Yes, Father Orthoduck is deliberately running a racy picture of Carrie Prejean because he needs to make a point. And it is a point that will keep biting conservative Christians, whether politically conservative, moderate, or liberal, until the Religious Right gets its act together. Yes, Father Orthoduck claims that it is possible to be a conservative Christian but to have differing opinions on social issues and to have differing opinions on which party(ies) is/are the better ones to join.
The Carrie Prejean story is interesting for two reasons. One reason is that she was really and truly wronged. What happened to her at the Miss USA pageant was a travesty and was utterly wrong. It was truly wrong for Perez Hilton to force his personal political stance into a pageant that is supposedly free of that type of presence. In fact, normally feminists, and others on the left, condemn the various pageants because they demean women and keep them as sex objects. Face it, the old joke is that the standard answer to questions in those pageants is, “I want world peace.”
But, here is the interesting part. Normally, conservative Christians have exactly the same stance in this area. Father Orthoduck can easily remember that Christian girls were taught in Sunday School that being involved in things such as the type of beauty pageants that involved skimpy swimsuits and paid-for-by-the-pageant breast augmentation was not right. That is, of course, unless the person has usefulness as an icon of the things that are wrong with America. In that case, one ignores former teachings because that person is useful in making a case against those evil liberals. In that case, with no background check, Carrie Prejean becomes a modern Christian martyr. After all, a wholesome Christian girl should have every right to pose in skimpy clothes, after being appropriately augmented, in a pageant that would have normally been condemned by some of the very same Christians that adopted her as a Christian hero.
Carrie Prejean ended up on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family program. She was quickly adopted by the Religious Right as an example of what is wrong with America that must be changed and as an example of persecuted Christians. She was supposed to speak to a Republican gathering of congressmen just a couple of days ago, but canceled out after the latest scandal. She was feted and invited to speak in many venues. But, in their eagerness to strike against liberals and the evil Perez Hilton–and he was truly inappropriate, wrong, biased, etc.–there was a major failure and a major compromise. The major compromise was the willingness to throw over previous moral stances in order to fully and unequivocally support Ms. Prejean.
The major failure is coming back to bite not just the Religious Right, but also all conservative Christians, of whatever political stripe. In fact, Carrie Prejean, just like the recently convicted-to-175-years evangelist Tony Alamo, is becoming a major embarrassment which makes all conservative Christians a laughingstock. Just the day before yesterday she had a major meltdown in Larry King Live after being forced to withdraw her suit against the California pageant once she admitted making a sex tape. This, of course, was several months after the release of several skimpy and more revealing photographs of the type pictured in this post.
The major failure is that of not checking out Carrie before making her into a strong Christian who deserved our unquestioning support. In fact, the Religious Right acted just like the extreme Liberal Left. There was a disconnect between reality and the image portrayed. It would have been easy for the Religious Right to simply support Ms. Prejean for the inappropriate and despicable comments made by Perez Hilton without making her into a modern Christian martyr-saint. But, the problem in much of today’s extremist politics, whether of the right or of the left, is the inability to do a balanced analysis of the circumstances. For the Religious Right, the concept of an ongoing culture war blinded them to the clues that were already present about Prejean’s not-quite-evangelical lifestyle, photographs, and video.
Carrie, or any other woman whether Christian or non-Christian, should have been supported against Perez Hilton. The issue should have been the right of any person to hold a belief different than Perez Hilton without being subjected to the rant on his blog (right after the pageant) and without the overt punishment that Perez meted out to Carrie. As Christians, we could have lauded the strength that Carrie showed in giving her answer rather than obfuscating. But, we should have never made her a Christian celebrity making the rounds of the Christian talk circuit. Nor should we have ignored or minimized the inappropriateness of her other behaviors, but rather quietly pointed out that the issue was Perez’s behavior, not every facet of Carrie’s life.
And so, conservative Christians are a laughingstock yet again. And we are so in a very public way, thanks to a culture war that is being fought by some without balance and without checks.
Radicalized people–right OR left seem to have a proclivity for exaggerating every issue that seems to fit or can be cropped to fit or even idealized to fit their particular narrow viewpoint. And it seems there are too many people who are merely interested in getting their 15 minutes to care how they come to be portrayed by said ideologues until they are confronted face to face by someone who is devious and bold enough to air the real facts without bias. But we are called, I believe to another standard and another name than conservative, moderate, or liberal. Pray for your enemies, walk the extra mile, give him your cloak as well and turn the other cheek are certainly not the standard responses of any side in the current morass of debate. But the Lord called us to be outside of the narrow boundaries and boxes into which the world would have us squeeze ourselves. Giving ourselves to be remade by God into the image of Christ is to be REALLY RADICAL. Talk about changing the world…..
“The major failure is that of not checking out Carrie before making her into a strong Christian who deserved our unquestioning support. ”
At first I read that sentence as: “The major failure is that of not making her into a strong Christian who deserved our unquestioning support.” After reading the original sentence several times, I realized I preferred my misreading. The deepest failure was the lack of effective spiritual formation and discipleship that has occurred in Carrie Prejean’s life, although she has been in the American evangelical church since childhood.
Something else has gone very wrong in the American church which I think is reflected in this incident. There is so little demonstrable sacrificial living in America and virtually no persecution or understanding of what true persecution is that the American church clings to and takes umbrage at cheap slights trying to wrap itself in the garments of the persecuted. This cheapens the profound suffering, sacrifice, pain and death members of the church face daily throughout the world and throughout history.
She didn’t win a beauty contest, but came in second place. To rally to her as though this was emblematic of the plight and suffering of the American church (on second thought perhaps it was) is to me more evidence of how weak the practice of the faith in the American church is.
has rallied to this woman as it has.
Ms. Prejean is not a martyr nor was she persecuted, and
I would agree with you. We are a rather wealthy church (in comparison to most of the world) whose “persecution” is that of not allowing us to have all the privileges we would like to have. This is not to say that there has been no opposition. There has been. But, it is not at the level that it merits the over the top responses that have been all too common among us.