Of Faith, Swimsuits and Silicone

Oh, the things I end up looking at in the name of research. Awhile ago, I remembered happening upon a site for some kind of Christian beauty pageant, and it intrigued me. I had previously been interested in the phenomenon of people like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson claiming to be traditional Christian girls and virgins while basically being teenage strippers who sing (well, Jessica sings). Call me a biased Yankee, but this felt like a part of Southern culture I couldn't wrap my head around. So what's with the blatant cheesecake/Jesus combo?

Turns out there is a Miss Christian America pageant, which requires both participation in Christian ministry and a "sportswear" competition (could that sport be swimming, or can you show up in a jogging suit?). After poking around a little bit, I noticed that, although there is a picture of a bunch of contestants, there is no information on who the reigning Miss Christian America is. Is it a scam? A noble attempt that failed? The entrance fee is $1500, while you can set up your own state franchising for a yearly fee of a mere $2500. Perhaps no one took them up on it.

There is also a Christian United States Pageants (featuring Mrs., Ms., Miss, Teen, Jr. Teen and Princess), which does have information on who their winner is, but only on their MySpace page. Their main page looks like it never quite came together, but it looks like they have eight state pageants on MySpace. Miss Christian USA 2009(who is also Miss Christian International) has a MySpace page, and it looks like she's a divorced mom, so they seem to be more open minded than some.

There is also Alabama Christian Pageants, which seems to be from a couple of years ago, with no sign that it actually took place. It is/was a project of a Certified Beauty Advisor and Assistant Modeling Instructor who also had a business selling gift baskets (Now I feel terrible... so many dreams don't come true...).

All of these pageants, or attempted pageants, seem to be melding the traditional beauty pageant focus on poise, beauty and good hair and make-up, with a focus on morality, community service and ministry, while skipping the swimsuit. No Britneys here.

Perhaps it's hard to compete with the real thing, especially when "a full third of [Miss America contestants] from the past three decades have overt Christian references, testimonies, or invitations to accept Christ..." in their official bios, as is pointed out in the Christianity Today article "Miss Christian America." It's interesting to see how every one of the winners knew that their victory was God's plan. Apparently, it was also God's plan for the other contestants to lose.

The contestants, and seemingly Christianity Today, have little to no qualms about the swimsuit competition, which is interesting for a magazine whose advertisements feature an issue with John Calvin on the cover (what would old John think?). To get a full dose of the splendor, check out this great video montage of Christian Miss America contestants. And wait until the drawing at the end to get a hint of the creator's true perspective (I also enjoyed his "Celebrity Christians #2," a celebration of faith and cleavage).

After all this, I don't think I've gained much insight. Except that maybe it's my uptight Lutheran cultural background that makes me think ogling scantily clad young ladies and chastity are contradictory in the first place. These Southern ladies' ancestors were displaying a lot of cleavage (if Gone With the Wind can be trusted) back when my ancestors were covered head to toe and banning drinking and dancing. Thoughts?

P.S. On the international level, there's the Queen Esther International Beauty Pageant, founded by the former Miss Botswana. It's named after Esther from the Bible, who the founder looks to as a role model: a woman who won a beauty pageant, became Queen, and saved her people. Being a little rusty on my Book of Esther, I checked it out. It turns out Esther was a part of a beauty pageant of sorts. The King of Persia, having ditched his wife for not coming when she was called, called for virgins to come to his harem, get several months of beauty treatments, and come to him one by one to stay the night. Whomever pleased him most got to be Queen. So I guess that's kind of a beauty pageant, and kind of like an episode of Rock of Love. No wonder I don't remember that being read in church...

"Spiritual Warriors" Plan Takeover of Society

Ever heard of the New Apostolic Movement? I hadn't either until they came up in connection with Sarah Palin, but they are apparently growing fast, especially in places like Brazil. This rather rambling post on DailyKos touches their philosophy and ambitions, including:

• Infiltrating business and finance, schools and education, media and entertainment and politics and government.
• "Plundering" the wealth of their enemies as "God has declared through His prophets that the wealth of the wicked will be released to the Kingdom of God."
• Transforming society "by mapping strongholds of demons, witches and 'spirits of witchcraft', and through driving those out through 'spiritual warfare'. The result will be the almost complete cessation of crime and addiction, almost 100% Christian church membership, the growth of farm vegetables to enormous size, and a miraculous reversal of environmental degradation.

I first heard about "spiritual warfare" and "prayer warriors" on an old episode of This American Life, featuring members of Ted Haggard's New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Pastor Ted had

put in place a project to pray in front of the home of every person in the city, systematically, block by block and house by house. He's also helped organize a 24-hour, 365-day-a-year 'prayer shield' over the city; all-night prayer vigils; and more.

This reminds me a sign in front of a Christian fraternity or sorority house in Minneapolis: "Jesus is Lord of the University of Minnesota". The implication is that Jesus reigns over a certain territory, whether the people in that territory are Christians or not. One can guess who are Jesus' deputies in the administration of his reign.

This movement has an ambition to conquer territory and control sectors of society, as opposed to/in addition to winning hearts for God. It combines the tactics of a modern revolutionary political movement with a belief system that is Medieval in its focus on the supernatural. The more traditional posture of evangelicalism is to believe that the inherent fallen nature of humankind and this world means that the truly righteous can never achieve worldly power. This movement combines a total alienation from society with a apocalyptic expectation of total revolution more reminiscent of Marxism-Leninism or Nazism. Something to keep an eye on.

Nightly devotions...

You are roughly eighteen billion years old and made of matter that has been cycled through the multimillion-degree heat of innumerable giant stars. You are composed of particles that once were scattered across thousands of light-years of interstellar space, particles that were blasted out of exploding suns and that for eons drifted through the cold, starlit vacuum of the Galaxy. You are very much a child of the cosmos.

In giving birth to us, the universe has performed its most astonishing creative act. Out of a hot, dense melee of subatomic particles - which is all that once existed - it has fashioned intelligence and consciousness. Some of those tiny, primordial pinpoints of matter from the infant cosmos have become temporarily arranged to make your brain and mine. Your thoughts at this very moment derive from energy transactions between particles born at the dawn of time. Somehow the anarchy of genesis has given way to exquisite, intricate order, so that now there are portions of the universe that can reflect upon themselves and ask Why am I here? What is the purpose of life, consciousness, and reality?

In posing these questions, we are, in a sense, the universe questioning itself - a most extraordinary realization. It helps dispel permamently the notion that we are irrelevant and insignificant in nature's broad scheme.

- David Darling, Equations of Eternity