Purity of pastors questioned

Christian authors cite studies that many watch porn

Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Ted Haggard, an internationally known Christian pastor, sucker-punched a startled world with his recent confession of "sexual immorality."

But are you so sure about your own pastor?

"A number of studies show as many as 20 to 30 percent of pastors are looking at pornography on a regular basis - and they're teaching us to be pure, so it's a frightening statistic," said Fred Stoeker, an Iowa business consultant and Christian author who writes about the pitfalls of sexuality in today's world.

Long before televangelists Jimmy Swaggert stumbled with a prostitute and Jim Bakker cavorted with a church secretary, people have been fascinated by pastoral peccadillos.

Stoeker, along with Stephen Arterburn, co-authored the best-selling Every Man's Battle series, which tackles the struggle for sexual purity among men, especially Christians.

The two authors talked in separate interviews last week about Haggard, a husband and father of five.

Haggard admitted to buying drugs and to "sexual immorality" involving a male prostitute from Denver. He was fired as senior pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, which he founded in 1985, and quit as head of the National Association of Evangelicals.

From Internet pornography to racy halftime shows, the modern world sets sexual traps that can lure men - even church-going and church-leading men - into marital infidelity, pornography, pedophilia and sex addiction, the authors contend.

"Studies show over one-third of pastors have been to Internet porn sites over the past 90 days, and that's extremely high statistically, given that it's a behavior that most are preaching against on Sunday morning," said Arterburn, who is founder of New Life Ministries of Laguna Beach, Calif., a faith-based broadcast, counseling and treatment ministry.

It has no connection with Haggard's church.

Haggard's scandal may be the best known but is hardly the only one. Consider what happened just a week before, at a church Arterburn declines to name:

During the Sunday sermon, the pastor turned on his PowerPoint screen to highlight scripture notes for his congregation.

"But the PowerPoint notes didn't come up - it was the most disgusting picture from his pornography collection," Arterburn said.

Elders removed the pastor immediately, and he is being counseled now by Arterburn's ministry.

Arterburn also cites an elder in a prominent national ministry who was removed for molesting kids.

In suburban Denver, a youth pastor last week admitted to sexual contact with a 16-year-old, according to police. All told, "You can't assume church is a safe place."

But why not? For one thing, churches by their nature encourage relationships and levels of intimacy that can drift into infidelity.

As for secret sexual problems, like pornography, Stoeker blames biology, not beliefs.

Whether heterosexual or homosexual, Stoeker contends, males are drawn by visual stimulation and a sexualized society, including bombardment from the Internet, billboards, magazines, TV sit-coms and suggestive fashions. He notes that women's sexual problems are rising, too.

"Men are men, and whether they're Christian or not they're built the same way and their eyes are drawn to the same sensuality," he said.

Using a drug analogy, Stoeker said that illicit sexual habits are tougher to break than even cocaine and alcohol addictions because "it's said the eye is the perfect delivery system for getting loads of pleasure chemicals to the brain. In that sense, Christian men don't have any more defenses in their purity than non-Christians. And the church is silent on how to defend themselves."

But churches may be waking up. The Rev. H.B. London, a member of Haggard's Christian counseling team and a vice president at Focus on the Family, said that the organization has set up a toll-free telephone counseling line for pastors and their families to discuss stresses of their jobs, and a number of the calls involve pornography: "Not a week goes by we don't deal with calls related to this particular addiction," London said.

Stoeker, a sociologist by training, has written a book, Tactics, which gives suggestion on how to get out of the sexual addiction trap. He said that overwork and drifting away from one's support systems - not just family, but trusted male friends - can lead to a fall. Prayer and daily worship are also antidotes, he said.

Arterburn, whose latest book is The Secrets Men Keep, discovered first hand the power of being able to hide a secret when he met Ted Haggard on a book tour last year.

"I had this overriding feeling he was so normal," Arterburn said. "It shows you anybody can be involved with anything."

Tips from two authors

Fred Stoeker

• Age: 50

• Home: Des Moines, Iowa

• Latest Book: Tactics (Waterbrook Press/Random House), which discusses how men can win the battle to stay sexually pure in today's sexualized society.

• Advice for Ted Haggard: "Don't buy into the idea you can't be healed. Your darkness can be hit by the spotlight that is Jesus Christ."

• Advice for churches: "Use this opportunity to look into your own hearts. If you haven't dealt with your own sexual impurity, get in line."

Stephen Arterburn

• Age: 53

• Home: Laguna Beach, Calif.

• Latest Book: The Secrets Men Keep (Integrity), which explores the ways men keep secrets out of fear of embarrass-ment, shame, guilt or loss of respect.

• Advice for Ted Haggard: "Know you're not struggling alone. Get some men alongside you who aren't just your spiritual overseers but your brothers."

• Advice for churches: "It's very important churches address these issues openly. Every Man's Battle workshops (based on Arterburn's book of that title) and other counseling help is available."