Jon Steingard Fronted an Award-Winning Christian Rock Band. He Tells Us Why He No Longer Believes in God.

From Esquire

What am I doing? It's the question Jon Steingard, former frontman of Christian rock outfit Hawk Nelson, was asking himself in May as he hit publish on an Instagram announcing he no longer believed in God. "I didn't sleep too well that night," he admits on a phone call from his adopted hometown of San Diego. "But what I just come back to, now that it’s done, is that this is true. This is how I really feel."

Hawk Nelson, then with a different lead vocalist at the mic, first broke big on the Christian circuit in 2004 when the Ontario-bred group's pop punk-infused Letters to the President LP gained traction. The following handful-plus of years saw them collaborate with A-list format talent like Amy Grant while recording songs for soundtracks like Yours, Mine & Ours (which starred Dennis Quaid). They were nominated for three Dove Awards and, in 2009, earned a Grammy nod.

Steingard made the move from guitarist to center stage for the band in 2012; he'd spearhead the release of three more albums into Hawk Nelson's eight studio album discography. But he was also beginning to have doubts about his faith—something that would have completely sidelined his act. The CCM industry, which sees tens of millions of albums in sales each year, is not necessarily the most welcome place for those questioning their faith, he tells me. He fought those feelings off as long as he could—he would "shove them down," he says—but eventually they became unavoidable. And when he finally pushed share on Instagram, his post went viral.

It found headlines across news and entertainment verticals, while thousands of fans, former Christians, and current Christians, alike flooded his comments. "I just didn't think it was that shocking of a thing to say," he says, considering the breadth of the attention. "I woke up the next morning with an honesty hangover, but I'm pretty convinced it was the right thing to do." And as the messages began piling up, he also realized, "wow, that's a lot of responsibility."

In a wide-ranging interview following his announcement, Steingard discussed the unraveling of his faith, the joy he felt at SCOTUS' ruling in support of gay marriage, and, of course, the Kanye of it all. The following has been edited for clarity and length.

Now that you have made your announcement, do you feel like you need to continue the conversation, from this point forward or was this a final note on the topic?

Yeah. That’s where this whole thing started for me. I felt like I had been public about faith and Christianity for so long that the fact that I had a change of heart over the last few years meant that I had a responsibility to be honest. If I was open before, why should I not be open now? I’m not able to write back to everyone that writes me because, quite frankly, I’ve never experienced this amount of inbox flood, but there have been a few stories that have stood out and I’m doing my best to jump in when I feel like I can be helpful.

In your post, you likened losing your faith to a sweater unraveling over time. It doesn’t sound like it was one big moment where your worldview hit a 180.

[The sweater metaphor] felt most true to my experience. It was a gradual process, thread by thread. Eventually you look down and discover the sweater isn’t there anymore. There were a number of points along the way where I was trying to hold onto my idea of God—like “Well, I have no problem with the idea of God; I have a problem with Christian culture, or the Church, or these types of Christians…”

But when I got right down to it, I was just trying to convince myself of things in order to hold onto my notion of God. Eventually, I got to this place where I realized if I was honest with myself, and if I could build up the courage to actually say it to myself, I’d have to say “I don’t believe any of it.”

Were there specific moments where you can pinpoint another thread falling? To continue the imagery…

I remember when the Supreme Court decision was passed to legalize gay marriage feeling in my gut, I want to celebrate this. And at that point, I can’t say that I had a lot of gay friends, but I had a few. And I had friends that were in long-term same-sex relationships and wanted to get married. I remember feeling like I wanted to support them but didn’t feel like I could, publicly.

There was a band called Jars of Clay that I grew up listening to as a kid, and I don’t remember if they came out and supported it as a band, but Dan, the singer, he did. I didn’t see them around the Christian music circuit very much after that.

I’d imagine that makes your own realization, that your belief was wavering, all the scarier.

It was terrifying on a bunch of levels. First off, how do we discuss this with our families and friends? But on a more existential level, I had always believed that there was someone looking out for me. The idea that we’re on our own was really scary. And then it was like, what do I teach my kids? What do I tell them? It feels like I’m not living in the same world I was living in a year ago.

How did that fear manifest in your daily life?

It put me in a pretty depressive state for a while. I felt a lot of responsibility. I felt like, I’ve been fronting this Christian band—what does that mean for the band? What does that mean for the guys in the band? What does that mean for our manager? Our label? Our publicist? I was feeling the weight of all of that, and I was also like, “How is this going to affect my kids and my wife and my family?”

I started seeing a counselor, and my therapist has been rad. I knew my parents would suggest that I find a Christian counselor—I was pretty open with my parents as I was processing this stuff—but I had to tell them that I wanted to find a counselor who I didn’t really care what they believed. And the first few sessions, I couldn’t have told you. I didn’t sense any agenda other than she wanted to get me to a healthy place.

How did this affect your relationship with your wife and her own faith?

I’m lucky that my wife has been processing these things in the same way that I have. I have friends that have gone through this process, where their spouse did not feel the same way, and that is a hard path to walk. I tend to be one or two steps ahead of my wife in this, but that’s only because I am obsessed with reading and I’m getting up at three in the morning and spending time alone reading.

Both your father and your father-in-law are pastors, so I have to imagine both sets of parents are invested in keeping your faith active.

It’s a hard conversation because if I’m talking with my parents—or someone that I care about who believes deeply—I can’t really say, “I don’t believe in God” without essentially telling them, “I think you’re wrong.” When it’s someone that you love and care about, you have no desire to attack their deepest-held beliefs, but by simply stating your own, it becomes that.

How are they handling this news?

They’re all really, really loving. They’ve made it clear that they love us no matter what. But my mom believes deeply that if I’m open, God will reveal himself. And I’ve just said, “Hey, if God is there, why wouldn’t I want to know about him?” In order for me to get to a place where I can believe in him, I feel like I need to really have an experience that takes me there. I’m just unwilling to manufacture it in my own mind. That’s the closest thing we’ve found to a place where we can all land. My mom said, “I feel like it’s in God’s court now.” And I said, “Okay. I feel the same.”

If you are a Christian whose job doesn’t depend on their faith, you’re allowed to remain a conflicted, or questioning, person. But as soon as it is your job—you become a Christian rocker, let’s say—suddenly you have to believe and maintain every single thing on the Christian checklist.

Yeah, and you can never wrestle with that. That’s one of the reasons that I have a ton of empathy for pastors, because they’re in a position where it’s difficult for them to be honest about their struggles with things. Every time they’re honest about something hard, they could lose their livelihood. That’s why you see things where those things can build up and build up and then you have something horrible come out and you have a huge scandal on your hands. It’s because we’re in a culture that can’t discuss these things.

Outside of the band, you have a full-time career in film editing and production. But was there a worry that by making this announcement, the financial well-being of your family, or your band members’ families, might be put in duress?

Luckily, all of us have developed other things that we’ve moved onto. About half of my work involves Christian organizations or nonprofits or bands, so I still felt like “this could be trouble.” But if people stop hiring me, I have the added layer of, I will never know if it was coronavirus or not...

My willingness to speak up increased as I became financially more independent from that community. Consciously and subconsciously, my way of dealing with my doubts was to shove them down. Because if I got to this place I’m at now, and I was still financially dependent on the band, and I was going onstage and singing songs about God that I didn’t believe in, that would have been so horrifying. It wasn’t until I began to be more financially separate from that community that I noticed, “Oh, if my career doesn’t require me to believe anything in particular, then when do I believe?” That’s where the journey became real.

Do you have any plans to make more music?

I’m not super interested in, at the moment, making music. Partially, it’s a practical thing. I feel like I’ve found other things that are more practical for me to make a living doing. But also, music is so tied to that period of my life that I feel like I would be missing part of the story if I wasn’t honest with myself about the fact that there might be a little sadness there for me. While I was processing all of this stuff, I was barely listening to music, for like two years.

Christian music is in an especially wrought spot. It’s kind of maligned by mainstream music press, or not really covered. But there are also a whole host of Christians who feels discomfort with it because of how much people profit off their faith.

There’s this sort of tension between art and commerce and ministry. And every Christian artist has their own blend of those three things. Some are heavier on one than the others. There are some artists that are very clearly, "This is a business." And some that are very clearly, "This is a ministry." And some that are very clearly, "This is art." And I am comfortable with all three of those existing, as long as they're honest.

My perspective, the whole time I was in it, and even now, is that I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to have any particular blend of those three things. I think where we get a little tripped up is that I think, broadly, that the Christian music audience is a little uncomfortable with the business side of things, because it feels somehow less pure … And I don’t think it’s fair to paint all of Christian music with the same brush, either. I know these people. There are some that I wouldn’t trust with a dime of mine. But then there are others that I would trust with my children. It’s hard for me to write the whole thing off.

The industry has had another level of attention added in the last couple years as Kanye West has said that he now only wants to make faith-based music. It feels like many people have been overjoyed that someone as famous as him has made such an announcement, but it also feels like there are a large number of doubters—people who think he’s just in it to sell tickets to Sunday service and new merch.

I’m fascinated by the Kanye thing. It brings up all kinds of questions that are so important—like, who gets to decide whether Kanye gets to talk about Jesus or not? Whose permission does Kanye need to talk about Jesus?

I would answer that very quickly: “No one’s.”

How can you know someone’s motivations? I am quite sure there are people in the Christian music industry right now who are asking those questions about me and wondering what my motivations are. I appreciate, more than ever, the value of leaving space for people to have their motivations remain unquestioned and take people at their word. When they say, “This is why I’m doing this,” believe them, unless you have a really good reason not to.

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