Jonathan Steingard and the Evangelical Dispensing of Existence

Near the end of May 2020, Jonathan Steingard, the frontman for the Christian rock/punk band Hawk Nelson, posted a lengthy Instagram statement in which he confirmed that he no longer believed in God. Just a few days later, as early as the 27th of May, media outlets like CNN, Variety and others picked up on the breaking story.

When I saw that a friend on Facebook had posted the CNN article that same day, I commented on her post that it wouldn’t be long before we start to see the typical responses from evangelical leaders weighing in on yet another high-profile Christian publicly defecting. Sure enough, by the 22nd pastor Gabe Hughes of The Midwestern Baptist site posted an “open letter response,” and by the 28th Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis wrote a lengthy Twitter thread voicing his point of view.

What’s striking about both Ham and Hughes’s responses is that both men emphatically stated that, in both their understanding of the Bible and interpretation of his statement, it was clear: Steingard had never been a Christian at all. Once that “truth” was established, then they could safely dismiss him as a crank. These two have drawn upon the playbook so many other evangelical leaders have used in the cases of other recent high-profile defectors from the faith.