In March Lauren Daigle released Thank God I Do, the first single from her forthcoming self-titled album. The music video is set on a flower-festooned street in her home state of Louisiana. Daigle, equally garlanded, wanders through them singing uplifting things about love. Many of the YouTube comments mention how it has touched their hearts or helped them through a difficult time. They make the ones accusing of her apostasy and paganism sound even more unreasonable.
Daigle, 31, has experienced plenty of these kinds of attacks. For a decade the two-time Grammy winner has been one of the biggest names in contemporary Christian music (CCM), a multimillion-dollar industry that tends to go unnoticed beyond its religious base. Its most popular hits are regularly incorporated into modern worship in churches worldwide. Meanwhile its artists exist under a unique level of scrutiny.
