The Producers Of “Hamilton” Served A Cease And Desist Order To A Texas Church For Performing An Illegal Version With An Anti-LGBTQ Message

Isn’t one of the Ten Commandments Thou Shall Not Steal? Well, clearly the bibles inside of The Door Christian Fellowship Ministries in McAllen, Texas must have some missing pages because they didn’t get that memo. Recently they decided to keep things within the congregation fresh and hip by performing an unauthorized version of the Broadway smash Hamilton, but they added a few tweaks. Aside from changing a few of the lyrics, they also threw in a lovely message aimed at sinners, including alcoholics and homosexuals, to remind them that God can help them with their problems.

Newsweek reports The Door Church’s version of Hamilton was a complete rip-off from the show, which is a huge No-No.  But they didn’t care because JESUS! And instead of performing the play intact, they took a few opportunities to churn out some religious messages in a couple of the songs. Unfortunately, you can’t do that when it comes to copyrighted work. Especially when you were never granted permission to use it in the first place.

Writer Hemant Mehta documented some of the church’s changed lyrics on Twitter. One is from the song “That Would Be Enough” in which the original lyrics were changed from “But I’m not afraid/I know who I married/So long as you come home at the end of the day/That would be enough” to “But I’m not afraid/I know who I married/My hope is in Jesus/If you could just give him a chance/That would be enough.”

Another lyric, from “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story” was allegedly changed from “I help to raise hundreds of children. I get to see them growing up” to “I introduce hundreds of children to Jesus as they’re growing up.”

Oy Vey. At no point during Hamilton do they throw out anything religious or make their gay audience members feel the need to bathe in the Blood of Jesus, so please don’t mess with the original recipe. Even the sermon that comes at the end of the play calling out people’s vices (including the breakable vice of homosexuality, mind you) is very cringe.

This is how The Door McAllen church concluded its illegal production of Hamilton: with a sermon demonizing homosexuality. pic.twitter.com/FXpw8ycvbb

— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) August 7, 2022

Well, I hope The Door Church enjoyed their night of plagiarism because producers for the show shut that shit all the way down legally, restricting them from ever doing this again.

In a statement to Newsweek, a spokesperson for Hamilton said, “Hamilton does not grant amateur or professional licenses for any stage productions and did not grant one to The Door Church. On Saturday, August 6, we were made aware of the unauthorized staging of HAMILTON by The Door Church in McAllen, TX that took place on Friday, August 5, and their plans for additional performances. We issued a cease and desist letter for the unauthorized use of Hamilton‘s intellectual property, demanding the immediate removal of all videos and images from previous productions from the internet, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, their own website, and elsewhere.”

Hopefully, The Door Church will take this cue from the producers, and God, to stop using Hamilton as a vehicle for their blatant homophobia. However, if some type of legal action takes place against them for this blasphemy then I, too, want to be in the room where it happens. And I don’t know why they even tried to bring Broadway to their church when Canada’s Church of the Rock did it better with their Easter version of The Lion King using an Adele song:

THE TOUCAN SAM COSTUME pic.twitter.com/qrj1VkEvG0

— High-Octane Ultramontane (@TrueLetterJC) April 24, 2022

Pic: Instagram