“He’s The Devil”

Chapter 1: Israel, the Archangel Michael, and Teddy Ruxpin

I’ve been talking to Israel Anthem for a few months now, because if anyone knows about DC Talk and Michael Tait, it’s him. Israel grew up immersed in Christian music. It was his entire reality.

“I was born in Atlanta, but when I was three we moved to Nashville. And that's where my childhood home always was. But I mainly grew up on a tour bus that had a painting on the side of it of shirtless Angel Michael holding a sword over his head, with his foot on the devil's head.”

All of that starts to make sense when you realise Israel was born into one of the most successful Gospel trios of the 20th century.

“My grandmother, mother and grandfather were in a group called The Rambos. So that's kind of how the family career started. My grandmother ended up writing 2000 plus songs for Johnny Cash, Elvis, Whitney Houston, and Dolly Parton. She's on the Nashville Walk of Fame. And then my mum, her name is Reba Rambo and she had a very successful gospel music career as well.”

Israel’s father Dony McGuire was a music producer, essentially putting the family business on steroids. In 1981 his parents won a Grammy for Best Gospel Performance for their album ‘The Lord’s Prayer.’

Then there was his gran, Dottie Rambo, also on that tour bus when he was a kid. 

“She was the first white artist to ever record with a black choir. The KKK - actually Fred Trump's [Donald Trump’s father] faction of the KKK - sent her letters basically saying, ‘If you perform live with them, we'll kill you.’ 

And the first show, she walked on stage and put her arms out and was like, ‘If you're gonna kill me, can you do it now? Cause I'd like to play a full set.'"

She did play that full set - arms outstretched. Dottie Rambo would go on to record songs like ‘The Soul of Me’, which won a Grammy in 1967.

I think it’s important to get all this background about Israel’s parents and grandparents down, just to show how deep he was immersed in the world of Christian music.

When a new contemporary Christian band called DC Talk appeared in the late 80s and early 90s, Israel’s young mind was blown.

“I didn't sleep with stuffed animals, I slept with soft cassette cases. Do you know what Teddy Ruxpin was? Teddy Ruxpin was a teddy bear that you could put cassettes in the back, and he would move his mouth with the music. He was like a portable tape player. And the first cassette I ever bought was DC Talk’s A New Thing. And the first CD I ever bought was DC Talk’s Free at Last.”

 “I loved rap. I used to gel my hair back with extreme hold, you know? It was in the 90s, man. They were the only Christian artist that you could put on in front of a non-Christian and they wouldn't completely laugh at you.”

DC Talk was Toby McKeehan, Kevin Max Smith, and the very charismatic Michael Tait. Toby rapped, Kevin rocked, and Tait brought the soul and heart of DC Talk. They had five studio albums together before they eventually broke up, and are known as the most popular overtly Christian act of all time. 

“I really looked up to them. They were my favourite. I really loved and respected them, and wanted to be like them.”

Israel wasn't alone. Christian kids and teens the world over all got hooked on DC Talk. Teens like Josiah Hesse.

“I'm a journalist from Denver, Colorado - originally from a little town in North Iowa called Clear Lake, the town that killed Buddy Holly. And that's where I spent 20 years as an evangelical conservative.

And throughout my childhood, there was literally nothing I was involved in that wasn't connected to evangelical Christianity. No sports, drama, academics, nothing.”

I’m talking to Josiah because, like Israel, he’s a vital part of this story in ways you’ll find out later. And like Israel, he was a DC Talk megafan.

“It's often said that DC Talk were The Beatles of Christian rock, and that's I think that's accurate on a number of levels when you think about everything The Beatles meant - not just as songwriters, but as cultural icons.

DC Talk obviously wasn’t on the same scale. They didn't change the world. They're not universally known. But in that world they were as big as The Beatles. Fans screamed, trembled, freaked out. 

I had the posters on my wall, wore their t-shirts, had all their cassettes and CDs. And these guys were my image of not only Godliness, but of cool - a kind of hipster-rock-fashion cool.”

Over in New Zealand, me and my Christian friends loved DC Talk too. They were one of the first bands I listened to, and one of the first bands I saw live at the Parachute Christian music festival in 1995.

They felt incredibly hip and cool, hiring the same director to shoot ‘Jesus Freak’ that Nine Inch Nails’ used to create their iconic ‘Hurt’ video (strangely, that director now lives in the town I grew up in: I interviewed him back in 2016).

I had no idea about this at the time, but back when I was a teenage fan in New Zealand, DC Talk was aligned with the Republican Party. Josiah Hesse explains:

“If you take yourself back to the late 90s and 2000s, gay marriage was the wedge issue of George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2004. DC Talk and Michael Tait never formally endorsed him, but they did events with him. 

They wrote a song called ‘Let's Roll’ about 9/11. That was Bush's big phrase. So Tait was in a lot of ways an ambassador, culturally and politically, of this movement. He was mentored by [Baptist pastor, televangelist, and conservative activist] Jerry Falwell. The whole band was! 

They're often described as a kind of like a mouthpiece for Christian right talking points. In the 80s, they were using hip hop. In the 90s, it was rock music. They were taking this message of the Christian right to young people through this music.”

DC Talk - with its very charismatic black member Michael Tait - talked about racial reconciliation, religious persecution and sexual purity. They basically gave the Republican Party a rock and roll face lift, making the idea of politics “cool” to America’s Christian kids.

And it’s here in the story that you need to know about another huge Christian band - this one hailing from Australia.

Chapter 2: The Newsboys, MAGA, and Kevin Sorbo

If DC Talk was one of the first bands I ever heard, Newsboys was the second. I fucking loved The Newsboys, and maintain that they wrote certified bangers.

Josiah agrees.

“The Newsboys, to keep that analogy going, could be said to be like the Rolling Stones of Christian rock. Maybe not in terms of rebellion, because you think of that dynamic of the Beatles and The Stones - The Stones were known for being much more rebellious, even though they came from art school.”

The Newsboys formed 1985 in Mooloolaba, Queensland, Australia - releasing 17 studio albums over their career. They had a number of lineup changes, including when lead singer John James left in 1997 to go preaching (he later revealed he’d left due to drug and alcohol use).

The band soldiered on - becoming one of Australia’s biggest musical exports, despite being pretty much unknown by the general population.

While The Newsboys grew, DC Talk started to pare things back, eventually stopping the band altogether in the 2000s.

That’s when something amazing happened in the world of Christian music. In 2009, The Newsboys, still lacking a key lead singer, hired Michael Tait. Essentially, two of the world’s biggest bands merged together, becoming a supergroup.

They had more success than ever, launching into a new era of stardom with their song ‘God's Not Dead’ in 2011.

According to Josiah, 2011 was when The Newsboys got really big.

“That song was a big hit in evangelical circles. It was kind of an anthem of the MAGA movement. It was sung on January 5th, the day before the big riot in the US Capital, and it's sung at evangelical rallies.

The Newsboys performed at ‘Evangelicals For Trump’ rallies. They performed in the White House during Trump’s first term. Michael Tait was kind of instrumental in bridging the gap between Trump and evangelicals. It wasn't him alone, but he was a big part of that - especially with gaining more traction with black evangelical voters, which Trump did do better with in his third run for president.

And ‘God's Not Dead’ was more than just a song. It was a movie that The Newsboys starred in. Michael Tait had a role throughout all of the sequels - and all of these movies are Christian movies and are based around Christian persecution in America, whether it's the courts, education, the media, politics, academia - there's all these stories about people being persecuted. And it always leads up to The Newsboys with their big cameo in it. 

And so Tait has had a substantial impact on this culture and the politics surrounding it, really going back to the eighties. So you don't get that much bigger than Michael Tait in this world.”

In the first God is Dead film – released in 2014 and starring Kevin Sorbo – Michael Tait converts a far left journalist who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The conversion happens in the band’s on-screen green room.

DC Talk and The Newsboys were big. In Christian circles, politics, and in entertainment. But in the background of their success, dark secrets were hidden - and earlier this year an Australian journalist finally brought some of them to light.

Chapter 3: The Australian, Cocaine, and Partying

Jessica Morris is a freelance journalist based in Geelong, Australia - about an hour out of Melbourne.

“So I was born in 1990, and so when DC Talk and The Newsboys were really probably starting to flourish at their prime. I was too young to appreciate their music, but I looked up to all the Youth Group kids who loved them. I wanted to be just like them.”

Morris is the journalist who broke the story about the real Michael Tait. All her reporting is available at The Roys Report, a Christian journalism outlet. She says she worked on the Tait story for two-and-a-half years, getting her first tip while in Nashville, The Newsboys’ current HQ.

“I was at the restaurant Cafe Fido and I was catching up with a friend who's in Christian Music - and they said to me, ‘Can you do something about this band? Can you do something about Tait?’ And I was like, ‘Well, why?’ And they basically said, ‘No-one else is doing anything, and the acts that they're doing’ - well, they called them, ‘evil’.”

At first it wasn’t clear what that “evil” was. And evil gets confusing in conservative Christian circles. For many Christians, being gay is considered evil. And the word was that maybe Michael was gay. 

“There was this underlying thing in Nashville where everyone was like, ‘Look, he's probably gay, he maybe doing things, but we don't have proof of it. So we're going to leave it.’ That was the general consensus.”

Israel Anthem was one of those Nashville locals who knew about this aspect of Tait. He’d seen it himself at an awards show afterparty a decade ago.

“The Dove Awards are like the Christian Grammys. So one year, I'd made a bluegrass record that won that year with my family. After the awards ceremony, my sister is like, ‘Do you want to go to the real after party?’ 

And we went to a penthouse hotel, and it was probably a good 30% to 45% of the artists and winners that were at the ceremony. But it was everybody who was in the closet. And somebody said, ‘It's crazy every gay person in gospel music is here’ and somebody said, ‘Except Michael Tait’. And somebody else said, ‘That man's not a homosexual, that man is an abuser.’”

So “abuser” was also a word being muttered, not just at Dove Award’s after parties, but all over the Nashville music scene.

“There were people who were like, ‘Look, there's a lot of partying and we don't like the partying. Like it's concerning. I've heard that there was rumors about cocaine use going on…’ Stuff like that.”  

That’s where things started. Jessica didn’t care if Tait was gay. But cocaine use and abuse in one of the world’s biggest Christian bands? That might be a story. 

“Working with my primary source, they were able to give me the names of probably five or six people. So I found this whole circle of sources. It started with like maybe six people. Now it's well over a hundred, which is mind boggling for me.”

Jessica flew back to Australia and got to work. Emails. Zooms. Phone calls. Slowly building trust and trying to figure out what was going on. As she talked to more and more people about Michael Tait, she found some incredibly disturbing stories. 

“Probably one of the most serious that I reported on was an incident that occurred in Fargo, North Dakota, in December 2014. On this off day on a tour, Michael and a lot of The Newsboys crew were drinking. There was this young woman who was 23 at the bar, and after a night out she accepted a shot of tequila from Michael Tait - and she can't remember anything afterwards. 

We accessed police files footage and pieced together what happened that night. And we found that she was essentially led to a room by a crew member of the Newsboys. Not Michael Tait, but led to the room where then Michael Tait appears. 

We don't have footage of what happened in that room, but she does have a memory of waking up in a very awful position, where she believes she was sexually assaulted. 

And then we see footage of her leaving her room and she collapses in front of her door. And this all took place probably between 1.20am - 2am. 

And basically later Michael Tait admitted to multiple people, ‘I didn't do anything, but I watched.’” 

The woman was a Christian fan of DC Talk. She’d never had sex before. The allegation of what happened in that room wasn’t sex, it was rape. Not by Tait - but Tait was in the room when it happened.

“She was on her period at the time, and she woke up the next and her tampon was shoved all the way up - which does not happen without absolute force. And she was, like, ‘something is wrong’.

Over the next few days, she went to hospital multiple times. She filed a police report. The case went cold, and so nothing ever happened - even though multiple people alleged that they spoke to The Newsboys management about this incident. And people have told me on and off-record that it was essentially covered up.

The Newsboys, to be clear, have denied that."

Jessica had discovered a world where Tait was allegedly involved in abuse, where management knew about it - and were actively helping to cover things up.

But this year, things were set to explode.

In January - five months before Jessica’s story came out - Tait resigned as lead singer of The Newsboys, after 15 years as their frontman. In a press release, he and the band didn’t really indicate why:

“I’ve made for me what is a monumental and heartfelt decision that it is time to step down from Newsboys. This decision does not come lightly and has been a shock to even myself, but amidst prayer and fasting, I have clarity that this is the right decision.”

Fans were confused. 

But Jessica knew exactly why he’d left - there were already murmurings on TikTok about his sexuality - and Tait himself probably knew a load of secrets were about to become public.

Jessica published her first story on a Christian news site, “The Roys Report” on June 4. Hers was the story that blew this whole thing open. The headline wasn’t subtle: “Former Newsboys Frontman Michael Tait Accused of Sexual Assault, Grooming, and Substance Abuse, Dating Back to 2004”.

“Fuck all of you who knew and didn’t say anything,” said Paramore’s Hayley Williams shortly after the revelations came to light.

Chapter 4: The Real Michael Tait

Josiah Hesse freelances for The Guardian, and while Jessica Morris was working on her story, Josiah was getting ready to publish his own. His report was more focused on Tait’s younger, male victims.

“For the most part, they all followed a very similar playbook, which is young Christian men - some as young as 16 - handsome, hipster, indie kids, ambitious either to be musicians or to work in the Christian music industry. 

And they meet their hero, the guy that some of them said they slept with his cassettes as kids, you know, like myself. They had his posters on the wall and were just awestruck by him. 

And Tait says things like, ‘Let's jam together’ or ‘Let me introduce you to this person.’ And he brings them to parties at his house in Nashville where there are famous musicians hanging out. And there's what could be characterized as grooming going on, where there's an overwhelming sense of awe at the beginning, and then he starts to isolate these people. 

Some of them that I interviewed and they didn't know this until recently that they had friends and they had both been assaulted by him. In those cases, Tait seemingly separated them. And that's when he started introducing them to harder drugs.”

Cocaine was a common one.

“It might start off with going out to bars, drinking at the house, maybe some cigarettes, maybe smoking a little weed. And then when they start spending more time alone, that's where he pulls out cocaine and more booze, like shots. 

And then there's a hot tub, and he has a ‘no clothes allowed’ rule in the hot tub. Things progress into fondling, a lot of caressing and touching, massaging. And for several of the alleged victims that I reported on, they believe that they were drugged with some kind of sedative like rufenol because they just passed out. And so many of them have the same story of waking up in his bed. One of them woke up on the kitchen counter with his legs in the air, and Tait was performing oral sex on their asshole.”

All the stories just stacked on top of each other.

“Others woke up in his bed, one of them woke up in a closet, and he was doing things to them, molesting them, performing oral on them. And a lot of the time, it's like people saying ‘no’ or trying to roll over and act like nothing's happening. One guy said ‘no’ several times and kept passing out. He said it happened three times.”

The aftermath is just what you hear about in so many abusive situations - a kind of damage control from Tait.

“It's either a complete ghosting of them or intense love bombing with a kind of apology, but not a specific apology. And then more offers of, ‘Hey, let's go to LA this weekend. I'll fly us out there. My treat.’ You know, ‘Let's go to New York. Let me introduce you to this person. Let's work on your demo for your band.’ 

And so as is the case with a lot of these stories, they kept touch with him after the fact. There's a lot of stigma with that and a lot of confusion with these guys, I mean partly because they were drugged, but also because they're like, ‘What did happen? What was that? Was that me?’ And in some cases Tait convinced them, ‘Yeah, that was you. You made that happen.’"

From what I can tell, that pattern just kind of happened - and built - for the last few decades. Until last year, when someone posted a TikTok hinting at Tait’s “double life”, and the dominos started to fall.

Victims started to talk. Journalists like Jessica in Melbourne, and Josiah in Denver, dug in deeper.

For Israel, this whole story has been a long time coming. He had heard rumblings about so much of this - including at that awards afterparty. There are victims everywhere.

And the truth is, Israel is one of them. That’s why he agreed to talk to me - he wants his story to be out there. 

Chapter 5: The Bathroom

It was 2001, and Israel was with his family at the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) awards.

“So DC Talk was there that night, and my grandmother was being given a songwriter of the century - like a lifetime achievement - award. And so a lot of those people, including DC Talk, came by the table and we took photos together.”

It was a nice night, and a 13-year-old Israel had to pinch himself that he’d got to hang out with his hero; the guy he blasted through this Teddy Ruxpin cassette player.

“And then a few months later we were at Houston's, which was a restaurant on West End in Nashville. Now it's a restaurant called Brick Tops, but at the time it was called Houston's. And it was like a hotspot because it's right next to Music Row, next to where everybody works and records. So there's always country and gospel musicians there. And Michael walks in.

He sees us, and he's standing as we're all sitting, you know, exchanging pleasantries: ‘It's good to see you all again, it was crazy to see you all the other night!’ And then he goes and sits down and we continue with our meal."

At some point, Israel excuses himself and goes to the bathroom.

“There's a row of urinals and then behind that there's one or two stalls So when I walk in, Tait is at the urinal. He's the only person there. And he's standing at the urinal about to start peeing as I walk in. And as I'm sure you know, there's the code: you keep your head forward as you're talking.

At this point I was obviously a virgin, I had not kissed. My ideas of homosexuality, especially, were just completely uneducated. I had not seen an adult male's erect penis at this point. I hadn’t seen an adult woman's vagina at this point. So that's the Israel that is experiencing this. 

And I remember specifically what I started talking about. They had released Intermission, which was a Greatest Hits CD that had some new songs from each of their solo projects. I started to talk about that, ‘Are you guys going to get back together?’, whatever. And as I was starting to go to the urinal, he kind of made like... he clearly had no problem with anybody seeing his penis the way he faced me. 

And I was so young and naive I didn’t think, ‘Oh, there's the almost erect big adult male's penis.’ I thought, ‘Man, I have a small penis’, because I was a kid. That's what I processed there. 

So I finished before him. I go to start washing my hands. I look up from washing my hands, and he's still standing by the urinal, but now his body is fully facing me. His pants are up, his zipper’s down, and his dick is fully erect and he is like slowly touching it and making eye contact with me.”

He pauses.

“Obviously it felt like five minutes and two seconds at the same time. So I just gave him the benefit of the doubt at that time, but I looked back up after a few seconds [and he was] still doing it.”

Israel alleges this happened in 2001. 

It would take another 24 years for the truth about Tait to come out.

Chapter 6: Forgiveness, Justice, and Nashville Coffee

The day after Jessica published her story about Michael Tait, The Newsboys released a new statement about their former member:

“Last night our hearts were shattered when we read the news alleging drug abuse and inappropriate sexual actions by our former lead singer, Michael Tait. While Michael has not addressed these allegations, we are devastated even by the implications.

[...]

When he left the band in January, Michael confessed to us and our management that he “had been living a double-life” but we never imagined that it could be this bad.” 

Not long after that, Tait himself posted a new message on social media. Josiah remembers it well, because it was a few days before he published more allegations in The Guardian.

“Just before my article came out, Tait dropped a post on Instagram called ‘My Confession’ where he admitted abusing alcohol and cocaine for 20 years. And I believe the quote was ‘touching other men in an unwanted sensual way’, which is really, really watering it down.”

For Josiah - a lifelong fan of DC Talk and The Newsboys - this was all just so, so weird.

I feel the same way. I’m no longer Christian, but up until I worked on this story and started talking to Tait’s victims directly, I was still listening to DC Talk and The Newsboys.

Josiah has been thinking a lot about this, as he continues to report on Tait in The Guardian:

“The second story that I did was with a guy who was the founding manager of Evanescence. He was in the room when [DC Talk] recorded ‘Jesus Freak’, and he's telling me these stories about Tait grabbing guys' genitals. And I don't know if he was on cocaine at that time, but it is so surreal to think about.

It wasn't just that they were in this industry or they identified as Christians. They really were propagandists that instructed us on what to do and what not to do when it came to, you know, hedonism and morality.

So it was surreal to think about Michael Tait having sex with underage men and snorting cocaine in the midst of all that.”

As for Tait himself? He was spotted in Las Vegas and then in Utah, apparently going to rehab for a period. But as of right now, Jessica told Webworm he’s been spotted back in Nashville.

“Since the stories have broken, I've had three random sources reach out to me saying, ‘I saw Michael Tait in a coffee shop in Nashville today’, or like, ‘I saw him in a Kroger’. He's still living his life in Nashville. He's still doing his thing. I know he's got a very supportive community around him who care for him and are taking care of him. 

It's ironic to me that with these allegations he can walk around his hometown, apparently relatively carefree and get coffee. I have sources and some survivors who are actually terrified that if their name gets dropped they will just lose everything.”

For Jessica, it says a lot about how certain Christian organisations think about forgiveness - and justice. And how those two things are treated with very different levels of importance. 

“In the evangelical community and the Christian community, and I include myself in that, I think that says a lot about the fact that we should value repentance and forgiveness and owning what we've done - but there is a difference between mercy and repentance, and forgiveness and justice. 

Justice still needs to take place and there's a humility that needs to come with that. And I don't - on a human level - fully don't understand why there seems to be a gap between that. I don't think you can say, ‘Well, he made a confession, so now he's okay, he's forgiven, he should be reinstalled.’ 

No, that doesn't happen. There has to be legal consequences to this if victims choose to go forward with it. And we know that a preliminary investigation has started. So I'm really hopeful that the truth will come to light and that people will be safe.”

Chapter 7: “He’s The Devil”

While it’s unclear if any of Tait’s victims - some allegedly as young as 13 - will try and take any kind of legal action, The Newsboys management certainly are.

But not against Tait.

On June 17, Newsboys Touring LLC and Newsboys Inc sued a small Canadian concert promoter for $5.4 million dollars, saying:

“The Newsboys have been lowered in the estimation of right-thinking members of society. The Newsboys have been seriously injured in their credibility, character, and reputation, especially in relation to their standing in the Christian rock scene, and they have suffered damages – both reputational and special damages related to loss of opportunities.”

Webworm has seen the 30-page lawsuit, and spoke to Sheena Hennink, the woman being sued, over the weekend. She says she flew to Nashville in June last year to meet The Newsboys management to discuss bringing them on a Canadian tour.

The band agreed to use her to promote eight dates in Canada in 2025. Tickets went on sale on December 1, 2024. On January 16th - Sheena’s birthday - Michael Tait left The Newsboys.

She immediately called Dave Wagner, GM of Newsboys Touring, assuming the tour would be cancelled. Taking The Newsboys on the road without Tait would be like U2 going on tour without Bono. 

Wagner told her the tour must go on. She’d have to keep selling tickets. Sheena asked for an explanation on why Tait had suddenly just left:

“And this was his response: ‘He's going on 60 years old, he has been tied up with Newsboys for 15 years, and he wants to do things that he hasn't been able to do while under contract with Newsboys. There's nothing we could do - he prayed about it. We prayed together. This is the decision that everyone came to.”

Ticket sales plummeted.

Not long after this, the TikTok about Tait’s “double life” started circulating on social media. Sheena says that Wagner responded by telling her, “We have people right now scrubbing the internet for anything like this, it will be removed, this will die down.”

It didn’t die down. 

“Three weeks before the tour started, there were some of my shows that had 250 tickets in a 2000-seater that I paid over $70,000 for.”

Two-and-a-half weeks before the show, she got a call from a contact in Nashville telling her that an article about Tait was about to drop. She got in touch with Jessica Morris in Australia, and learnt about the alleged rape and coverup that happened on the Newsboys tour in 2013.

After talking to alleged victims directly, she finally pulled the plug on the entire tour. “I have a 14-year-old son and a 19-year old daughter, and at no point would I put them in there,” she told Webworm.

As I Facetime Sheena, she turns her camera around to face the dining room. It’s littered in boxes, filled with her possessions. The failed tour ruined her financially, and she and her husband are moving.

After all that, she’s being sued by Dave Wagner’s ‘Newsboys Touring’, and another entity called ‘Newsboys Inc.’

Newsboys Inc is Wes Campbell, the sole owner of Newsboys. Wes is the brother of Steve Campbell, Newsboys’ tour manager at the time of the alleged 2013 rape outlined in Jessica Morris’ reporting.

Wes Campbell resigned from the board of the Gospel Music Association on July 10 over the allegations that he, and the whole Newsboys Team, helped cover up Tait’s abuse.

But behind the scenes, he’s doing anything but back down.

“The way I like to describe the situation is… Wes Campbell is the devil,” Israel Anthem tells me.

“There is a difference between committing a sin and then covering up somebody's sin and profiting off that person while keeping those sins a secret. I'm sorry, but there's a difference. He could have gotten Tait help. He could've gotten people help. He could have done something about the situation that actually helped everyone. 

But not only did he not do that, he hired employees to literally keep words off search engines. That's why up until this, if you search ‘Michael Tait homosexuality accusations’, nothing. To say he didn’t know: bullshit. And that to me is unforgivable in so many ways.”

Israel wishes the stories had brought him closure, but he’s worried about what happens next. He worries for people like Hennink, who faces financial ruin.

He’s worried about what will happen next in Nashville, and in the world of powerful men in the city’s Christian music scene.

“You need to know man, like the story is so much worse than people know yet. And it's so much deeper. Literally yesterday [August 29] the detectives that are investigating had come by to pick up - and here's the thing, it could be a coincidence - but there's been four different calibers of bullets left on our doorstep since the story dropped. I threw away the first one because I thought it was an accident, but then I kept the next three.”

I ask if Israel took photos. He sent me a photo immediately. 

“Everybody has ring cameras - it looks like the same person. But it's just somebody who parks on the main road, wear a hoodie and a mask and just, like, does a fast walk. They just look like a silhouette blur.”

This sounds outlandish, but then this whole thing is outlandish. 

It’s outlandish one of the first bands I loved - two of the first bands I loved - ended up here. Newsboys and DC Talk were held up by me, and so many Christians, as something to aspire to. They were meant to be the Holy Spirit-filled moral lights guiding us out of sin.

The whole time - Michael Tait couldn’t have been a worse role model, or a more confused guide. To think, young Christians like me were scared of Nine Inch Nails and Ozzy Osbourne the whole time. We should have been more worried about some of the artists we'd see praising the name of Jesus on stage at Parachute.

But the fact remains: this is so much bigger than Michael Tait. He was an abuser - but he was an abuser enabled by a town and an industry for over 20 years. Now his secrets are being laid bare, and those that knew about it are terrified, unpredictable, and dangerous.

If you want to get in touch in confidence about this story, I am always: davidfarrier@protonmail.com.