For years, the battle against pornography has been waged offstage. Pockets of conservative Christians have been fighting and winning skirmishes to close “adult” bookstores. But by and large the church as a whole has let the issue lie, assuming that, because it is there, pornography is legal.
There are signs, however, that mainstream Christians are becoming more aware of the pornography issue. Last month in Cincinnati, the National Coalition Against Pornography (NCAP) held its third annual conference to inspire the movement and supply fresh ammunition from legal and social science researchers.
The coalition is headed by Jerry Kirk, pastor of the thriving College Hill Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati. Kirk’s congregation authorized him to devote half of his time to the antipornography effort. He was invited by leaders of existing anti-porn groups to head a coalition that would broaden the base of the movement.
At NCAP’s first conference two years ago, Kirk found it hard to attract interested people. But last month he was pleased that some 350 local leaders came to Cincinnati from around the country. Among them were 26 denominational executives, an indication that Kirk’s efforts to tap the networks of existing church structures is beginning to take hold. If he is successful in enlisting denominational leaders in the antipornography movement, the issue would grow significantly as a matter of concern in the Christian community.
Kirk says that his office is inundated with calls from people who want to join the fight. He added that all four of the existing national antipornography organizations report rising memberships. Those organizations are Morality in Media, the National Federation for Decency, Citizens for Decency through Law, and the National Christian Association. All have joined hands under the NCAP umbrella.
Two arguments seem to be effective in NCAP’s efforts to enlist a broad spectrum of the church in the antipornography fight. The first is realizing the shocking lengths to which hard-core pornographers have gone to continue to titillate their jaded clientele. “I walked into one of those adult bookstores myself to see just what all the fuss was about,” said a prominent lawyer who attended the Cincinnati conference. “When I saw that stuff I knew instantly that my life would change. I could no longer call myself a Christian without joining this movement.”
The second persuasive argument involves the growing body of academic evidence that relates the use of pornography to violence against women and the sexual abuse of children. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who delivered the conference’s keynote address, said the average child molester arrested by police has a store of pornography at home, including pornographic depictions of the sex act for which he has been apprehended. Koop said pornography has become a public health issue.
Victor Cline, a psychologist from the University of Utah, told the conferees that the harmful effects of pornography are no longer debated in academic circles. “No one denies it anymore,” he said. “Too many scientific articles prove it.”
The week after the Cincinnati conference, the U.S. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography held a hearing in Houston. Several researchers who testified were cautious in acknowledging a connection between pornography and violent behavior. However, the testimony of some of the nation’s most respected psychological researchers backed up Cline’s assessment. The commission is studying all aspects of the pornography problem and will issue its findings in June.
The antipornography conferees in Cincinnati cheered loudly when they learned that in the last two years some 7,000 stores have removed pornography from their shelves under pressure from citizen activists. But law enforcement officers estimate that pornographers still take in as much as $19 million each day, much of it untaxed. With that kind of money at stake, the problem will not disappear easily.
In Houston, a city vice squad officer told the pornography commission that his squad is the largest in the country and has the highest pornography conviction rate of any city’s vice squad. At the same time, he said, the number of pornographic bookstores in Houston has grown from 20 to 46 in five years.
TOM MINNERYin Cincinnati
Can the Battle Against Pornography Be Won?
Jerry Kirk says the National Coalition Against Pornography is working to “unite a very broad spectrum in every community and city of this country to … eliminate the destructive influence of obscenity and pornography and indecency.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked Kirk to describe the pornography problem and to outline his organization’s strategy to combat it. An abridged version of the interview follows.
If we enforce laws against obscenity, won’t pornography become more profitable since it will have to be sold under the table?
I don’t think so. I believe that when the laws are enforced, pornographers will seek to make their money in other ways. We have found that they leave a place when the heat is on over a long period of time, as evidenced here in Cincinnati. [Citizen action was instrumental in closing all of Cincinnati’s adult bookstores and X-rated theaters, and in removing the Playboy Channel from the cable television system.]
Pornography already is illegal. Pornographers are making a bundle of money because the public doesn’t know it is illegal. Obscenity laws are not going to be enforced unless there is tremendous citizen pressure. Many people get involved after they see how bad and how prolific pornographic material has become. The FBI says 90 percent of it is produced and distributed by organized crime. The FBI also says one out of four 12-year-old girls will be raped in her lifetime unless something is done about pornography.
Why should Christians join the battle against pornography?
For me, the strongest biblical basis for attacking the problem is the story of the Good Samaritan. In that story, religious people avoided a battered person who had been left at the side of a road.
We now have more than one million children sexually abused every year in America. We have 300,000 children and young people being used to produce kiddie porn every year. We have 600,000 unwed teenage mothers. How can we allow the youth of America to be ravaged by the avalanche of pornography and walk by on the other side of the street?
I run into pastors, full-time Christian workers, and leaders in the church all over the country who are addicted to pornography. We desperately need the healing power of Christ in the church and the purifying and healing of our own lives so that we can be salt and light to the church as well as to society.
Through pornography, moral pollution has been flooding the bloodstream of America. It’s as if a sewage plant were pumping millions of gallons of sewage into my drinking water. If I boiled one bucket of water at a time so I could drink it, then I wouldn’t really care what’s happening to all the other people. I determined that I had to go after that sewage plant. I found out the law was on my side. Then I realized that God can use his people to play havoc with that sewage plant.
Can the battle against pornography be won?
Yes, and I am optimistic for several reasons. First, God’s promises and power are available to his people. God is using the problem of pornography to drive us to our knees, to drive us to face up to our own sin, and to drive us to one another.
We are seeing an explosion of concern across the country. Two years ago we found it difficult to get anybody interested. Now they’ve seen the impact of pornography in the sexual abuse of children. The news media are calling attention to the fallout of pornography and the sexual revolution.
I’m optimistic because I’m seeing whole cities changed. I’m seeing whole states affected. While all of those are sources of optimism for me, the size of the battle gives me caution. Seven thousand stores have removed pornography in the last couple of years. But the pornographers are putting it in new stores faster than we’re getting it out. I anticipate that the momentum will increase and the size of the team fighting against pornography will increase.
Is the National Coalition Against Pornography explicitly Christian?
Our mission is to unite the Christian community and all other concerned persons to combat and eliminate the destructive influences of obscenity, pornography, and indecency. We want to work with anybody who cares about the well-being of women, children, the quality of life in America, family values, and fidelity.
What God has used to bring us together is the slaughter of the young and of the women of our country through pornography. I believe we are a movement of God that is going to bring renewal and righteousness.
