Interview with Alex Sosler, author/editor of “Hip-Hop Theology: Only the Lover Raps”
Alex Sosler is an assistant professor of Bible and ministry at Montreat College, who does a lot with practical theology. He is also an assistant priest at an Anglican Church. He’s written a few books and most recently he is also author and co-editor (with Claude Atcho) of a new book, Hip-Hop Theology: Only the Lover Raps (Wipf and Stock, 2026). He was kind enough to do an interview and share a bit about the book, pop culture, theology, hip-hop, nostalgia, and even more.
How do you explain to people what this book is about? And what do you hope will come from this book?
I think the first distinction that needs to be made is that this is not a book on theological hip hop. In other words, you won’t find reflection on Christian hip hop where it’s theology done in the style of rap. I’m not against it, and I think there’s a place for that. But we’re not talking about Lecrae or Jackie Hill Perry or DC Talk. (Sorry, I had to).
Really, it’s an exploration of how hip-hop music and culture considers and relates to God in all its ambiguity, complexity, and power. There are a few forerunners to our book but I think the recent resurgence in hip-hop is worth talking about. Hip-hop celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2023, and one of the most popular Broadway shows (Hamilton) and comic book movies (Into the Spiderverse) feature hip-hop soundtracks. These currents felt like it was time to revisit the hip-hop theology conversation that others have started. (Daniel White Hodge, Ralph Basui Watkins, Andre Johnson, etc.)
In essence, Hip-Hop Theology seeks to answer these questions: what is hip-hop doing in the world, and does God have an interest in it?
Where did the idea for this book come from? How did you end up here? Have you always been interested in hip-hop? In theology?
I remember ordering my first CDs through a magazine. (Do you remember those?) My parents could correct me, because it seems insane, but I remember at maybe ten years old the first CDs I ordered were Tupac’s Greatest Hits, DMX It’s Dark and Hell is Hot, and Green Day’s Nimrod. So, I guess I was always drawn to an alternative culture, something not quite neat and clean.
Even in those early albums, Tupac and DMX portray a complicated relationship with Christianity--but it is spiritual. There’s something there that hooked me even before I was a Christian. When I became a Christian, I thought I needed to give up these “secular” songs. I tried, really. But there was a rawness, a realness that never really let me go. I moved on to the Midwest conscious hip-hop of Bone Thugs-N- Harmony (from Cleveland where I’m from) and Common and Nas. It was the soundtrack of my youth that I often felt quietly ashamed of.
And so, really, I wanted to spend some time with this complicated interest. I’m a white kid from the suburbs who is an academic theologian. These artists are not “mine,” and they’re not writing for me. But I couldn’t escape them, and I thought they needed more interaction than they were getting. I was compelled by… I don’t know what. Their complexity? Their rawness? Their vision? I kept discovering Hip-hop artists that kept inspiring me—Chance the Rapper, Tobe Nwigwe, J. Cole.
Then, Claude and I met at an Image Workshop that was hosted in Asheville during COVID. We had some passing conversation, but after reading Reading Black Books (his book), I thought we could partner on something like Listening to Black Music. I didn’t want to colonize hip-hop with my own reading, so it was important to me to work with someone who comes from this culture and feature a majority of black voices in this volume.
Who do you hope will read this?
The entire universe.
But really, here’s a story that may get at this question:
I used to live in Austin, Texas, and Chance the Rapper was headlining Austin City Limits that year. (2017?) He had just been on the Colbert Report and performed an unrecorded song with Daniel Caesar called “First World Problems.” It’s amazing—the lyrics, the cadence, the aesthetic. I was talking about this to a Christian group, and the overwhelming response was, “Is he a Christian, though?”
Then, sitting at a bar downtown, I overheard the bartender talking about Austin City Limits and Chance. “I really loved Acid Rap,” she said. “But he’s gotten really religious.”
That dynamic, I think, is interesting. Too “secular” for Christians and too Christian for the general audience. That intersection is who I think the book is for. I would call the intersection those interested in redemptive art—maybe not Christian art, but art that has seeds of redemptive thought.
So, I think this book is for people comfortable in those in-between spaces.
Pop culture is clearly one of your interests. Some people agree that it’s interesting and worthwhile, others might be a little more skeptical. How do you try to win over people who are maybe a little more skeptical about spending a lot of time and thought on pop culture?
Ah, yes. I am involved in some theology and art conversations, and they tend to be pretty highbrow. I really enjoy them. I think they’re fascinating, and I also feel really out of place. I’m from the rustbelt of the Midwest and now reside in Appalachia—not exactly bastions of high culture. (Although, every time I go into the Cleveland Museum of Art, I am always blown away—it is such an underrated city. I digress).
So, I like these conversations about visual art and seeing Jeremy Begbie lead an orchestra interspersed with his reflections is mesmerizing. I could watch it all day.
But I also work with students. There’s an on the ground reality that these kids don’t know who Arvo Pärt is or care about what he’s doing. They’re listening to Taylor Swift and watching Stranger Things. It’s probably what leans me to “Practical Theology” over formal theology, and why I like doing theology for the church and not for other theologians. I want to be practically helpful and talk in a language that people understand.
Yet, there’s this great line from David Foster Wallace in an interview with the journalist David Lipsky. He says, “There’s nothing sinister (about entertainment)… the thing that’s sinister about it is that the pleasure that it gives you to make up for what it’s missing is a kind of…addictive, self-consuming pleasure.” He compares the television to candy—sweet treats that give us stomach aches when we over-consume it.
And I think that’s right. I’m not here to argue that young people are really doing just fine with their addictive pleasures of pop culture. I do think they need something deeper, more substantial and nutritional.
However, I also think there’s plenty of beauty in pop culture for the taking. I don’t want to keep them addicted; I want to give them wider resources to reflect on what they’re seeing, hearing, and consuming.
I mean, hell, Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. Pop culture shouldn’t be looked down merely as trashy, kitschy, or candy-like—though some is. I won’t defend all of it—or Taylor Swift to my daughter’s deep despair.
If pop culture is all you do, then yes, perhaps there’s a danger. But you can start there and lead people to deep waters. I try to point to sources that can provide an interpretive ballast for pop culture. It’s not all candy, and when we lovingly look long enough, I think our attention can reward us.
On the publisher website, one way the book is framed is through this question: “What has Jerusalem to do with the Bronx, or Compton, or the South Side of Chicago, or the west side of Houston?” We’re kind of always faced with those Athens/Jerusalem questions. What are some ways that you think are helpful for us to navigate those questions?
Yes—maybe that’s a cliched way to put it. But I think I put it that way, because my gut reaction is, “Probably not a lot.” God in the hood? No, not God. He belongs to the high, civilized culture. He wouldn’t defile himself in the ghetto.
But, of course, God does “defile” himself. He comes to earth to die. He enters into the mess. He claims us as his own. In coming, he doesn’t defile himself but sanctifies us.
I was talking with a friend today about Edward Pusey, a prominent Anglican in the Oxford Movement in the 19th century, who said, “How can you see Christ in the tabernacle but not the ghetto?” Man. What a line. And I think the ghetto has something to teach us—Jesus said he’s there.
One of my biggest gripes with traditional Christian music is that it tends to not be honest. And there are some hip-hop artists that are not honest—glorifying sex and drugs and murder. That’s a thing.
But the best of hip-hop music is honest. They peak behind the curtain of our otherwise comfortable and clean lives and sometimes shock us into seeing what’s really going on in where we prefer not to look.
What are the advantages to this book being an edited volume?
First, people are smarter than me. They make me look like I know what I’m doing by being part of the project. That’s really helpful.
Their backgrounds are also different. One gives a close read of the musical notes behind Outkast’s “Rosa Parks.” I don’t know anything about musical notes—but his take is fascinating. And I only get that by bringing people in with different specialties and interests. They also engage with artists I haven’t. My only wish is that it could be longer—there is so much out there that deserves our attention, and I feel like we only scratched the surface.
Who were some of the hip-hop artists who were most influential, or most important, to you?
I mentioned some of them previously. But I’ll take this question to say: Kendrick Lamar is incredible. I “let” my co-editor, Claude, write a chapter on him, and I’m still jealous he got to. I’ve given a few talks on his music recently, and his “Mr. Morales and the Big Steppers” is a masterpiece. An absolute masterpiece. The whole narrative of the album is beautiful and redemptive and healing.
The album cover takes up Christ imagery with Kendrick in a crown of thorns and his wife with child beckoning a Madonna image—but also with a gun in his waist. And, as it's been called, it’s his therapy journey to healing. It starts with “United in Grief” where he says he’s wrestling with representing hip-hop culture which glorifies things he’s against, but also he’s the face of. And it causes grief that he doesn’t know how to deal with. But he doesn’t confess like a journal entry. He bears his wounds to heal others—and so identifies with this Christ figure. (Like in the music video for N-95—also taking up James Cone image connecting the crucifixion to the lynching tree.) The way the album tells the story and ends is poetic—but I’ll let readers go experience it for themselves.
He's complex and complicated and amazing.
I’ve noticed there’s a lot of nostalgia right now for older hip-hop among people (maybe especially around our age). How have you tried to keep this volume current and not just nostalgic? Or is it ok for it to also be nostalgic and help us make sense of theology and formation over the last 30-40 years?
I won’t even link to it because it’s so perverse and misogynist and profane, but have you seen Juvenile’s Tiny Desk Concert? To me, that’s like my childhood, and I can’t believe I listened to it—or that it was allowed to be produced. But there’s also something transcendent about the black joy featured in that tiny concert. Maybe it is just nostalgia—but there’s this art critic that talks about black music—blues in particular—being like “playing in the briar patch.” I love that image. Danger and thorns are all around—but they’re still playing. And for me, there’s something about that defiant joy of fun and swag that I can’t totally critique—but it’s also hard to know how to endorse.
Anyway, most of the theology and hip-hop books that have gone before us were pre-2018 before Kendricks’ Pulitzer Prize and before hip-hop become a real transnational and cultural movement. So, it felt like it was time to start re-reflecting on it—and to introduce some new artists to the mix. This volume has a bit of nostalgia, but we tried to talk about how even older music is also being translated today.
You also have a podcast, “The Artistic Vision.” Can you describe that a bit?
Sure. My priest and I wrote a book titled The Artistic Vision, and we’re really bad at self-promotion. So, we decided to promote other people after we wrote our book. Surprisingly (not), it has done nothing for sales of our book, but it’s been fun to talk to and highlight the work of others in the theology and art space.
We’re on a bit of a hiatus after a year of producing it. I’m sure we’ll revisit it as books and people write or create things in the coming years, but after putting out an episode every week for a year, we are tired. So, you’ll find a lot of really great people on there—just an incredible line-up of artists and critics and theologians doing really amazing work. It was such a joy to talk to these people. But it may be a bit before you get a new episode!
Interview conducted by Elizabeth Stice
