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These Worship Songs Need to be Abolished: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc4unEkYlDU&t=168s
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Transcript:
Trent Horn (00:00):
There’s something about modern worship songs that is really off-putting to me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I heard news about one of my favorite worship songs from back in the day being turned super gay. I won’t quit my day job and become a songwriter, but I can tell you where these songs ultimately go wrong and it’s not their failure to tell people to subscribe to the Council of Trent or support us at trendpodcast.com so we can keep creating great content like this. No, they go wrong somewhere else and you can see this in the 1997 song Testify to Love from the Christian band Avalon. Even though it was from an evangelical group, you always heard this song at Catholic youth masses and retreats. If you’re a millennial or older from the life teen days, this should sound familiar. So let me try.
(00:45):
All the colors of the rainbow, all the voices of the wind. Every dream that reaches out that reaches out to find where love begins. Every word of every story, every star in every sky. Every corner of creation lives to testify and then there was a drum riff. Okay, hit it, Avalon.
Song- Testify to Love (01:12):
I will testify to this in the silences when words are not in love. With every breath I take, I will give thanks to God ear. For as long as I shall live, I will testify.
Trent Horn (01:35):
Like shoulder pads in the 80s or Frosted Tips in the 90s, all I can say is it was a different time. And that’s also what two former band members from Avalon say because they want to reclaim the song as having a gay meaning to it. One of them is Michael Passons, who was kicked out of Avalon in 2003 for engaging in sexual relations with men, not just for quote being gay. Here’s how Paston tells the story in an interview.
Michael Passons (01:59):
My bandmates were getting married. They were all getting married. I was in all their weddings and I was just getting angry that their lives were going on and I just started like WTF. I’m just going to do my thing because nothing’s going to change so am I just going to waste my youth? And so I started to see people.
Trent Horn (02:27):
Passins reveals that someone saw him at a place he should not have been, possibly a gay bar, but he doesn’t say in the interview. He temporarily left the group after that and then rejoined. But when someone saw Passins in a “questionable situation” in 2003, he lied about it and then he was fired from the band. Now, many people who want to revise church teaching on homosexuality say they just want same sex couples to be treated and held to the same standards as opposite sex couples, but often that isn’t true. The problem is this theology creeps into conservative branches of Christianity because its advocates claim that all they want is the same sex version of monogamous, lifelong, opposite sex bonding in marriage. But for many of them, that’s not their end goal. In 2014, Mark Regners released a study showing that at the time self-identified gay and lesbian Christians were more likely to support evils like adultery, fornication, corn, abortion, and polyamory.
(03:23):
They’re more likely than Christians who support so- called same-sex marriage and even more likely to support these things than members of the general population. And we see the same today in advocates for so- called same-sex marriage within the church. Brandon Robertson, who has been praised by Father James Martin, defends polyamory and really any supposedly consenting sexual relationship.
Brandon Robertson (03:42):
In fact, the Bible doesn’t give a prescription of what any romantic relationship should look like. Instead, it gives us values. It says these relationships should be based on love, mutuality, respect, covenant, commitment. I think that three people can be in a loving, committed, covenant relationship. I think that because I’ve met them, they’ve been in my church.
Trent Horn (04:02):
Going back to passons, imagine he was just a man who is attracted to women, but he was unable to find a spouse, an incell, if you will. He then chooses to find sexual release through a parasocial relationship with a woman on OnlyFans. His bandmates discovered this and he refuses to stop doing this so he’s kicked out of the band. Most people would not say this is an example of hateful Christian bigotry. It’s Christians instead holding fellow Christians accountable to their own moral standards. But this example is just like Passin’s case. An unfortunate obstacle prevents him from being able to marry so he chooses a sinful means to engage in some of the pleasures that are associated with marriage. In both cases, we can empathize with someone being unable to marry and compassionately help him carry his cross, but we should not condone someone choosing a sinful response to such a trial.
(04:54):
But honestly, gay revisionist theologians would probably say that incels can have a kind of mutuality with OnlyFans creators that the ignorant authors of the Bible from their perspective couldn’t understand and would hatefully call prostitution, which is why we should not allow this to become a gay versus straight issue. It’s an issue of sexual virtue rooted in God’s plan for marriage being a one flesh union opposed to the alternative view, which is a kind of anything goes consensual morality that struggles as I’ve shown over and over and over again to explain why even horrible evils like relations with animals or dead bodies is evil. So back to Avalon’s new song. Last month, Passin, self-identified gay singer, Ty Herndon, and former Avalon band member Melissa Green, re-released a version of Testify of Love with basically the same lyrics. They say instead they are reclaiming the song’s meaning of loving everyone, which includes not saying sex outside of marriage is sinful.
(05:53):
Green even said in her Substack that this was the song’s original meaning. She writes, “It is a song about love without exception, love that reaches every corner of creation, love that testifies through every star in every sky. Michael never needed to be redeemed. He was always whole and worthy. These songs always meant what they meant. The friendships were always real. What’s changed is that we’ve learned how to stand inside them fully as ourselves and as artists. It’s the song finally telling the truth. It’s possible there was always a gay subtext to this song and that the line about every color of the rainbow wasn’t so innocent. And by the way, I don’t appreciate the symbolism of the rainbow being ruined in the modern age, but that’s a whole other episode. But it’s also possible that this is a fanciful rewriting of history from someone who later left Christianity in 2017 to lead a non-religious group called The Imaginarium, not to be confused with the Wonder Emporium and then officiated Tyler Herndon’s gay wedding in 2020.
(06:51):
But Green is able to make these claims because the original song itself is vague and fluffy. When you just sing about love and going out there and making a difference and all these things, you can make a text mean almost anything. You can make the sacred become profane or worldly and you can make the profane become sacred. When you do that, a praise and worship concert becomes indistinguishable from a regular concert. A few months ago, I saw Journey perform their farewell tour and it was awesome. I even got emotional because they’ve been my favorite band for a long time and singing the songs with them, it kind of felt like being back at a praise service in nearly 2000s. I mean, given how vague modern praise worship is, it’s almost indistinguishable from some journey songs. For example, here’s Journey’s classic Open Arms. And then in a praise and worship service, you might sing this.
(08:15):
Okay. The last one isn’t a religious song, but you get the idea. Now, there isn’t anything wrong with a song reflecting on our love for God and you can prayerfully sing about reflecting in that love in various bodily postures. The problem is that this religious movement of the soul often gets described in a cliche way so that it’s indistinguishable from a song about our love for another person, which has given rise to the genre called Jesus Boyfriend music. This was even parodied on South Park where Cartman creates a fake Christian band that just replaces references and romantic songs with the word baby to the name Jesus.
South Park Episode (08:53):
We were looking over some of your lyrics. I want to walk hand in hand with Jesus on a private beach for two. I want him to nibble on my ear and say, “I’m here for you. ” It seems you really love Christ.
Trent Horn (09:08):
Yes, we sure do. You might think this is an overblown criticism and if you think that, you may not have heard how he loves by John Mark McMillan, which includes this line.
Worship Song (09:18):
So heaven means earth like a stop you away kissing my heart turns violently inside a marchest.
Trent Horn (09:28):
When modern worship songs are just all about us and how we feel toward God, God can get crowded out of the picture. Consider these lyrics from the song praise.
(09:51):
This makes it sound like we are the main character taking down Jericho and God is just kind of helping us out in the background. I also covered this in my previous episode that’s linked below about songs you often hear at mass that need to be abolished. Songs like All Are Welcome, which has been condemned by the USCCB for lyrics that make it sound like we create the church, not the Holy Spirit, which is a similar problem in the songs sing a new church. But the biggest offender of a song that’s all about me instead of all about the would be go make a difference, the jazzy outro song you eventually hear at some parishes with lyrics like …
Worship Song (10:26):
Go make a difference so we can make a difference. Go make a difference in the world. Go make a difference. We can make a difference. Go make a difference in the world. I’m
Trent Horn (10:43):
Not sure what the song’s meaning was. It was something about making a difference, I think. And once again, we should make a difference when we leave church, but just because it’s so vague and it’s about us, make a difference could refer to almost anything, including things like promoting LGBT ideology. Praise and worship services can have their place, especially as an alternative to the bad things that happen at secular concerts. Ephesians 5:19- 20 says, “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Or Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” My concern is when these services stop being times to worship God in song and just turn into spectacles where we get really excited in a concert-like venue to sing songs about worshiping God instead of being focused on the act of worship itself.
(11:55):
You can see that in this ex post which says, “I’ll never forget my friend telling me she used to cry at church because she thought she felt the Holy Spirit, only to feel the exact same way at a on direction concert. She’s now an atheist.” That doesn’t mean every song has to be Gregorian chant, though a little more of that in church wouldn’t hurt. There are hymns that have a focus on ourselves that are less likely to be warped because they’re rooted in God, such as an adaptation of the breastplate of St. Patrick called I Bind Unto Myself.
(12:54):
And there’s even room for some of the cheesier stuff from back in the day, especially when it keeps our focus squarely rooted on God and his purposes. So once again, let me jog the memory of my fellow millennials and older crowd. When he rolls up his sleeves, he ain’t just putting on the ritz. Our God is an awesome God. There’s thunder in his footsteps and lightning in his fists. Our God is an awesome God. And the Lord wasn’t joking when he kicked him out of Eden. It wasn’t for no reason that he shed his blood. His return is very close and so you better be believing that our God isn’t awesome. God, take it away, Rich Mullins. God, He reigns. I know you know the gestures. God, you know the gestures, come on. Oh yeah. God, he reigns. He reins people. All right, thank you guys for joining us today. Don’t forget to hit the like button and leave a comment below of some of your favorite worship songs. So take care and I hope you have a very blessed day.