Rich Mullins’ queerish Jesus love

A few months ago I did a long post on Christian singer-songwriter Rich Mullins, suggesting he was gay. I’m revisiting the subject for a magazine article, and looking over his song “Love of Another Kind,” covered by Amy Grant on her Unguarded album in 1985.

There, it’s about her intense love for Jesus. When Mullins sang it himself, there was an Elton John feeling, and the lyrics are different. “The love I know is a love so few discover,” Amy had sang. But Mullins has: “I feel you’re closer than a brother.”

Suppressed by a religion, that was a clue to his queerish Christianity, in which the deity is experienced as a same-sex lover.