Adeem the Artist Finds Room for Dialogue Inside “Children of the Lord”

An effort to bring evangelical Christians and trans people into conversation helped shape Adeem the Artist’s latest single. “Children of the Lord” grew from a writing session with singer and worship pastor Leon Timbo, whose outreach created an opportunity to discuss faith across a difficult divide.

That context is essential to the song’s perspective. Adeem and Timbo spoke about exile and the experience of sharing religious communities with both mystics and fundamentalists. The conversation allowed different experiences of faith to occupy the writing room together, giving the song a foundation in an actual exchange.

Adeem brought a developing blues riff and a line from their friend Dale Mackey: “You can roll your eyes to heaven, but I wouldn’t call that a prayer.” The line offers a precise example of religious appearance failing to match an action’s meaning. It also gives the song a point of entry that requires no elaborate theological vocabulary.

From there, “Children of the Lord” examines raised fists, heavenward eyes and the use of the Bible as a weapon. Its criticism concerns the absence of compassion behind those displays. The imagery asks what happens to a religious community when its symbols become tools for maintaining distance from other people.

The collaboration with Timbo complicates any easy reading of the track as a rejection of faith. The session itself made space for the curiosity the song finds missing elsewhere. That relationship between the writing process and the finished subject gives the release a perspective grounded in experience.

The single appears on Christians for Goliath, produced by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. Across 11 songs, Adeem addresses religious harm, gender, family and the possibility of sustaining faith outside Christian orthodoxy. The material reaches back 15 years, reflecting changes that a single account of belief would struggle to contain.

“Children of the Lord” is available now ahead of the album’s December 11 release on Four Quarters Records / Thirty Tigers. Further details are available through Adeem’s website. Its most consequential setting may be the writing room itself, where two people made an effort to hear one another before turning their conversation into a song.