Taylor Swift Mocks Christianity in Her New Album
By Movieguide® Contributor
While it’s no secret that Taylor Swift is not a Christian, she made her hatred for religion known through her newly released album “The Tortured Poets Department.”
The album is full of minor quips that elevate Swift above God while also featuring two songs devoted to tearing down the Christian sexual ethic.
Swift’s elevation of herself over God begins in the song “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” where she sings about dating a “bad boy” whom she – and only she – has the ability to fix.
“They shake their heads sayin’, ‘God help her,’ / When I tell ‘em he’s my man,” Swift sings during the chorus. “But your good Lord doesn’t lift a finger / I can fix him, no, really, I can. And only I can.”
At this point, Swift mocks the power of prayer, revealing how the bad boy she has decided to date remains bad despite her fans praying for their relationship. She then takes the mockery a step further, revealing that even though the Lord cannot fix her man, she can. At the end of the song, however, she reveals that she wasn’t up to the task, singing, “Well, maybe I can’t,” while making no comment on the Lord’s decision not to step in either.
Swift later reiterates that love and relationships are her gods when, in “loml” (love of my life), she calls her lover the “Holy Ghost.” This analogy further reveals her view of the Lord as someone who can be replaced by human relationships.
The singer’s disdain for Christianity, however, is put on full display through “But Daddy I Love Him” and “Guilty as Sin?” where she blasts the Christian sexual ethic and Jesus’ teaching on lust.
“I just learned these people only raise you / To cage you,” Swift sings during the opening of “But Daddy I Love Him.” “Too high a horse for a simple girl / To rise above it / They slammed the door on my whole world / The one thing I wanted.”
Complaining about the “oppressive” nature of the Christian sexual ethic to wait until marriage for sex, Swift sings about rising above the Bible’s teachings.
“Now I’m running with my dress unbuttoned / Screamin’, ‘But daddy I love him / I’m havin’ his baby’ / No, I’m not, but you should see your faces,” she sings during the chorus, continuing to mock the Bible’s teaching and joking about having her boyfriend’s baby.
“I’m telling him to floor it through the fences,” the chorus continues, with Swift pushing the imagery of breaking out of the “oppressive” guards put in place by the Bible. “No, I’m not coming to my senses.”
Swift goes on to bash those who try to share the Gospel with her and help her find peace in her relationships by not giving herself up before marriage.
“Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see / Thinkin’ it can change the beat / of my heart when he touches me / And counteract the chemistry / And undo the destiny,” she sings. “You ain’t gotta pray for me / Me and my wild boy and all of this wild joy / If all you want and is gray for me / Then it’s just white noise, and it’s just my choice.”
While Swift is right that sermons about the Bible’s teachings on sex will make no difference if they fall on deaf ears, she is mistaken when she says that it cannot change the chemistry that comes from attraction. While sexual attraction itself is not a sin, falling prey to lust and temptation, which is often the result of that attraction, is.
Thankfully, Christ equips us to handle it, and through the Holy Spirit, believers can overcome the strongest temptations – even sexual ones. One of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control. While that wouldn’t “change the beat of her heart when he touches her,” it would, in fact, “counteract the chemistry and undo the destiny.”
Swift, however, finds it oppressive to live under a belief system that asks something of her rather than allowing her to follow her heart and do what feels right.
She further throws shade on the Bible’s teaching in “Guilty as Sin?” when she questions Jesus’ teaching from Matthew 5, which says, “Anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
“What if he’s written ‘mine’ on my upper thigh only in my mind?” she asks during the chorus. “I keep recalling things we never did / Messy top-lip kiss, how I long for our trysts / Without ever touchin’ his skin / How can I be guilty as sin?”
Ironically, while the album mocks the Christian ethic, questioning why lust and sex outside of marriage are sinful, she also reveals the fruit of her sexual ethic throughout the album, sharing the brokenness and heartbreak she has experienced as a result of failed relationships.
In “Florida!!!” she sings about going off the deep end and all in on worldly fun and entertainment.
“I need to forget, so take me to Florida / I’ve got some regrets, I’ll bury them in Florida / Tell me I’m despicable, say it’s unforgivable / I need to forget, so take me to Florida,” she sings. “Tell me I’m despicable, say it’s unforgivable / What a crush, what a rush, f*** me up, Florida / It’s one h*** of a drug.”
While Swift has since clarified that this song was about a fantasy rather than an actual experience she has had, it still glorifies going off the deep and engaging in complete debauchery.
Most people would admit that the consequence of this type of living is an emptiness that cannot be filled. This is because those who live like this fill themselves with the world rather than with Christ. Swift admits this, too, but she does not blame the debauchery for her struggles.
“I’m so depressed, I act like it’s my birthday,” she sings during the chorus of “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart,” revealing that while she is committed to celebrating and elevating herself, she is still greatly depressed.
The fact that one of the most popular and famous celebrities of her generation cannot find happiness reveals that living in the world leads to death while living for Christ and under his teachings leads to life. Unfortunately, Swift has chosen the path toward death and is reaping the fruits of her labor.
Movieguide® previously reported on Swift:
In Taylor Swift’s “Willow” music video, she includes occult worship, a troubling practice being normalized in culture across numerous forms of media.
The “Willow” music video follows Swift as she tries to connect with her lover. Something always stands in their way, and they are forced to escape to different time periods where they attempt to connect again. The scenes for the first two verses find Swift in a forest and a 1920s bar before the third scene takes place during cult worship around a campfire.
This cult worship scene has no relevance to the song, nor does it tie into the scenes from the previous verses. Swift observes the occult ritual taking it in for a few moments before taking her place and joining the dance for the second half of the verse. After, she leaves to travel through time again and continue looking for her lover, whom she eventually convenes with during the final chorus of the song.
The inclusion of the campfire witchcraft scene is confusing, as it was unnecessarily added onto lyrics it has zero relevance to. Nonetheless, it provides another worrying example of the way witchcraft and pagan worship are being pushed into pop culture and becoming normalized.