In the middle of all the hype and angst about Anne "Interview With a Vampire" Rice leaving Christianity, a new story has emerged, albeit with a little less fanfare. It seems as though Katy "I Kissed a Girl" Perry has decided to tell the world, "I'm still a Christian." Or at least that part of the world that read her recent interview, "Sex, God and Katy Perry," in Rolling Stone magazine.

Talk about a spiritual cage match made in, er, heaven. Wouldn't you just love to get the 68 year-old Rice--raised Catholic, turned atheist, Catholic again, and now somewhere in between--in a room with 25 year-old Perry--raised Pentecostal by tongue-speaking parents, not rejecting her faith, but not exactly serving as a wholesome role model for all of her music fans? Wonder what these two spiritual titans would say to each other? 

Americans love Faith served on a cafeteria tray, served up by magazine interviewers who scoop celebrity conversions into appetizing sound bites for the public to feed on. This week has given them plenty of new dishes.

This month in Rolling Stone magazine, pop-star Katy Perry (who is melting Popsicles from coast to coast this summer) declares that she still believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  As many know, Perry had a brief stint in Christian music before becoming America’s bubblegum sex princess. But her comments are so tongue-in-cheek that it’s hard to imagine she is taking anything seriously, including the divinity of Christ. In the same interview she belittles her parents’ Pentecostal beliefs (“My dad speaks in tongues and my mother interprets”) and includes extraterrestrials among her beliefs. I say her sarcasm is a very good thing, for if Perry and I share the same faith, then I seriously misinterpreted fidelity to Jesus Christ.

This will be short and sweet:

Imagine you are a secularist, and the Ukrainian version of “Hot and Cold” is Christianity.  I think this is what our art can look like and sound like to our secular friends. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out:

My point? Why do Christian artists try to speak a different language? We speak in our native tongue, so let’s make indigenous art instead of covering pop songs that weren’t written for us in the first place.