CCM’s atmosphere of celebrity worship

Recent sexual assault allegations against CCM icon Michael Tait have rocked the Christian music scene, as major press outlets rush to cover what might be the worst scandal in the industry’s history. The former DC Talk star abruptly left the Newsboys in January of this year, in what he now claims was an attempt to seek help for his homosexuality and substance addiction. His much-circulated confession refers to the breaking reports as “largely true” and admits that, “at times,” he “touched men in an unwanted sensual way.” However, if the specifics of the allegations are factual—including multiple claims of premeditated grooming, drugging, and forced sexual acts going well beyond “touch”—then the carefully worded statement hardly scratches the surface. And the latest breaking story includes accusations that not just Tait but multiple Newsboys personnel arranged or covered up a young woman’s alleged rape.

According to multiple sources, Tait’s double life was a more or less open secret in the business for years. But given his status, it simply cost less to look the other way. On his Instagram page, worship leader Cory Asbury says “everyone knew,” even if they didn’t know all the “specific details.” In answer to a follow-up question about “how many ‘Christian’ bands/artists are living a double life,” Asbury answers, “A lot.” Of course, this should prompt the further question, “What did you know, Cory? And why are you only telling us now?”

In a fiery reaction to the Tait news, Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams has said she hopes the whole CCM industry “crumbles.” And more, she hopes they abandon a traditional sexual ethic, as she claims Tait’s case highlights the need for “gay-affirming support”—as if celebrating his destructive identity would somehow have made it less likely for him to engage in destructive behavior. One wonders if she would also say the industry should have affirmed former Caedmon’s Call frontman Derek Webb in his self-identification as an adulterer, when he left his wife and de-converted from Christianity altogether.

If there is industry-wide dysfunction to address here, it seems to tend in the opposite direction. Christian music subculture does not typically err on the side of holding strong theological lines and harshly punishing sinners. On the contrary, it has created an atmosphere of celebrity worship and consumerism in which badly catechized artists are placed on a dangerously high pedestal, but their audiences are scolded for accordingly holding them to high standards.

This attitude is on display in the 2021 documentary The Jesus Music, which prominently features Tait and other members of DC Talk, alongside other CCM industry voices and pioneering stars like Amy Grant. Grant’s divorce and remarriage was a widely publicized industry scandal in the 1990s, leading some stations to pull her music amid complaints from outraged fans. The documentary portrays such fans as judgmental fundamentalists unable to give grace to their flawed heroes. It also discusses gospel singer Russ Taff’s struggle with alcoholism, from which he slowly recovered after friends staged an intervention. Bill Gaither becomes emotional as he recalls a conversation with Jerry Falwell, Sr., in which Falwell asked if rumors about some artists’ “lifestyles” were true. Gaither said “Probably,” then went on, “Jerry, if you’re waiting for me to get a room full of unflawed artists, it’s not gonna happen. These are human beings who have been gifted in a special kind of a way, and they’re trying to work through it in these earthly bodies, and sometimes they make mistakes.”

Of course, it’s appropriate for Christians to be compassionate to repentant sinners, and individual cases like Taff’s seem to have been handled with balance. But high standards are also appropriate given the enormous influence of Christian celebrities, influence far greater than most pastors will ever have. “Gifted” people are not served well by an industry that exploits their gifts and enables their sin, while shielding them from the consequences of that sin. And a subculture where people are inclined to make excuses for each other’s “brokenness” provides cover—and cheap Christianese—for predators to exploit.

The Roys Report says that after the night when Tait allegedly spiked a young woman’s drink, then took pleasure in watching her assault, she and her friends claim he tried to apologize to them with phrases like “Sometimes I just have these urges and we all sin,” and “We all make mistakes, and I’ve prayed, and I’ve asked for forgiveness.” His implication, they say, was that nothing more needed to be said. It was being “handled.”

DC Talk’s hit “What if I Stumble?” opens with a spoken-word intro by defrocked celebrity priest Brennan Manning on “the greatest single cause of atheism in the world”: Christians “who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him with their lifestyle.” As fans are now saying in comments under the song on YouTube, its lyrics and intro “hit different” now. Surely God can still speak even through terribly broken vessels. But surely God is also a just God, and whatever lies hidden in the dark will one day be exposed in His all-purifying light.