What Are Lady Gaga’s Religious Beliefs?
It seems Lady Gaga has managed to create two artistic personas for herself: One the almost avant-garde (at times) pop star, and the other the classy jazz chanteuse. You can argue she’s also carved a third persona with her turn as dramatic actress in A Star is Born, enabling her to use her real birth name.
While we know these sides to Lady Gaga, not everyone knows about her personal religious beliefs. If you’re curious, we’re about to look into the faith she was raised in, plus what her views on religion have been throughout her career.
With a career as complex as hers, you might learn something about balancing religion with the entertainment world.
Gaga grew up in a typical Italian Catholic family
Growing up in Manhattan with Italian roots, Gaga was raised Catholic all the way. This reportedly helped establish a belief and reverence for a personal God throughout her early life.
She certainly isn’t the only superstar to be raised Catholic (or practice it at some point), even if this also brought issues eventually. As we’ve seen with some stars raised in Catholic families, they’ve maintained their basic faith, yet decided to rail against institutionalized religion.
This is exactly what Lady Gaga’s beliefs eventually evolved to. What this philosophy led to is how she shaped her music, including recent political statements about things going on in America.
You’ll even find statements she’s made directly about Catholicism and her impression of how Jesus would interact with the celebrity world if here today.
Her comments on a Catholic website were eye-opening
On Instagram, there’s a popular Catholic account there called CatholicLink where Catholic celebrities sometimes interact. Lady Gaga is one of them.
A few years ago, a person posted to her directly and subtly chided her and other celebrities for often being hypocritical on espousing Christian beliefs, yet not living up to them. Lady Gaga saw this and responded to the person by noting Jesus always spent time with sinners more than anyone else.
Of course, she used Mary Magdalene as the example for this as a way to prove Jesus would be hanging out with sinners today as well. Then Gaga said this to quiet the tension:
“We are not just ‘celebrities’ we are humans and sinners, children, and our lives are not void of values because we struggle.”
An official from CatholicLink responded and praised Lady Gaga for her comment. It proved she’s held her basic Catholic beliefs intact while noting the showbiz world shouldn’t be considered outcasts based strictly on their jobs. Even so, it hasn’t stopped Gaga from criticizing organized religion as a whole.
Gaga’s references to religion in her songs
We all know Lady’s songs are about self-empowerment, leading to a huge following and recognition with Grammy wins. Not that she hasn’t written some songs almost falling under Christian pop with songs like “Judas.” However, you still find those who complain this song and her real faith shouldn’t integrate.
No doubt this is why Gaga’s gone after institutionalized religion, including calling out hypocritical politicians who claim they adhere to Christian principles.
Case in point was a piece HuffPost did where they interviewed Gaga about how organized religion can sometimes fall short. She noted institutionalized religion impacts values strongly to a point where it can lead to teen suicides.
As you might guess, this disturbed those accustomed to living under the tradition of organized religion while still enduring hypocrisy. While Lady Gaga may not fall under everyone’s good graces, nobody can say she hasn’t made everyone think.
When even Catholic officials acknowledge her integration of religion with showbiz, you know she’s bridged a divide other celebrities haven’t easily built.
