Singer and fast-rising evangelical speaker Lecrae Devaughn Moore says black Americans don't trust church leaders anymore, whether they be black or white.
The reason?
"The church has been absent as far as race and justice for three decades. We're like: 'We haven't seen you since MLK!'" he says, as quoted in a Washington Post article. Lecrae is referring to Martin Luther King, Jr., the American Baptist minister and civil rights activist who was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at the age of 39.
Church values are fading in America because Christians have become just a shell of "morality and religion and rules," Lecrae adds.
The 36-year-old ex-drug dealer-turned-rapper and Christian preacher presents a new evangelical model that's drawing the attention of American Christians, particularly the youth.
"What I bring is unique; no one else brings to the table what I am," Lecrae says. "That's how I look at myself — a clear voice in the middle of it all."
Many evangelicals say they love Lecrae because of his middle-of-the-road position on the major issues shaking up America. These evangelicals fill his concert tours, buy his books, listen to his lectures and watch admiringly when he's on national news like when he initiated a truce between a cop and protesters near his home in Atlanta after the post-Ferguson riots, according to the Post.
Lecrae's concerts are unlike those of other artists since his hip-hop is about Jesus and without obscenities.
He recently launched a media campaign called "Man-up" where he encourages young urban men to embrace traditional roles as husbands and fathers.
In his memoirs "Unashamed," which came out last May, he says he wants to show troubled young people his scars so they know they can move on just like him.
Many Christian leaders have acknowledged Lecrae's contribution in the field of evangelisation.
"He's an important voice. He has an immediate influence on churches when he speaks," says Russell Moore, head of public policy for the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.
"This generation doesn't have a Billy Graham," says LaDawn Johnson, a sociologist at Biola University, an evangelical school outside Los Angeles where Lecrae performed in April. "We've lost any kind of significant evangelical leader people could point to, and Lecrae is in a position where he could definitely for many young people be that voice and be that model."
