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   Pushing Vileness in the Name of Christ:
The Promotion of The Vagina Monologues

 by
Viola Larson

A wonderful, funny, sardonic writer of the twentieth century, Evelyn Waugh, the author of Brideshead Revisited, wrote another book which I believe speaks to the deep moral problems of the American Church. (And don’t see the movie read the book.) A Handful of Dust focuses on Tony Last whose life is laid waste by the modernity of twentieth century London. This battered man who held tightly to his aristocratic past ends up in the jungles of South America held captive by a native who requires him to read daily the stories of Charles Dickens. And the point is made that Dickens believed in God, a God that neither the protagonist nor his fellow Brits cared anything about.

Waugh, a devout Catholic, was perhaps thinking of Jesus warning that he might remove the candle stick from the church at Ephesus or send some from the church of Thyatira into great tribulation. Jesus’ words to the seven churches of Asia Minor are full of promise for those who were faithful but he did not mince words with those who upheld immorality. He speaks of removing their church (Rev.2:5), making war with them with the sword of his mouth (2:16), sending the church into great tribulation and killing her children (22-23), and spitting them out of his mouth (3:16). Jesus Christ cares so greatly for his church that he will trim, prune back and even destroy the destroyer for her sake.

Sometimes, it seems, the church becomes too entangled with the world, not in a missional way, but rather with promoting vileness. I thought of this recently while reading a piece by one of my favorite columnists David Brooks1. The piece “A Tear in Our Fabric,” compared Congressman Mark Foley’s disturbing attempts to solicit sexual information from teenage pages with a section of The Vagina Monologues, in which a young girl is raped by a twenty-four year old woman. Brooks describes the scene:

Then she [a secretary] invited the girl up to her apartment, gave her some vodka, took off her underwear and gave her a satin teddy to wear. Then she had sex with the girl, which was interrupted when the girl’s mother called. Then she made the girl masturbate in front of her and taught her some new techniques.”

The act is seemingly justified because as Brooks quotes the young girl, “I say, if it was a rape, it was a good rape …”

Brooks is making the point that the lack of judgment against the story in The Vagina Monologues and the judgment against the actions of Foley are due to two differing morality codes. The story in the play comes under rules that Brooks suggests belong to “excessive individualism.” Since both people in the scene, the teenager and the adult, agree that the actions were pleasurable it was okay even if it was the rape of a minor. The judgment against Foley comes under what Brooks calls an older code; and believes its rules are formed not by individual identity but by “our social roles.” When our action “tears the social fabric” it is wrong. Brooks is of course deploring “excessive individualism.”

Brooks’ column brought back some memories and the memories reinforced my views about how God’s word speaks to our morality and our sin. First it is important to note that we all are under the wrath of God because we are all sinners. Some of us, sinners that we are, are hid in Christ. That is, because of the death and resurrection of Christ, God the Father looks on us and sees the righteousness of his Son rather then our own human sin. But, nonetheless, all of humanity and the works of humanity are under the wrath of God. And all human institutions, in the end, will fall, without the grace of God.

What does this have to do with my memories and with The Vagina Monologues? Quite a few years ago one of my daughters was attending the same high school her father and several of his friends attended years before. She had several friends who considered themselves lesbians. They were often at our house and most of them were troubled young women with abusive homes. Toward the end of the school year a student teacher made friends with many of them. I invited her for tacos. She and her roommate invited the girls to several activities including an overnight stay. And then the roof, so to speak, fell in!

Yes, much like the woman in the play, the student teacher was preying on the young girls. But the school officials only let us know in obscure ways. “Don’t invite teachers over to your house,” they said. “Don’t allow your daughters to go places with their teachers.” But in the end the truth came, seeing, at a college festival, the teacher hand in hand with a student, then information from my daughter, and finally a confrontation with the school leaders. The school had allowed a culture of permissiveness to grow to the point of harm. 

The harvest came a few years later when the school collapsed with financial problems. Today a charter school group has taken over what was once the primary high school in our city. The school and students wear uniforms and the curriculum is on basics. The buildings and the memories of my husband and his friends are all that remain of their high school. Human sin defiles and spoils and institutions, muddy with the grime, fall.

I think back to those years when I read about the promotion of The Vagina Monologues by the National Network of Presbyterian College Women in their newsletter and by Women’s Advocacy on their web site.2 The author of The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler, through the V-Day College Campaign, encourages students and others to produce and perform this play around Valentines Day and give the profits to those charities that provide help to women affected by violence. And both Presbyterian women’s organizations, named above, take advantage of the opportunity. It seems to be a case of the end justifies the means or doing evil to bring about good.

Glorifying the rape of a young woman in order to help women who are raped is a contradiction that must pain the sensibilities of any rational person. Certainly, without question, any Christian organization, institution or individual, using this material is contradicting the faith and degrading the love of Jesus Christ who upholds the dignity of the individual. The author of Psalm 107 writes, “But He sets the needy securely on high away from affliction, and makes his families like a flock. The upright see it and are glad; But all unrighteousness shuts its mouth. Who is wise? Let him give heed to these things, and consider the loving kindnesses of the Lord.” (41-43)

Any organization, even a Christian organization, which promotes the wickedness of the world, will eventually shut their mouth before the God who lifts up the needy. God gives healing and dignity to mistreated, violated and abused women. But he is also capable of demolishing any organization that cares so little for the image of a holy God in the people he has created. He is capable of preparing a jungle where his people might sit and read and listen to the words of God rather than the vileness of the world.

Christ calls his church to purity and The Vagina Monologues are anything but pure.