Righteous Invasion of Cringe, Part 2

[June 2026]

​One of the weirdest things about growing up evangelical in the 90s was how Christians could look at the most random harmless thing imaginable and decide it was Satanic. Not “this promotes unhealthy values.” Not “this person probably needs therapy.” No. Literal Satan. Horns, pentagrams, demons, Hell, the whole package.

And because this was the era of moral panic VHS tapes and church youth group urban legends, people said this shit with complete confidence.

I remember when Amy Grant released secular music and Christians absolutely lost their minds over it. Which in hindsight is hilarious because Heart In Motion is basically one of the least threatening albums ever made. This woman was singing upbeat adult contemporary pop music and suddenly church people were acting like she had opened a portal to the abyss.

What sticks in my mind most vividly is people freaking out over the album cover. Amy Grant was wearing a red dress and posing dramatically, because that is what people on album covers fucking do, and I heard multiple Christians insist this meant she had gone Satanic. They claimed the red dress was Satanism-coded and the pose was some kind of Satanic prayer pose or witch spell pose.

And I remember being a teenager sitting there like: what the fuck are you even talking about.

How do you invent this stuff. Was there a handbook somewhere titled Evil Hand Gestures Of Contemporary Christian Music? Did somebody get a theology degree in bullshit semiotics?

Because from the outside, even as a teenager still deeply immersed in evangelical culture, it was obviously nonsense. Amy Grant looked like a pop singer. That was it. She did not look like Aleister Crowley summoning Beelzebub through the power of soft rock. For fuck's sake, she was even modestly dressed compared to a lot of female pop stars at the time *cough Madonna*.

The sheer paranoia was unreal. Evangelical culture in that era trained people to look at art the way medieval peasants looked at crop blight. Every aesthetic choice had to contain hidden spiritual warfare symbolism. Red dress? Satanic. Dark eyeliner? Satanic. A triangle shape somewhere in the stage lighting? Satanic. Drums? Satanic. Dancing? Potentially Satanic. Existing while insufficiently bland? Extremely suspicious.

And looking back now, there is something very gendered about the way Amy Grant got treated.

Because years later, there was nowhere near the same level of evangelical vitriol toward bands like Creed or P.O.D. Both of whom were openly straddling the line between Christian and secular markets. Suddenly everybody got a lot more flexible about “reaching the world” and “being a light in secular spaces.” Funny how that worked.

Amy Grant does adult contemporary pop and people are analyzing her fucking hand position like she’s casting spells in the woods under a blood moon.

A bunch of dudes make mainstream rock music and suddenly evangelicals discover nuance.

That tells you a lot.

What is funny in hindsight is that while evangelical adults treated Live like dangerous secular rock music, Ed Kowalczyk himself is a born-again Christian. He still performs Live’s old songs too, though he changed the lyric in “Operation Spirit” from “what a man was two thousand years ago means nothing at all to me today” to “means everything to me today,” which is such a fascinating full-circle moment considering how scandalized Christians used to be by that band. I still vividly remember my Sunday school teacher absolutely losing his shit after seeing me wearing a Throwing Copper shirt at the mall like I had shown up draped in the skin of sacrificed youth pastors.

It's also worth noting Ed himself has turned out to be politically liberal and openly supportive of LGBTQ people and progressive causes. He seems to actually practice compassion. If more Christians acted like Ed Kowalczyk instead of culture war addicts screaming about demons in pop music, I would probably have a much warmer view of Christianity than I do now.

And honestly, once you start pulling on this thread, the whole Satanic Panic mentality completely falls apart.

Because the actual reality of musicians and artists is complicated and human.

Did a lot of rock stars overindulge in sex and drugs? Yeah, obviously. Rock music history is basically one long cautionary tale about cocaine. But evangelicals acted like this behavior uniquely proved secular musicians were depraved monsters while conveniently ignoring the fact that born-again Christians also cheat on spouses, abuse substances, watch porn, gamble, and generally behave like messy fucking humans.

The evangelical subculture had this bizarre habit of pretending that saying the sinner’s prayer turned people into morally superior beings while simultaneously having churches packed wall to wall with addiction, infidelity, abuse scandals, financial fraud, and closeted behavior.

Apparently doing cocaine backstage at a Motley Crue concert was evidence of spiritual corruption.

Doing cocaine after Bible study was somehow “struggling with temptation.”

And this is where my own perspective started changing as I got older.

Because the more secular musicians I actually learned about as people, the harder it became to maintain the cartoon version evangelical culture had sold me.

A lot of them were just... people.

Some were assholes. Some were kind. Some were deeply damaged. Some were thoughtful and intelligent. Some were predators. Some were genuinely decent human beings trying to survive fame and addiction and an industry designed to grind people into powder.

For years, my favorite example in these conversations was Marilyn Manson.

And look, younger people may not fully understand how huge Marilyn Manson was as a moral panic target. Evangelicals talked about him like he was the Antichrist, Charles Manson, and the Ars Goetia combined into one human being.

After Columbine, the media and conservative Christians practically treated him like he personally hypnotized teenagers into violence through spooky music videos. But when you actually watched interviews with him back then, especially around the Bowling for Columbine era, he absolutely destroyed people in debates. He was articulate, thoughtful, media savvy, and frankly smarter than a lot of the pearl-clutching adults trying to blame rock music for societal violence instead of dealing with systemic issues.

And weirdly enough, he also came across as kind of soft-spoken and nice and nerdy offstage. Like underneath all the theatrical horror imagery was this intelligent goth dude who loved art and had cats.

For years I used him as my go-to example of why evangelicals flatten people into caricatures.

Except then multiple women came forward with abuse allegations against him, and suddenly that example no longer worked for me.

And honestly, that realization matters too.

Because rejecting evangelical moral panic does not mean pretending every edgy celebrity is secretly wonderful. Sometimes the church is wrong for stupid reasons while the person in question still turns out to be abusive or harmful in completely different ways.

Reality is more complicated than “Christian good, secular bad” or “religious people are uptight and artists are enlightened.”

Human beings are capable of beauty and cruelty in every subculture.

These days, my go-to example is Trent Reznor.

Because if you grew up evangelical, Nine Inch Nails was basically one of the Officially Scary Bands. The name alone probably triggered emergency prayer circles somewhere in suburban America.

And yeah, Trent Reznor absolutely had a messy history with addiction and self-destruction. He has talked openly about it. The man was not exactly living like Ned Flanders during the 90s.

But then he got sober.

He cleaned his life up.

He got really into fitness and working out after sobriety and looked hot as fuck when I saw Nine Inch Nails live in 2013.

And beyond that, he built a stable life. He has a long-term marriage. He is a father. He became an acclaimed film composer. The dude literally worked on a Disney soundtrack. Somewhere out there is a Christian boomer who once thought Nine Inch Nails was summoning demons while Trent Reznor is now helping score family movies.

And I think that is ultimately what irritates me most about evangelical “be not of the world” culture. The absolute refusal to see people as people.

Everything had to become a cosmic battle between Good Christian Heroes and Evil Satanic Villains. Art could not simply be art. Musicians could not simply be flawed human beings. Every eyeliner pencil became spiritual warfare.

Meanwhile actual abuse, hypocrisy, addiction, misogyny, and manipulation inside churches often got minimized, hidden, or forgiven if the person involved knew the right worship songs and said “praise the Lord” enough times.

I spent years watching Christians scream about hidden Satanic messages in rock albums while ignoring cruelty happening right in front of them.

And to be blunt, a lot of secular musicians ended up displaying more honesty about human brokenness than the churches condemning them.

At least Trent Reznor admitted he was fucked up.

At least Ozzy Osbourne never pretended to be a moral authority.

At least Alice Cooper openly talked about getting sober instead of framing himself as spiritually superior.

Meanwhile evangelical culture constantly demanded performance. Constant certainty. Constant purity theater.

And if you stepped outside the approved aesthetic for even five seconds, people started accusing you of witchcraft because you wore red and posed weird on an album cover.

Which is still one of the dumbest fucking things I have ever heard in my life.