Facing the Music

by Jennifer Knapp

  Mark’s invitation finally sunk in. He wasn’t asking me to do a gig or incite a particular school of thought; he and Highlands were simply interested in hearing my story. They were offering hospitality, not debate.

  “I do hope you will come. We would love to be a friend,” Mark humbly appealed.

  Truth was, I hadn’t been to a church in years and was intimidated by the thought of standing in a sanctuary. All the communal praise and worship music, Jesus talk, and prayer, was a welcome distant memory. For years, I’d adopted the “where two or more are gathered” idea of church, where a strong beer and long buzzy night of hashing out my faith experience with friends in a bar was much more rewarding than feeling like a Sunday morning disappointment. I imagined myself to have moved beyond such trivial expressions of spirituality and traditional practices, but I was also curious. I wondered if it was still possible for a church to be a community that served its people’s spiritual needs before serving denominational politics. Mark said he thought that might actually be happening in Denver, but I’d have to come for a visit to find out.

  And so, I went.

  Most conferences of this sort have a habit of only inviting well-practiced and skilled speakers who are there to help solidify some sort of finite conclusion or ideal for the cause. This is especially true when it comes to Christian meetings, where there is typically a great deal of effort in securing the talents of those who uphold a particular religious teaching and who also have the charisma to inspire those listening to walk out clutching certainty rather than doubt. Highlands took a different approach.

  Instead of building a curriculum that prescribed what all who attended should believe after the event, it was presented more as an opportunity for everyone involved to contemplate and consider how the ramifications of our beliefs, traditions, and theologies actually played out in the world around us. The topic this weekend happened to be centered around the church and homosexuality. Rather than defining what the outcome should be, they wanted to compile the realities—the lived stories—of those who had been experiencing this complicated dynamic. Rather than a school of instruction, the symposium was more like a story-­telling convention where those who shared did so by telling the story of their personal journey through the maze. The rules were relatively simple and elegant. Speak to share, not to preach. Listen to hear and not to judge.

  Though I arrived ready to participate and prepared to be a focal point, I soon found myself in need of listening far more than speaking. I listened as one woman told the story of how her religion-inspired rejection of her lesbian daughter ended in the tragedy of suicide. An African-American pastor spoke of how his coming out shaped not only others’ perceptions of his faith and cultural identity, but how that experience affected how he saw his own life. There was a passionate lesbian, who was finishing divinity school, and wondered aloud where her passion for serving God and the church would lead when her truth was fully revealed. Rounding them out was an ex-gay reparative therapy survivor and one former Christian music rock star . . . all of us with tales of paradoxical joy and suffering at having found ourselves to be people of faith in an environment that had worked hard to silence the telling.

  I listened to others tell of their experiences, and I was struck by one statement that would resonate with me for months and years to come. It came from the gay pastor’s coming-out story of how he was confronted by one of his church board members. Upon his revelation, the board had convened and reached the conclusion that a gay pastor was no kind of pastor for their church, and he was asked to resign. All involved began to mourn the supposed fall of their beloved leader. After the decision had been reached and each went their own way, a man approached the now-discarded pastor and said, “Pastor, we all knew that you were gay, but why did you have to come out?”

  I teared up when I heard those words. I recognized them from the many angry letters, returned CDs and, uncomfortably public blogs aimed in my direction. So many words of admonishment, disappointment, and disgust, but I had never heard it put so plainly to the point. In essence, we can only accept gifts from people who are straight or have yet to declare.

  Yes, it’s incredibly sad that a gay man lost his job and his spiritual community. Tragic, even. But what stands out to me is not the argument as to whether it is religiously acceptable to be gay, but rather that when the time came for a community to share in the journey of one of its members, the answer was, “No. We would prefer your silence rather than consider how we can rise to the challenge of loving you as you are.”

  So much of the story of LGBT people living in the shadows of religious bias is that the story has been so one-sided. The religious conservatives have had plenty of face time to describe their views. We’ve heard so much rhetoric as to the Biblical grounds that justify marginalizing nonheterosexual people, but we’ve heard so little about the deeply spiritual, soul-searching experience of those who have been victimized because of it. As a gay person, I’ve experienced others’ attempts to pressure, shame, and preach me into silence. The end result was that, in my absence, I let others tell my story for me. That story was that gay people lose their faith and disappear in the shadows.

  I had spent enough years in silence to come to a place where I could no longer ignore the voice inside me that longed to be heard. I had tried to convince myself of what others had alluded to, that it would be better for me to be quiet and fade into obscurity than to rock the boat. Yet, in doing so, I had only stifled my own passions. I lost sight of what I was made to do, what I longed to do, in singing, writing, and sharing my experience with others. I lost community. I lost connection. The gifts that I had to offer others lay rotting on the ground, unwanted and wasted. I had wasted enough. I was ready to live and tell the tales of my adventures.

  What earthly good was my life if I was not out, living in the world, connecting, and sharing my story with others? By hiding any portion of my experience, I was sacrificing the opportunity to connect joyfully with others. When I finally opened the door, got dressed, and walked out, I may have found difficulty, but I also found support, love, and connection. When I dared to share a little of my journey with others, the story grew. I began to realize that my story didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was alive and growing. That when I shared it, others joined in by sharing their own experiences. By hiding my story away, I was not only shortchanging my own experience, but I was also keeping others from finding a place out of their own silence.

  We each long for some kind of community. We long for connection. For though we each have our own individual lives and experiences, it is not until we share those experiences with others that we begin to develop the wholeness of our story. We need witness and friendship to our being. To lock a portion of ourselves away, to cut ourselves off from spiritual contemplation, or to be ostracized and rejected is truly the most violent act against another human being that we can think of. It is why the idea of solitary confinement is so utterly devastating. To be shut into a black box, silenced and forgotten, is to be rendered into nothingness. To set the story free, to be heard, and allow it to be retold is the essence of our humanity—to know and be known.

  No. I’ve had enough silence. I had somehow found the courage to sing again, and I wasn’t about to be silenced about the joy of discovering love. I was grateful that I had a partner who loved me and supported me. Bemused that faith had kept me remarkably intact, I was humbled that I had a place in this world to sing. I had traveled thousands of miles in silence and had adventures aching to be spoken of. I consider it a blessing to have come so far and be healthy and fit enough to have the energy to share it.

  Listening to the others at places like Highlands Church tell of how they had traveled helped me realize that if I was willing to share my story, doing so might help another person take hold of their own story. For me, it was a turning point. It took a good long while to work up the courage, to get over my own hurt and disappointment at being so poorly tr
eated by Christians, but I was ready. I made the decision to take the risk. The next time a Christian, or anyone else for that matter, asked me what it was like to have the experience I was having, I would choose to engage rather than to walk away. The days of being silent were over.

  twenty-five

  When I walked off the stage in 2002, leaving CCM and public life for what I truly believed was forever, I thought that I really could leave everything behind me: every memory—the music, guitars, religion, good times and bad—all of it. If I could have erased my own mental hard drive, I would have. Instead, all I could hope for was to be forgotten in the public mind.

  “Burn it all!” I thought. I didn’t want to be reminded of any of it. I tried to ignore my own memories of my public life, but the one thing I couldn’t avoid was my name. It got to the point at which I hated seeing my name in print, and even loathed having to write it down.

  For a while, I grew obsessed with the idea of changing my name, convinced that I had corrupted the one my mother had given me. It had become the symbol of a life I needed to leave behind. I was angry and embarrassed every time I saw it or heard it. Even after I left public life, I feared its use. Too many times I sat trembling in places like doctors’ offices, dreading the moment when my name would be called aloud among a room of strangers only to be found out as that Jennifer Knapp. I longed for the day when writing my name on a blood sample was just a sign of ownership and not a chance to be mistaken for an autograph.

  How I hated my name.

  The words Jennifer Knapp took on a life of their own. She had come to be a person, apart from the me I saw myself to be, and yet had attached herself so tightly that there was no telling where she ended and I began. Those two words, that name that had once been mine, came to stand for something or someone I didn’t recognize. Their association to me left me feeling embarrassed, angry, and humiliated. Saying my name in public now had consequences.

  I felt like a prize idiot. I regretted that I had ever used my own name to be a Christian rock star.

  How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I make up a stage name?

  The remorse started in wishing that I had drawn a more definitive line between my private and public life, then slowly added momentum, death-spiraling into darker thoughts that I had used and brought shame to my entire family by having used my name.

  This psychosis was all part of the mental haze back when I was making the exodus from CCM. I needed fame to stop immediately so I could have some quiet, alone time and figure out my life in private, yet I couldn’t see myself as capable of escaping anywhere without having to use the actual name I was running from.

  I spent time piecing together the prospective aliases for my new life. I picked out new first names and other family names from both my and my partner’s families. I practiced writing them down. I even rehearsed introducing my newly named self in a mirror to see if the name fit as I imagined. I tried on dozens of new names, but they were all just cumbersome masks, layered on top of a person whom I couldn’t rename or outrun.

  When I really sat down and thought about it, I just couldn’t do it. This was my name. This was the name my mother gave me.

  When I imagined going to my mother and asking her to call me by some other first name, the whole idea seemed silly and even a little offensive. She loved me and was proud of me. How could I tell her I was ashamed of the person that she had always known? What kind of person was I anyway, to take what she had given me, ruin it, and then think that by simply renaming the package, I could change her impression of the contents within?

  Then, all of a sudden, I realized, this wasn’t just a name game. It took working through the ridiculous fantasy, but there it was, a truth that I could not escape. I had to live with the life I had. No change of name could change what ailed me.

  The name was just the reminder of a life of which I had grown extremely self-conscious.

  Obviously, I decided to keep my name, but when I moved to Australia and began meeting new friends, I kept my last name to myself. When asked about how I paid my bills I would grow sweaty and anxious.

  It seemed weird to lie about such an innocuous thing, but I wanted to say anything but what became my usual terse reply: “Music.”

  It’s the kind of response that people always want to know more about.

  “Oh, yeah?” their eyes light up and you can see the questions queuing up to form a conversation.

  “What do you do? Sing? Write? Play? What instruments do you play?”

  “Are you famous? Have I heard of you?”

  The last question is one I’ve always found funny. There’s the old saying that if you have to ask someone if they’re famous, then they’re probably not. I never really knew how to answer it.

  “Eh. Kind of. I guess.” What was I supposed to say? Part of me wanted to be proud of what I had accomplished. I mean, really, how often does that happen? How fantastic was it that, for at least a short while, I had a professional music career. I had a radio hit in Japan for God’s sake. I’d never even been to Japan!

  “Are you on iTunes? Can I Google you?” and finally, the name question . . .

  “What’s your full name?”

  Once anyone had my full name, that was it. My secret was discovered. The real source of my embarrassment

  “What kind of music?”

  When I wanted the misery to end I’d just blurt it out and cut to the inevitable chase: “I was a Christian music artist.” It was a confession.

  My most favorite response ever was a man who excitedly shouted “Jesus!” after my admission.

  “Yes,” I said sheepishly, “I used to sing songs about Jesus.”

  “No, it wasn’t a question.” He went on, “I mean, Jesus!” It was an expletive of surprise. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Then, his tone dropped, head cocked, and—Oh God no, please don’t— ­piecing it together he asked—Why do they always ask?—“So uh, you’re a Christian, then?”

  It never seemed to matter how I answered that question, because the deck was already stacked. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has an opinion about Christians. Even self-identified Christians tend to respond with qualifiers to soften the blow, and I was no exception.

  What is amazing is that, to this day, the reactions I get when I tell people I am a lesbian don’t even compare to the reactions of telling people I am a Christian. Honestly, I still find the declaration uncomfortable. Not just for others, but for myself as well. There is just so much baggage.

  In my years away from music, there were two major fears that I came to realize were pinning me down.

  First were the sincere reservations I had about public life. I grew afraid to play music because, in one way or another, doing so always led me to a place of sharing. Music was dangerous because I told it my secrets and it never kept them. The logic train connected music with public, public with coming out, and coming out having to face the religious fervor of those who saw me as a failure. It was a lot to untangle for what used to be the simple joy of finding personal fulfillment in music, and it was potentially a very risky endeavor to undertake.

  I was willing to take the risk, but the whole point was that following music had to, in some way, be fulfilling enough to balance the challenges. I’ve always loved a good challenge, and I’ve never minded feeling the burn so long as there’s some muscle to gain, but the what ifs were killing me.

  My second fear was that the risks of answering my calling wouldn’t actually balance out. If they didn’t, what would I do then? Like any work that is hard, you want to know that more came of it than just calluses and exhaustion. You want to see if you can build something that can make the world a better, safer place.

  That I chose to come back wasn’t so much that I found a resolution for any of those fears; it was just that I was no longer willing to let those fears rule my life.

  For the first
, I had the good fortune to know life with music and life without it. As it turned out, I preferred with, so I made the choice to accept the adventure, rather than live out the rest of my life wondering what might have been.

  As to any questions of purpose, how was I to know unless I accepted the challenge of the adventure?

  Every step back was a tiny, sublime victory. From sitting in my home studio in Australia to mailing off the demo CD. From walking through the Nashville airport for the first time in seven years to closing my eyes in front of a studio microphone. I told the world I was gay and (fortunately, as far as I know) no one died. I even managed to release a record after nearly a nine-year layoff and, thankfully, it didn’t die either. (In May 2010, Letting Go debuted on the top one-hundred Billboard charts. It was a first for any of my records to appear so high on a mainstream chart.)

  It has been a blessing to be able to get back to the music that I love, yet it has also come with the unexpected surprise of ­returning, in a way, to the religious community where I first came into the spotlight. By coming back to music and coming out, I’ve had the chance to be a part of a movement to end religion-­endorsed discrimination, marginalization, and judgment against LGBT people and their allies. In 2011, thanks to many requests to do so, I began sharing what has been my personal odyssey of reconciling sexuality through the lens of Christianity. I took what was a series of chances to say yes to churches and faith leaders who asked me to tell what life was really like coming out as a Christian. Those talks evolved into what I now call Inside Out Faith.

  I use Inside Out Faith events to tell my story, but I hope it doesn’t end there. Because for every kid that comes out, for every pastor who stands up, for every friend, mother, and religious denomination that tells the true story of love, the more we realize how much we have in common.