Baptist Pastor Jay Dennis of the Church of the Mall in Lakeland, Florida, never thought he’d find himself taking sexual addiction classes, he told The Daily Beast. But staff members were approaching him with concerns about pornography in the church: wives who’d caught their husbands, moms worried about their sons. He knew it would be an awkward conversation, taking on pornography as a mission, and he knew he’d face critics who would tell him the church is no place to deal with sexual issues, he said. “But my heart believed this is the very place to deal with it.”
So Dennis launched a glossy website, Join 1 Million Men, where he asks men around the world to add their first names to a wall, pledging to say goodbye to smut. There’s an iPhone app with related scripture, tips, and tools. Videos about how to “destroy your porn stashes.” Testimonials from men who’ve found themselves in the clutches of Satan’s ubiquitous tools.
The most reluctant recipients of his message, he says, are other pastors. They tell Dennis they’re convinced the church just isn’t the right place to talk about sex in general, or they say it’s not necessary—a recent survey found that pastors believe less than 10 percent of Christians view pornography on a regular basis. But Dennis says he thinks there’s another reason he can’t get other churches to get involved with the pledge: some of those pastors are porn junkies, too.“There are a lot of pastors struggling with it personally,” he said.
The article also mentions trying to enforce an act that bans pornography from military bases and ships.
As virtuous of an effort as this may be, when I look at his picture in the article, it’s hard to take a older man with obvious bleached hair and thick rimmed hipster glasses seriously. It’s like he’s trying too hard to be relevant. But then again, I’ve noticed a lot of pastors trying this look as of late.
