Facing the Music Discovering Real Life Real Love & Real Faith

Jennifer Knapp’s meteoric rise in the Christian music industry ended abruptly when she walked away and came out publicly as a lesbian. This is her story—of coming to Christ, of building a career, of admitting who she is, and of how her faith remained strong through it all.

At the top of her career in the Christian music industry, Jennifer Knapp quit. A few years later, she publicly revealed she is gay. A media frenzy ensued, and many of her former fans were angry with what they saw as turning her back on God. But through it all, she held on to the truth that had guided her from the beginning.

In this memoir, she finally tells her story: of her troubled childhood, the love of music that pulled her through, her dramatic conversion to Christianity, her rise to stardom, her abrupt departure from Christian Contemporary Music, her years of trying to come to terms with her sexual orientation, and her return to music and Nashville in 2010, when she came out publicly for the first time. She also talks about the importance of her faith, and despite the many who claim she can no longer call herself a believer, she maintains that she is both gay and a Christian.

Now an advocate for LGBT issues in the church, Jennifer has witnessed heartbreaking struggles as churches wrestle with issues of homosexuality and faith. This engrossing, inspiring memoir will help people understand her story and to believe in their own stories, whatever they may be.

“Facing the Music is a fascinating read on so many levels. Knapp is brutally honest about herself, about what she experienced, and what was happening in her head and her heart as she grew in her relationship with music, Christianity, and her sexual orientation. It pulls back the curtain on the Christian music industry to look at the business behind the worship and the squeaky clean image. It’s a story that many of us will be able to relate to, in our own way, and readers of Facing the Music will find not only Knapp’s story, but their own as well.”

“Jennifer Knapp’s lyrics come alive in the pages of Facing the Music, a vivid account of Knapp’s journey to embrace herself, her faith, and her capacity for love. Neither a confession nor an apology, Facing the Music is a hard-won declaration that faith and love transcend our theologies of exclusion. In this deeply personal memoir, Jennifer Knapp offers hope to individuals struggling to overcome the rejection, shame,and insecurities so often experienced by LGBTQ Christians.”

"When I first found Jennifer's music in the mid-nineties, I was struck by how adept she was at unearthing the tensions of the human condition through her songs. With her writing, she has ventured to the most vulnerable of places to offer us the story of a girl, once broken, in the throes of becoming whole."

Jennifer Knapp is a highly acclaimed singer-songwriter who got her star in Christian Contemporary Music (CCM). Knapp exited CCM in 2002 at the height of her professional music career and seemed to disappear. On her return in 2010, she publicly confirmed that she was gay. Today, she performs and tours extensively and actively engages in advocacy work alongside religious communities and leaders that seek to create an open and affirming spiritual home for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of faith.