of you are going to be mad at me. If I did not want to upset people, I would never have become a columnist. I’m not a big fan of Contemporary Christian Music. Listen to me before you throw guitar picks or capos my way. I confess that I love liturgy, “smells and bells” and “yells,” so when it comes to sacred music, I tend to lean towards Gregorian/Eastern Orthodox chants. CCM is a very important part of the church for many people, and I can understand this.
CCM was a death sentence for me. Although I was an evangelical at the time, I tried my best to embrace this genre. A young woman called K-LOVE thanked the station for their playlist which “saved her husband”. If your husband was saved by Jesus, I’m sorry for my skepticism. Not the jocks from K-LOVE. One time I was in Texas visiting a megachurch and the worship music was so loud it caused me to get tinnitus for a short period. This was a funny story for the church members. Another was repeated to me when I worked for a Christian radio station.
The GM informed me that CCM was not played at the station because the music was tuned and groomed to match whatever popular sound was in the air. The whole thing is a money grab. Find the episode of “South Park”, where the boys discover that they can be a Christian group by replacing the word “baby,” with “Jesus.”
The moment I started to doubt myself was when I went back to my old church. The young worship leader, armed with his guitar, led the congregation to sing a song called “Your Love is Marvelous” in which he sang a line about wanting to “smell God at the secret place”. I knew what he was trying to say. The truth is that wanting to “smell someone in the secret place” sounds very creepy. God included, I do not want to smell anyone “in the secret places”.
CCM probably needs a revamp.
With all that in mind, it is no surprise that a Drag Queen currently tops the charts of iTunes’ Christian Music. According to Them’s online magazine, Flamy Grant is a drag artist who recorded “Boys Will Be Girls”, a song by Derek Webb. The song is about LGBTQ+ individuals who were rejected by their church. Grant sings the song with a blue hairpiece in the video. They provided the following sample of lyrics:
I heard Jesus spent his life with people who were abandoned by men who were proud and afraid / If a church doesn’t love and celebrate you, they are believing lies that can’t help you or them.
Grant, a former worship leader, has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame thanks to a dispute with Sean Feucht. Feucht is described as a “missionary, musician, and activist” on his website. Sean Feucht, his high-school sweetheart Kate and their four children Keturah Malachi Ezra, and Zion travel the world to share the power of the gospel.
Feucht took issue with the song and Grant fired back:
If you’re wondering the end goal of the deconstruction movement in the church, then look no further than former worship leader @derekwebb‘s new collab with a drag queen.
These are truly the last days. https://t.co/sgvzGFoRgu
— Sean Feucht (@seanfeucht) July 26, 2023
This speaks volumes about Grant. Feucht was a worship leader for Bethel Church, Redding, Calif. Bethel had its theological issues over the years.
However, the transgender movement has a spiritual issue that makes it incompatible with Christianity. The sexual component is there, but it is not the issue I’m referring to. Trans/Pride is based on attracting attention, acclaim, and affirmation. The trans/Pride movement is not only about wanting to be accepted but also celebrated. It is also about converting others to this lifestyle while condemning those who are against it or just don’t care. In Christian terms, this movement wants to remake God and the church in its image. It wants to dictate God’s nature and force God into becoming what it desires. This is pure idolatry if you can separate it from self-obsession. It is a form of worshiping the self, not God.
Anyone who has attended sermons given by recent graduates of bible schools has heard dissertations about the woman at a well or the woman sentenced to be stoned because she committed adultery. The sermons usually focus on the fact that Jesus accepted the individual in question. Jesus didn’t leave the women exactly as he had found them. He left them renewed and changed. They were aware of something bigger than themselves. Those who followed Jesus were changed by him. Those who refused to change were left on their own.
Sexual sin is possible. As the child of a trans man, I can imagine how sexual sin could reverberate. In this case, the sin is pride. Pride is when one believes that God Almighty and the entire world must conform to their will. Then, one chooses to give in to sins instead of fighting them. Succumbing to one’s sins can make you happy in the short term. Isn’t this what God wants? Well, no. God prefers that we are holy, rather than satisfied. It is not easy for anyone to do that.
Grant, in this respect, is no worse than other Christians. People in churches all over the country are trying to make God look like them. I was at my old parish when “Duck Dynasty”, the hit show, became popular. People began to view the Louisiana Duck Hunting family as the perfect example of what being a good Christian meant. At one point, the pastor told his congregation that Jesus was a “redneck”. The problem was “Duck Dynasty”, a popular television show. The Robertsons are vocal Christians. Millions of Christians started to flee the world because of this. They were well-known, so it was easy to follow them. The world suddenly dictated what it meant for someone to be a Christian. I’d hope that the Robertsons were the first to call out such people. As a part-time job, I briefly worked at a Christian bookshop just as the “Duck Dynasty’ craze was fading. The t-shirts and decorations kept coming. It was sometimes difficult to find enough space to store everything. The world is unpredictable. God is not fickle.
It doesn’t matter whether Grant’s song was popularized by the transgender community or Christians who chased the fame and fortune that the world promised. In both instances, people choose to ignore God and favor themselves. Instead of rebuking Pharisees, they indulge in Original Sin.
