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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">‘Porn Epidemic’
is ‘Sweeping the Church’ says Evangelical Leader</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">By Bill
Berkowitz,</span><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-size:12pt"> Jan 22
2016 </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Published on The Smirking Chimp (<a href="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/"><span style="color:blue">http://www.smirkingchimp.com</span></a>)<br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">“Well, ya got
trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City. … With
a capital "P," … and that stands for porn!” – paraphrasing The Music
Man </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">The Iowa
Caucuses are just around the corner and frankly I’m surprised that, given the predilection
Christian evangelicals have for pornography, Donald Trump didn’t turn to Jenna
Jamison – especially since she declared her support for The Donald back in
November of last year -- rather than Sarah Palin. </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'MS Mincho'">
</span><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br><br>
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">There’s an evangelical Christian movement afoot and its immediate concern is
not combatting abortion, same-sex marriage, or re-defining religious freedom.
It’s a movement aimed at conquering Christian men’s penchant for pornography.
Regardless of whether this addiction is a product of an attack by Satan, a plot
devised by communists in the 1950s, or just plain old twenty-four/seven
Internet accessibility, pornography is grabbing hold of Christians and shaking
up the evangelical Christian community. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Recently,
evangelist John McDowell told ASSIST News Service that the “porn epidemic” is
“sweeping the church.” According to McDowell of Josh McDowell Ministries,
"At least 78.8% of all men that attend evangelical churches watch
pornography. Probably 80% of all evangelical youth pastors also watch pornography,
and now, the greatest increase is among women and young ladies. It's killing
us. 64% of all Christian families have an acute problem with pornography. 67%
of all divorces now are directly related to pornography. Almost every time you
hear of a pastor leaving a church asked to leave it's because of pornography.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">The
conservative Lifesitenews.com recently reported that a Barna Group survey
commissioned by Josh McDowell Ministries, found that “21 percent of youth
ministers and 14 percent of pastors … admit they struggle with pornography.”
The same survey found that “twelve percent of youth pastors and five percent of
pastors admit they are addicted to [I]nternet porn.” Barna also found that
“teens – both boys and girls – view porn weekly, and 41 percent have ‘sexted’ a
sexually explicit image.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">A survey
conducted by Christianity Today found that “at least 50 percent of Christian
pastors are struggling with [pornography].” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Pastorswives.org
calls porn addiction "one of the fastest growing problems in the lives of
North American pastors today."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Author Steve
Farrar has written: "A number of years ago a national conference for
church youth directors was held at a major hotel in a city in the mid-west.
Youth pastors by the hundreds flooded into that hotel and took nearly every
room. At the conclusion of the conference, the hotel manager told the
conference administrator that the number of guests who tuned into the adult
movie channel broke the previous record, far and away outdoing any other
convention in the history of the hotel."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">In an attempt
to draw attention to this scourge, McDowell’s Ministry, in partnership with
Covenant Eyes, is hosting the "Set Free Global Summit" on the impact
of pornography in the church. The Summit will take place in Greensboro, North
Carolina, April 4-7.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">The Battle Plan
for Purity</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Meanwhile,
another evangelical enterprise, KingdomWorks Studios, recently announced with
flair that it has developed an important tool to enable Christians to fight
pornography addiction; a 6 DVD set called The Battle Plan for Purity. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">A hyped-up
trailer for the 6 DVD set starts off with relentlessly ominous music, followed
by shots of a jet fighter plane streaking across the sky, while a menacing
battery of anti-aircraft guns – manned, it appears, by a crew of Asians -- lay
in wait. Up pops a series of flashing headlines trumpeting the DVD’s arrival:
”For The First Time In History, A Cinematic Teaching Series on Sexual Purity,
Is Here To Give Men, The Battle Plan For Purity.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">In the trailer,
Dr. Doug Weiss, PhD, author of Clean says, “The church is in the sexual battle
of its life.” Dr. Ted Roberts, founder of Pure Desire Ministries International,
and the star of the DVDs states: “You take just a standard cookie cutter
Christian, don’t do this, don’t do that …it won’t work.” Dr. James Reeves,
Senior Pastor, City on a Hill Church warns: “It’s gonna really sweep through
the church like a tsunami wave of destruction of the family.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Former U.S.
Marine fighter pilot Dr. Ted Roberts is the undisputed star of the show.
Roberts claims to be providing Christians with the tools they need to fight
their addiction to pornography. And he’s doing it in style, dodging a battery
of obstacles as he pilots his jet fighter toward freedom from pornography.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">According to
the KingdomWorks Studios website, “The Conquer Series, unrivaled in its scope
and authority, is a life-changing, 5-week discipleship study that lays out the
battle plan for purity. It provides men with biblical strategies, scientific
facts and insight on how to use God’s weapons to become conquerors. For the
first time in history, a cinematic teaching series on sexual purity is here to
help men get to the root of the sin, while offering proven principles and
practical tools to walk in freedom from sexual sin like pornography.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">An email --
sent out via the auspices of Christianity Today magazine – announcing the
project pointed out: “The porn industry knows that it cannot survive, unless
more users become addicted to their material. They are also specifically targeting
more Christian communities, which is partly why the Bible belt leads the nation
in consumption of porn. The porn movie Fifty Shades of Grey, heavily targeted
the Bible belt with advertising and PR, which is why their highest
concentration of box office ticket sales came out of the south. Number 25 in
the Current Communist Goals from the book The Naked Communist published in 1958
is, ‘Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and
obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Dr. Ted Roberts
maintains that watching porn on a regular basis is a “brain problem.” “We tell
men to try harder, pray harder, love Jesus more. But, what starts off as a
moral problem, quickly becomes a brain problem. Telling a man to try harder is
only tightening the ‘noose’ of bondage.” For an anti-porn pitch, that’s a
pretty enticing metaphor to simply toss out there. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Will Satan have
his way? Will the communist “plot” finally be realized? Will the Josh McDowell
sponsored anti-pornography conference or the KingdomWorks DVD series stem the
tide? Stay tuned.<br>
_______</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">About author
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His
Conservative Watch columns document the strategies, players, institutions,
victories and defeats of the American Right.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt"><div><span style="font-size:13.3333px">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. </span><br style="font-size:13.3333px"><br style="font-size:13.3333px"><span style="font-size:13.3333px">-Greek proverb</span></div><div><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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