Evangelicals have united around a strange champion: Justin Bieber. The singer’s comments about abstaining from sex before marriage in a recent interview have prompted portions of American orthodoxy to cheer for him as an ally. But he did not uphold their most deeply held beliefs, he discarded them.
Until recently, the pop star hadn’t sat for a lengthy interview for over two years. But after he married model Hailey Bieber nee Baldwin, in September, he spoke with Vogue about their new life together in an interview published this month.
The couple married at a courthouse in Manhattan, not a lavish, Page Six-style wedding, because they wanted to tie the knot quickly. One of the reasons was that they waited to have sex. Bieber had committed to celibacy before marriage, and Christian media praised him for it.
“I wanted to rededicate myself to God in that way because I really felt it was better for the condition of my soul,” Bieber said. “And I believe that God blessed me with Hailey as a result.”
Besides his tit-for-tat view of morality, Bieber didn’t do American Christianity any favors.
“I wouldn’t consider myself religious,” Bieber also told Vogue. “I believe in the story of Jesus — that’s the simplicity of what I believe. But I don’t believe in all the religious elitism and pretentiousness, like people are better than you because they come to church, like you have to go to church and dress a certain way. I get sensitive when religion comes up because it’s been so hurtful to a lot of people. I don’t want to be thought of as someone who stands for any of the injustice that religion has done and does do.”
It’s a modern trope, a safety net for the religiously inclined but noncommittal: I believe in God, but I’m not religious. I’m one of the faithful, but without all that dogma.
Bieber is right to say there should be no elitism, no pretension in religion. He’s right to point out that many are squeamish to the idea of religion in general and, oddly, to Christianity in particular. But for him to challenge that stigma, as he seems to want, he has first to embrace “religion.”
After being panned by media for years for failing to be “sex positive,” evangelicals understandably desire some vindication. (“See, a celebrity tried the abstinence we’ve been advocating, and he’s happy to have done it.”) But just because Bieber tried out one “rule” and found that it fit, they give him a pass to abandon another one, the one that should unite them all.
Evangelicals can’t hope to become more relevant, more palatable to others if their uniting principle is about shunning sex. It has to be about embracing, in a positive way, the Christian faith and the religious community. And that’s something Bieber isn’t ready to do, at least not yet.
