Don’t think for a second that evangelical pastors and their flocks are immune from the temptations of internet pornography. Items about such ’sexual addiction’ regularly appear in conservative Christian publications, so that I genuinely wonder whether evangelical porn fans are over-represented in the general population. The Australian Christian weekly New Life (20 Jan. 2005) reports that:

A ‘Christianity Today’ survey said 37% of pastors say cyberporn is a current struggle for them and 63% of men at a [presumably Christian] marriage seminar admitted to struggling with porn in the past year.

These sorts of figures are backed up by leading American evangelist Charles Swindoll who writes of:

… a severe disease that is eating away at our congregations … Men and women, from adolescents to senior citizens, from all walks of life, have succumbed or are at risk, and more are becoming infected every single day.

Nineteenth-century moral panic merchants used to introduce denunciations of masturbation in just this way but Swindoll has a different target in mind:

The problem is pornography, especially internet pornography. Without your knowing, it could be eating your church alive.

And just how serious is this threat?

The most recent studies available suggest that one out of every two people, that’s 50% of the people sitting in our pews, are looking at and/or could be addicted to internet pornography … Chances are good that some of our full-time staff members, even some who faithfully serve on our boards, may be losing this secret battle.

Naturally, Christian children are in terrible danger:

…[W]hile I’m listing these possibilities, let’s not overlook our young adults, married and single, who provide instruction among our junior and senior high [school] youth … Stop and imagine the ugly but very real possibility of some of your own elders and deacons leaving your meetings and going home to surf porn. Think about youth leaders viewing it one minute, and leading a small group with your kids 30 minutes later.

The parallels with earlier masturbation panics are now overwhelming, and at this point Swindoll loses it entirely:

It’s ruining marriages, destroying relationships, harming youth and hurting the body of Christ. You hardly need to be reminded that fallen pastors and priests did not ’suddenly’ fall. More often than not, pornography played a role in their downward spiral. (New Life, 14 Aug. 2003)

Despite Swindoll’s hyperbole, there probably is some fire here to go with the smoke. Frank York and Jan LaRue have written a book for Focus on the Family (FOF) (Protecting Your Child in an X-Rated World, 2002) which contains some comparable statistics:

… [T]he reality is that there may be as many as 10 to 20 per cent of your church membership who wrestle with a pornography addiction. This includes pastors … At one [hyper-Christian] Promise Keepers men’s event, 50 per cent of the attendees admitted to dabbling in porn during the previous week …[A]bout 20 per cent of the calls on [FOF's] pastoral care line are for help with issues such as pornography and compulsive behaviour …

York and LaRue offer an estimate of around 25 per cent ’sexually addicted’ Christian pastors, and conclude as follows:

One researcher estimates that 60 million Americans have visited sexually explicit websites. Tragically, the percentage of Christian men involved is not much different from that of the unsaved. [Evangelical commentators often make similar observations about divorce and abortion rates but aren't quick to draw certain unpalatable conclusions e.g. that prayer doesn't work!] According to another survey of pastors and lay leaders conducted by ‘Leadership’ magazine, 62 per cent have regularly viewed pornography. (179-80)

Elsewhere in this book we read of ‘perfect Christian girls’ who become ensnared by ‘pornography’ (in one case it was actually romance novels, given to a girl by her grandmother) and suddenly find themselves ‘obsessively engaged in oral sex and other sexual activities with boys’. (217-8)

The more you study evangelical Christians, the less special and more ‘normal’ they appear. By their own accounts, their religion seems quite unable to protect them from day-to-day temptations, and you begin to wonder how some of them develop the nerve to tell the rest of us how to live our lives.

Filed in: Evangelicals, Sexuality