Whole from the Start with Jennifer Knapp
My journey from trying to become Whole Again to realizing I was never broken in the first place.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a spiritual connection with music. It’s made me feel understood like nothing else. Beginning at age six, I latched onto various artists whose songwriting felt like an extension of myself. When I look back at these favorites, they give me insights into the different seasons of my inner world growing up. I had an ache to be seen, heard, and understood - and their music met a deep longing for the way I felt inside to be witnessed and reflected back to me. Through those cherished songs I felt like I existed, that I mattered, that I was seen, and that I was not alone.
Jennifer Knapp was my very first favorite.
I have a vivid memory of drawing during free play in kindergarten while having her song “Whole Again” stuck in my head. I remember feeling moody, and so in tune with the feeling of this song. I embodied it, and decided to let it inspire my kindergarten art. The best part of this was that my six year old self misheard the lyrics. The true chorus of the song says, “If I give my life, if I lay it down - can You turn this life around? Can I be made clean by this offering of my soul? Can I be made whole again?” When she sings the word “offering” toward the end of the song she belts it out earnestly and honestly. It was my favorite part, but my cute little brain thought she was singing “Can I be made clean by this submarine?”
So, naturally, I drew a submarine in class that day. Other kids saw and began to draw their own submarines. “They don’t even know this song,” I scoffed quietly to myself. (This is such a fond memory for me - knowing that music, melancholy and I have always been linked, and we’re still going steady.)
Although I got that lyric wrong, I belted it out straight from my heart just like Jennifer. 6, 7, & 8 year old me adored Jennifer and put her on a pedestal - just as her career seemed designed to do - though not by her.
To further unpack my connection to Jennifer Knapp, it’s necessary to share a bit of the world I found myself in. I was raised in fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity. In very short summary, this means from about age 5 I was taught that I was a sinner inherently deserving of condemnation, but not to worry because God sent Jesus (God’s son, and not a sinner) to die in my and everyone’s place because we were too wretched to ever meet God’s standards ourselves. Jesus had to sacrifice himself on our behalf. To accept his sacrifice meant to accept Jesus as my savior and to commit my life to him. The result of my saved heart and spirit meant I would be saved from going to hell and would spend eternity in heaven. So, basically, a very big problem: me being a doomed sinner, packaged with a very simple solution: believe and obey.
(Please note, beloved reader, that this summary is not a theologian’s attempt at describing Christianity. I invite you to read this summary from the perspective of a 32 year old woman who is attempting to understand how her initiation into Christianity as described above impacted her young, developing brain.)
I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I was 6 years old. I still remember the immense relief I felt to have found the antidote to hell. With that sorted, all I had to do was share the antidote with others, and the best way to do this was to be a living example of purity and obedience. I caught on very early that in my world, obedience equated to being a good Christian. I was up for the task. It became my entire personality as well as the lens I saw the world through. One of my favorite ways to share Jesus and express my faith was through “Christian music.”
Back to Jennifer! If you haven’t gathered already, Jennifer Knapp was a successful artist in the evangelical Christian music industry. I was drawn to and inspired by her powerful voice and lyrics. Even though my little brain misheard some lyrics, I understood the whole of her message to be in line with what I was being taught in Christianity. Crying out to God to make me clean, to make me whole. Asking God to undo me, to relieve me from myself - because the way I was was wrong somehow. Asking God to put away my flesh and own my spirit - internalizing a vague idea that my body was to be feared.
In addition to what I was being taught at home and church, Christian music further shaped my personal and theological beliefs. I believe music to be - quite literally - magic; and I experience it to be powerfully and mysteriously influential. Considering music was my safe place to feel seen and understood, it makes sense I would attach myself to the music makers. And of course, I’m not alone in this experience, and those that market the music know it. Jennifer Knapp - and all of the other Christian artists that would become my favorites - were pedestalized as shining Christian role models. I believed them to be the ones who had mastered the Christian faith, and were being celebrated and given the honor of singing about it for the rest of us to be in awe of and to emulate. For me, their music was a place to find the answers, without even having to ask the questions in the first place.
Evangelical Christian culture attempted to control the narratives and messages that came from these artists, and that created a lot of potential harm for both the musicians and the fans. The musicians who wanted to share their art and their faith could do so by becoming consumable products of purity and perfection. In turn, the fans of these artists could consider themselves good and pure by consuming Christian music instead of “secular” music. It was a symbiotic relationship that proved to be monetarily successful, though it has done a lot of harm. I certainly don’t want to minimize the sweetness of fans enjoying their favorite music, and artists enjoying successful careers. But I believe it is also important to acknowledge the potential for harm and dehumanization in this industry, and to be honest about the affects it has had on individuals and culture.
Now that I’ve opened that can of worms, I’ll zoom back into the parallels of my and Jennifer’s stories.
The messages from fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity and the culture created around it deeply impacted the way I viewed myself. Thinking about little me singing along to songs that spoke of my uncleanness and brokenness as if they were the most true things about me still makes me feel sad. I don’t feel like I developed a sense of self - instead I was obsessed with being a good Christian, and was terrified of what stepping out of that identity would mean about me. My beautiful, human quirks along with the desires I had for myself were subconsciously buried and repressed.
On the other side of things, Jennifer Knapp was writing songs about her faith - her connection with God, her questions and experiences - and quickly found herself gaining popularity in this Christian culture that was my one and only lens for viewing myself and the world. Never mind that she found this culture a bit disconcerting (which you can read all about in her brilliant book, Facing the Music), us Christians gave her the role of shining Christian example, and it was now her job to evangelize and be our trophy singer. Jennifer wasn’t raised in Christianity, but it found her and gave her hope in a hard time in her life. Her connection to her faith has always been gritty and honest, and you can hear that in her music. Little me connected with the energy of that - she was real and earnest and I could feel that through her voice. Though as a small child I was blindly accepting the Christian answers about the world and myself through her music, there was something deeper I was connecting to. Her raw expression of her faith as she grappled with the human condition struck a chord in me, and I now feel this might be because we are built with some of the same stuff: gumption, courage, sass, and integrity.
So, while our stories are different, we found ourselves in the same Christian culture at the same time. She was pedestalized by the industry as a good Christian example, and I was the good little Christian girl she was meant to be an example for. We were both stuck. We both had to stay in line for fear of condemnation. By God? Not really. By those who use the fear of being condemned by God as a means of control. We both had questions and strong desires to do right by God and others. But when certain questions aren’t allowed and the weight of responsibility and perfectionism is heavy, it seems the safest choice is to stay good and quiet. Jennifer understood this struggle actively at that time, while I was living it but didn’t have the brain development to understand it all yet. I consider Jennifer an important part of my story because of the example she set of choosing her own path - one of curiosity, integrity, and courage.
As I grew and the changing seasons of my inner world called for different kinds of music, other Christian artists took Jennifer’s spot as my “favorite.”
And when I was about 10, Jennifer Knapp disappeared from the public eye.
The year I turned 18, my parents told me the news: Jennifer Knapp had reappeared and announced she was a lesbian. I was still living that good girl Christian life, and I’m ashamed to say, I was disappointed in her. She was a role model of mine and at the time I felt like she let me down by choosing a lifestyle that was anti-Christian. I now know this is the farthest thing from the truth - that you can indeed be gay and Christian - but more importantly to police an individual’s sexual preferences out of fear of either losing control of others or losing the security of your own beliefs is evidence of a sick religious culture. I thought she had let me down when really she was the example of being in integrity with one’s truth that I needed. She showed me how to be brave in questioning the cultural norms, and I saw that though it wasn’t easy, it reached a lot of people who really needed to hear her story.
Jennifer took some serious heat from Christian culture for speaking her truth. I believe this is because her Christian songs are incredibly honest and intimate prayers. She was praised and treated like a trophy for this. To come out as a lesbian was a threat to the narrative control you find in Christian culture. How can someone with such beautiful, honest, and prayer-like songs be gay? They wouldn't invite room for that possibility. They chose to simply discard her.
I didn’t make these mindset shifts when I was 18. When I heard about her coming out, I silently judged her and moved on with my life. It wasn’t until I began questioning the Christianity that raised me that I remembered Jennifer and googled her, curious what she was up to. That’s when I found her book, Facing the Music. I read it and cried, understanding her and my own story more deeply for the first time. I spent hours listening to her music and weeping. It was strange to listen to the songs with such admiration for Jennifer after reading her book, and with such heartbreak for little me who drank those songs like water. It was a deeply spiritual experience to cry through those songs and feel all I needed to feel.
It’s been a few years since then and now I listen to her songs with such joy. I’m no longer religious, so I don’t quite understand how it’s possible for me to find delight in them. But the songs feel like a part of me, and I’ve repurposed them. When I listen to what I affectionately call my submarine song (Whole Again) I smile and sing, because I can feel in my heart and my gut that I am already clean and whole. And I have this sense of trust in myself that on those days when I don’t feel clean and whole, I have the tools and support to sit with those younger parts of me that still feel dirty and less than, and I let them cry while I listen. I remind them they don’t have to work so hard to be good anymore, and that they are loved and accepted as they are.
I wrote all of the above nine months ago. I never felt it was the right time to share it until now, and I know it was because there was more to say. Since writing it, I got to see Jennifer in concert. I got to tell her my submarine misheard lyric story, and she playfully worked it into the show (see the video at the end of this post!) It was so special to be able to speak with her and thank her for being who she is. There was a palpable peace in the room that night. I had a sense that those who gathered to see Jennifer play came because they felt safe to be there. We felt safe to take in those songs again, despite the religious lyrics, knowing that we belonged in that room together. Celebrating our safe passage through our own unique stories together, knowing we were understood by the other fans there.
Jennifer didn’t owe us her authenticity, she didn’t owe us anything. But she chose to stand up and share her authentic truth to a harsh world, and because she did we were able to gather that night and sing together and celebrate how far we’ve come.
Last week Jennifer’s re-recording of her album Kansas was released: Kansas 25. I’ve watched with such joy as so many fans have shared their experiences of the new recording, and the overall feedback is similar to what I felt at the concert that night. Lots of celebration for our individual and collective evolutions. I also had the pleasure of joining a few other fans on a podcast where we discussed our thoughts on the re-recording (linked below!) Jennifer’s compassion and integrity shine through these songs. It’s a mysterious thing to listen to these lyrics, full of many of the fundamentalist messages I have spent so much energy unlearning, and to feel Jennifer’s frequency and voice pierce through it all with love and care.
It is a gift to have some of my story intertwine with Jennifer’s. I’d like to believe six year old me felt drawn to Jennifer for her depth, integrity, and poetic expression above all. It is so sweet to look back now and see that I did have a deep connection to myself through music, and perhaps I could always trust what I was drawn to and what I enjoyed. Though the harmful religious culture certainly rattled my self trust and discouraged access to my voice and power, through this connection to Jennifer’s music all these years later I see that I never completely lost myself. I was trustworthy and whole from the start.
If you would like to hear me and three other Jennifer Knapp fans share our thoughts and feelings about her re-recording of Kansas, Maggie graciously hosted us on her podcast to do so and here are the links!