Christian rapper urges followers to see movie that promotes African folk magic
Christian rapper Lecrae says he thinks Christians should go see the box office hit “Sinners” despite containing some “anti-Christian propaganda.”
The 45-year-old Grammy-winning hip hop artist, whose real name is Lecrae Devaughn Moore, shared his thoughts on the Ryan Coogler-directed horror film starring Michael B. Jordan, which is projected to take in over $225 million worldwide by the end of its theatrical run.
Set in 1930s Mississippi, “Sinners” follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack, played by Jordan, who confront a supernatural evil upon their return to their hometown. The film, according to Lecrae, also “flips traditional vampire tropes” to cast Christianity as evil and pagan African rituals known as “hoodoo” as holy.
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“I felt some anti-Christian propaganda. The film flips traditional vampire tropes — usually it’s crosses, holy water, and the church standing strong against evil. In this movie, Christianity is either irrelevant or oppressive, and power is found in African spiritual practices,” the rapper said in an April 19 Threads post. “Hoodoo, not the Holy Spirit, is the weapon of choice.”
A form of African folk magic that focuses on practical uses for healing, protection, and divination, Hoodoo emerged in the United States as a form of religious syncretism among newly enslaved Africans in the colonial era.
But in “Sinners,” Lecrae says, the pagan spiritualist tradition is venerated over traditional Christianity, particularly in one scene involving the “sinner’s prayer,” which he says “mocks the faith.” “The church is portrayed more as a place of shame than sanctuary,” he wrote. “The voodoo priestess is the wise guide. And a character says something along the lines of, ‘Blues was created by us, not like gospel which was forced on us,’ I was like daaang.”
He speculated that Coogler, who directed the blockbuster “Black Panther,” maybe “working through some church hurt. Catholic school, forced religion, etc. The film feels like his way of wrestling with that.”
Calling “Sinners” a “beautiful piece of work,” Lecrae encouraged his audience to go and see the film — but to use discernment. “Unfortunately Christianity takes the L for the sake of cultural empowerment. Beautifully shot. Spiritually conflicted.”
He quoted escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
“As Frederick Douglass says about religion, there’s a difference between ‘the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ,” the post reads. “To be the friend of the one, is to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”
The rapper went on The Shade Room podcast days later to clarify his comments, adding that, despite “Sinners'” production value, he believes the film “depicts the Christian faith as a colonized white man’s religion that is oppressive.”
“Did white people use Christianity to oppress black folks and other minorities in history? Absolutely,” Lecrae said. “But just because it was used as a tool of oppression does not discount its relevance, its power, its potency.”
He critiqued the film’s depiction of church, particularly a scene where a character’s father dismissed his musical aspirations. “Even his dad wasn’t a supportive person. His dad was like, ‘Man, you got to put that guitar down,'” he recounted.
The rapper suggested an alternative perspective: “I would have said, ‘Man, you know, gospel came from the blues; that’s how we got gospel music. The blues wasn’t shunned; it was used to uplift and to praise God.'”
In recent years, Lecrae has taken his own shots at what he once called “corporatized” Christianity. He suggested he was almost “done with Christianity” after backlash over his appearance at a December 2020 event in Atlanta held in support of pro-choice Democrat Raphael Warnock during a contentious U.S. Senate election runoff.
The rapper also gave a 2021 interview with The Breakfast Club in which he discussed “deconstructing” from a “Western, political, Evangelical version of Christianity.”
“I’m a hip hop kid who found the Lord,” he said at the time, “but I found America’s version of Christianity, which was detrimental to my psyche, and it was drenched in white supremacy. So I had to deconstruct my faith, come to grips with who God is, and strip away the nationalist mindsets that were drenched in it.”
