Comments on: Should Christians Participate in Beauty Pageants?

By: Derek

Derek — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 02:53:49 +0000

Very interesting subject. As a man, I constantly am weighing my motives and being cautious about what tries to draw or entice me. I for one would appreciate more women being more modest. At the same time, we men need to be extra cautious with what we condone. Women are pretty. Duh. Why do they have to show it off? might as well wave food in my face when i’m on a diet. “beauty is fleeting…but let the woman that fears the Lord be praised.”

By: Louis

Louis — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:57:33 +0000

I am personally astounded that beauty pageants still exist at all. When one does the swimsuit competition it looks like a meat market. It seems to this man that regardless of your faith – Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or no religion at all, that it is degrading to women in general. It reduces a woman to an object.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:36:12 +0000

While i’m not convinced that all modelling is inappropriate for Christians, I do struggle to reconcile such competitions that blatantly promote immodesty and the objectification of women with a faithful Christian witness. While it is possible that some of the Christian women getting involved in this stuff are young Christians who don’t know any better yet, there certainly isn’t an excuse for Christian leaders who certainly do know better promoting what these girls are doing. Christian girls struggling with body image and guys struggling with lust already have enough rubbish thrown their way by the world without having such behaviour glorified in Christian circles. Not to mention the terrible message of hypocrisy this sends to the world, particularly when one of these celebrities gets themselves involved in a scandal. Similar things show up with the Church embracing all sorts of celebrities eg. John and Kate.
I think this is symptomatic of a bigger problem, namely that we’ve lost our grip on the goal of evangelism. Evangelism should be about presenting the truth of Jesus so people can make a meaningful (hopefully positive) response to Jesus and be saved by him. The way a lot of Christian groups approach reaching the world is to try to make people like us Christians so they will join our churches/Christian culture. When the goal becomes getting people to like us we become like any secular brand and start marketing ourselves. In the church this plays itself out in things like trying align cool people/celebrities with our side (as we see here), making everything we do as exceptionally convenient, entertaining & undemanding as possible, spending absurd and unnecessary amounts of money on the latest sound systems ect. in an attempt to outdo the world and toning down anything that may offend people’s fallen nature. Rather than glorifying God, it ends up being about glorifying ourselves and the coolness we’ve achieved. Under the faulty approach that the big goal is to get people to join us because they think we’re cool, such beauty pageant contestants make perfect sense. But when compared with what we are meant to present, such tactics often stand in contradiction.

By: sherri

sherri — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:56:34 +0000

I just find it funny (in a sad kind of way.) It’s like some christians can become so desperate for some kind of ‘famous’ face to give christianity validity that they bring out the double standards without blinking to make room for it.
One of the recent Miss New Zealands is also a ‘christian’ (pastors daughter.)She was used as the cover girl on one of the top christian womens magazines* down here. She also wore a tiny bikini and gave the same kind of blurb about ‘maintaining her standards in a dark industry’. It’s just ridiculous.

When somebody claims to follow christ that means all the walk, which includes modesty. Cherry picking out the parts you like is not christianity.

If christianity is just a club then sure, you can be one and do whatever you feel like once you’ve paid the membership fees. But it isn’t.

However the fault is more with the people who accept it and pretend they don’t see it (expecially the leadership) in my opinion. It can be hard to tell exactly where the heart is of someone pulling something like that – but it’s pretty easy to see everyone elses when they deliberatly ignore it.

And if you want an even funnier example. Do a search on youtube for a song called ‘China Wine’. It’s sung by a woman who’s husband is the pastor of the biggest church in singapore. I actually went to a conference where he did an incredibly convincing job of explaining how his wife was actually ‘spreading the gospel’ by doing what she does. People hadn’t seen that clip at the time, but he gave enough photos in his presentation to give everyone an indication of where her standards were.
And he was clapped and cheered off the stage at the end because he was so clever in his presentation. (Even I clapped believe it or not because I was trying to figure out if he was really saying what I thought he was saying and decided to just clap the ‘good’ bits because I was a coward. (Along with a lot of other people.)
The whole ‘religious’ ‘narrowminded’ ‘self-rightous christians attacking the gospel being spread through the entertainment industry’ bandwagon.

So yeah.

It’s just another example of selling out.

* Interestingly enough. The singer I just mentioned and Brooke Fraser who also uses/d ‘come fuck me posing’ (s’cuse) to promote herself in the music industry (and I think Natasha Bedingfield too) were all featured as cover girls on the same magazine.