My song 'Charlene' is about defying religious intolerance against LGBTQ people | Opinion

The levels of societal tolerance and complacency are actively being tested in real time. And it is a grave mistake to believe that none of it is connected.

Cody Belew

Guest Columnist

Cody Belew is a singer-songwriter and a designated CMT Listen Up 2023 artist. He writes on faith and emotion with a signature Southern stomp.

In 2014, I knew Charlene as the lady who cashed the rent check for my small business in Nashville. 

Her back story isn’t important. What’s important to know is that she considered herself a devout Christian woman. I considered her to be a “sister in Christ” in the Southern tradition. And it was always small talk – our exchange on rent check day.

But on that day, she pushed back from her desk, sighed a little, and matter- of-factly said, “Cody. I’ve really been praying for you, and I just don’t think you’re going to get into heaven with me with the way you’re living.” 

She had a gay brother who had been happily married for years and years, and she threw him in the fire with me – I think to express how serious she was. 

I tried to give her my testimony – a very serious moment for a Christian. She dismissed it. I tried to offer up that God was bigger than the box she had him/her in. That maybe I was sent directly to her at that exact moment to open her heart to God’s infinite grace. She dismissed that too. 

My new song was communion

She dismissed my faith. My salvation. The covenant I had with Jesus. It was her way, or no way. And so I gave up on Charlene. I left her to sit in her judgment. 

But I got home that day and wasn’t feeling “over it.” In fact, I felt the opposite. I was on fire. The Holy Spirit was blasting from my fingertips. My skin was crawling with it. 

When I wrote “Charlene” that evening, it wasn’t songwriting. It was communion. 

I was a little boy again, rocking back and forth in my bedroom, pleading with God to remind me and assure me that I was still in His favor.  

So when I wrote the chorus:

“Won’t you lay me down? Lay me down. 

You can’t forgive me, and you don’t know why. 

Let Kingdom come. Your kingdom will fall around you.

Your kingdom will fall, Charlene.” 

I was stretched all the way out in blind faith. 

No redemption needed. 

Intolerance and complacency are connected

I had no way of knowing then that, in the short years to come, the decades of plotting of the powerful elites (at the top of the evangelical empire in the U.S.) would begin to play out on the national stage. 

Going after those that they deem to be “the others” in our democratic society was finally starting to work. They had tried for years to create a narrative that would mobilize their Christian base. Always playing to a variety of fears; the liberal agenda, the LGBT, the unborn, the African Americans, the climate, the masks, the undocumented immigrants, the Muslims, the Jews, the Native Americans. 

They played the long game of politics – quietly funding this campaign and propping up that candidate until they had enough players in the game to actively begin the infringement of our democratic rights. And doing it all in Jesus’ name. 

Now it’s all out in the open. The levels of societal tolerance and complacency are actively being tested in real time. And it is a grave mistake to believe that none of it is connected. 

It is all connected. 

As soon as we give license to openly condemn and judge “the others” while simultaneously seeking to cement the United States as a Christian nation, we invite the condemnation and we accept the judgment. 

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Are you living like Christ?

I wrote “Charlene” to remind myself that I am still and will always be a child of God and a brother to Jesus. 

I sing “Charlene” to remind Charlene and all the Charlenes of the world that I am a child of God and a brother to Jesus.  

Since the day He drew his last breath, His message of absolute love, forgiveness, charity, and salvation to anyone that wanted it – free of judgment and free of charge has been capitalized.

Jesus’ name has been used to wage war, to slaughter, to colonize, to enslave, to vilify, to subjugate, and to damn “the others.” The cross He died on was used as a weapon against Him. And, from then on, the symbol of it has been used as a weapon against us. 

With “Charlene,” I’m simply using it as a mirror. Are you living like Christ or are you living like the modern evangelical Christian?  

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." -Matthew 7: 1-2

Cody Belew is a singer-songwriter and a designated CMT Listen Up 2023 artist. He writes on faith and emotion with a signature Southern stomp. The song "Charlene" comes out on multiple platforms on May 11.