From Christian death metal rock star, to convicted murder plotter, to confessed scamster is the awful path Timothy Lambesis has taken. For once, truth is stranger than fiction. Lambesis, lead vocalist of the band As I Lay Dying, has been sentenced to six years in prison for attempting to hire an undercover policeman to kill his estranged wife.

A year after his arrest he’s told Alternative Press that he and other members of the “Christian” band were not Christians-and that they are not the only “Christian” band to pretend.

“I actually wasn’t the first guy in ‘As I Lay Dying’ to stop being a Christian. In fact, I think I was the third. The two who remained kind of stopped talking about it, and then I’m pretty sure they dropped it, too. We talked about whether to keep taking money from the ‘Christian market,’ ” Lambesis told Alternative Press.

If the idea of someone pretending to be a Christian while playing rock and roll seems strange it’s because it’s counter-intuitive.

Your intuition probably tells you that saying you’re a Christian-or religious-will probably earn you less money in most places. And you’d be right.

“The study of religious discrimination in hiring recently published in the journal Social Currents found job applicants whose résumés betrayed a religious affiliation were 26 percent less likely to be contacted by an employer…” reports the Washington Post.

“Researchers Michael Wallace, Bradley R.E. Wright and Allan Hyde of the University of Connecticut sent 3,200 fake applications to 800 jobs within 150 miles of two major Southern cities through a popular employment Web site [sic]. Each employer got four résumés with comparable job qualifications. The only thing that set the fake job candidates apart was whether their résumés mentioned involvement with a religious group — such as membership in the Muslim Student Association or Hillel House, a Jewish organization,” writes the Washington Post. “Résumés for the control group indicated no religious affiliation. The others indicated the applicant was atheist, Catholic, evangelical Christian, Jewish, pagan, Muslim or a made-up religion called ‘Wallonian’. Employers preferred the control group,” said the article.

The control group (with no religious affiliation) got 20 replies per 100 emails sent to potential employers. Pagans got 17.5, Evangelicals 16.4, Catholic, 16.2 and Muslims 12.6 according to a version of the research presented in Christianity Today.  Simply referencing a religion in a résumé reduced employer call-backs by almost 40 per cent.

Lambesis’ story of faking it as a Christian rock star is an exception to the rule that employers are not keen on applicants who flag their religion. It’s worth noting too, that the survey was conducted in the most religious part of the US—the south.

Following up Lambresis story we had the opportunity to ask a couple of young Christian Musicians their response to living in a space where their Christianity could be hollowed out.

We told two young members of Hillsong’s youth band Young and Free about the ‘As I Lay Dying’ story and asked what they did to make sure they stay true to what they sing.

“It’s all about your personal relationship with Jesus, because if it’s not personal, it’s not really real,” Taya Smith responded. “So for me it’s an everyday thing, spending time with Jesus, reading the word. It’s just got to be personal, because it’s got to be away from everything else before I can do life and do it publicly.”

Going off the back of Taya’s answer, Joel Houston said, “To be honest for us, for us, that is the most important thing. Everything we do comes out of our revelation and relationship with Jesus. That’s the rock that God’s building his church on. I’d say what Tay said.

“I also like the culture we have on our tours and trips and our services as well. We’ll never take the platform without praying together and just putting first the fact that none of us could be doing what we’re doing without who Jesus is for us. That revelation is always going to keep us on the ground.”

Hillsong leader, Brian Houston, butted in at this stage of the press conference Eternity was attending and said of Taya, “She lives the life every day: she really does.”