Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, said the Christian community should stand behind Miss California, even after a racy photo of her appearing in panties appeared on a gossip blog.
“In her moment of truth, standing on a national stage and defending marriage, that meant more for the cause of marriage than anything else,” he said.
Several conservative Christian groups praised Carrie Prejean for her voicing her opposition to same-sex marriage during the Miss USA pageant. After a racy photo of her was posted on the web, Prejean said her Christian faith was under attack and that the photo was taken while she was a teenager.
CitizenLink writes, “Daly pointed out that we are all sinners, saved by grace.”
“I think at this moment, we should stand behind Carrie,” he said. “The reality is we’re all fallen people, we’re all made in God’s image, and Jesus has come to set us free.”
Dobson will interview Prejean for a two-day broadcast starting Monday.
Update: Jim Daly told Christianity Today that the Prejean interview was taped before the semi-nude lingerie photos emerged, so there will be no questions asked about them on broadcast. But James Dobson does plan to make a brief statement at the beginning of the show.
“Within the Christian community, it’s a fair debate about what she’s done in the modeling industry. But it’s a distraction to the more important story of religious freedom,” Daly said. “Pageantry and underwear commercials: We would not encourage Christian women to go do those things. At the same time, no matter what your profession, I’ve heard of God using it and radical grace breaking through. It can find any of us at any times in our lives: the alcoholic, the prostitute, the model, the businessman that’s having an affair. I’d hate to have the Christian community focus on poor decisions she’s made as opposed to celebrating that she had the courage to speak for biblical truth.”
But did she speak for biblical truth? After all, she started her answer by saying, “I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite.”
“Some would debate whether she gave a forceful statement,” Daly said. “Some might say it was tepid. It was a little easy; it was soft. But even it was was feebly stated, the point is that she did come out and say, ‘In my family we believe it’s between a man and a woman.’ … She says in the [Focus on the Family] broadcast that airs Monday and Tuesday that while she was on stage, she was considering, ‘Do I go for the crown or do I do what God asked me to do?'”
“There are questions about the modeling profession, and Focus on the Family isn’t on a position to critique the modeling profession,” Daly said. “Her past modeling jobs don’t make her opinion on marriage any less valid. … She’s a 21-year-old girl whose Christian worldview is probably not fully formed. In this environment of pressure she’s in right now, it will probably form. All of us as Christians as teenagers and in our 20s faced decisions. We did well at times and poorly at times.”
