Greater Abominations: Pole-dancers for Jesus

WORLD MAGAZINE - By Tony Woodlief - March 25, 2011
This is the kind of story you have to double-check to be sure it isn't parody: pole-dancers for Jesus. The owner of a dance studio outside Houston has started classes for women based on increasingly popular pole-dancing classes, only these classes use modern Christian music, and incorporate presumably less provocative moves.

The logic, as I understand it, runs like this: The body is a temple, you're supposed to keep your temple in shape, poles are good for keeping said temples in tippy-top fitness, it's not sin if you add some Christian music and don't look too strippery, and anyone who wants to judge isn't being very Christian about the whole thing. ...

And perhaps that's a good rule for all of us to follow, to cultivate the habit of asking what is motivating our desire to do this, that, or the other. When it comes to pole-dancing, it seems the whole thing is motivated more by a desire to emulate a particularly unsavory part of popular culture than the desire to stay fit. Which is all well and good, this being a free society and all.

But how about we not call it "Pole Fitness for Jesus"? Because it's not really for Jesus, I don't think.

Edited :: See Original Report Here
http://online.worldmag.com/2011/03/25/pole-dancers-for-jesus/


Hallelujah! Christians Pole Dance for Jesus in Texas
Student Says Pole Dancing Class Brings Her Closer to God
ABC NEWS [American Broadcasting Companies, Inc./The Walt Disney Company] - BY Sherisse Pham - March 22, 2011
A new exercise class, Pole Fitness for Jesus, is inviting Christian women in a small Texas town to spin without sin for the Lord.
"God gives us these bodies, and they are supposed to be our temples and we are supposed to take care of them," instructor Crystal Dean told ABC affiliate KTRK-TV. "And that's what we are doing."
For one Sunday each month, Dean teaches free classes to Christian women who bring in their church programs.
There is biblical approval of mixing religion with song and dance, namely, Psalm 149:3: "Let them praise His name with dancing; Let them sing praises to Him with timbrel and lyre."

For critics and skeptics who find it difficult to merge churchgoing Christians with limber pole dancers, religious scholars point out that Christians have been adjusting their moral obligations to the modern world for the last half century. There are Christian tattoo parlors, books about Christian dieting (Thin for Him, Fit for My King), and even Christian sex manuals. On the scale of shocking modern activities for Christians, Thomas Tweed, a professor with the University of Texas, rates the pole dancing classes as "mildly surprising."
"This is just another attempt to think through how to live a full Christian life," said Tweed. ...
Student Says Pole Dancing Class Brings Her Closer to God ...

Churches throughout the United States already host contemporary, even sexy workout classes. You can take jazzercise classes at the First Church of Lombard in Indianapolis, Zumba at Amazing Grace Church in Memphis, or belly dancing lessons at Trinity Presbyterian in Richmond, Va.
Pole dancing, however, maintains a stronger relationship to vices frowned upon by the Christian community.
"It does have a history of being used for unhealthy practices, for things that are not good for portrayal of women," said Rev. Ron Krueger, pastor of the Immanuel United Church of Christ, located less than 400 feet from Dean's class. ...
If the class reaches people who would otherwise be turned away from Christianity, Krueger said, that would be a positive outcome.
But as to Dean's claim that it helps Christian women maintain healthy bodies, the pastor had a list of alternative exercises with less salacious histories: yoga, aerobics, running and walking.

Edited :: See Original Report Here
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=13194891


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