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Miss (Christian) America
After Erika Harold was crowned Miss America 2003, her outspoken faith sparked controversy. But she's just the latest in a long line of Christians to win the title. Why are so many believers attracted to this secular beauty contest?
By John W. Kennedy
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Miss (Christian) America
Before she began her senior year at the University of Illinois in 2001, Erika Harold experienced a crisis of faith. She not only had lost the Miss Illinois title twice, but she felt that her outspoken views on her chosen platform—sexual abstinence before marriage—had cost her scholarships in competition. Harold wanted to attend law school after graduation, but the lack of funds made her pessimistic about her prospects.
"I felt as though every time I stood up for my faith I not only wasn't being rewarded, I was losing things as a result," she says. "I didn't feel God's presence in my life the way I thought I would."
Harold turned to her dad, who helped address the litany of questions she had about the Bible. Her pastor at the Urbana First Assembly of God also gave her books by Charles Colson and C.S. Lewis to help answer faith questions. Ultimately, God confirmed his existence to Harold when she earnestly sought him in prayer and realized that faith requires being secure in God's omniscience despite times of adversity, confusion, and doubt.
"God told Job he wasn't going to give him all the answers and he didn't have the right to demand them," Harold says. After she became Miss America 2003 last September, Harold, now 23, began to understand God's timing. She says if she had won the Miss America title at 19 when she first entered the Miss Illinois pageant, her shaky faith would not have enabled her to survive the rigors of public scrutiny. But because of perseverance through many difficult circumstances, including sexual and racial harassment as a teenager, Harold (whose father is white and mother is black and American Indian) is no longer easily rattled.
In fact, Harold's perseverance was quickly put to the test just a few weeks after winning the national pageant when, in a widely publicized moment, the Miss America organization attempted to silence her public promotion of teen abstinence. However, pageant officials soon discovered that their newly crowned queen was not about to be muzzled when it came to sharing her beliefs. Harold has something to say, and she was willing to take a stand and live with the fallout of her convictions.
The Miss America pageant allows young women to gain incredible exposure without sacrificing their values.
Born-again beauties
Erika Harold's experience was not a unique one. Every year, the Miss America pageant attracts an inordinate number of born-again Christian women vying for the title. A check of the biographies of the Miss America winners on the organization's website (www.missamerica.org) and links to personal pages shows that a full third of the women from the past three decades have overt Christian references, testimonies, or invitations to accept Christ. And that's just the winners.
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