TTBOOK GEMS

Rev. Alex Gee (GEMS - from program # 04-02-22-A: God in Unlikely Places)

Tupac Shakur - The Prophet of God

From an interview with Rev. Alex Gee by Steve Paulson on the Public Radio International program "To the Best of our Knowledge." Alex Gee is the pastor of the Fountain of Life Church in Madison, Wisconsin and incorporates hip hop into his worship service. His new book is called, "Jesus and the Hip Hop Prophets."

Rev. Alex Gee: I found that many of the hip hop artists speak to the disenfranchised, the marginalized, people who are a voice for the forgotten. And I realized those are the people Jesus preached to. So then I thought, "OK, this is really crazy. How am I going to explain this at my next monthly pastor's get together? That I'm drawing a correlation between, say, Tupac and Jesus." (Laughs)

Steve Paulson: Well it's one thing to talk about Tupac Shakur being a social prophet, as a guy who has some very pertinent things to say about the status of society. But to incorporate him into a spiritual practice, to say as you just said that he has some similarities to what Jesus did, that's kind of astounding.

Rev. Alex Gee: It really is. I started thinking about hip hop artists today. They are people who speak out, who put their necks on the line to speak out against social ills, who put themselves at risk. And I started thinking, and this is not to bash organized Christianity or anything but in terms of how society viewed Jesus he was probably more similar to Tupac than Billy Graham. So, it made me really start to think about hip hop and its message. I really became intrigued and actually I became a fan and I had no intention of that.

Steve Paulson: What about Tupac's personal history. He was in prison for sexual assault. He was a drug dealer. He was killed in gang-related violence. What do you make of all that?

Rev. Alex Gee: He sounds like he would have made a good disciple. (laughs) I mean Jesus, he ran with a pretty shady crew. Too often we look for people who seem to fit the part rather than looking into their hearts. If we continue to look at these type of people with disdain and think God can't use them, or they can't rally voters, or they can't bring about social change, it might be that we are guilty of overlooking some of our potentially most prolific speakers and thinkers and prophets that are in our society today.

Steve Paulson: I'm curious about what a prophet means to you. I guess when I think about Biblical prophets, I think about figures like Jeremiah and Elijah. Are you putting Tupac in their company?

Rev. Alex Gee: That's the big scary question. You know, and I'm going out on a limb but as I wrote this book I said to myself, "Yeah, that's what I'm saying." Now when you look at the Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah or Ezekiel, they didn't appoint themselves as prophets. They were very reluctant. But basically God said, "I'm going to give you a message." A prophet is one that speaks forth. It is not really foretelling, it technically means "an appropriate word for an appropriate season." And I think that the word that many of these hip hop artists are conveying is very appropriate for the season. They're conveying messages that really are not being conveyed anyplace else, at least in circles I travel in. Again, I am not here to bash the church. I am part of the church. But you would be hard-pressed to sit in a congregation and hear a pastor say that racism is sin. That there really is a glass ceiling, an old boy's network. That some of the issues surrounding unemployment in the inner cities really goes deeper than people of color not wanting to work. You're hard-pressed to find Christian leaders challenging the status quo and the American dream. These hip hop artists don't think twice about it. And you cannot convince me that God is excited about this. But if God can't get us to preach about it he's got a ram in the bush. He's got a rapper who will get out and bring it.

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