Friday evening I attended Christian High‘s presentation of “Annie Get Your Gun.” It was played to a full house at Calvin College‘s FAC Auditorium, and I understand that good crowds attended the other three performances. Obviously this kind of performance “takes” with our people and the box office selling $3 tickets took in thousands of dollars. The acting was first rate as the students had done a marvelous job of memorization. The orchestra was excellent and the stage settings were immense and striking, particularly the big, colorful, Indian scene.

As I watched the capable performance I wondered, however, what could properly be considered “Christian” in it. An opening prayer to God at a program by a Christian school would suggest that one might expect some Christian or Biblical dramatics. Instead, this opening prayer seemed completely irreconcilable with what proved to be a secular or worldly play. One scene gave us “entertainment” in social–dancing and liquor drinking. The hero and heroine engaged in prolonged kissing and embracing. The heroine vowed to show her prospective lover a few things when she would get to him with a low-necked dress instead of her wild-west hunters’ garb. For no apparent reason, a card game was thrown in to complete the exercise in worldliness.

Where was Christian taste, not to speak of Christian supervision and censure in all this? Why should such a play be chosen for presentation by a Christian school? Have we no Christian dramatics? We ought to be able to get and net out moral dramas whioh reflect Biblical standards. It seems to me that such completely secular content and manner of presentation does great disservice to our Christian public and school.

How can such secular material possibly bring the glory to God to which we are supposed to be committed? How can it serve our spiritual and moral well–being? The Scripture says, “Bodily exercise (entertainment) is profitable for little, but godliness. for all things, having promise of the life . . .” (I Tim. 4:8).

We are also warned in the Bible, “Love not the world.” Surely such plays as this, play into the hand of the world and will cause many to stumble and fall from the way of holy living in obedience to God‘s law.

Renze O. De Groot is a retired Christian Reformed pastor living at Grand Rapids and president of the Reformed Fellowship.