Did Rich Mullins have AIDS?
New evidence in the life of the Evangelical legend
On September 19, 1997, the Evangelical singer-songwriter Rich Mullins died in a car wreck, age 41. For fans, it was a tragic end to a divine life.
But details have puzzled. Why had Mullins retired from music? Why had he looked so ill prior to his death? He’d seemed all right as of 1994.
Then, he wasn’t all right.
In a post in 2020 I suggested he’d kept a secret.
Mullins discussed himself as a “sissy,” never married or had apparent girlfriends. Had he been gay?—if in a tortured, closeted, Evangelical mode.
My profile had suggestive scenes. In 1985, Mullins was in crisis over what he called his “secret sin.” He was doing some activity that made him “sick” and made God “sicker,” he said, as he’d pursued some kind of “cure.”
The identification of Mullins as gay may lurk for many in the realm of surmise, though there was a development. Shane Claiborne had written in The Irresistible Revolution (2006) of knowing Mullins. In a 2021 reminiscence of Mullins on Facebook, he was using a word he hadn’t before.
