Lin-Manuel Miranda Reacts To Church’s “Christianized” Version Of ‘Hamilton’: “Now Lawyers Do Their Work”

Tom Tapp
·3 min read
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“Stop running from God, Alexander…His word says if we confess our sins, he is faithful and [wants] just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us.”

Don’t remember that line from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Hamilton? Well neither does Miranda.

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The line is from an unauthorized, “Christianized” version of the musical from RGV Productions, which operates with The Door Christian Fellowship Ministries of McAllen, Texas. It was performed and live on August 5 and streamed. There was also reportedly a second performance the following night, and Miranda is none too pleased.

In a tweet yesterday, the creator of the Grammy and Tony-winning musical expressed his gratitude “to all of you who reached out about this illegal, unauthorized production…And always grateful to the @dramatistsguild, who have the backs of writers everywhere, be it your first play or your fiftieth.”

Miranda punctuated his statement with, “Now lawyers do their work,” above a retweet of a condemnation from the Dramatist’s Guild.

The church’s alterations went far beyond the one scene, replacing many lines throughout Miranda’s work with references to Jesus.

In one example, these lines:

“But I’m not afraid
I know who I married
So long as you come home at the end of the day
That would be enough”

Are changed to these lines:

“But I’m not afraid
My hope is in Jesus
If you could just give him a chance at the end of the day
That would be enough”

You can watch it directly below followed by other examples.

At the conclusion of the show, just in case the revised messaging wasn’t plain enough, the church’s associate pastor, Victor Lopez, delivered a sermon in which he compared homosexuality to drug addiction.

“Maybe you struggle with alcohol, with drugs, homosexuality,” he said to the audience, “maybe you struggle with other things in life, your finances, whatever, relationships. God can help you tonight.”

On Tuesday, Shane Marshall Brown, a spokesman for Hamilton, issued the following statement to USA Today:

Hamilton does not grant amateur or professional licenses for any stage productions and did not grant one to The Door Church. We issued a cease-and-desist letter for the unauthorized use of Hamilton’s intellectual property, demanding the immediate removal of all videos and images from previous productions from the internet, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, their own website, and elsewhere.

The Hamilton family stands for tolerance, compassion, inclusivity and certainly LGBTQ+ rights. We are in the process of reviewing the unauthorized changes made to the script to determine further action.

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