Chynna Phillips, the well-known singer who is also one of the music industry’s most outspoken Christians, says her niece and nephew-in-law — Hailey Baldwin and Justin Bieber — can make a difference for the kingdom of God.
“They are awesome examples of what it is to be a Christian and I feel like they’re going to help pave the way for other young people to see it in a new light and see that Christianity is cool,” Phillips told the New York Post’s Page Six.
Phillips, 51, is a member of the group Wilson Phillips and the daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the 1960s group Mamas and the Papas. Her husband is William Baldwin, whose brother, Stephen, is Hailey’s father.
Phillips holds a Bible study in her Los Angeles home. Bieber and Hailey Baldwin don’t attend the Bible study, but Phillips said it “would be really fun” if they did.
She told Page Six she became a Christian at the age of 12 when classmates offered to pray for her.
“I knew in that moment,” she said, “that I had been touched by God and that Jesus was real and Jesus truly was the son of God and that I needed to come to terms with that reality because it was the truth. Ever since that moment I’ve known that Jesus is Lord.”
Her teen years, though, included alcohol and drug use, which she now says were a “Band-Aid to cover up all of my abandonment issues with my father and grief surrounding his drug use.”
Phillips experienced a spiritual reawakening after her daughter, Brooke, was born in 2004, she said.
“I had postpartum [depression]. I was isolating and I was unable to sleep,” she told Page Six. “I knew that I needed help and one morning I felt enveloped by a light, by the presence of God and I felt His presence so strong in the room. I couldn’t move, I was paralyzed by this force. I felt that it was realigning me. I felt that it was healing me and lifting my burden and pain and confusion.
“It lasted about a minute and the very next morning it happened again around the same time and that’s when I knew that I needed to recommit myself to Jesus Christ. I fell to my knees and gave my heart back to the Lord and said, ‘You are the way, the truth and the light. I ask you to make me your vessel and put me out in the world as your messenger and let me share your truth with other people.’”
Being a Christian in Hollywood, she said, comes with a “little bit of a stigma.”
“People just automatically assume that you’re a fundamentalist,” she said. “That’s unfortunate because I love everybody … I believe that the power of love overcomes all evil.”
Phillips discusses her faith on her YouTube channel. Her Instagram bio reads, “YouTube queen for the King, Jesus!!”
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Valerie Macon/Stringer
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
