On Christians for Goliath, Adeem the Artist questions who faith is serving
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Newsdesk
The biblical giant gives Adeem the Artist a pointed way to describe a contemporary religious contradiction. Their forthcoming album, Christians for Goliath, takes its name from the spectacle of Christians aligning themselves with power while turning away from people asking for mercy.
The title song followed Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s remarks at the National Prayer Service after Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Budde asked the president to show mercy toward frightened immigrants and LGBTQ+ children. Adeem saw the ensuing attacks on her, and arguments against empathy itself, as a reversal of the values Christianity had taught them to recognize.
That response became the starting point for a collaboration with John Darnielle. Adeem sent him the song, and Darnielle proposed making a contemporary Christian record in Nashville. The suggestion brought a familiar musical language into a project that would examine its assumptions.
Due December 11 through Four Quarters Records / Thirty Tigers, the resulting 11-song album draws from gospel, country, blues, folk and contemporary Christian music. It begins with an acoustic version of the title track and returns to the song in full at the end. The circular structure leaves its central dispute open.
The first single, “Hard to Get”, offers another way into the album. A collaboration with The Mountain Goats, released with an official lyric video, it honors Christian songwriter Rich Mullins. His generosity and searching approach to belief supplied Adeem with an example of religious conviction grounded in service.
That distinction matters to the album’s perspective. Adeem confronts the harm religious communities inflict on queer and trans people while continuing to explore faith as a language for empathy and repair. Their own history includes fundamentalist Christianity, Episcopal chaplaincy and agnosticism, leaving them with experience on several sides of the questions being raised.
The album’s political challenge therefore sits inside a longer personal investigation. Adeem is asking which inherited teachings remain useful, which require rejection and what a prayer might become after certainty falls away. Christians for Goliath is available to pre-order and pre-save ahead of its December release.
