Reflection: How Hip Hop Saved My Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"by Mark JeffersonI will never forget the feeling I had when I first heard Kanye West's "Jesus Walks" track from his\u00a0The College Dropout\u00a0album.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2011\/11\/reflection-how-hip-hop-saved-my-faith.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reflection: How Hip Hop Saved My Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Mark JeffersonI will never forget the feeling I had when I first heard Kanye West's "Jesus Walks" track from his\u00a0The College Dropout\u00a0album.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2011\/11\/reflection-how-hip-hop-saved-my-faith.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-11-05T12:31:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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<\/div>\n

I will never forget the feeling I had when I first heard Kanye West\u2019s \"Jesus Walks\" track from his\u00a0The College Dropout\u00a0album. It felt like Kanye channeled and articulated my angst, hope, faith, and doubt in less than four minutes. I was not the only person to connect with the song considering its massive commercial success.\n

For me, the brilliance of the song was not displayed in the first two versions of the Jesus Walks videos, which garnered critical acclaim, but in a lower-budget third version that was financed completely by Kanye. This version showed Jesus walking through the hood with Kanye on an ordinary day. When talking about the making of the third \"Jesus Walks\" video, Kanye said, \u201cEven after seeing the Chris Milk video, there was something I was still missing. I still didn\u2019t feel like I had the hood. That\u2019s what Jesus Walks was for \u2013 the hood.\u201d Kanye\u2019s desire to translate Jesus in a palpable and culturally relevant way is a key to understanding why I believe the Americanized Jesus Christ of popular consumption has failed to do the same thing.<\/p>\n

Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

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