Hailey Baldwin says many people in her church community made her feel like an 'outcast' after she and Justin Bieber broke up in 2016

• Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber regularly attended church services when they first dated in 2016.
• After they split, the model told WSJ that "people in the church" made her feel "very outcast."

Hailey Bieber (née Baldwin) recalled feeling unwelcome by many people in her church community in the aftermath of her 2016 breakup with Justin Bieber, who is now her husband.

Before the model married the "Justice" singer in 2018 (and then again in a larger 2019 wedding), they briefly dated two years prior. Both practicing Christians, the couple regularly attended religious services at the same churches.

When they broke up months into their relationship in 2016, Hailey, 25, said some of the church-goers' behavior toward her shifted.

"There were a lot of people in the church world that made me feel very outcast," she told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Tuesday. "When did church become a social club? That was such a bad feeling."

In the years before Justin, 27, and Hailey reconnected at a 2018 church conference in Miami, some of the model's longtime friends, such as Churchome pastors Judah Smith and Chelsea Smith, stood by her side throughout the fall-out, she explained.

As a result of their unwavering support, Hailey told The Wall Street Journal that she felt comfortable enough to have a candid conversation about her personal life on their podcast, "In Good Faith," in November 2021.

During the joint interview with Justin, Hailey discussed the challenges she confronted early in their marriage, particularly while supporting her new husband through his mental health struggles.

At one point, she said she called her mother, Kennya Baldwin, and told her: "I just can't do it. There's no way that I'm going to be able to do this if it's going to be like this forever."

Her mother responded calmly, according to the model, and reassured her daughter that "it's going to pass" and that she and Hailey's father, Stephen Baldwin, were behind her.

"I do feel like we just had a lot of support. I feel like if I didn't have support, it would've been 10 times harder, and it was already the hardest thing in my life at the time," she said on the podcast.

Now, over three years into their marriage, Hailey said she's grown cautious about sharing details about her personal life and relationship during interviews.

"It doesn't feel worth it to me anymore when I try to have an open conversation with someone like you and then it gets taken out of context," she told WSJ's Lane Florsheim.

To speak directly to her fans, Hailey has created her own YouTube channel, which currently yields 1.47 million subscribers. She's also in the midst of launching her own skincare line coined after her middle name, Rhode.