I’ve been on a roll with the ever-so-slightly controversial topics of late, so why not take on this one? A co-worker alerted several of us to an MSN article she saw the other day. The topic was a Protestant youth group in Nuremberg, Germany that has taken a new spin on the Bible. To make the Good Book more appealing to young adults in a country where the church is practically dying, they’ve created a calendar illustrating Biblical scenes… in the nude. As the photographer says in the article (which I’m not going to link to, for fear of being accused of directing folks to pornographic sites, so you’ll have to find it yourselves), “There’s a whole range of biblical Scriptures simply bursting with eroticism.”

Well… umm… yeah, I guess you could put it that way. The photos I saw on the website particularly depicted a strategically-covered Eve with the apple and a not-so-strategically covered, topless Delilah cutting off Samson’s hair. Apparently there is also one of a 21-year-old woman as the prostitute Rahab in garters and stockings.

Now, I’m all for trying to transform the stuffy image of the Bible and depict it with more of its gritty realism. Because for those of you who have actually spent some time with it, you know it isn’t all about choirs of angels with halos. You don’t need a calendar to get racy with, for instance, Genesis. The whole thing with Lot’s daughters, Tamar and her father-in-law Judah, Potiphar’s wife and Joseph… regardless of your stance on whether God really created the world in seven days, etc, there’s no doubt that the Bible is truthful in how it portrays failed and flawed humanity. Jerry Springer only wishes he could come up with some of this stuff. It is also amazingly truthful, and hopeful, in the ways in which it depicts God using those failed and flawed characters to carry out God’s divine purpose in the world.

But is a Playboy-style pinup calendar, regardless of how humorous it might sound on the surface, the way to convey that? Or are we just diluting the message, playing into the “sex sells” consumer culture? It isn’t so much the nudity in and of itself that disturbs me about the whole idea, because yes, nudity and sex are both within the purview of the Bible. God created us good, bodies and all.

What bugs me about it is the way in which it uses women particularly to convey a sexualized message. Call it “Samson and Delilah” if you like—to the vast majority of folks, it is still a bare breasted woman leaning over a sleeping man with a naughty smile on her face. And now the naughtiness is tied into the Bible, which makes it all the more titillating. Is that really bringing us closer to God, or making anyone think differently about the message of Christianity?

When you’re portraying all the “naughty” women of the Bible, too, it just serves to reinforce the whole “evil sexual temptress” complex that has kept women from taking a participatory role in the church for millennia. I will admit that I don’t know what the other calendar topics are (I can’t read German, unfortunately). Maybe they do have some empowering images of Deborah, or Mary Magdalene proclaiming the Good News at the Resurrection. But somehow, I doubt it.

The photos I saw basically used the traditional iconic images of women in the Bible to say that a woman’s role in Scripture, and in society, is for the sexual pleasure of men and that her power comes from that. And you wonder why young women still have such low self-esteem, date such rotten guys, practically prostitute themselves in Abercrombie and Fitch miniskirts? Even church youth groups are shooting this message at them using the Bible: you are a being created for another’s sexual pleasure. And only through sex will you have any power or influence in this world.

So really, such cutting-edge interpretations of the Bible aren’t quite so cutting-edge after all.

“Let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling or drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.” --Romans 13:13

Kelsey

PS-- Ironic that I also saw the film "Dogma" for the first time this weekend... the calendar evangelism tactic kind of reminds me of "Buddy Jesus" at the beginning of that film. They're trying to accomplish the same things.