An evangelical Christian magazine has apologized for running a personal ad for a woman created by her father—without her knowledge.
“Her: godly, gorgeous, athletic, educated, careered, humorous, travelled, bilingual, 26-year-old virgin,” the ad said. “You: unworthy, though becoming less so daily.”
Even creepier, it was posted in the jobs section of Christianity Today.
“At least it’s appropriate they placed it in the Employment Opportunities section because putting up with this father-in-law's shenanigans is a full time job, without any paid vacation,” Rachel Stewart wrote in a since-deleted blog post after commenters there drew her attention to it. (The blog was listened in the ad to provide prospective grooms more information on her.)
It was too late for Christianity Today to pull the ad from print, which it said “has been rightly seen as demeaning and in poor taste.”
“We want everything in our magazine to reflect beautiful orthodoxy, and this ad did not,” the editor in chief, Mark Galli, wrote. “We have taken a hard look at our ad review process, made some changes, and we can assure our readers that no ad like this will appear again.”
Rachel wrote she was amused and called the ad “remarkable” on her blog. There she also recounted calling her father after finding out about the ad placed for her future spouse. Her father Stephen reportedly closed his office door before defending his choice to place the ad, and reading it aloud to his daughter. Rachel was “impressed, but not surprised,” she wrote.
A month before Valentine’s Day, Stephen told Rachel that he was investing financially in finding her a match, though he refused to give details. He called his plan to find her a man “El Grande” in earlier conversations. (In 2014, Rachel also blogged about her dad’s readiness to “promote our beauty to strangers, notifying boys of our availability and convincing parents of our guaranteed familial contributions.)
“I’m just nervous if this doesn’t work out, next I’ll find my face plastered on a billboard,” she added in her post about the ad. “Oh gosh, now I’m giving him ideas.”
Commenters on her blog praised her good humor, though some questioned how many shekels—or how much land, or livestock—it would take to win Rachel’s hand in marriage.
Stephen Stewart did not reply to a request for comment.