Hailey Bieber has berated believers. Is she right?

Petition prayerfully. Pursue perfection. Practice patience.

Fine advice, reasonable alliteration. And just the kind of thing you’d hear in a local church on a Sunday: the sub-headings of a sermon, the heart of a homily, the tickboxes of the talk, if you will. Nothing cringeworthy or controversial, right?

Wrong.

Hailey Bieber, wife of Justin (which I mention for context, not because she is not noteworthy without her husband), took to social media recently, panning pastors, pillorying them, even, protesting their use of alliterative cliches and picking apart the predisposition of pundits in pews to praise the practice.

It’s not that she loathes alliteration, she says, just the phenomenon of preachers apparently replacing wisdom with well-placed words.

And, frankly, fair enough.

“Pastors and preachers really love to just put words together with the same letter and act like it’s HITTING so crazy…” Hailey held forth. “‘There’s blessing in the brokenness’… ‘There’s grace in the gratitude’… s*** drives me bananas.”

She went on to say (over an image of Elmo expressing elation): “and then people sit there like this eating it up!”

It’s an anodyne enough observation, hardly worth the Christian community’s commentary. But the world is full of horror, so it’s fine, occasionally, to distract ourselves with nonsense like this.

But is she right?

Kinda.

Criticising church

Rhetoric is a skill, and preachers use it to communicate religious truth, to teach and to inspire. As with all communication, getting the audience to pay attention - and then to remember at least some of what you’ve said is a challenge.

The rules of rhetoric are there to help one achieve this, and Hailey should know, because her husband is a songwriter. One who opens the refrain in his song ‘Intentions’ with the words “picture perfect” no less than four times. And fans ate that up.

Most of us have opinions on things. Very few of us are experts

Hailey should also keep in mind that she was critiquing aesthetics on the second-least-cool social media platform, Instagram (aka ‘TikTok three months later’ or ‘Millennial Facebook’), so glass houses should be clocked before stones launched.

It seems a little harsh to be too critical of those who try, every week, to hold our attention on behalf of the Lord, particularly considering they wouldn’t need to resort to verbal tricks if we could find the strength to sit still and listen for 20 minutes.

Consumer culture

There will also be those who say to Bieber: “You’re an underwear model. Pipe down.” And to them I say: “Show some respect when speaking to a hero.” Most of us have opinions on the things we participate in, hear and consume. Very few of us are experts in everything. It’s fine to have views. After all, if you’re the intended audience and a particular rhetorical device is irritating you, then the communication is not working.

It’s not always the wisdom of the words that wins you over. It’s the winsomeness of the waffling

And as I write that, I hear the collective intake of breath from 500 delighted prigs, all flexing furious fingers to type a comment to the effect that this is the problem. A consumerist attitude to church. Which is a sentiment that is surprisingly irritating considering how boringly often it is repeated.

Because what can we say to this? Just calling something consumerist is not the conversation-ender you think it is. If the sermon was preached in a language you couldn’t comprehend, would a critique be consumerist? It is not consumerist, entitled or a sign of Church going to hell in a non-alliterative cart to have a view on the style, any more than the church or preacher paying attention to style is shamefully shallow.

Preaching is communicating. Some of it is about style, and style is subjective. Some people are going to be irritated by alliteration. OK, cool. I (and about a million Baptist preachers, in my experience) kinda like it. It helps me remember.

Chaismus unchained

So, is Bieber wrong? No. Just a holder of an opinion. And, like crazy exes and unmentionable parts of anatomy, everybody’s got one.

What Bieber gets right, though, is to question Christian gullibility. I have sat in far too many services where a pastor’s rhetorical flourish (“don’t show the size of your problem to God, show the size of your God to the problem” or some such) elicits gasps and amens from the crowd.

People. It’s called chiasmus. JFK used it when he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” And that didn’t really mean anything either, except: “hey, sacrifice for your nation”, which is hardly a profound or new thought.

So, I’m Team Hailey on this. Let’s be more aware of how we might be manipulated by fiery phrases and clever clauses. And remember: It’s not always the wisdom of the words that wins you over. It’s the winsomeness of the waffling that wipes out worry and watchful wariness.

You’re welcome.