Why Did Grant Walk?

It has been a long time since I have watched any award shows. To be honest they are just boring to me. I can just read who won what the next day and I am fine. So I guess I had no idea about the quality of entertainment that occurs at these shows. Or according to the actions of Natalie Grant, I had no idea of the lack of quality in that entertainment.

Grant is a gospel singer nominated for 2 Grammy awards. After attending the ceremony last week, she left as she did not want to expose herself to the “entertainment” that was presented. According to reports, there were several candidates for being the type of entertainment that may turn off a Christian woman. Beyonce seem eager to reveal her rump to the world. Katy Perry decided that a simulated burning at the stake of a witch was entertaining. We have a mass wedding ceremony including same-sex couples. And then there was a song about a guy just hoping to get lucky. It is feasible that any one of these “performances” was the one that put it over the top for Grant and convinced her to call it a night.

Her exit has evidently led to hate mail being sent to Grant. In response to that hate mail she replied: “We left the Grammy’s early. I’ve had many thoughts, most of which are probably better left inside my head…I’ve never been more honored to sing about Jesus and for Jesus. And I’ve never been more sure of the path I’ve chosen.” Thus, ultimately we do not know why she chose to leave the event. It is possible that some are angry that she may have left due to the mass wedding, but since Grant has decided to keep that information to herself, they are only speculating. Yet, even if that is the reason she left, we should respect her right to not watch something with which she is uncomfortable, and yes perhaps even disagrees with. Has the new politically correct standard become that individuals must attend same-sex weddings? Seems to violate the assertion that allowing same-sex marriages comes with no costs to those who do not agree with them.

But I do not want to focus on that issue since we do not know why Grant decided to leave the ceremony. Rather I am more interested in the Katy Perry act. From what I have been told Perry took the stage as a witch and after some singing and dancing was “burned at the stake.” What!!!! How did this get approved by whoever decides what goes on the stage? I am not blaming Perry. I get it. She grew up a Christian and now she hates Christians. Maybe it is daddy issues. I leave that between her, her family and God. But there had to be more mature individuals involved in the planning of the program who would see the offensive nature of this act.

I know one of the critiques is that art is supposed to push the limitations. Art is about being cutting edge and challenging the status quo. If you do that then sometimes you are going to be offensive. Let us test that little argument. Instead of simulated burning a witch at the stake how about a performance where we reenact someone machine gunning down a group of Palestinians. Do we think that Jewish performers in the audience would have the right to be offended and walk out? Or perhaps we can have an act simulating a terrorist cutting the head off of a captive. Would a Muslim singer be in the right to be disgusted and to walk out of the award show? Putting issues in this perspective allows us to see why a Christian singer has a right to be offended by an act based on Christians murdering accused witches.

Furthermore, do we seriously think that any performer would do one of these latter two acts no matter how badly he or she wants to be cutting edge? I may be wrong. Perhaps there are media acts in the United States that are as rude to Jews, Muslims, the nonreligious, Buddhists, etc as this one is to Christians. I am open to being proven wrong in my assertion of the exceptional nature of offending Christians as opposed to other religious groups if someone can post some links illustrating my error. So ironically, the Perry act is not all that much of a cutting edge act after all. Does it really take much bravery to blast Christianity in Hollywood?

Someone helping to run the Grammys should have anticipated just how offensive Perry’s act would be, but they failed to do so. We can speculate why they were unable to foresee the insulting nature of this act. The organizers of the Grammys likely have few friends who are Christians or who at least take their Christianity seriously. So they had no one to give them some perspective of why such a performance would be insulting. I found it interesting that many of Grant’s critics automatically assumed that the mass wedding motivated her to leave. When I heard of all of the acts I immediately assumed that it was the witch burning that convinced her to go. I suspect that most of her critics also do not have Christian friends to give them perspective on why that act would be so offensive. I know from my research concerning interracial contact that not having friends from different groups can contribute to a level of ignorance and insensitivity towards members of those groups.

Another reason why the organizers of the Grammys did not foresee how offensive this act is concerns the general propensity of some individuals to dehumanize Christians. I recently finished up a blog series based on my latest book Dehumanizing Christians. The focus of that book was to indicate that ethnocentrism by certain groups of non-Christians lead to similar characteristics tied to previous theories of authoritarianism. I am doing other research investigating a more generalized examination of anti-Christian animosity. Needless to say anti-Christian hostility is an explanation that is underused by academics to explore social events. But it seems very viable that animosity towards Christians explains why the producers okayed an anti-Christian act that I do not think they would have okayed if it was as potentially offensive to members of other religions.

At the end of the day, having distasteful acts at the Grammy awards is not even close to being one of the more important problems in our society. I suspect that such performances will decrease the number of viewers of award shows over the next few years, but that will not be the end of the world. However, these episodes do provide insight into certain social dynamics occurring in the United States. So deconstructing these events provides us more insight into the religious atmosphere in our society.