A short anecdote about overprotective parenting, church, and my love of Rihanna.

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Imagine not being allowed to listen and sing along to “What’s My Name“, or “Diamonds“, or “Umbrella.” Sounds kinda like hell, doesn’t it?

Well, that’s just the life my former church proposed to me and the rest of our congregation, over 7 years ago.

Much of my childhood was spent leap-frogging from church to church after my family and I left a church we had been members of for years. My father wanted a pastor that he deemed “doctrinally sound.” So even when my siblings and I liked a church we had found, we had to surrender to our dad’s judgement, which almost never ended up working in our favor.

Fast-forward to the very early 2010s, and my family visits this particular church in the downtown area of my hometown. My father loves the pastor and the church, so we ended up attending it for the next few years. However, my siblings and I were…not in love with the place, to say the least. And our doubts increased after I told some of my friends at my school where I was going to church, and they responded by making a stank face and calling it a “cult.” That’s never a good sign.

At this time, I’d been attending a public school system for about two years and was still getting up to speed with the grander world around me that I was sheltered from during my childhood, thanks to a pretty religious upbringing. I was exposed to cuss words, learned about what sex was (they didn’t teach us that at our private Christian school), and observed the social/racial diversity that was severely lacking in the small bubbles in which I was raised.

Most importantly, I was finally exposed to the world of popular, *secular* music after years of being restricted to religious music — not that there was anything “wrong” with the music we were listening to, but you can only listen to the same chord progressions and lyrics for so many years before you begin to beg for something new in your musical rotation.

My 8th and 9th grade years featured my immersion into the world of popular music that I would soon come to love. My 8th grade bus driver would tune the radio to a throwback station, so I got to listen to artists from the ’70s and ’80s like Prince, Earth Wind & Fire, The Commodores, A-ha, Whitney Houston, Queen, Michael Jackson, and Marvin Gaye. The following couple of years, the buses I rode featured more contemporary pop, and I quickly became acquainted with artists like Taio Cruz, Jason Derulo, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, Maroon 5, Black Eyed Peas, Kesha, Bruno Mars, Beyoncé, and Rihanna.

Like most living beings with a pulse, I was — and still am — in love with Rihanna. She was an important part of my early adolescence — not just because she was one of my biggest celebrity crushes at the time or because I thought the music she was putting out was amazing. Her music — along with the myriad of other artists I was hearing on the radio — exposed my naive, sheltered mind to parts of the world that I couldn’t possibly comprehend.

Sexual power dynamics. Strip clubs and dollar bills. BDSM. You know, the parts of the world that my family — and to a greater extent, this new church — absolutely dreaded I would find out.

So there was a particular week in which the pastor of our new church preached a sermon on “holiness” and “cutting off anything that causes you to sin.” He began talking about parents taking an active role in limiting their children’s exposure to the proverbial “worldliness.” He then brought his son — who was a few years older than me — up onto the stage, who proceeded to describe the various ways in which his parents had shielded him from the evils of popular culture. “Being sheltered hasn’t held me back at all” he reassured the congregation. I rolled my eyes 🙄.

The pastor encouraged the the audience to do the same, and take a proactive role in their children’s lives.

“No ‘worldly’ television shows,” he said. That meant no Degrassi, Teen Wolf, or reality TV like Jersey Shore.

“No movies with violence or graphic depictions.” That meant no Spider-Man, The Dark Knight, or Transformers.

“No secular, non-Christian music.” That meant no Justin Timberlake, no Katy Perry, no Bruno Mars, no Beyoncé.

And no Rihanna.

Suddenly, I was making a stank face too.

Having recently emerged from the cold shadows of ignorance that were a direct result of overprotective parenting, there was no way on Earth I was going back. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel so naive. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel so disconnected from the world around me. I was learning new slang, new dialects, new modes of communication, new methods of expression. I was developing a sense of humor, a grasp on comedy. I could finally hold conversations with fellow classmates about movies, and TV, and popular culture, and current events. I was listening to music that pushed the boundaries of sound and lyricism, music that spoke to both the common human experience and our lofty aspirations of grandeur, music that soundtracked some of the few happy moments of my childhood.

I was making more and more friends everyday over the bonds that were forming based on these newly-shared interests. My self-confidence was skyrocketing.

And this pastor and his son wanted me to go back? Nope. Sorry. Wasn’t gonna happen.

Like with many of the pastor’s sermons that year, I tuned out. Less than 24 hours later, I was listening to “We Found Love” on the radio.