One thing that’s really gotten under my skin lately is the strained relationship between culture and religion. As the entire world wanders aimlessly into a scorching wildfire of polarized “hot takes,” theology continues to find itself propped up as the enemy of academic rigor, democratic values, and scientific knowledge. We’re surrounded by a cacophony of voices that have placed intellect, democracy, and science on one side of an imaginary chasm, and religion on the other. Their implicit demand is to choose one side and leave the other behind. In many cases, I have witnessed the Church embrace this enmity in a misguided attempt to “fight the good fight,” which, okay, yeah, smug, sneering condescension is admittedly infuriating. But meeting hostility with hostility moves us even farther away from a solution, not to mention the fact that it compromises the very human community Christ lived, died, and rose to reconcile to the Father.
I am far from the first to criticize the angry back-and-forth shouting match. America’s favorite volunteer parish catechist Stephen Colbert has consistently brought outspoken opponents of religion onto his show in a demonstration of the possibility for dialogue. Centers at universities all over the world are devoted to bringing faith and culture into dialogue. Br. Guy Consolmagno, hero to Catholic school science teachers everywhere, continues to shout into the void about the ridiculousness of the false dichotomy between science and religion (and of course, so does his boss, Pope Francis). However, there’s someone else who belongs to this Dream Team, someone you might not expect: a charming dude from the South Side of Chicago whose grin is almost as permanent as his baseball cap: Chance the Rapper.
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Since Coloring Book came out, Chance has been something of a cross between a superhero and that kid from your neighborhood that your mom says you should hang out with more often because she thinks he’d be a good influence on you. He won three Grammys. He performed at the White House and became a close family friend to the Obamas. He donated a million dollars to Chicago public schools. He became the most gif-worthy person in the world, and let me take a minute here to pick out three specific examples of his gif-worthiness:
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| When Beyonce snuck up behind him and gave him a hug, and he reacted the way we would all react if Beyonce snuck up behind you and gave you a hug. |
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When he threw out the first pitch at a White Sox game when it was raining and celebrated by busting a move. |
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| When he danced backstage at the ESPYs with Steph Curry and made everybody in the whole world all smile at once. |
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The second most exciting thing about Chance the Rapper is that he talks about God in his music. Coloring Book isn’t Christian rap; its lyrics include a fair amount of profanity. The thing about it is, it’s such a beautifully human collection of music. The themes of the songs on Coloring Book range from mournful eulogies for loved ones who have died (“Summer Friends”) or from whom we’ve drifted apart (“Same Drugs”), to startlingly frank commentaries on luck and gratitude (“Blessings”). There’s an entire song about how much he misses dancing with his girlfriend at the roller rink (“Juke Jam”), and another about the bittersweet realization that, now that they are parents, they can’t live the same way they used to (“Smoke Break”). It also includes Chance saying things like this:
This for the kids of the King of all Kings 1
I got the power, I could poke Lucifer with crucifix2
Magnify, magnify, lift it on high 3
I speak of wondrous unfamiliar lessons from childhood, make you remember how to smile good4Coloring Book’s lyrics are also full of shout outs to Space Jam and The Lion King, so you could probably say that it’s like Chance created it specifically to fulfill all of my wildest dreams. It’s perfect.5 But it’s the way he raps, and the way he creates music, and the way he generally carries himself, more than the words themselves, that make Chance such an important figure.
See, the most exciting thing about Chance the Rapper is Chancelor Bennett, the actual person. It’s his story, the story behind Coloring Book, and what it came to symbolize in my life, that powered me through last summer and helped my slay the comps dragon.
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You can find more detailed versions of Chance’s life before, during, and after his meteoric rise to fame—I recommend this profile from GQ, which is excellent—but the crucial part, for me, is this: Chance got famous and moved to Los Angeles in 2014. In a couple of months of living “the life” in LA, he started to lose a lot of what mattered to him: his health, his family, and his faith. So he moved back to Chicago to rediscover the world that made him. The result is Coloring Book, which is changing the way pop culture critics are talking about rap music—and about Christianity.
“This record is so good, and it’s so moving, and warm, and joyful,” said Andy Greenwald, former television critic at Grantland and current host of The Ringer’s pop culture podcast, The Watch. “This dude makes religion sound fantastic. I listen to Chance talk about his life, and he loves being a Christian, and I’m like, ‘this sounds interesting,’ and that’s not a thing I ever thought I would say.”
Coloring Book has that effect on Greenwald and others precisely because Chance didn’t go out and try to write a Christian rap album; he’s just a dude who has a relationship with God and creates authentic art. “I never really set out to make anything that could pretend to be the gospel,” he said in an interview with Beats 1 Radio. “It’s just music from me as a Christian man.”
It’s the matter-of-factness with which Chance approaches his faith, and the effect it has on his art, that makes it so graceful and so joyful. He is not setting out to broadcast his own Christianity, but he doesn’t hide it, either; it is part of him, and so it is part of his music.
The pain in Chance’s life also worms its way into his music, but again, the effect of his faith is fascinating and poetic. While much of the world points to evil and declares that it must mean God doesn’t exist, and another part of the world wallpapers over suffering with bubblegum K-LOVE platitudes about God making everything okay, here we find something refreshingly real: a Christian person inviting God into the midst of his suffering, and processing how it all fits together by creating beautiful art.
“There is something about Chance's voice and manner that suggests joy,” writes GQ staff writer Zach Baron. “Sometimes joy shaded by real pain, or real sadness, or real loss, but, nevertheless: joy.” It’s in this willingness to hold all of these disparate things together—pain and joy and sadness and faith and family and fame and culture and religion—that we find not only Chance the Rapper, but also the aforementioned Pope Francis. They are both actively changing perceptions of religion, imbuing the intersection of faith and culture with radiant joy and dancing on the street corner.
Both of them are human, and they both seem to have a sense of all the good and bad that is wrapped up in their humanity. Neither is a savior, and neither tries to be. Both, however, choose to become icons of Christ, making love and hope and joy present in a world that desperately needs more of those things. In this way, they mirror Our Lady, who was the very first to, in the words of Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Dolan, “give God a human nature.”
This, it seems, is the way forward for the Church today: to authentically live as men and women of faith, radiating with joy and giving God a human nature, without fear of the world into which we bring Him.
1 From “All We Got,” which is the best song.↩
2 From “Finish Line/Drown,” which is the best song.↩
3 From “How Great,” which is the best song.↩
4 From “Blessings (Reprise),” which is the best song.↩
5 It also, somehow, doesn’t include either of my favorite pieces of music from Chance, which would be “Sunday Candy” and his verse on Kanye’s “Ultralight Beam.”↩
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