Jesus is King: A Necessary Revival for Christian Art
by Keegan Drummond
Agony in Garden (1483-93) Pietro Perugino. Public Domain.
“I'm standing up, and I'm telling you, I am Warhol! I. Am. The number one most impactful artist of our generation! I am Shakespeare, in the flesh! Walt Disney. Nike. Google. Now, who's gonna be the Medici family and stand up and let me create more? Or do you wanna marginalize me 'til I'm out of my moment?”
-Kanye West
(Sway in the Morning on Sirius XM, 2013)
As I write this, it has been 24 hours since Jesus is King (2019) has dropped. It seems that every Instagram story I swiped through, every news outlet I subscribe to, and every friend on Facebook was talking about this record. Regardless of faith, everyone is listening to Kanye West. My evangelical friends who probably did not listen to the sexually explicit My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) or the somewhat blasphemous Yeezus (2013) are posting screenshots of their favorite songs and reposting Kanye Sunday Services. However, my non-Christian friends were doing the same thing. One of my friends who no longer attends church jokingly asked where an album like this was when she was a Christian. This album is bridging worlds of the faithful and the faithless.
This is made especially clear in some of the features on the album. My favorite track is “Use This Gospel,” featuring brothers Pusha T and No Malice, who both formed the group Clipse in the early 2000s. Pusha T has worked extensively with Kanye throughout the years. Many of his songs allude to his prior career in drug dealing. Pusha’s verse on the track seems to wrestle with his infamous image as a “pusha” when he says,
“Who am I to judge? I’m crooked as Vegas.”
No Malice, however, famously converted to Christianity in the early 2010s and did not record with his brother for close to a decade, instead recording with Christian artists like Lecrae. No Malice appears to be giving his testimony during his verse. He first remorsefully alludes to his former ways of arrogance and drug dealing, but then contrasts this saying,
“from the concrete grew a rose.”
No Malice then differentiates himself from other rappers that give “wraith talk” (referring to the car by Rolls-Royce), but instead offers “faith talk.” Their verses on “Use This Gospel” could be read as a dialogue between someone who is knowingly “crooked as Vegas” (Pusha) and someone who, “from the concrete” grew like a rose because of his faith in God (No Malice). This track captures the heart of Kanye’s message, that he was between two worlds but is choosing God instead. The album itself is a bridge between secular and sacred artists.
Nevertheless, scroll into the comments section of any video or article, and you will find the “real Christians.” The ones that see through the production and artistry, mustering the courage to voice their opinions through their keyboards. They remember quotes like the one above. They did listen to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Yeezus.[1] They listened to Jesus is King and found it “insufferable and musically hollow.”[2] Kanye isn’t really proclaiming Christ; he is proclaiming himself as god.[3]
These Christians are missing the point; Kanye West is bridging the worlds of the Christian faith and mainstream art. At the risk of sounding exaggerated, we haven’t seen anything like this for like over 500 years (literally). At one point, mainstream Western art was Christian art. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and prior to the Renaissance, art was almost exclusively Christian in the Western world. Many of the cathedrals, icons, and paintings from this period that still stand today, testify to the influence of Christian faith on artists. Yet this would not last, the Renaissance already evidenced the rise of Secularism in art. The Enlightenment would, for the most part, make religion irrelevant. This brings us to the present age, a post-Christian and Postmodern society, with art that is a reflection of this age.
That short history lesson was to remind you that once upon a time, Christians made art that everyone enjoyed. Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Rembrandt all produced art that was based in faith and is still to this day indiscriminately enjoyed by Christian and non-Christian alike. There is no need for Caravaggio’s The Supper at Emmaus to be displayed in a Christian art gallery or for Handel’s Messiah to be played only on K-Love because it is great art.
Often Christian art is pigeon-holed by being inherently “Christian.” There are Christian Billboard categories, Christian awards shows, and Christian studios that further exclude artists from the mainstream appeal. Christians are often forced to produce and perform inside a vacuum; otherwise, they face criticism for going outside the church walls into unfamiliar territory.[4] I will say artists that are Christian like Sufjan Stevens, Switchfoot, and Lauren Daigle have all been able to break the bubble and ventured into the secular music industry and have found success. Nevertheless, I feel that Kanye may be a more archetypal figure of the era of art and faith that once was.
One of the reasons for this is because Kanye’s platform was built in the secular world. Before Jesus is King, Kanye had eight number-one albums on the Billboard Top 200.[5] West had 21 Grammys and 69 Grammy nominations.[6] Kanye has never been shy about faith, and the topic of God was never off-limits, but I would argue that faith was never the central message of his discography (despite what he says about The Life of Pablo).[7]
Kanye in Amsterdam (2012). Image courtesy of Pieter-Jannick Dijkstra.
The year 2019 was definitive in Kanye’s championing of the Christian faith. The Kanye Sunday Services (KSS), which launched in late 2018, bridged together the worlds of fashion, production, and music with Christianity. The Services brought in notable names such as Brad Pitt, Kendall Jenner, Tyler The Creator, and Katy Perry.[8] Although some have argued that these services are a cash-grab[9] or a collection of the rich and famous,[10] they are nevertheless liturgically not far dissimilar from a regular Sunday service at your local church. The KSS included worship and even the occasional homily.[11] Kanye himself preached at one of the services, which I thought was a little too legalistic![12]
To argue that these services are a celebration of Kanye is ignorant. The Services have encouraged and edified the attendees and those who have watched the live streams with their Christian message. They meld the very secular worlds of fashion and hip-hop into worship unto God very directly. The core of Kanye’s message is the redemptive power of God in Christ, “radical obedience to God,” and embracing the miraculous in our daily lives. This is not only the message of the most impactful artist of our generation; it is the Gospel of our Lord. Thanks be to God!
I wonder if that is precisely the problem, Christians don’t understand the power of Good News. At the risk of sounding like a pastoral cliche (I can’t help it, I’m a Divinity student), the heroes of our faith had worse backgrounds than Kanye. Perhaps this was why Kanye identified with The Life of Pablo (St. Paul the Apostle), who also had a colorful past. We have all heard these stories of radical change and repentance in figures like Paul, Augustine, and Luther, yet we are often skeptical when they happen in the present age. To put this moment of art history in perspective, Kanye West has released a record entitled Jesus is King, which is the summation of our faith,[13] and Christians aren’t happy about it because he used to talk about sex and blasphemy. Do we really believe that the Gospel has the power to transform lives, or is there just no way Christ can reach Kanye? I choose the former.
Jesus is King is not just another hip-hop record; there is much more at stake here. Christians need to look at our history both personally and collectively to see how far we have progressed as people and fallen out within the world. No, we are not supposed to be “of the world,” but Jesus IS King, and that has drastically changed the reality of the world in which we live. Our art once reflected His reign, and it reached the world, but now we have let the world take hold of mainstream art while we carried on in our comfortable sanctuaries to make music in which only we will listen to. We celebrate testimonies and salvation, especially within the Evangelical church, but it seems we aren’t content when celebrities come to faith and testify their own stories. Perhaps it will be through artists like Kanye that we may once again be able to produce art that is accessible to Christian and non-Christian, art that communicates the power of the Gospel and the reconciliation of all things in Christ.
works cited
https://www.complex.com/pigeons-and-planes/2013/06/kanye-west-yeezus-religious-reviews/think-christian
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kanye-wests-jesus-is-king-is-fake-christianity-at-its-finest-3?ref=scrol
https://twitter.com/Aaronofthewild/status/1177475391767769089
https://www.christianpost.com/news/lauren-daigle-critics-ellen-degeneres-show-appearance-completely-missed-the-heart-of-god.html
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/on-the-charts-ye-gives-kanye-west-eighth-straight-number-one-album-629135/
https://www.grammy.com/grammys/artists/kanye-west
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kanye-west-new-album-is-gospel-album-with-whole-lot-of-cursing-111762/
https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/brad-pitt-kanye-wests-sunday-service-is-really-special/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-kanye-wests-coachella-sunday-service-a-big-mesmerizing-religious-grift
premierchristianity.com/Blog/God-used-Kanye-West-to-save-me.-But-the-rapper-s-Sunday-Service-project-is-deeply-flawed
https://www.thefader.com/2019/09/24/a-history-of-sunday-service-kanye-west
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KLjgJevo7Y
Mark 1:1, John 18:36,37, Revelation 15:13
Resources
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