Becce Bettridge, the Director of the Network of Presbyterian Women in Leadership, a Ministry of PFR, joins me in this post.

Well, we’re at a loss for words.  What can you say when you realize that if a person looking for Jesus happened upon the homepage of the website of the Presbyterian Church yesterday (pcusa.org), he or she would have been encouraged instead to host a “Vagina Day” event and celebrate the performance of the “Vagina Monologues”?  Such would-be spiritual seekers are directed by our denomination’s site to resources to help them “get involved” in the fight to stop violence against women by purchasing t-shirts that say “Vagina Warrior” and “Value Your Vagina.”  You can also sign up for “V-mail” (i.e. Vagina Mail), to be kept up-to-date on events related to the worldwide campaign to spread “V-Day” through the efforts of the always provocative and ever so randy Eve Ensler.

Some evangelicals undoubtedly see the Vagina Monologues as the quintessential embodiment of contemporary paganism. Despite parts of the play where women literally confess to idolatrous worship of the female genitalia and scenes that celebrate lesbian pediastry, this really is just run of the mill paganism we’re dealing with in this case. And it’s paganism that certainly isn’t bereft of signs of God’s grace. Romans 8:19 tells us that all of creation groans for redemption, “waiting in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” V-Day began as a movement intending to embrace and celebrate all women and girls and determined to end violence against females everywhere. On the first V-Day Eve Ensler insisted that, “Women should not have to spend their lives surviving or fearing violence against them.” Who among the baptized could take issue with this sentiment? It should come as no surprise to brothers and sisters of the Second Adam that wayward children of Eve would yearn for a share in the freedom and glory of the children of God. Neither should it surprise us that such true and honorable desires are mixed with and overwhelmed by the bondage and decay that characterizes all worldly ideologies. None of these insights are particularly newsworthy. In fact, this entire paragraph seems like an exercise in stating the obvious. What is news of the worst kind, we’re afraid, is that some spiritual leaders would call disciples of Christ into an uncritical endorsement and embrace of altogether ordinary worldliness.

That the church cares about the liberation and empowerment of women isn’t particularly laudable. It’s what we ought to expect of the bride of Christ, washed in baptismal waters that relativize the significance of identities like Jew, Greek, slave, free, male or female. We also ought to expect our liberative desires and initiatives to bear witting witness to the whole gospel that is the only hope for the whole world. Instead we find some denominational staffers clinging to and celebrating partial truths found among unwitting witnesses yearning unknowingly for the redemption found in Christ alone.

Why is this? Have we like the cosmopolitan Corinthian Christians forgotten the glorious nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Perhaps we need to listen again to some of Paul’s words to that church found in 2^nd Corinthians: “For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!” (2 Cor 3:10-11) Like Esau we seem all too willing to sell our birthright in order to satiate immediate felt needs that have become all consuming. What after all is the glory of the whole Gospel compared to a fleeting moment of transitory relevance?

But it’s unfair to single out the Presbyterian Church or even mainline churches in general. The uncritical embrace of worldliness knows no ecclesial prejudice. It is found in evangelical as well as mainline quarters. Mainline activists celebrate festivals of the secular left while some conservative evangelicals equate American foreign policy with the invisible hand of the living God. A pox on all our houses. We can do better, we must do better. God expects and deserves it and the world desperately needs it.

As we’ve traveled the country and had the privilege to meet and work with some inspiring disciples of Christ, we’ve become more and more convinced that the mission of the church is one that requires both an identity that is profoundly distinct from the world and an uncompromising engagement of the world in all its brokenness.  Among those who have made significant impressions on our souls include a friend involved in Evangelicals for Social Action; some who work with Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship and the Outreach Foundation, and others who work with International Justice Mission.  What we’ve found inspiring in them is their uncompromising commitment to the Gospel of Christ, which leads to an unswerving desire to faithfully follow Jesus amidst the poor and the marginalized. Anything less than this is old news, not good news.