"Preacher's Kid," And The Importance of Identity

Abigail Franklin has been telling me for the better part of a year that I need to listen to Preacher’s Kid by Semler. I put it on in the background a few months ago and thought, “Yeah, I like this sound.” But last week I reflected through the entirety of the EP, reading the lyrics along with it and looking up anything that didn’t make sense. By the end of the third line of the first song I listened to, “Jesus from Texas,” I felt like my theology was being called into question in the best way. “My Mom turned eighteen in the 1960's, and she doesn't remember Stonewall / To be fair, she can't have known I'd be her kid / That the bricks launched at police would compel me to exist.” Relief calls Christians to remember the Stonewall Riots, because we never know who around us may find their life in it.

Ben Rector used to write music that I enjoyed and found loveliness in, like his 2015 album Brand New. At the beginning of 2022, he released the EP The Joy of Music, and I lost my hope in another Christian artist. The first song on the EP is called “Dream On,” a title just as whitewashed and tasteless as the lyrics, which start, “Do you ever get scared / Do you ever get sad / Do you forget the childhood dreams that you had / Hoped it'd be better but things turned out bad and all went wrong.” There is no comparison in excellence between the first four lines of this song and the first three of “Jesus from Texas.”

Colossian 3:23-24 says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” Christians are called to do all that they do with a pursuit of excellence, not seeking to be perfect but to make effort in serving the Lord no matter the context. Grace Semler Baldridge, writing music under the name Semler, said in an interview with NPR that she is both openly Christian and openly queer. Baldridge, as part of her identity as a Christian, makes music as worship to the Lord, trying (and, to me, succeeding) to create art which is excellent. Although The Joy of Music may have more traditionally “uplifting” lyrics, they lack verisimilitude and a willingness to confront with honesty the holistic view of the human experience.

Relief is not a journal that tries to share art synonymous with Ben Rector’s most recent EP. Rather, this journal worships God with art that is not afraid to look away from uncomfortably honest things like the church’s historical and current oppression of the LGBTQ+ community. No person, including a Christian, can live up to perfection or any other ideal.

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