Sinead alights with 'Theology'

Sinéad O'Connor is not your typical Christian music diva.

The Irish singer/songwriter has torn up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live, refused to have The Star-Spangled Banner played before a concert, been excommunicated after her "ordination" as a Catholic priest and announced that she was a lesbian — before shortly recanting.

Yet with her soon-to-be-released double album Theology, the Grammy Award-winning O'Connor will make a foray into the mainstream Christian music market by distributing the album in major Christian retail outlets, including Family Christian Stores and Lifeway Christian Stores.

The album will be released June 26 by Koch Records.

The move, O'Connor says, is not as out of character as it may seem.

"By blood and by birth I am a Catholic, and I am extremely inspired by that," she says in a telephone interview from Dublin. "I wanted to acknowledge music as a way of talking to God."
But will the Christian market buy it?

Besides her public antics, her private life may be a hard sell to Christians, too.

She spent time in a reformatory school for shoplifting and truancy, has been divorced and is raising four children by as many different men.

"I would think that the people shopping at these stores would find Sinéad too controversial," says Andreas Hager, a senior lecturer at Finland's Abo Akademi University who has written about Christian themes in O'Connor's music. "That usually matters to American conservative Christians."

But she may find an audience with younger Christians, especially those involved in the emerging church movement, which is generally built upon rebuilding broken lives and is, therefore, more forgiving of people's pasts.

"Yes, her past is checkered, but I think for many people it's not inconsistent," says S. Brent Plate, a professor at Texas Christian University and author of Blasphemy: Art That Offends.

"There are plenty of Christians with checkered lives. She's working it all out, I think, and perhaps in some raw and honest ways. Her music is obviously an expression for her struggles."

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