Tonéx and Jennifer Knapp // Christian Music and the Link between the Stage and Sexuality

Full article here // Excerpt below

Tonéx’s and Knapp’s stories stand out in the queer history of Christian music because they directly challenge this heterocentric vision of the misfit gay using the stage to sublimate his forbidden sexual proclivities. Openly gay and Christian, Tonéx and Knapp insist on the right to “come out from among them,” as the apostle Paul put it in his letter to the early church at Corinth, and “be ye separate,” in ways that are true to the totality of who they are. In this way they actively resist being inscribed into evangelicalism’s punitive discourse of the self-embattled homosexual.

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The article is about much more than the focus of this particular paragraph, but it is striking--what does the perceived connection between, say, theater and homosexuality mean for arts and theology? I've always said that if the church emptied itself of homosexuals, sacred music would go down the tubes. It's a joke, but the sentiment is widespread... -- Sarah