The #1 Evangelical song is about a closeted gay man
“Awesome God” by Rich Mullins is full of secrets
Published in
6 min readJan 20, 2024
Since 1988, Rich Mullins’ “Awesome God” has been called the #1 song of the ‘Contemporary Christian Music’ genre. Evangelicals have deeply loved it.
As I was growing up, “Awesome God” was a staple of church choirs and youth groups. That rapturous refrain—“Our God is an awesome God”—was truly the sound of the religion.
The story of how it was written was always a little strange.
“Awesome God” has been covered by many other artists.
Videos on YouTube get many millions of views. I’m looking over various performances over time.
In 2021 it was featured in Netflix’ A Week Away, a movie about Evangelical summer camp.
The same year, Michael W. Smith did a thunderous delivery with drums. The lyrics are clipped down to the chorus, repeated over…
