Britney Spears, Religious Poet

Whether she’s kissing Madonna, marrying a childhood friend in Vegas, or filming her own so-awful-it's-funny reality show, Britney Spears never fails to make for great sound bites and magazine covers. But, for me, the high points of my Britney fascination have been the ones connected to religion.

Britney was raised Southern Baptist, and she talked often in the press about wanting to adhere to its moral tenets, like waiting until marriage to have sex. Next up was Kabbalah, which Brit got interested in thanks to her friend and idol Madonna. More recently, paparazzi snapped photos of Britney taking her newborn son Sean Preston to get a Hindu blessing. There were even rumors of her getting involved with Scientology. Not long afterward, she publicly announced that she was done with Kabbalah because “her son was her religion.”

Like Madonna, Brit seems to know that you can never go wrong with some religious controversy, especially when you need to get the heat off of your personal life. And she’s had a lot of heat in the last few weeks, as she and hubby Kevin Federline have allegedly separated and she has been investigated by the L.A. Department of Child Services. How does a girl cope? If she’s Britney, she posts a poem on her Web site. It’s a free-form “buzz off” to someone (Federline?) peppered with Biblical references like this one:

You come to me now
Why do you bother?
Remember the Bible
The sins of the Father.
What you do
You pass down
No wonder why
I lost my crown.

Illegible rhyme scheme aside, is Britney using Biblical references to give insight into her psyche? Are the “sins of the Father” metaphorical, or is she dissing Federline’s parenting skills?

Later on, she writes,“My crown is back / And it's way too high.” This could be an allusion to Jesus’ Crown of Thorns and an indication of her own personal torment. Or she could be talking about her hair, since the Bible refers to a woman’s hair as her “crowning glory.” If Britney worships her son, perhaps she sees him as Jesus and herself as the Virgin Mary, complete with halo, as if she's in a Renaissance painting. But that's just my own speculation, of course. Maybe it's all just a clever way to compare herself to her idol, Madonna, instead of the actual Madonna.

Regardless of what my BA in English and I might think of Britney’s literary efforts, I appreciate that she’s trying to deal with her feelings in verse. And I’m looking forward to her next religious incarnation. Has she tried Mormonism yet?