Gwen Stefani was always a devout Catholic
A look at a popstar’s faith
The new spokeswoman for a Catholic prayer app has many surprised. Is that Gwen Stefani?—the star of the rock band No Doubt and “The Voice” T.V. show.
Many of her fans knew she was raised Catholic. But it wasn’t clear she was that Catholic.
And yet, she was.
Born in 1969 and raised in Anaheim, California, she was Catholic with her family.
They did everything including a trip to the Vatican. It wasn’t just a family practice. She’d received the religion’s spirit into herself. “That was a seed that my mom planted in me when I was a little girl,” as she put it.
A ‘seed’ is a biblical term for Jesus.
She was an improbable star of punk rock music.
She’d recall the mentality of the day: “You’ve got to be a feminist and you’ve got to hate guys. And you’ve got to cuss and be tough.”
She continues:
“And I was never like that. I grew up, like, a Catholic good girl. Total Brady Bunch family. That always kind of scared me, the pressure of having to be so cool or like, ‘fuck you to the world’. But I kind of got over that and realized that, yes, I love to dress up and I love to wear makeup and be myself. I like being a girl. I like having a door opened for me. I like all that traditional stuff and I won’t deny it.”
She became the traditional Catholic punk rock diva.
Even the name of her band, “No Doubt,” could be read as a religious statement. To have ‘no doubt’ is to be a ‘true believer’.
Her music was often confessional, a word she’ll use of it.
The music scene of the time, on reflection, was more religious than anyone knew.
The ‘rage’ and furor of the alt-rock music scene of the 1990s and 2000s was heavily formed by private religious dramas. One might say there were the Evangelicals, Kurt Cobain and Eminem, then there were the Catholics: Madonna, Courtney Love, and Gwen Stefani.
In No Doubt’s early work, Christian terms are often allusively placed, as in the tracks “Open the Gate,” “By the Way” or “Snakes.”
No Doubt’s 1995 album, Tragic Kingdom, picks up from Disney’s “Magic Kingdom” moniker, but also Christian ideas of the ‘Kingdom’ as the world to come. Tracks like “Sunday Morning” are hazily religious.
But there was nothing like “Don’t Speak.”
The ultra-viral video framed the song as a biblical narrative of the ‘Fall’. In the Garden of Eden at the beginning of time, Adam eats the forbidden fruit, as Gwen — playing ‘Eve’ — begins to sing a story of a breakup.
To the extent it told her own story (i.e. ‘Adam’ is played by her ex-boyfriend), she processed her life through biblical stories.
She could be unexpectedly sexually conservative.
Gwen Stefani was never one to indulge sex talk. In 1997, an interviewer asked when she’d lost her virginity. She was offended.
“I would never tell you that! Are you crazy? I would never tell anyone that. I have pretty strong feelings about that. If any girls were to ask me what my advice would be, completely wait as long as possible, wait till you’re married. I think it’s really a sacred thing. It’s different when you get older and you have a boyfriend. Like, I’m 27. It’s such a blessing that God gave us, we should be able to respect it.”
Like many Catholics she was somewhat ‘liberal’ on social issues.
She wasn’t pro-abortion, she’d say, but she was pro-choice. She didn’t moralize. She’d sprinkle in some “God” talk. On rare occasion she’d do overtly Christian gestures, but mostly it was a quiet practice.
She was noted to attend Mass every Sunday, even when on tour.
Her marriage in 2002 to the musician Gavin Rossdale was a Catholic challenge.
He grew up Anglican. His own music, he’d reflect, had hymn-like qualities, even as his thoughts were drifting into atheism. He’d use Christian terms in his music in a way intended to affront, and she’d be upset.
She had three weddings, one Catholic and two Anglican. She carried her mother’s prayer book as she walked down the aisle.
The breakup was “hell.”
The talk was that he was having a longtime affair with their nanny, under her nose. Her childhood fantasies of being a good Catholic wife were dragged through the tabloid press. “I thought my life was over,” she’d say.
Catholic assumptions are layered into the period, if often unspoken. If divorcing, she would not be able to religiously remarry.
Her latest album, Bouquet, presents as an autobiography, and seems to review the period, scene by scene. In “Swallow My Tears,” she sings:
“Lookin’ for God, I’m prayin’, kneelin’
Had to go and do some healin’”
Religiously, she did not get a ‘divorce’.
She managed to get the marriage annulled at the Vatican. She’d always call it a “breakup.” She’d also call it a “test” of her faith.
She says in one interview:
“This is the thing, I always feel like this whole thing that we’re doing here, this life thing, is a test. And basically, you get given all of these crazy challenges to trick you to think that maybe it’s not a test and maybe nothing good is going to be around the corner.”
Along the way, she adds, “you get lost on your journey.”
She set out to write and sing about the divorce.
Her 2016 album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, is strikingly Christian, in that its agony over the end of her marriage is tinged by Catholic theology of marriage and divorce. But even the idea of singing about her pain was explained as a Christian activity.
“I tried to find what was my gift and my purpose,” she said. “In that horrible moment, I just said to myself, ‘This is happening to me for a purpose…’ I tried to go right into the studio. I knew that was the only thing I know how to do good, is write songs and I wrote the Truth record.”
She’d add:
“It just makes me believe in God and my journey. My cross to bear was to go through these heartbreaks and write these songs and help people.”
In this, the ‘break-up’ was a kind of crucifixion, followed by resurrection.
She’d think of her next relationship as divine.
Meeting Blake Shelton, amid his own divorce drama, seemed to her supernatural. “God put this other person there to love me,” she said.
She’d often discuss the relationship in terms of their gardening together on his Oklahoma ranch, as in her song “Purple Irises.” An Edenic narrative is not overtly referenced, but could not have been far from mind.
“And we’re blooming into the change,” she sings.
She might’ve called it the ‘Fall’.
Her “Bouquet” album returns to images of planting a new garden.
The biblical references get pretty thick. The track “Reminders,” for which she is credited as the primary writer, is a prayer.
“Give me your peace
I’m gonna dig down deep
And bury those memories
Sow under the soil
Gonna let perfect love grow
On this road to Jericho”
The ‘road to Jericho’ suggests that she has seen her life’s more difficult moments in terms of the biblical story of the Exodus. In focusing on Jericho she subtly positions herself as a figure of Rahab the harlot.
Blake Shelton wasn’t Catholic, but became one.
“I start seeing God in everything, because she does,” he’d explain. “Of course, that starts bleeding into my records and my music, and next thing you know, I’m recording songs and writing songs about faith and God.”
The ‘King of Country’ would convert to Catholicism before marrying her. The wedding was staged to suggest she viewed it as her first and authentic one, as if she’d understood marital love for the first time.
For all her clues and suggestions, Gwen Stefani wasn’t widely known to be a devout Catholic.
In her new ad for Hallow, she’d ‘coming out’ as Christian, at Christmas.
“Join me and millions of Christians around the world,” she says, “as we celebrate the truth that God so loved the world, He gave us His only Son.” 🔶
