The news broke this last week about Michael Tait, of DC Talk and Newsboys fame, having sexually abused at least 3 men over the course of the last decade.

In a lot of ways, it's barely news. OMG! Another rock star turns out to be an abuser. 😱🙄 Nothing special there. But it is when you consider the role Christian rock music played in 2000s era American Christianity.

I was 7 years old when DC Talk released their seminal Jesus Freak album, which launched their careers as musicians. Arguably, that album launched Christian rock as a viable genre. There were many others before them but that album was a turning point in the industry.

That album is also central to one of my core traumatic memories as a child, one which shaped my childhood in many ways. My cousin, who was 3 years older than me had just gotten a copy on CD for Christmas and he wanted to show it off to my brother and I. So there we were, in my cousin's bedroom, listening to Jesus Freak on his boom box, with the volume on low, praying that my dad wouldn't hear it from downstairs. What would Dad do if he heard? I didn't know. I just knew it would be bad. My dad did NOT approve of rock music. So we kept the volume low and neither of us said a word to anyone about what we did in my cousin's room that night.

I don't have a lot of particularly clear memories from my childhood, especially not emotional memories. But I remember that one. I remember that fear. I remember the feeling of my heartbeat as the adrenaline rushed through my body in pure animal fear. I remember it like it was yesterday. My dad was not a kind man. He especially did not take kindly to his whims not being respected by his children. The punishment would have been harsh had he known what we were listening to that night. Doubly so once he realized we'd been intentionally hiding it.

But there was nothing wrong with that music. I mean, there's plenty wrong with it and that's what we're going to talk about. But there was nothing on that CD that should have been morally objectionable to my father. There was no swearing. There was nothing about sex. The only thing my dad objected to was the fact that the music had a beat but that was enough. (There was also an anti-racism song which probably pissed some people off but my dad wouldn't have known about that.) He was a hymns-only kind of guy. When not at church, he and Mom would branch out and listen to Steve Green but that's as racy as they got. He didn't want any of that rock and roll in our house.

What followed are what Evangelical Christians from that time remember as "The Worship Wars" where the most important question being debated in church meetings was whether or not we should sing more modern songs that weren't in the hymnals. The whole thing was, quite frankly, ridiculous. It was nothing more than a generational shouting match between the older people who liked the familiarity of the old hymns they'd grown up with and the younger generation who wanted something more modern with guitars instead of an organ.

But it was all out cultural war and destruction from that war can still be seen to this day in churches all across the Midwest. My parents church eventually settled on singing a mix of hymns and more modern songs. Many churches split over it. Sometimes they actually split into two different congregations and sometimes they technically remained one church but they held two services every week: one modern and one traditional. My parents church eventually, settled on an uncomfortable compromise where we would sing a mix. No one liked all of it but everyone liked some of it and that had to be good enough. Even my own family was split with my dad sticking to his hymns (he may have even refused to sing the others; I don't remember) and my mom liking the new music.

Yes, it is dumb. But, frankly, most things people fight over are dumb. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is the environment I grew up in. This all happened while I was in late elementary school through highschool. By the time I graduated and headed off to University, the younger generation had more or less won and bands like DC Talk and Newsboys were playing regularly on the Christian radio station. (Though, usually their praise and worship albums, not the good stuff.)

Growing up in the midst of that, music was huge a point of contention between kids and their parents. My dad may have been on the more conservative point of the spectrum but a lot of kids fought with their parents about music. Ironically, I'm pretty sure my dad had those same flights with his. He was in the jazz band in highschool in the 70s when all that dirty dancing was happening. 😲

But Christian rock in particular was a religious honeypot for kids in the 90s. It gave the illusion of rebellion (by making my dad uncomfortable) while keeping kids entirely inside the Christian system and pumping their heads full of Christian messaging. On DC Talk's Free At Last album, which predates Jesus Freak by 3 years, there was even a song called I Don't Want It which is entirely about not wanting sex, as if girls were trying to shove sex down their throats. It's pure distilled Christian purity culture in a format that makes you feel like a rebel for listening to it.

It's the perfect trap.

It made being a straight-laced Christian look edgy and rebellious. Most of DC Talk's music was like that, actually. It is all Christian victim complex, made to look like counter-culture. Jesus Freak, the titular song on their album was about John the Baptist and how everybody thought he was freak for the things he did and said. There's another verse about a fictional tattood street preacher who was also a "Jesus Freak". Christians are the real persecuted minority. That was the message. And if you really want to be counter-cultural (what highschool student doesn't?) you'll lean hard into Christianity.

The. Perfect. Trap.

It's the same thing we see happening today as white male pastors, who have never known real insecurity, stand on stage (literally or on social media) and scream about how the gays and the trans people are ruining our world and about how they're the real oppressed minority, all because some liberal told them to stop being an asshole to gay people once. No, DC Talk wasn't doing that directly. But their message that Christianity was the real counter-culture laid the framework for the victim complex we see today.

The phenomenon that is youth pastors was also part of this trap. Their job was basically to be cool, but safely cool. They were supposed to be someone the kids in the church could look up to but who wouldn't lead them to do anything actually bad. They were supposed to be just edgy enough to make your dad uncomfortable but still totally safe in the sense that the most ruckus thing that happened at their house on a Friday night was a little too much sugar and caffeine and a bunch of kids sitting on a sofa watching VeggieTales.

On the surface, this is good and healthy. Kids need people in their lives who are less boring than their parents. For me, that role was also played by my aunt and uncle. Uncle LeRoy would stay up late with us to watch movies my dad wouldn't have allowed. (He was pretty explicit about that last part.) They were all still perfectly age appropriate but my dad was a stick in the mud and he wanted us to still have a fun childhood. They also didn't have any kids and I think that was his way of sharing his favorite things with us.

But there's a darker side to it as well. These youth pastors (not my uncle) were pushing the Christian agenda hard. Christian purity culture, in which any sexual desires sent you straight to hell, was accepted as fact. The church was reinforced as a safe space, even when it wasn't. Your parents bigotry, far from being questioned like it is by the actual counter-culture, was respected. If a kid had a problem at home, they were probably sent back to their parents to sort it out, even if home wasn't safe.

Again, it was a trap. By providing a fake safe space, they prevented kids from seeking out actual safe spaces outside the church. For an alternative or queer kid like myself, it trapped us forever in our parents bigotry and prevented us from finding community or acceptance. Instead, our heads were stuffed full of messages that said we were the problem, that we were broken, and that conformity was the only path to safety, whether immediate or external. That'll fuck you up bad...

And that's also why I have some compassion for Michael Tait. The way you create that fake safety is by first brainwashing the artists and then keeping them in line. The Christian music industry of the 90s and 2000s was toxic as hell. All of the fame and glamour of rock and role, combined with the expectation of a life that's clean enough you can take them to dinner at Grandma's house. It was an impossible environment to be in and one that's practically designed to nurture abuse. That doesn't absolve Tait, of course, but it gives me some compassion for him.

And when someone like that falls, it's a bit of a shock, or at least it's supposed to be. People like him are supposed to be role models for kids, after all. And yes, secular pop stars have that pressure, too. Taylor Swift has talked at length about how she's been both sexualized and expected to have a weirdly perfect life and criticized for having a string of boyfriends. (As if any young woman hasn't?) But Christians, moreso than most, actually believe that it's true, or at least should be.

At this point, my love affair with Christian music is over. Any fondness I might still have for that music is very much in "separating art from artist" territory. I no longer have any delusion that Christian rock stars are any different from other rock stars, except that they're pushing the Christian agenda. I'm sure plenty of them are high while singing about a life of sobriety or sleeping with the groupies after singing about not wanting sex. It's all a façade. A façade that's designed to keep kids under Christian control.

But I'm past it now. That part of growing up is tucked away with the rest of my Church trauma. Whenever my music player brings up a Christian song, I smash the 👎🏻 button as soon as I realize that's what it is. I kept a few of my old CDs but mostly because they're a part of my childhood that was actually mine. (I had to fight for that music, as safe and Christian as it was.) But any love I might have once had for that music or those artists is past.

These days, I listen to a lot of pop and heavy metal. My current theme album is Ritual by Within Temptation and, in particular, Don't Pray For Me. A lot of the music I listen to is informed by trauma, particularly the trauma of growing up alternative and Christian. I also have a newfound appreciation for Linkin Park, who I never listened to as a kid because that definitely would have sent me to hell. A lot of their music is deeply informed by trauma as well.

I'm healing. It's a slow process but I am healing. Instead of trying to solve my problems by losing myself and in the Church and having my identity overwritten by theirs, I'm learning to find myself, listen to myself, and seek wholeness. It's long. It's hard. Sometimes there's a lot of anger and I need a song that expresses that. Sometimes I need a lesbian love song like Bloodstream by Zolita that reminds me that who I am is real and that my experience isn't weird or creepy but that it's actually one I share with other queer women. And sometimes I'm loving my life and who I am and I just need a bit of Taylor Swift.