The following is a sample profile from the book Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints by Daneen Akers.

Jennifer Knapp

It’s a Sunday morning in Chanute, Kansas. An eight-year-old girl named Jennifer Knapp sits on a pew inside a simple church with her sister and grandparents. The nylons her grandma makes her wear under her dress are itchy, hot, and uncomfortable. Her feet feel pinched inside of the dress shoes she has to wear to church. She shifts in her seat, trying to get comfortable.

“Shh,” Jennifer’s grandma shushes her and gives her a stern look. Jennifer tries harder to sit still. The preacher is talking about Jesus. Jennifer likes these stories, and she loves visiting her grandparents, but going to church where she gets told that she has to “act like a lady” isn’t her favorite thing. Who decided that ladies are supposed to wear uncomfortable clothes and sit still anyway?

Jennifer looks out the window at the front of the church, trying to catch a glimpse of the world outside. She wishes she could be out digging up crawdads at the creek, playing in the dirt, or riding her bike. Outside is where she feels the happiest and where she feels that spirit of God that the preacher keeps droning on about. Outside is where she can be herself.

Besides loving nature and being outside, Jennifer loves music. Her teachers start to notice that she has a gift and encourage her to play more music. She starts by learn- ing to play the recorder. Then she adds piano, and by high school she also plays the trumpet. She is such a good trumpet player that she receives a scholarship to college to play it.

In college, Jennifer committed her life to God in a way she hadn’t before. She had struggled with making safe choices after leaving home. She and her friends abused alcohol and made other choices she later regretted. But, at one point in college, her friend reminded Jennifer of how precious and valuable she was to God. Jennifer began to treat herself with more kindness as she imagined God might treat her. That led to making healthier choices and focusing more on her spiritual life.

Jennifer’s musical skills led her to learn the guitar. Before long, she was leading praise music worship teams in college and singing Christian-themed songs in local cafes. She produced two albums that got the notice of a record label known for finding new and promising talent. In 1997, her record Kansas came out. It was a huge hit in the Christian music world, and earned her several important award nominations. Her honest lyrics and alternative folk sound made her popular even beyond the Christian music world. Soon she was on tour most of the year playing her music in front of huge crowds along with other popular Christian music artists. She won more awards, and her managers wanted to produce more records and book more tours.

But the Christian music world wasn’t ever an easy fit for Jennifer. The managers, record labels, radio stations, concert halls, and Christian bookstores where a lot of her music was sold had very strict expectations. “In many ways, it was the adult version of what I had experienced as an eight-year-old girl in church,” Jennifer says. “There were lots of rules about what ‘good Christian girls’ could or couldn’t do.”

Jennifer understood that the authority figures in the Christian music world wanted her to write mainly happy songs about God. But the way Jennifer talked about her faith was always a little bit different. Jennifer’s music didn’t fit the usual expectations of the Christian music world. Her lyrics were often raw and real, her music showing her commitment to honesty and truth. And the truth about faith is that it isn’t always happy or easy. Just like her yearning to be outside feeling the Spirit of God in nature instead of inside of a church with stained-glass windows and crosses, Jennifer’s instincts as a musician were outside of the four walls of any church. “I kept breaking the boundaries of where we find God,” Jennifer says. “As an artist, I never fit the mold.”

In 2002, the exhaustion of being on tour for 250 days a year and the pressures of the Christian music industry to write a certain type of music got to Jennifer. She knew she had to step back or she was going to lose her sense of who she really was. She told her managers that she was going to Australia to take a break. “When will you be back?” they asked, worried about how to keep selling her music.

“I don’t know,” Jennifer replied, simply. “I need a break.”

In Australia, Jennifer finally found a quiet space to think. There was something else that Jennifer had started to realize that she knew would not go over well in the Christian music world. Jennifer was in love with a woman. Could she be both a person of faith and a lesbian? Did she have more music to write?

Jennifer stayed in Australia for seven years. She stopped writing music for most of that time. She stopped doing things that she had been expected to do by other people. “I threw the baby out with the bathwater,” she says. “I had to re-claim my own voice and rebuild everything.”

In the Outback of Australia under a hot sun with kangaroos occasionally hopping by, Jennifer found the voice of God that had started to be drowned out by the voices of other people’s expectations. “I realized that God didn’t expect me to be like everyone else. That opened me up to be able to talk about God with people again.”

Gradually Jennifer began writing music again. She hadn’t played her guitar in so long that it hurt her fingers to play chords, but she kept at it. Jennifer planned to tell her fans that she was in a committed relationship with a woman she loved deeply. She also knew that being honest about being both a lesbian and a person of faith would come with huge losses in the Christian music world. Her career as a musician might be over. Too many Christians had prejudices against LGBTQ people. But Jennifer knew that a lot of that prejudice came from ignorance and not knowing actual LGBTQ people. Because so many people knew who she was, she felt like she had a chance to start new conversations. She went on national television to talk about being a Christian and a lesbian.

Jennifer wasn’t wrong about how the Christian music world would receive her new record and the news that she was in a committed relationship with a woman. Most Christian radio stations banned her music. Former fans posted online that they’d deleted all of her songs from their devices. She essentially had to start over building a new fan base. Of course, some people also came to her concerts to thank her for her honesty because they too were people of faith and also part of the LGBTQ community.

Seeing someone like Jennifer being honest gave others hope and energy. “I came back to help all of the other LGBTQ kids out there know that these things are survivable,” Jennifer says.

In addition to releasing another album, Jennifer went to divinity school and began a nonprofit called Inside Out Faith to help share the stories of LGBTQ people of faith. She wants to help change the conversation so that people realize that within all faith traditions there are LGBTQ people and their family and friends. Despite centuries of religious prejudice against LGBTQ people, there are actually many LGBTQ people of faith who are thriving and teaching the rest of the church about love and justice. “We want to show what it means to love without exception.”

Even Jennifer is a bit surprised by how tenacious her faith turned out to be. It would have been a lot easier to entirely walk away from being a Christian. “My choice to keep turning towards God can still be a bit hard to explain,” Jennifer says. “But here I am.”

What does it mean to you to “love without exception?”

Glossary Terms

Alternative Folk
A musical style also known as “indie folk music,” this musical style often features an acoustic (not electric) guitar and a single singer-songwriter.

Christian/Christianity
A person who practices Christianity, the Abrahamic Religion based on the teachings of Jesus, a first-century Jewish teacher. While there are many different types of Christians who vary widely in belief and practice, all find the life and teachings of Jesus to be of central importance.

Lesbian
A woman who can fall in love with another woman.

LGBTQ
The acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people; other commonly used acronyms for gender and sexual minorities include LGBTQI, LGBTQIA, and LGBTQ+.

Nonprofit
An organization that exists in order to support a particular cause and works for that cause rather than for financial gain.

Nylons
Also known as pantyhose or stockings; close-fitting, elastic garments that cover one’s legs.

Outback
The vast, remote interior of Australia.

Prejudice
Judging a person negatively without knowing anything about them except that they belong to a particular group of people (such as an ethnic group or religion).

Spiritual
Something that relates to the human soul or spirit.