Sufjan Stevens is an artist with three distinct sounds. There's the Sufjan Stevens who uses symphonic instruments and records Christmas albums; this is the Sufjan behind his breakout album, 2005's. In the promotional blitz leading to the release of “The Ascension,” the eighth studio album from the prince of sad boi hours, Sufjan Stevens, much has been said about the singer-songwriter’s shame toward the current state of our country. Of course, such discourse isn’t without warrant; on the final song of the album, “America,” Stevens. Sufjan Stevens is currently single, according to our records. The American Folk Singer was born in Detroit on July 1, 1975. Singer/songwriter most famous for his Illinois album, which includes the hit “Chicago.” His 2003 album, Greetings from Michigan, and his 2015 release, Carrie & Lowell, also received critical acclaim. 115.1k Followers, 0 Following, 80 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Sufjan (@sufjan). Sufjan Stevens “America” “Christ would be ashamed of us all,” Sufjan Stevens wrote on Tumblr in early 2017, about the refugee crisis, days after the inauguration of Donald Trump.

by F Brannigan PUBLISHED 13 June 2013

Sufjan Stevens is an indie musician most famous for his “50 States Project” and the 2005 album Illinoise featuring the song “Chicago.” Unfortunately for Sufjan Stevens, people start wondering about the sexuality of a hot, sensitive young singer songwriter who wears angel wings at live shows on tour and who doesn’t seem to have a girlfriend or be dating publicly. So is Sufjan Stevens gay? Married? Christian?

Is Sufjan Stevens Christian? What’s His Religion?

Is Sufjan Stevens Christian? Sufjan Stevens studied as an undergraduate at a Christian school, Hope College in Holland, Michigan. In a 2005 interview, Sufjan Stevens acknowledged his Christian religion, saying that he attends “a kind of Anglo-Catholic church.” Sufjan Stevens' views on faith and doubt & more Christian music like Sufjan Stevens.

Sufjan Stevens doesn’t give many official interviews, but in a way he doesn’t have to, as his song lyrics can often speak for themselves. Besides Sufjan Stevens announcing his Christianity officially in an interview, many of Stevens’ lyrics are very overtly religious, especially those from Seven Swans, which almost works as a Christian rock album. On “The Transfiguration,” Stevens directly references the Biblical Gospel accounts of Jesus Christ’s Transfiguration on the Mount. In the lyrics to “Abraham,” Stevens again almost literally sings about the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Old Testament of the Bible: “Abraham, put off on your son. Take instead the ram, until Jesus comes.” With obviously religious lyrics like these, Sufjan Stevens doesn’t have to come out and say that he’s Christian.

Is Sufjan Stevens Gay or Christian? Song Lyrics Interpretation

While Sufjan Stevens might not have to announce that he’s Christian, there are a lot of rumors circulating about whether Stevens is gay, straight, or at least bisexual. Oddly enough, some of Sufjan Stevens’ lyrics have actually added to the whole gay debate. Songs like “The Dress Looks Nice on You” read as heterosexual because he is obviously singing to a woman. However, on the Illinoise song “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us” or “Futile Devices” from Age of Adz, the gender of the person Sufjan is professing his love for appears to be male, causing some people to wonder exactly what kind of 'love' he is talking about.

Some of these critics have also pointed out the Seven Swans song “To Be Alone With You” as possibly having a hidden gay meaning, but in my opinion this song is a perfect example about how easy it is to misinterpret song lyrics. “You gave up a wife and a family…to be alone with me,” Sufjan sings, finishing, “I’ve never known a man who loved me.” On the surface, these lyrics seem like they might be talking about a gay relationship with a man, but let’s not forget: Sufjan Stevens is a devout Christian. After analysis, lines like “You went up on a tree” are pretty clear indicators that Sufjan Stevens is not talking about being gay here, but about being a Christian.

Is Sufjan Stevens Straight? Married? Does He Have a Girlfriend or Wife?

Just as it is impossible to find an interview with Sufjan Stevens setting the record straight on whether or not he is gay, it is also hard to get official word on whether he is married or seriously dating anyone. To put it bluntly, some lyrics from Age of Adz sound like they were written from a very lonely and depressed place. On “I Want to Be Well,” Sufjan, who has publicly acknowledged that he has suffered from depression, sings about being “isolated” and basically on the brink of insanity or “death.” This is just an opinion, but I don’t think people usually give voice to these kinds of thoughts when they’re in a committed, healthy relationship--gay, straight, married or otherwise.

Who is Sufjan Stevens?

So who is Sufjan Stevens? When it comes to whether Sufjan Stevens is gay, married, straight, bisexual, depressed, Christian, or whatever, Sufjan Stevens probably said it best with the 2005 interview quote above. Although Stevens is speaking in reference to religion in this particular quote, his statement can really apply to any minority. To me, this quote also seems to answer the question as to whether Sufjan Stevens is 'anti gay.' We don't need to label Sufjan or his music. The music speaks for itself (most of the time). Next up: Is Deerhunter's Bradford Cox Gay?

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Sufjan Stevens Married

This one comes to us from Jeb Ralston.

Sufjan Stevens, that enigmatic and soft-spoken tortured soul of a musician, released a new single last week, “America,” with the not-so-subtle timing of being one day before the Fourth of July. Sufjan, who is no stranger to political commentary through the lens of his own Christian perception, is not one to remain ambiguous on everything. Ask Sufjan’s fans, and most of us, anticipating this single, would have predicted a scathing takedown of American culture.

Sufjan is a disarming lyricist, though, and often catches me off-guard as he did with this track. In a time when everyone has something to say about the state of our country or political adversaries, and virtue-signaling abounds, criticism which intimately involves self-criticism will almost always be more readily received.

I have always respected Sufjan for this reason. He is willing to see the depths of his own infidelities and deviances in his songwriting before he is willing to call out the sins of an individual or a nation. He is typically above potshots and sucker punches and virtue-signaling. Whether it is the secrets beneath his own floorboard or the humanizing of an American villain, Sufjan knows that the Pharisaical posture of thanking God that we are not like some is entirely antithetical to the Christian faith.

Sufjan Stevens called this new single “a protest song against the sickness of American culture in particular,” but for Sufjan, this is a song equally (if not more) about the sickness within himself. He is not removed from the sickness, and neither are we. We are all products and producers of the culture in which we find ourselves. And it would not be Sufjan without his iconic ambivalence:

I have loved you, I have grieved
I’m ashamed to admit I no longer believe
I have loved you, I received
I have traded my life
For a picture of the scenery
Don’t do to me what you did to America

In my estimate, it is a petitionary song to God that views the moral, social, and spiritual degradation of America as one that has occurred and is occurring in his own life. The oft repeated line, “Don’t do to me what you did to America” is a haunting and God-fearing request, and the constant self-comparison to “a Judas in heat” strikes at the heart of the song. Allusions to the flood of Genesis 6 are frequent, but where Noah was called a “blameless man among the people” as he “walked faithfully with God” (Gen 6:9), Sufjan sees himself as one who simultaneously has “choked on the waters” and “abated the flood.” He is a type of both Noah and Judas. He is one who denounces the evil of the land but must also denounce himself in the process. He is one who has “worshiped” and “believed” but in the same turn has “broke your bread for a splendor of machinery.” He is pious and a traitor. And he is indeed ambivalent with his outrage: he is outraged over the condition of America and he is outraged with himself.

Like a land flooded in judgment, who are we to think we did not contribute to the flood? And who are we to think we will escape it? The problem to Sufjan is not the abstraction of sin but the reality of it. Sin is always more ‘real’ when we see it in ourselves. And the effects of sin can very well be a judgment in themselves. God can just as easily bring judgment through a flood or a plague as he can by leaving us to our own devices. And I believe that is what Sufjan is grasping at here. The “sickness” of American culture is more pervasive than any one thing. The political wrath consistent across the political divide, the deep-seated and vicious racial injustice, the xenophobia, and no doubt the greed and syncretism of American culture—as perhaps best expressed in one of his most bizarre songs (“Oh I’m hysterically American I’ve a credit card on my wrist”)—are surely in Sufjan’s mind here as symptomatic of such sickness.

The song strikes at the tension of Sufjan possessing a holy anger over injustice while maintaining that he himself is one deserving of judgment—an irony I know in myself all too well.

I am fraught with imposter syndrome. It has plagued me most of my life. I wear masks of competence and virtue but know full well that those masks are not the real me. I am a seminary student who hopes to be ordained, but I am also a profoundly immature and insecure man. I find myself in alignment with Sufjan’s own frustrations here because I know that there really is an imposter. And my frustrations with American culture are very often the same frustrations I have with myself: I am a greedy and self-protective man. The imposter is not imaginary.

Of course, the imposter is not the sum of me, but he is there, like Brennan Manning said:

Sufjan Stevens Girlfriend

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games.

Who Is Sufjan Stevens Dating

I am not the man I want to be. I am a man who would not withstand the flood and who is grieved over the sin in our world and in the deepest cracks of my own soul. I love Jesus, but my love proves itself so little. I am both “broken” and “beat” but also “fortune” and “free.” I am both sinner and saint. Faithful and frustrated. And the only assurance I have in this life is that Jesus died for the likes of me.

While this is quite clearly a song of judgment and by no means ends on a happy note, the Christian life is not one that must be a stranger to such paradox. And it is perhaps this ambivalence that may allow us to be keenly in tune with the sickness of our culture and be the ones most adequately prepared to address the sickness without having to result to scapegoating or willful ignorance. When one is grounded in the assurance of the gospel, criticism can take a humble but potent new form because it can call sin what it really is without needing to resort to annihilation.

Who Is Sufjan Stevens

We have a Great Physician who came for the sick and sinners. And when we know ourselves to be numbered among them, our best criticisms will always have a tinge of irony and a taste of a cure.

Featured image credit: Asthmatic Kitty Records

What Is Sufjan Stevens Chicago About