*Houston hip-hop artist Lecrae never censors his spirituality, and frequently raps about faith, race and cultural change. In an essay penned for Billboard, the Christian rapper let his thoughts flow about the country’s current state of turmoil following the police involved deaths of two black men: Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile, 32, in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.
Lecrae, whose album “Anomaly” debuted as No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, hit up Instagram last Thursday to criticize his Christian fans who accuse him of spreading a “divisive message” and ask him to “just stick to the gospel.”
“True faith stands up for the oppressed and the broken…” he wrote in a post. “Christians saying that ‘preaching the gospel is all we need’ ignores how sin affects infrastructures and societal systems.
“If you ever trusted in anything I’ve said, if you’ve used my words to stir your hope or joy, then trust that same voice now,” he continued. “This is an epidemic that school books or church services haven’t taught you.”
Read the full post below.
READ RELATED STORY: Meagan Good Address Christian Critics of Her Wardrobe Again
In an op-ed about race relations that he wrote for Billboard, Lecrae explained his reasoning behind a viral Tweet in which he said that the freedom America celebrates on July 4 doesn’t apply to everyone. “I posted a picture of slaves in a cotton field instead because that was the vantage point of my ancestors on July 4, 1776. They weren’t free.”
The rapper, whose fan base reportedly includes many white evangelical Christians, wrote in the Billboard piece that many of his supporters find his straightforwardness divisive. But he said: “There’s a difference between creating division and exposing the division that’s being ignored.”
“A lot of times, when you don’t have to deal with some of the circumstances that affect minority culture, you just don’t think they exist. This is a conversation I have with lots of my white friends all the time,” he wrote. “When I share my experiences with them, they’re like, ‘Oh. Really?’”
My family on July 4th 1776. pic.twitter.com/R9DzWkqDWc
— Lecrae (@lecrae) July 4, 2016
