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Meet the drag queen who hit No 1 on the Christian music charts – with help from a Trump ally
(www.theguardian.com)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Growing up closeted while attending an evangelical church in small town North Carolina, Matthew Blake found refuge in music – particularly the songs of the Christian musician turned pop star Amy Grant.
After five years with Exodus failed to turn Blake straight, they eventually embraced their sexuality, began attending a progressive church in San Diego, and launched a podcast that laid bare their deconstruction experience.
On their album Bible Belt Baby, they sing with the delicate yet powerful range of a worship band leader, while telling the story of a boy who wants to cross-dress as the Virgin Mary, followed by a feminist anthem set in the Old Testament, and a cover of Amy Grant’s Takes A Little Time.
Chrissy Stroop, trans author and one of the pioneers of the exvangelical movement, says all these artists “display an authentic expression that is lacking in what we typically think of as CCM, allowing themselves to ask real questions and not come away with the pat answers evangelical subculture demands.
Credited with writing the first CCM song, Marsha Stevens-Pino saw her career destroyed when she came out in 1979, inspiring her to form Born Again Lesbian Music (Balm) Ministries, one of the first of a growing network of queer Christians in need of a home.
Unlike outright mockery of faith by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens’ “new atheism” movements, exvangelical songs (as well as memoirs, podcasts and stand up comedy) often bleed with raw vulnerability, sitting with the unanswered questions about the Bible and the evangelical experience, wrestling with doubt and longing, loneliness and persecution, not necessarily rejecting God but often inviting him to the table for a difficult conversation.
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