How Many Looked Away?

Have you ever heard the sad story about Hank Williams, Sr., and his car ride with Minnie Pearl?

It’s a true story, from 1953, told by Minnie herself. In between shows at the Grand Ole Opry, Minnie needed to keep Hank, an alcoholic, sober enough to perform for the second show. So she and Hank’s wife, Audry, drove around Nashville for two hours to keep him away from his favorite drink, whiskey.

At one point, the story continues, Minnie suggested singing to pass the time and, naturally, she suggested they sing “I Saw the Light” to get Hank Sr.’s mind off the alcohol his sick body was craving.  

That old song goes:

I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light

Hank, who wrote that song in 1947, wasn’t feeling it that evening. 

“That’s just it, Minnie. There ain’t no light,” Hank confessed to her. “It’s all dark.”

That sad story from Music City sounds a lot like the sad, reckless, and wrecked life of Michael Tait, 59. He is the now-former frontman for The Newsboys, and his list of sordid, sinful behavior is long and keeps getting longer. The accusations began with first-hand accounts of how he groomed and sexually assaulted young men. That story, first reported June 4 by The Roys Report, came after a two-year investigation and dozens of interviews.

"For some two decades,” Taite belatedly wrote in an online post, dated June 10, “I used and abused cocaine, consumed far too much alcohol, and, at times, touched men in an unwanted sensual way.”

Tait, who labeled his post “My Confession,” said he did not dispute the “substance” of the accusations made against him. 

The confessions weren’t over, though. British tabloid The Guardian published its own story with more first-hand accounts from six more men. Some said they had been drugged by the Christian singer. Another man described how Tait had exposed himself to him in a restaurant restroom when he was only 13 years old.   

In a follow-up to its first story, The Roys Report used hotel security camera footage to back up a woman’s allegation Tait watched a Newsboys crew member rape her in a hotel bedroom in 2024.

Michael Tait, undone by the terrible choices he made, is done in Christian music.

And that’s really sad. When I was a teenager, Tait was one-third of the trio DC Talk. I can tell you where I was, in a dorm room at Delta State University, when a BSU friend named Bob played “Jesus Freak” for the first time.

Back then bald-headed Peter Furler was lead singer for The Newsboys. I remember listening to their “Going Public” album with “Shine” and “Spirit Thing” on a BSU mission trip to Texas. Furler’s song “Stay Strong” still speaks to me today, 20 years since it came out.

Considering how those songs impacted my life, the long list of allegations against Tait hit me hard, to be honest.

What hit harder is wondering what happened in Nashville and its Christian music industry to allow it to happen. Somebody up there, maybe several of them, allowed Tait to hurt people over and over, for years and years, when nobody in a position of authority was courageous enough to confront a man-groping, cocaine-addicted, homosexual groomer Christian singer.

There are a couple of big clues, from inside the industry, that Nashville knew and did nothing. In a telling revelation, Christian musician Cory Asbury wrote on social media that “everyone knew” about Tait’s behavior.

Back in the Roys Reports, it similarly called Tait’s misdeeds the “worst-kept secret” in Nashville.

How did that happen? The most logical answer is money, greed, and power. 

Can it really be that simple? Sure, it can. All three of those terrible vices – let’s call them the unholy trinity – have ruined human beings for thousands of years. The setting this time just happened to be Music City, where Christian music is a $1 billion industry and is apparently treated like an industry, too.

If you follow the money, it leads to Newsboys record label Capitol Christian Music Group, which has now dropped the band. It also leads to Wes Campbell, who has owned the band’s name and music for decades like P.T. Barnum owned a circus. His brother, Steve Campbell, is the band’s tour manager.

That is one version of what happened and why. The other version, told by the Campbell brothers and the Newsboys members, is they were totally caught off guard by Tait’s admission he lived a “double life” right under their noses for years and years.

Capitol, the record label, dropped the Newsboys from its payroll in mid-June when Tait’s allegations kept growing. Feel free to believe that the top executives there didn’t know what Tait was doing all this time, but it’s hard to believe “everybody knew” except the record label bosses at the top.

What really hurts anyone’s claim of ignorance and innocence, besides common sense, is a second online comment from Asbury. Asked how many Christian music artists in Music City are living a double life like Tait, he answered “a lot.”

If it’s true everyone knew, then the main culprit is powerful people who work in big offices and live in the biggest homes in Brentwood and Bell Meade.

Long ago, they could have treated the growing Christian music industry like a ministry. They could have behaved like vigilant church deacons protecting the pulpit and the church’s reputation. Instead, the evidence shows they made the decision to treat it like a lucrative business and to protect Tait like a million-dollar investment.

Going back to the Hank Sr. story, did you know why he was in the car with Minnie that night? They were driving around to sober him up because, one year earlier, the Opry had pulled his membership for excessive drinking and drunkenness.

There’s a lesson to learn from Hank Sr.’s story. If the Grand Ole Opry had such high standards it was willing to punish a popular pioneer of country music, is it asking too much for the Christian music industry to demand high standards for Holy Spirit-filled people singing about Jesus?

Until the powerful people in Music City see the light, and trade the wrong for the right, it’s looking pretty dark for the future of Christian music.