Reckless Love? Considering Intimacy, Aggression, and Gender in Christian Music
By Anneli Loepp Thiessen.
Anneli Loepp Thiessen is a 2024 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholars Award winner. You can read her award-winning article in the most recent edition of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, available now.
From its earliest days as a movement, contemporary worship music has drawn heavily on intimate and romantic language to describe the relationship between humanity and God. These Christian congregational songs include intimate phrases such as “You are my all in all,” “I want to touch you,” and “draw me close to you.” This intimate and romantic language is meaningful for many, but it has also granted the genre critique (including the nickname of “Jesus is my boyfriend” music). While contemporary worship music speaks to me both musically and spiritually, in recent years, a concern for the way women are represented in this repertoire made it difficult to sing particular songs. I noticed that a small subset of songwriters has drawn upon intimate language in a more aggressive way, using words such as “reckless,” “jealous,” and “insatiable” to describe God’s love. I wondered: how might this shift towards intimate and aggressive language for God in worship music impact marginalized members of congregations, namely women and survivors of abuse?
From 2016-2020, I served on the committee that compiled the recent Mennonite hymnal, Voices Together. Our meetings were often shaped by discussions about the larger meanings of song texts. We asked ourselves, “What are the subtle messages that come from certain images of God?” We often took our cues from feminist liturgists, who have long suggested that the images of God that we hold impact our social arrangements and human relationships. Marjorie Procter-Smith encapsulates this in her 1990 book, writing: “The use of patriarchal titles for God such as Lord, King, and Father indicates what kind of behavior is appropriate for us and what we can expect from God. Patriarchal relationships of dominance and submission are reinforced by such forms of address.”1 With this in mind, I find the recent trend in contemporary worship music towards intimate andaggressive language for God concerning. What messages does that language send?
Scholars have raised concerns over aggressive language from God towards people in a range of areas throughout history, such as in scripture (ex. Song of Songs), the writings of women mystics in the Medieval era (with writings often focusing on God’s assault on the soul), or the hymnody of women text writers in the 19th and 20th centuries (which often emphasize submission). Evidently, language of intimacy and sexual violence was present in Christian texts long before the rise of intimate language in evangelical worship in the late twentieth century. However, from a feminist liturgical lens, the rise of violent language in the intimate context of contemporary worship music is an invitation to consider unintended messaging.
Jenell Williams Paris suggests that the romantic language between humanity and the divine in contemporary worship music can be interpreted as a reflection of the romance between men and women.2 She identifies ways that God takes on the role of the “leading man” in contemporary worship songs, while the congregation enacts a doting and helpless woman, a set of roles that can be carried over and reflected onto romantic relationships.3 In the context of intimate and romantic worship lyrics, imagery that portrays God as violent and aggressive has detrimental impacts on women and survivors of abuse who are positioned as inferior and may be re-traumatized recalling prior experiences. It also negatively impacts men, for whom this language and the associated behaviour becomes normalized. It would be a broad overgeneralization to say that aggressive language has infiltrated all contemporary worship music, but the popularity of these songs marks this trend as worth examining. I offer one example here.
“Reckless Love,” was released in 2017 and quickly became one of the most popular contemporary worship songs of the year. The chorus declares “the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God … chases me down, fights ‘til I’m found, leaves the ninety-nine.” While the song is intended to describe a God whose love is radically caring and devoted—reckless about their own safety in their search for the lost sheep—the use of the word “reckless” instead depicts a God who is incautious and unconcerned with how their actions may be received. The message of carelessness presented in the chorus transitions to violence in the bridge, as the singer recites, “There’s no wall you won’t kick down … coming after me.” The text indicates that God is chasing the worshiper, or when romantic roles are layered on, that the “leading man” is aggressively pursuing a woman. If a woman were to describe a man as recklessly coming after her in these terms, those around her would likely be concerned.
As a wide-reaching movement in congregational song, the question is not whether congregations should continue to sing contemporary worship music, but rather how they can do so in ways that are more attentive to these issues. In response to this violent language, I suggest that songwriters and worship leaders should work towards finding language that empowers congregants to pursue relationships with God and each other that are consensual and safe. They can do this by relying more heavily on a range of scriptures (including expansive feminine images), considering the effects of implied or explicit liturgical power structures, and offering symbolic, spoken, or sung consent. Our worship will be stronger if it cares for a breadth of human experiences in communion with a God who sees and understands pain. As Julie B. Miller writes: “If we as feminists are to continue our efforts to end violence against women, we must continue to read against the grain and to expose ideologies that oppress women wherever we find them.”4
Anneli Loepp Thiessen is a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Ottawa, where her research exists at the intersections of musicology, religious studies, and gender studies. Her dissertation examines how religious, social, and political values inform women’s participation in the Nashville-based Christian music industry. This research has been supported by fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and Louisville Institute. In addition to her article in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, she is published in Religions, Worship, Anabaptist Witness, The Hymn: A Journal of Congregational Song and the Journal of Contemporary Ministry. An active church musician, Anneli served on the hymnal committee for the Voices Together Mennonite hymnal (2020) and is the co-director of Anabaptist Worship Network. She teaches in the School of Music at Canadian Mennonite University.