Posted on 04/17/2010 11:26:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Award-winning Christian music artist Jennifer Knapp has returned from a seven-year hiatus with a bang.
Aside from touring with provocative singer-songwriter Derek Webb and preparing for the release of a new album, Knapp is confirming what some had for years suspected – she’s gay.
In interviews with The Advocate, Reuters, and Christianity Today – all published Tuesday – Knapp spoke openly about her sexuality while making it clear that she is not a pro-gay activist or even a self-described lesbian despite being in an eight-year relationship with a woman.
“I'm just a normal human being who's dealing with normal everyday life scenarios,” Knapp told Christianity Today.
“As a Christian, I'm doing that as best as I can,” she added. “The heartbreaking thing to me is that we're all hopelessly deceived if we don't think that there are people within our churches, within our communities, who want to hold on to the person they love, whatever sex that may be, and hold on to their faith. It's a hard notion.”
Though not the first Christian music artist to “come out” as gay, Knapp is arguably the most prominent.
Knapp's impressive history includes over one million albums sold with her three releases to date – Kansas (1998), Lay It Down (2000), and The Way I Am (2001). In 1999, Knapp won her first Dove Award for Best New Artist. The Kansas-born musician later scored a Grammy nod in 2002 and another Dove nomination in 2003.
"She's like a fine cabernet. She only gets better with age,” commented John Huie of Creative Artists Agency, Knapp’s booking agent.
In September 2002, however, Knapp decided to leave the music scene over a number of issues – her "crazy" and exhausting schedule, for one – and has for the past seven years been spending time and soul searching in Australia as well as traveling throughout Europe.
It wasn’t until the last year that Knapp picked up a guitar again and came out with a couple of new tracks that led to her return to the United States last July.
After a few sessions in the studio, it became clear to Knapp and her team that it was time to make music again, and so Knapp officially moved back to the states in August together with her partner, whose identity Knapp is adamant about protecting.
Now, the finished product, titled Letting Go, is slated for a May 11 release and will be the first test of her fans’ loyalty given her sexuality confirmation.
While the decision to "come out" one month before her new album’s release is a risky one, The Advocate said Knapp chose to do so partly because she didn’t want people to love her music and then discover that their own values won’t let them sing along full-throated.
“I think it’s going to be shocking and feel like a betrayal to some people who live their spiritual lives through the music they listen to,” Knapp told the LGBT publication.
Furthermore, the move provides Knapp a chance to be “wholly myself."
Currently, Knapp is on tour with former Caedmon's Call member Webb and will be until at least the end of April.
On Monday, Knapp turned 36.
Not so sure about that. The others are plenty bad enough, but homosexuality seems to lead to the downfall of nations/cultures in a special way.
Well said.
So, she wants to sell records to people who she knows will openly condemn this lifestyle, due to their beliefs and what the Bible says .... or is there a large gay Christian music audience I am not aware of?
This woman represents a larger problem with the contemporary Christian music industry. Too many are in it just for the money, prestige and the fame. They use Jesus and God as trappings to make money, the words they sing to others have no meaning to them personally.
Paraphrasing a few lines from a Steve Camp song called Ministry
“We once sang for Jesus without charging a dime, and we called in ministry. We weren’t ashamed of the gospel, we let our light shine, and we saw lives saved and set free.”
“While singing about God’s love, they are indulging their lust and they dare to call it ministry.”
“We don’t need stars in the body of Christ, but servants who live a holy life, yes we’ve all seen the famous revel in their sin, but we need to see holiness live out again.”
“An ambassador of Christ must be chosen and called to deny ourselves for the glory of God!”
Yes.
When a person identifies himself as a homosexual, he is identifying himself as his sin.
When a person is in Christ and struggles with temptation to homosexual acts, I think it is more accurate and helpful to identify himself as in Christ — a Christian — who then has various struggles, one of which is named homosexuality.
Not just saddening, sickening.
Will pingout later today.
Homosexual is intrinsically worse than many of the sins you listed. The idea that “all sin is equal” is a fantasy.
________________________________________
I see that the Lord is a freeper and He calls Himself Little Jeremiah.
I never understand why people say “all sins are equal”. It’s senseless.
There are degrees. Common sense.
Other than someone who has no choice but to be gay, such as Elana Kagen (search to see photo to find out why), most women who become gay just do it for fun...they really don’t care who they wind up with. And, in a lot of cases, it’s a political statement - that men are simply not needed in their lives.
Whereas most gay guys are simply sick.
If you want to get into relative grades of sin, I think that "monogamous" lesbianism is better than the promiscuity which typifies male homosexuality or the swinging promiscuous hetero lifestyle. God's desire is love, which requires commitment, "for better or worse."
April 16, 20100:12
A few words...
I share my life with a woman. I have approached this relationship with gratitude, joy and humility. I am honored to have the support of my loving family, a caring partner, friends and people of faith who have accepted me as I come, while encouraging me to become who I am meant to be. My loved ones - you have endured much, loved much and made full the lives of all those around you. I thank you as one who has been blessed by your generosity and gentle spirits.
In the abundant amount of private time I have been afforded to reflect, I have been deeply moved by the memory of rich experiences brought about through the intersection of faith and music. Generous fans, humble churches, believers, stumblers, seekers, the broken, the faithful and the faithless, alike, through the common thread of music we have found ourselves in the same spaces ignoble in our own humanity. Where I often begin, alone in sacred spaces, to plumb and pen the depth of my own person, music draws me out to the land of others. I discover that I am not alone, nor have I ever been.
As ever,
Jennifer
I’ve known her for many years and on a few occasions met her “personal assistant”. It never donned on me that she was a homosexual even though i guessed her assistant was. I was shocked when I learned of her being gay about ten years ago. But after a little retrospect I felt silly thinking she was straight. She is truly a wonderful person and I pray the best for her. I have dreaded the day when she would return to music as the lesbian prodigal. She will only mislead alot of confused young people.
All sin is founded on rebellion to God. Therefore, in that sense, all sin is equivalent. But as far as how sinful behavior and actions manifest themselves, all sins are not equal nor do they have the same effect on the sinner or those around him or her.
It’s a long topic and I don’t have time to do it justice, but just as all physical ailments are not the same (hangnail, sunburn, measles, AIDs, cancer...), similarly the spiritual sickness of sin is a continuum.
So she’s saying she’s “meant to be” a homosexual.
So she’s proud of her aberration.
Try again little girl. You miss the boat some where.
The other women in her life is more important to her than Christ apparently.
Jennifer isn’t going to market herself as a Christian singer. She’s going more along the lines of a new-age spiritual genre. She’s not with a Christian recording label. Her first album, “Letting Go” will be a true test of how Knapp will be able to make it outside the industry.
******
Knapp is very clear that she is not marketing herself as a Christian artist, a term with which she said she has never been comfortable. She’s no longer on a Christian-based record label, and her new album of folksy rock songs is described as being about “inner-conflicts, spirituality and life lessons.”
Knapp quit the industry and moved to Australia, she said, because she was simply exhausted by all the performing and unprepared for the challenges being a music star brought her way.
She said she began writing music again in earnest two years ago and the music, as well as the decision to go public with her sexuality, all happened “organically.” Knapp said she is no longer afraid of her gifts as a musician and now realizes that who she is as a private person can remain intact even as she shares herself with the world through her music.
“I was tired of not writing because I was afraid of what other people were going to think of me,” she said. “So for me it was a really healing process.”
Knapp said she realizes that some fans will now view her earlier work with lyrics about inner turmoil as evidence of the struggle between her beliefs and her sexuality. But she says she has always struggled as a person of faith to be the person she wants to be, and her sexuality was only a part of that, she said.
God has always known she would walk this path, Knapp said.
“I would rather be judged before God as being an honest human being,” she said. “If I am in any way unpleasing in his sight, I can only hope and pray that he gives me the opportunity to find who I am supposed to be.”
Perhaps the most telling clue to where Jennifer Knapp finds herself in life after so many years is contained in the title of her new album. It’s called “Letting Go.”
I often wonder about the morality of Christian musicians. I know some of them have been faithfully married for years, and some have adopted children. Most seem to me like fine people. Anyway, my judgment is meaningless. That of God is all that matters.
From the first time I heard Jennifer Knappshalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
I was reminded of Melissa Etheridge.
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