Passons, Herndon, and Greene
On May 15, Michael Passons, Ty Herndon and Melissa Greene released an updated version of “Testify to Love,” the pop anthem that played on a continuous loop in the late 1990s on Christian radio stations and the compact disc players of evangelicals worldwide. The song was first recorded by Avalon, a Christian vocal group that included Passons and Greene, who joined the band a few years after the song’s 1997 release.
In 2003, members of Avalon, including Greene, showed up at Passons’ house to inform him that he was being kicked out of the group for being gay. The story was only confirmed to the public in recent years by Passons, and Greene has since come out in support of her former bandmate living openly as an LGBTQ+ individual.
Herndon, a central figure in country music in the 1990s, also came out as gay in 2014.
For anyone not initiated in the world of contemporary Christian music (CCM) and unaware of the power “Testify to Love” holds in the evangelical imagination, look no further than the response from the gatekeepers of evangelical orthodoxy to the song’s re-release.
Allie Beth Stuckey
Allie Beth Stuckey, the Christian podcaster and social media influencer who seems to constantly be auditioning for the role of Aunt Lydia in a hoped-for real-life version of Gilead, announced the “bad news” of the song’s re-release to her Relatable podcast audience. She claimed that efforts to affirm LGBTQ+ identities within Christianity were misguided attempts to “be nicer than God.”
Southern Baptist theologian Denny Burk scoffed at any suggestion that the song was always a “gay anthem,” as Passons has implied in recent days on social media. In a recent blog post, he appealed to original intent, saying that neither the songwriters nor the members of Avalon expressed LGBTQ+ affirmation when it was first released on the album A Maze of Grace.
“The bottom line is that two former members of Avalon who have deconstructed their faith are now trying to coopt ‘Testify To Love’ for their deconstruction narratives,” Burk wrote. “Don’t let them do that. Feel free to listen to Avalon and the original version of ‘Testify To Love.’ There is nothing ‘affirming’ about this song, and there never will be.”
Stuckey and Burk clearly represent a tradition within evangelicalism that approaches some of Scripture with a narrow interpretive lens. This allows them to systematize and prioritize (and, in many cases, bastardize) a random set of verses that speak to ancient codes of human behavior. They then take on the role of gatekeepers for what does and does not fall within orthodox Christianity.
They have more than enough people who agree with their approaches to faith to keep them in business. What they don’t have, however, is the support of the original “Testify to Love” songwriters, Paul Field, Henk Pool and Ralph van Manen.
In a social media post, Field responded to Greene’s comments on the song with a simple, “You’ve got the real meaning.”
On behalf of Field and van Manen, Pool wrote, “I think that we as co-writers of Testify to Love all honestly hope this song will continue to find people that need to hear that God’s love is for all of us!!”
“Testify to Love” has been covered by several prominent artists, including Wynonna Judd. According to Passons, it belongs to none of them.
“It’s not theirs, it’s not mine, it’s not Wynonna’s,” he wrote on Instagram. “The power of this song is for all of us!”
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.