(RNS) — When old christian artist For the first time, Michael Güngör hosted a new spiritual community in Los Angeles this year, where worship began not with an organ blast or a sermon series video introduction, but with the blowing of bubbles.

Appropriately named “The Game,” Güngör envisioned the event, which included painting, dancing, communal singing and meditation but no religious belief, as a celebration that “redefines worship.”

“I want to be in a room, see each other’s eyes, smell each other, and hear each other sing in tune. This is something we have always done as a species,” said Güngör. “I think there’s something important, really fundamental and human about this.”

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Güngör’s understanding of worship was not always this experimental. Thousands of people in packed churches and concert halls sang along to Güngör’s 2010 hit “Beautiful Things,” where it became a permanent fixture on youth groups’ set lists. However, in 2014, Güngör’s criticisms of the Christian music industry and his public musings about Creation being a poem rather than a historical fact led to his ostracism from the Christian music industry. Now, after a long period of struggling with his inherited evangelical faith — documented on his podcast “The Liturgists” — Gungor says he is more interested in embracing the current lived moment than adhering to a set of religious beliefs, although he identifies Christianity as his adopted faith. “mother tongue.”

Like himself, Güngör still sees a desire for ritual and social gathering for “deconstructionism” (a popular term today for the process of questioning and sometimes abandoning the teachings of one’s faith tradition). He recognizes the power of the collective and aims to write non-dogmatic music for corporate, if not religious, worship.

“We have been freed from some of the shame-based things and some of the dogma that oppressed and hurt so many of us, but now we’re kind of wandering around alone… What are we missing? Is there anything we can find here?”

Over the last two decades, Contemporary Christian Music stalwarts such as Audrey Assad, DC Talk’s Kevin Max, Hawk Nelson’s Jon Steingard, and many more have clearly emerged from the CCM industry. For many of these musicians, questioning the theological parameters of the industry meant feeling unwelcome in mainstream CCM spaces. Years later, after questioning their beliefs, a handful of these once CCM artists are reconsidering the faith in some way, experimenting with elements they had previously discarded, and writing music for listeners who are spiritual rather than religious. In many ways, these artists’ break with institutional Christianity and their hunger for a broader form of belonging exemplify this. national religious trends.

One of the first CCM artists to publicly leave the industry was Jennifer Knapp, who burst onto the Christian music scene in 1998 with her debut album “Kansas.” But although Knapp was attracted to Christianity’s teachings about human dignity and divine love, he soon realized that the Christianity promoted in the CCM world drew hard lines about who belonged and who did not. His remarks about Jesus’ humanity and his questions about the necessity of substitutionary atonement (the idea that Jesus died to replace humanity) began to come under criticism.

“At that time I was already being criticized and being told that you were no longer a Christian,” Knapp said. “Then I thought: Okay, I wonder what you think about my sexual orientation.”

In 2002, Knapp “hit the eject button” on the Christian music scene and faith. It’s like when you came back in 2010 openly gay musician no longer releases music under the Christian banner.

According to longtime Bethel Music recording artist William Matthews, it was partly the rigid homogeneity of the Christian Music industry that ultimately led him to leave it. Raised in the context of the Black Church of God, he came to Christian music through models of spontaneous worship promoted by Morningstar Ministries in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri. Matthews, who spent his evenings watching Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, was skeptical about the existence of hell, but felt very much at home in his prophetic corner of the Christian music world. He led worship at the charismatic leader’s conferences in the early 2010s. Lance Wallnauhe is now known for his pro-Trump prophecies.

But by 2015, Williams realized that nonviolent Christian theology was a more compelling approach. He watched anti-immigrant rhetoric and opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement reach a fever pitch in evangelical circles and became frustrated with what he saw as the “conservative bias” of the Christian music industry. After spending nearly 15 years thinking she was bridging cultures as one of the only Black people in predominantly white evangelical areas, she was shattered to discover that many of those she approached seemed ambivalent about racism.

“That really led me to move away from Christian music,” Matthews said.

She attributes the CCM industry’s apparent conservative bent to its target audience of “white, suburban, Midwestern or Southern moms.” Christian radio executives and Christian bookstores that cater to this demographic have been known to censor songs or albums that cross conservative theological or political boundaries.

“What the CCM industry or Christian music sells is safety,” said musician Derek Webb, founding member of the Christian rock band Caedmon’s Call. “The people who run or appear to be gatekeeping the CCM industry are not doing so to hold some kind of moral plumb line.” Webb believes the pushback often has to do with the company’s profitability rather than personal beliefs.

Despite the constraints of the Christian music industry, exiting the industry often means leaving record labels, Christian music festival circuits, and radio plays behind, and involves introducing music to a much less defined market. Christian artists who are pushing some boundaries Semler And Flaming GrantThe two gay artists who top the Itunes Christian charts have found success through social media and streaming platforms; many once-Christian artists have been labeled “too Christian” for mainstream musical spaces and “too secular” for those who are openly religious.

“Algorithmically, this is a kind of no man’s land,” Güngör said. “I still have more listeners for ‘Beautiful Things’ than anything else I’ve ever done.”

Creating music for a more obscure spiritual audience may not guarantee commercial success, but if it means creating music that feels authentic for many early Christian artists, it’s worth the trade-off.

Known for his provocative approach to songwriting, Webb says his lyrics have caused him to both “lose” a quarter or a third of his listeners every 18 months and gain new listeners. After 30 years in the music industry, he’s happy with the ebb and flow. In 2017, three years later divorce From fellow Christian artist Sandra McCracken, Webb released the album “Fingers Crossed,” documenting her departure from Christianity. However, although he still considers himself agnostic, his latest album, “The Jesus Hypothesis,” deals with Christian themes more openly.

“I wanted to go back under the rubble where all this was destroyed and burned, and I want to go back with a scalpel to where I was before with an axe,” he said of the album.

Webb’s return to the wreckage of the Christian faith coincided with his return to Caedmon’s Call, which recently re-recorded its self-titled debut album in honor of its 25th anniversary. The 2022 release is emblematic of the ways many early Christian artists are coming back to reclaim elements of their religious heritage.

More than a decade after his return to the music scene, Knapp offered a re-release of his debut album “Kansas 25” in May. He graduated from Vanderbilt School of Theology in 2018 and now sees Christianity as a source of wisdom whose teachings of freedom fuel his own LGBTQ+ advocacy. Knapp said the support for “Kansas 25” has caused him to look at his early music with new eyes.

“If I had any resentment about my role within Evangelical Christianity, or concerns that I was subjecting people to too much religious trauma because of the conservative evangelical space I came from, where I bound people, it was a real joy to believe that our faith can teach us things and that sometimes our smaller religious spaces have to offer us witnessing that it can go beyond some harm,” Knapp said.

Güngör’s next project emerged from his desire to see communal songs replacing religious lyrics with more universal themes such as love and unity. This fall, he met with more than 20 songwriters in Colorado for a songwriting retreat to begin writing and recording music for a project called The Mystic Hymnal.

After a long hiatus from Christian music, William Matthews is also releasing new, honest songs about spirituality. He was invited by evangelical writers earlier this year. a recent declaration of counter-culture war to write and produce an album aimed at ridding the church of political idolatry. with title “Return to Love” The September album was recorded by artists from a variety of theological and political perspectives and was intended for “those who are full of faith or have difficulty believing.”

“I’m always in the middle of wrestling. Does the church have any importance in my life?” said Matthews, who leads worship at a progressive LGBTQ-affirming church in Los Angeles where former evangelicals regularly attend. “I must say that in my life I have always somehow managed to bounce back. Maybe it’s cyclical. “You always come back to home, to a sense of home or a better expression of home.”