Sunday School and the Taylor Swift Reference

An opinionated guide

Recently LDS Living published a piece on “17 Taylor Swift Lyrics You Could Easily Quote in Sunday School.” This is a great idea. My own Sunday School experience would be improved by hearing any of the author’s recommended lines. Some of them come ready made for use in church. “Never be so polite, you forget your power.” That line–Taylor’s favorite from the album–is good advice. So is the couplet’s second half: “Never wield such power, you forget to be polite.” Others among the suggestions are both more intriguing and elusive. “I’ve been spending the last eight months/Thinking all love ever does is break, and burn, and end/But on a Wednesday, in a café, I watched it begin again.” Where is this one going? It’s the kind of Sunday School story-of-us that would get my attention.

A challenge is that for many of the recommended lines, it’s not altogether clear how to bring them up in Sunday School. To pull off a good Taylor reference, you need a strategy. For clarity, I will divide things up into four levels, starting with the simplest and moving to the most advanced.

Level 1: The Obvious Reference

Obvious references are those to lines that everybody knows, even if they don’t know who Taylor Swift is, anyway. Some of them may not even originate with T.S. However, they are still useful–especially if you can see how they might come up in Sunday School. If, for example, you find yourself playing a game in Sunday School, it will almost certainly be a stupid game (in the most affectionate way), and so it invites a line like “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” I recommend bringing intentionally stupid prizes just to facilitate this reference.

Or suppose someone in class asks if they can tell a long story or expound their view or something. This is a common occurrence, which you could respond to with a quick “Don’t threaten me with a good time!” This has the nice effect of expressing confidence that the person’s contribution will be worthwhile, and also implicitly encouraging them to live up to that confidence.

It can help to keep in mind the kinds of questions usually asked in Sunday School. Many questions involve variants of “What is mortal life like?” For example, “Why are we here on Earth?” “What is our purpose in having a physical body?” These questions are such as to make one wonder whether they could be answered at all, let alone in a single sentence. Swifties don’t have to worry. Just say, “Yeah, we’re happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time.”

Another strategy is to anticipate how people are likely to respond to your reference. If you’ve ever been to Sunday School, you know that you can say very nearly any combination of words whatsoever, and the teacher will respond with the same offering of brief, enthusiastic praise. Use this to your advantage. Suppose you’re reading in Genesis 37. Here’s an illustrative example of using your knowledge of how the teacher will respond to your reference.

Teacher: How do you imagine Joseph felt when his brothers left him in a pit?
You: Maybe he felt like, “We’re never, ever getting back together”?

Teacher: Yeah, awesome! Very good. Thank you for…

You: [interjecting] Like, ever.

The main thing to keep in mind is that when making an obvious reference, you really want to lean into the obviousness. These aren’t subtle, so may as well be open about it.

Them: Why do you suppose the crowd turned against Jesus?

You: Haters gonna hate

Them: ….

You: [pause for effect] hate…hate…hate

The last thing you can do is stylize your cadence to match the song. Suppose you’re about to say, “I’m going to pass around this casserole sign-up sheet.” The resulting reference could be improved by holding a physical pen as a prop.

Good: There’s a blank space, and you can write your name.

Better: I’ve got a blank space [*click click*], and you can write your name.

Level 2: The Esoteric Reference

Now we turn to references that demand a little more Swiftian knowledge. They’re from deeper cuts, or they deploy Taylor lines in more unexpected situations.

Here’s an example of the former:

Them: You look ____ today.

You: I’m tied together with a smile, but I’m comin’ undone.

Notice it doesn’t even matter how your interlocutor describes your appearance.

The other strategy is to make more specific references. Cryptic is fine.

Teacher: What’s the significance of the girl’s noticing that Peter is a Galilean (Matt. 26:69)?

You: This ain’t Hollywood, this is a small town.

Once we’re allowing obscure references, a lot of possibilities open up. What will the eschaton be like? It’ll be like, your secrets end up splashed on the news front page. Why does Martha accept Jesus’s teaching? Somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them. Where did the Pharisees go wrong? They didn’t even see the signs (so many signs). What’s the point of the pigs in the exorcism at Gadarenes? Matthew’s got his demons, and (darlin’?) they all look like…Roman imperialism. Care is generally advised with the use of “darlin’.”    

Level 3: The Double Reference

The younger Taylor once wrote, “no amount of vintage dresses gives you dignity.” I suspect it’s still true they don’t teach you that in prep school, so it’s up to Sunday School:

For all flesh is like the grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever. (1 Peter 1:24)

Not unlike Taylor’s warning about the dresses, Peter cautions that no attainment of this-worldly glory can last. Time, mystical time, makes no such promises. People may have what they want now, but–Peter insists–scripture will always have the last word.

With the double reference, you break up a Swiftian pericope with another, separate idea, which turns out to illuminate what comes both before and after it. The good Sunday School student might call it intercalation, but the Swiftie will probably just see it as a rude interruption–albeit one they might miss everyday–if you don’t speak now!

Level 4: The Call and Response Reference

This one is where you make part of a Taylor Swift reference and then count on someone else in class to provide the right rejoinder. I have, on occasion, said “I’m still a believer but I don’t know why,” and actually had someone provide the line “I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try.” I love this one. The sense of human inadequacy. The longing for grace. Much like any good call and response, the two lines are more beautiful together than either of them taken alone.

Earlier this semester, I was mentioning to my class a colleague’s view that love is compatible with negative feelings. My explanation was something like, “So the opposite of love isn’t hate, but rather indifference.” As I said it, it came very close to “it isn’t love it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference.” After just the right pause, someone from the back of the class added, “So…yeah.” Most people in the room were confused, but those four or five students with ears to hear burst into laughter.

The highest form of Sunday School Taylor Swift reference is to provide the response when someone else has given the quotation’s first half. Vigilance is key. After all, no one knows the hour of church wherein a Taylor Swift reference might appear. Will you be ready for it?