FLAME: A Reaction to Lutheranism’s Newest Rapper

I wish I could remember exactly what we said. I wish I would have written it down. I wish it would have taken place a few years later when smartphones allowed for easy recording of any and everything.

These were the thoughts going through my mind last week Friday after scrolling upon a post by a fellow pastor which began, “When a rapper becomes Lutheran.”

“Wow, that’s cool; I wonder if it’s anybody good,” I thought. “Wait a minute, that looks like FLAME. IT IS FLAME! What is this?!” I spent the rest of the day looking for more information as I listened to what FLAME had posted online and wished for more commentary from him. To understand why, we need to go back…

I think it was the summer before I started college. In those days, if I was at an event, it was either a sports game or a hip-hop concert. That day it was a hip-hop concert. The concert was held at a church two blocks from my home. I stood out at this concert; I almost always did at such shows. I was the only white person there.

The performer on stage stood out; he often did. First, he was a hip-hop artist who didn’t cuss and who talked about Jesus. That was unusual, but not unheard of (I myself attended dozens of concerts by such artists in my teenage years). Second, he was a Christian hip-hop artist who intentionally included deep doctrinal content in his music. That was even rarer.

“Christian hip-hop” is a hotly debated term (and I’m not going to go into all the details of that here), but for now let’s just use it to describe a hip-hop artist who professes to be Christian and uses his music to talk about Christianity.

Christian hip-hop has an interesting story of growth. In the beginning, such artists seemed to not know what to rap about in their music. There was a lot of talk about “what I used to do” or “slaying demons” (seriously) but a blatant lack of anything more than scratch-the-surface references to Christianity. There were some exceptions of course, but the first group to truly bring widespread acceptance to the idea of hip-hop which both professed Jesus and dove into the depths of Scripture was The Cross Movement. FLAME was something of a protégé of The Cross Movement. FLAME was the artist on stage that day.

After the concert, I hung around with quite a few others to talk to FLAME. I told him I appreciated his efforts to delve into the doctrines of the faith in his music. We talked about how that was a rare thing in Christian hip-hop. He spoke of his love for studying doctrine. I had developed a love for studying doctrine in high school and planned to continue that study in college. I told him that love for doctrine is one of the things I appreciate about Lutheranism.

This is where I wish I could directly quote what happened next. He said something along the lines of, “I don’t know much about Lutheranism, but I love to learn,” and I replied with something along the lines of, “You should look into Lutheranism.”

Hip-hop is such a great tool for truth. Seriously. The format is so well-suited for digging into stories… concepts… doctrine. This FLAME guy understood so much and, I was convinced, was so close to Lutheranism. If only…

Since that time, FLAME has become one of the most recognizable names in Christian hip-hop. Anyone who is remotely familiar with the artists/history of this genre knows who FLAME is. Anyone familiar with the various Christian music awards knows who FLAME is. Anyone who pays attention to Billboard music charts or even simply iTunes music charts knows who FLAME is.

FLAME has always been known for his interest in systematic theology (an orderly account of the teachings of the Bible). His first nine studio albums show this clearly. They also show a heavily Calvinistic school of thought.

So, now you can perhaps imagine some of my excitement upon seeing that FLAME was now professing Confessional Lutheranism. I started listening to the music he had posted online last week and was dumbfounded (in a good way) to hear him rap about “two kinds of righteousness,” “the real presence,” and even The Book of Concord. In a commentary track released with the music, titled “Concordia,” he explained that he had received a master’s degree from Concordia Seminary St. Louis in, you guessed it, systematic theology.

This was the story behind the album he was releasing: Extra Nos (Latin for “Outside Self” – a distinctively Lutheran theme). Extra Nos is available on YouTube, iTunes, and elsewhere. In the coming weeks, some of us will be reviewing the individual tracks of Extra Nos so I’m not going to delve into them here.

What I hope you will take away from this is that this is a big deal. First and foremost, it’s a big deal because another person has found the rock-solid comfort of Confessional Lutheranism. It’s also a big deal because people like FLAME have far-reaching influence.

You can count the number of well-known Confessional Lutheran rappers on one finger (despite my own high school career goals). For whatever reason, Lutheranism in America has not made the same headway in urban arts that other denominations have. Most Confessional Lutherans barely have any idea of what hip-hop music or culture is. There probably are some, but I don’t know any Confessional Lutheran pastors besides myself who would truly identify with hip-hop culture. (Honestly, I don’t personally know any Confessional Lutherans period who would) Imagine the contacts FLAME has in his various vocations that nearly no other Confessional Lutherans have. That’s why this story is so exciting!