Marsha's tears: An orphan of the church

Christian Century, March 17, 1999 by Mark Allan Powell

WHY ARE PEOPLE ripping "For Those Tears I Died" out of songbooks and hymnals? It's one of the most popular Christian folk songs to come out of the '60s. It's been translated into 12 languages. There's hardly an evangelical songbook in which it doesn't appear. Written by then 16-year-old Marsha Stevens, the song expresses adolescent piety, yet its images of baptism and liberation are universal. Liturgical purists may think the song too personal or sentimental, but a lot of people count those elements as strengths. It's probably the second-best Christian campfire song ever written (right behind "Pass It On"). So what's wrong with it?

To answer that question, we have to look at Stevens's story. Thirty years ago Stevens epitomized what the media called "the Jesus Movement." Life and Time ran cover stories on the phenomenal revivals erupting in southern California and spreading across the country. Don McLean took a potshot at the movement in "American Pie" ("The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast"). Hippie Christians--Jesus freaks--were baptized in the ocean and embraced evangelical Christianity with a passion they usually reserved for sex, drugs or rock-and-roll. And Stevens was their teenage princess.

Stevens fronted what was arguably the very first contemporary Christian music group, the Children of the Day. The band made six albums, toured relentlessly and touched millions of lives. The group consisted of Stevens; her husband, Russ; her sister, Wendy; and a multitalented friend, Peter Jacobs. They had a jazzy folk-rock sound that sometimes recalled Peter, Paul and Mary and occasionally anticipated Fleetwood Mac. They also drew on classical influences, performing madrigal renditions of pieces like "All Breathing Life" (by Brother Bach, as Jacobs used to say). Pretty tame by today's standards, but back then-during the guitars-in-the-sanctuary wars--the band was avant-garde.

As a side project, Stevens joined with others in making a record for Maranatha called The Praise Album. It was followed by Praise 2, Praise 3 and so forth, popularizing "the praise chorus" as the standard liturgical form for evangelical (especially nondenominational) assemblies. Maranatha's praise albums sold phenomenally well, and Vineyard and other companies have made copycat versions. Today, contemporary Christian music is a multimillion-dollar industry, with Dove awards, summer festivals and popular magazines like 7-ball and CCM. It is not uncommon for singers like Stevens to become millionaire celebrities, to perform with symphony orchestras, and to sell out major venues.

But Stevens's destiny has been different. She's been singing and testifying for three decades, hosting public love-ins for Jesus and cranking out a new album every couple of years. Possessed of an incredible voice, perceptive songwriting abilities and growing theological maturity, she should be as successful as Amy Grant, Sandy Patti or Margaret Becker. But she lives in an RV and uses taped back-up when she sings her songs in churches. Many have forgotten her.

Like many children of the Jesus Movement, Stevens had a troubled youth. She remembers childhood as a time of terror, a time she doesn't want to talk about. "Let's just say that when you grow up with an alcoholic in the house, you learn that night is a time to hide," she states. She hid curled up in bed, crying the eponymous tears of her most famous song. Then, high on Jesus, she married young, thinking she had found a musical and spiritual soul mate. The second Children of the Day album featured the wedding songs the couple wrote for each other. Her contribution is still a popular selection for weddings, though it's been retitled (from "Russ's Song" to `"I'd Like to Write a Song for You"). His song for her was a beautiful ode: "You're a gift from heaven above ... You were meant for me, and I was meant for you."

Seven years and two children later, the marriage ended. When her husband told her, "You need to find someone else," Stevens replied, "You know, I think it might be a woman."

She was totally unprepared for what happened next. Christian singers had gotten divorced and had had babies out of wedlock, but the scandal that accompanied Stevens's revelation of her sexual orientation was like no other. "The Christian community excised me from its life," she says. Some people from Stevens's church came over to insist she take the "Jesus Is Lord" sign off her door. People started ripping her songs out of their songbooks. The record company tried to deny her royalties, appealing to a "backslider clause" in her contract that allowed such exclusion if she renounced the Christian faith.

Fourteen months later, when her lover's daughter died of a congenital heart disease, Stevens was told it was divine vengeance and that her own children would be next. She was no theologian, but she knew that the idea that "God killed our baby because we loved each other" couldn't be true. She wandered for a while, trying to find a Christian home. "The church didn't want me, but I just missed Jesus too much to stay away." She'd sit in the back pews of a church until someone recognized her. Then she'd never return. To put bread on the table, she worked as a registered nurse.