To be up front about my bias: I think much of contemporary Christian music is garbage, and that many of the bands and singers are part of the most toxic aspect of evangelical celebrity culture. That’s not the point of this column, but I wanted to get that out of the way at the outset.
That brings me to the scene that unfolded at this year’s Dove Awards, which is an awards ceremony run by the Gospel Music Association of the United States “to recognize outstanding achievement in the Christian music industry.” I don’t watch them – or any awards ceremony, for that matter – but clips frequently go viral on X (formerly Twitter). This year, Derek Webb, lead singer for the band Caedmon’s Call, decided to wear a dress to the awards.
This story is culturally significant because with the ascent of the LGBT movement to cultural dominance, we’re seeing a lot of this sort of thing. I’ve already written extensively about the culture wars convulsing the country music scene – because the LGBT movement’s demands are totalizing, there is no area of the culture that can remain politics-free. Many churches are buckling on key issues of orthodoxy and following the sexual revolution instead of scriptural revelation; artists who identify as Christian are particularly vulnerable to caving on key convictions since their careers depend on audiences and the herd has shifted over the past few years.
Caedmon’s Call, in case you’re wondering, is a reference to the 6th century monk Caedmon, who was referenced by Bede as a powerful composer and Christian poet. I suspect he wouldn’t be thrilled at the specter of his name being used as a traditional-sounding name for cross-dressing hipsters. Indeed, Derek Webb used his first-ever in-person attendance at the Dove Awards to come garbed in a woman’s dress, black stockings, and pearls.” (His wife Sandra McCracken, whom he divorced in 2014 after cheating on her, was nominated for an award.) Webb has gotten really into cross-dressing of late, frequently posting photos of himself wearing women’s clothing and posting various pro-LGBT slogans, perhaps in an effort to make people forget that he cheated on the mother of his two children.
Just in case people didn’t know about his brave decision to wear a dress, Webb posted a video to X explaining why:
“Why did I wear a dress to the Dove Awards?” Webb asked. “As a cis, straight white man, I walk into a room like that, and any room, with an incredible amount of advantage and privilege. If I’m attending as an ally of friends and colleagues, I should do everything possible to surrender that privilege at the door. If the way you look at my loved ones isn’t the way you look at me, I’m not truly standing with them.”
Ostentatiously wearing black nail polish, Webb then quoted pro-LGBT “pastor” Stan Mitchell, saying: “If you claim to be someone’s ally but aren’t getting hit by the stones thrown at them, you aren’t standing close enough. Plus – I have amazing legs.” Keep in mind here that Webb markets himself as a Christian singer – in fact, he even dressed in drag and joined a drag queen for one music video, standing in front of a cross while he played his song.
The replies to Webb’s video are worth reading – nobody is fooled by what he’s doing. Webb wanted to hijack an allegedly Christian awards ceremony by making a statement and attempting to make everyone uncomfortable and provoke a reaction, thereby making himself a news story and signalling to his cultural overlords that he is, in fact, an “ally” and that he should thus be accorded all of the privilege that comes with being an “ally.”
He still wants to call himself a Christian – that grift is still working for him at the moment – but he’s not one of those, you know, Christian Christians who actually believes any of the more uncomfortable doctrines about it being an abomination for a man to wear women’s clothing or prohibitions on homosexuality. He is the sort of Christian who can reliably serve as a spiritual quisling for the LGBT movement by joining them in their campaign to smear actual Christians as bigots, and he let them know by putting on a dress, stockings, and nail polish.
Honestly, what an embarrassment. I wonder if he ever considers what his grandfather and great-grandfather and other ancestors must have thought of him, a man debasing himself before drag queens and gender-confused activists by wearing women’s clothing and painting his nails. They would be so deeply ashamed of him – but he, unfortunately, appears unable to feel any shame at all.
