Pop singer Justin Bieber also low-key evangelist
With a smooth voice, a signature mop of hair and a string of hits,
Canadian singer Justin Bieber has accumulated millions of fans, and last
year he sold 3.7 million albums in the United States. Now Bieber's
handlers are showcasing another side of the 16-year-old pop sensation:
Christian icon for the tween set.
Bieber's faith is on display in the new 3-D concert film/documentary Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, which hit theaters in early February.
Paramount
Pictures has screened the movie for faith leaders across the country
and distributed spiritual discussion guides—the same tools used to
promote The Passion of the Christ and The Blind Side as family-friendly fare.
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"People
will walk away [from the movie] knowing faith is very important to
him," said Scooter Braun, Bieber's manager and one of the film's
producers. "As a Christian, he's someone to look up to. . . . When
[fans] are getting the real person is when they can connect to that
person."
Bieber has never shied away from faith. He was singing
Christian songs on YouTube before he became famous. His born-again
Christian mother Pattie Mallette has talked about her spiritual
conversion on a Christian TV show and openly shares her beliefs and
Bible verses with 281,000-plus Twitter followers.
Bieber's
come-from-nowhere climb to become the fourth-ranked top-selling artist
of 2010 has given a higher profile to his Christian beliefs, which he
also addressed in his autobiography, published last fall, First Step 2 Forever: My Story. "I believe that Jesus died on a cross for my sins," Bieber told Billboard last November. "He's the reason that I'm here."
On
his November single "Pray," a departure from his typically pop oeuvre,
Bieber sings, "I close my eyes and pray / I close my eyes and I can see a
better day." The music video, seen more than 21 million times on
YouTube, ends with the written message, "God speaks in the silence
of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer."
In
the new 3-D film, fans will see Bieber expressing his faith; several
scenes show Bieber praying before concerts, and Mallette discusses how
God brought stability to her life as a single teenage mother.
Paramount's
spiritual resource guide suggests that the movie "provides an
opportunity to teach our children about the power of hope, prayer, faith
and family." It lists discussion points and Bible verses related to the
movie, such as "the power of prayer" and "the importance of Godly
friendships."
David Tai, one of the pastors at the Christian
Assembly of Suburban Chicago in Carol Stream, Illinois, said after a
recent screening that while the film's faith message is subtle, he might
use the movie in discussions as an illustration to show "how authority
and responsibility go hand in hand."
Diane Winston, a scholar in
media and religion at the University of Southern California, says it's
"perfectly natural" for Paramount to market Never to spiritual
leaders. "Many [Christians] might not have known Justin Bieber was one
of them," she said. This campaign reminds them that the movie "is a
wholesome product they can take a child to see."
It's also not
unusual for teen pop stars to use "the language of faith to widen their
audience and project a clean pop image," Winston said, citing Miley
Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers as examples. "For young stars, particularly
in those murky young teenage years, it's a quick, reliable way to show
parents you are not going to be offering a sexually explicit message,"
Winston said.
While Braun, the teenager's manager, said the movie
may earn Bieber more Christian fans, he dismissed the idea that Bieber's
faith is being used as a marketing tool. "There are some stars who
speak their faith because they're trying to do outreach to that
audience, and there are others who share that side of their lives
because that's who they are," Braun said, "and I think that's just who
Justin is. When there are 20,000 people chanting your name night after
night after night, if there's no sense of faith, if there's not a sense
of something bigger than yourself, you can get lost."
Braun, who's
Jewish, said he encourages Bieber's faith because "I think it's so
important." He said the two regularly pray the Shema, Judaism's central
prayer, before the start of each concert.
Winston said one
potential setback to Bieber promoting his Christianity is that he may be
held to a higher moral standard; Cyrus's wholesome image, for example,
took a beating after a pole dancing episode at a 2009 awards show.
Braun,
for one, isn't worried. "There's going to be mistakes I'm sure [he'll]
make as a young man, like we all make," Braun said. "But overall he has a
really good heart and he's a very intelligent kid. . . . For him it's
about living his life to be the best example he can be for others."
