Southern Gospel Sissies: Evangelical Music, Queer Spirituality, And the Plays of Del Shores‪.‬

The Gay-Gospel Paradox The origin of this paper is twofold. In the first place, I have for some time now been alternately fascinated and perplexed by the number of gay men--myself included--who enjoy music in the southern, white gospel tradition, which perhaps more than any other could be fairly described as the soundtrack for fundamentalist, evangelical Protestantism in North America. The second catalyst was the appearance in 2006 of an article from Inside Out Nashville, a weekly periodical focused on the queer community in Music City. The piece was a vitriolic critique by a local gay writer unaffiliated with gospel music, aimed at a periodic social gathering of gay southern gospel professionals, whom the writer lambasted for the hypocrisy of being gay and working in conservative Christian entertainment. This gay-gospel social gathering, the writer concluded, was as "one of the most cynical and creepy statements of our society" (Derrick, 2006, p. 5). For several years now, I have attended this event, though my association with gospel music goes only so far as an academic interest and a blog devoted to criticism and commentary on southern gospel music and culture, and the columnist's portrayal of the gathering bore virtually no relationship to what I have encountered there, which might best be described as part religious experience, part cabaret, part family reunion, and--perhaps most important for a group of people whose identity puts them at odds with their spiritual traditions (not to mention their livelihood, in many cases)--unconditional affirmation of both the redemptive promise of evangelical spirituality and gay male sexuality.