Jennifer Knapp, Christian music star from the late 1990s and early 200os, is a lesbian.  But you won’t read that word in her interview with Christianity Today.

The interview is an interesting study in Christian media and rhetoric.  Knapp has a new album–her first since an abrupt departure from the Christian music industry in 2002–and much of the press centers around reasons for her eight-year hiatus.  That question of “Why did you disappear?” is part-and-parcel for music journalism.  Knapp’s answer is a legitimate story–it was difficult to reconcile being a lesbian with an industry that does not privilege homosexuality.  (To a degree, she is the anti-Ricky Martin–would he have really lost that many fans of mainstream music if he had come out ten years ago?)

Christianity Today‘s interview, though, covers Knapp’s sexuality without using the word “lesbian.”  Not once.  The word “gay” pops up seven times: four times by the interviewer, once as a parenthetical note by the editor, and only twice by Knapp.  She uses it once to describe herself (the other use is in a general reference to gay couples at her shows); all four times the interviewer uses it is in the context of her sexuality, as in “Have you ever felt like you had to choose between your faith or your gay feelings?”

Why would Christianity Today write about Knapp being a lesbian without using the word “lesbian?”  Does the Christianity Today stylebook mandate that that word not be used to describe Christian women?  Is it used only for non-Christians and for anti-Christian activists?  Is it a pejorative word in the Christian press to the same degree that the word “fundamentalist” is oftentimes a pejorative word in the mainstream press?  Does it give her homosexuality too much credence to acknowledge her as a “lesbian” as opposed to someone with “gay feelings?”

Would The Advocate refer to Knapp as someone with “spiritual tendencies” instead of saying, simply (and accurately) that she is a Christian?

The AP Stylebook would approve of identifying her as a lesbian.  So would The New York Times.  Why won’t the Christian press do the same?

Jennifer Knapp is a lesbian.  Just say it, Christianity Today.  Say it.