The Christian Side-Hug and the End of Rap

From my outsider perspective, I've learned two things about devout Christians. And no, I'm not talking about those moderate, everybody get along, some of my best friends are Jewish and I don't hate gay people Christians, I'm talking about the super-duper double order of Christ with cheese Christians. One: They hate sex, that universal expression of love and affection with the ability to form lasting bonds between people regardless of background and even the power to create new life. Two: They're a-ok with violence, the force that has kept people apart since the beginning of time and even has the tendency to destroy life. In Christian fundamentalism's most recent attack on sex, or at least their woefully distorted conception of sex, they've instituted the concept of the Christian Side-Hug, or CSH, with the help of a terrible, terrible rap premiered at the Encounter Generation Conference.

Put simply, the CSH is an unfounded prohibition of the traditional "front hug" because there is the slight potential for the genital areas of the participants to briefly graze through several layers of clothing. Yes, because if there's one thing that's sure to keep kids from having sex, it's forcing them to obsess over one another's naughty bits and all of the ways they might get touched over the course of otherwise innocent behaviors.

The CSH comes from the same backward thinking as the Purity Ring fad and the idea of "re-commitment" aka re-virginizing. This particular tack has previously resulted in such super-Christ-y outcomes like an increase in teen pregnancy rates and a higher prevalence of devout Christian kids engaging in all kinds of creative sodomy thanks to the Freudian levels of vagicentric thinking engendered by religious chastity movements.

But really, the CSH as a behavior is just another in a long line of ridiculous, soon-to-be-failures in the losing war against teen sexuality. The more startling thing about it is the accompanying rap manufactured for the Encounter Generation Conference. Yeah, it sucks, it's vaguely anti-semitic and it relies on the most broad hip hop stereotypes to capture an audience, but it's also almost indistinguishable in quality from most modern pop rap. This should be cause for concern among anyone who wants hip hop to be taken seriously as an art.

The Christian establishment co-opting pop styles in an attempt to capture a younger demographic is nothing new. The difference is that things like Christian Rock have always been noticeably worse in overall quality when compared to their secular counterparts. The Christian Side-Hug rap is only lame because of its message. The production values and sense of rhythm have a lot in common with much of the rap in the secular Top 40. This doesn't mean that Christian pop music is getting better (that's scientifically impossible), it means that hip hop has reached its nadir. If anyone, even a bunch of dangerously uncool fundie kids, can mimic your style, it's time to evolve.

And one last note: The "rappers" at the end of the video mimic getting shot to death in sync with the gun sound effects at the end of their track. Maybe now that the most suburban kids in the world have hijacked the rap=violence schtick, secular hip hop can stop all of the gangland posturing.