Kanye West’s Faith Triumphs Over Political Bitterness

The pop star’s new album and film disrupt godless hedonism.

Halloween Week’s bedlam (demonic parades and gratuitous candy commercials and other occult celebrations in the media) confirm the millennium’s casual godlessness, so the release of Kanye West’s new album and film, both titled “Jesus Is King,” intrudes on that party. Its impact will be long-lasting.

West’s gospel revival coincides with his political independence. So far, this is West’s most powerful statement since supporting President Trump and wearing a MAGA cap in public. By reviving his faith in the word of God and the independence of black Americana gospel, he forces others to remember the moral foundation of the civil-rights movement, which has been forgotten and deliberately disregarded by fervent secular liberals. (It was at a high pitch during the funerals that turned the spiritual transitions of Aretha Franklin and Elijah Cummings into shameless political rallies.)

Throngs of fans and worshipers taking part in West’s various Sunday Services concerts across the country over the past year are vividly documented in the 38-minute film Jesus Is King. (The IMAX visual emphasis on land, sky, and clouds evokes George Stevens’s 70 mm The Greatest Story Ever Told.) When worshipers sing the lyric “He walked with my mother / I want Him to walk with me,” the song’s emotional resonance recalls the faith of generations — from before the sea change of black politics’ bitter alignment with the tenets of Communist atheism.

The beautiful essence of Jesus Is King is its non-bitterness. Despite private struggle and public pushback (“Before the flood, they did the same to Noah”), West has realized a way to avoid and confound liberal media’s trap: the promotion of black bitterness as the core of African-American self-realization. Jesus Is King is a spiritual work thanks to its deep feeling — pure expression brought to today’s calamitous social condition. The album rejects any recourse to political solutions. West’s personal movement, and the public convocation of his Sunday Services, is clearly against the politics of division.

America’s ’50s–‘60s civil-rights movement was based on righteousness — justice and virtue were understood as moral measures learned from the Church, not social license. That’s what gave the fire-hosed marchers and lunch-counter martyrs their courage. While West has always defied the commonplace worldly sentiments of hip-hop culture (letting the preppie image oppose the street-thug image yet still flashing bling), Jesus Is King shows maturity. He has grasped on to the strength of faith — a belief in the moral certitude and divine promise that sustains and edifies one’s existence.