Posted on 06/30/2006 12:15:26 PM PDT by presidio9
A Christian missionary group making the rounds at US adult entertainment conventions hands out Bibles with "Jesus loves porn stars" stamped on their covers.
Jesus loves porn stars just as much as he does pastors and soccer moms, XXXchurch contends.
The outreach team from XXXchurch, calling itself a "porn ministry," distributes paperback New Testaments with a gaudy purple-and-yellow cover reading: "Jesus loves porn stars."
Its website, billed as the number-one Christian porn site, includes downloadable Bible studies and an array of "prayer software," including "accountability programs" designed to help users resist pornographic temptation.
The Bible's text, in everyday conversational English, includes this introduction from XXXchurch:
"Jesus loves pornographers as much as he loves pastors, soccer moms, liars, thieves and prostitutes. We're all just people who need God to save us from the mess we're in, and lead us to a better way."
Pornography brings in more revenue in the US than all of professional football, baseball and basketball franchises combined, according to the conservative research group Family Safe Media.
XXXchurch has taken its message on the road for "porn Sundays," a traveling seminar "to bring healing and recovery to those struggling with pornography."
The group estimates that over half of Christian ministers use pornography regularly, and are determined to expose "America's dirty little secret." It is not made explicitly clear how XXXchurch arrived at this number.
Its pastor, J.R. Mahon, and founding pastor Craig Gross, have published a book titled "Starving Jesus" outlining their unorthodox missionary views. The cover features a cartoon image of an emaciated Jesus with blinking bug eyes dragging a cross.
Their mission: to change church culture inside out.
"We're sick of pastors with planes, pastors with record deals, pastors with bodyguards," writes Mahon. "Give to the poor, evangelize on a city street, bring the hooker to church, just get off your butt and do something."
At the recent Los Angeles Erotica convention, Mahon spent three days spreading his message. One convention visitor, armed with a camera for snapshots of favorite pornographic actresses, was perplexed by the pastors' gift of a pocket-sized Bible.
"It's the real deal, no naked chicks in there, just the word of the lord," said Mahon. "Well, I don't really read, but thanks," the conventioneer replied before rushing off to collect autographs.
"We're not here to tell people they're going to hell," said Mahon. "We just want people to know that we dig God and we want them to dig him too."
But some believe there are better ways to attract potential converts.
"Christ would never compromise or stoop to their level. Mary came to him, remember? He didn't go to the whore house using words like sex and porn," said a typical entry in the hate mail section of the XXXchurch website.
"It's nothing but a gimmick to you, an excuse to mingle with the perverts. You talk more about porn than you do Jesus Christ," it said.
Mahon admits his ministry has received mixed reactions in the Christian community. "When we first started this thing four years ago, some people looked at us and thought we were working for the devil," Mahon said.
The young ministers also had trouble finding a publisher for their porn-fighting Bible. The American Bible Society, one of the oldest Bible publishers in the US, refused to print it.
"Out of a sense of propriety, ABS felt that the wording 'Jesus Loves Porn Stars' was misleading and inappropriate for a New Testament cover," the company said in April.
Despite flaps over its methods, XXXchurch continues to make the rounds of porn conventions and congregations nationwide in its "porn mobile" -- a black, customized SUV splattered with an eyebrow raising logo.
"These are the perfect places to find people to love God," said Mahon. "If Jesus was here today, he'd go to the porn shows."
Soccer moms? Well, that's pushing it.
Trench fighting can get rough and dirty, having shock troops to do the work, where the work is needed is a good thing.
Well, yes, Jesus loves porn stars. He loves the sinner, but hates the sin. "Go and sin no more."
But I suspect they don't teach that part.
True, and he hates what they do.
Freedom of speach, yes, but what do we accomplish by putting a religious face on Porn? I wonder if this made the Al Jeezera news too? This is what they will show the muslim world as American culture.
Eleven long haired friends of Jesus in a chartreusse microbus.
FYI
The idea of putting those words on a bible just don't fit. Thats what I was trying to say.
Kidding! C'mon! It's a joke!
Christ loves us - and hates our sins. If we hang onto our sins then we will die in them.
Christ came into the world to save Porn stars - as well as Pol Pot and Nancy Pelosi - but mouthing obscene nonsense like "Jesus loves me - so I can carry on sinning!" throws the torture of the crucifixion back in His face.
"Convoy", right?
LOL
What a pharisee! You make this phony accusation against this guy that is false. Did you somehow not read this "We're all just people who need God to save us from the mess we're in, and lead us to a better way." or were you too quick picking up your rocks to stone this guy with? Clearly this guys preaches that they need to be "saved from the mess they are in" and "go a better way".
The twelve pornostles? </ducking>
I think that in today's modern world there are extreme pressures on people that did not exist even 50 years ago.
In the case of porn I think that has gotten to be a bigger problem because of the internet. Today you have many millions of people more potentially exposed to porn than before the internet. And even young people and kids, something really should be done about it and the faster the better.
In the last 40 years the Left has been tremendously successful in tearing down at Christian principles and values through the various media industries such as movies, TV, music, news print, magazines, etc.
It has gotten so bad that the Left almost exclusively owns the battlefield, and thus is virtually the only American cultural heritage currently available, as they wipe morals and ethics nearly out of learned human experience for the new generations. That is truely a frightening thing when you stop to consider it.
So what is needed, is to fight back and if that means we have to resort to unusual methods then so be it. And when fighting the left on the ground they have won then the methods can be expected to be unusual because they are freaks.
This reminds me of a radio station on the internet I came across recently called CMradio.net that plays "Loud Christian music on the EDGE".
I was listening to it and I asked my wife what she thought of it and she said it sounds like heavy metal stuff. She was right, it's very loud and crazy sounding but the music actually contains Christian messages. You would never believe it when you first hear it though.
I told my wife I think it is great because the Left has taken near total control of the music that is available to young people and they have effectively stolen away our own youth right from under our noses and we are going to get our kids back, we are taking back our country, we are taking back our kids and we are taking back our cultural heritage.
And if that means "Loud Christian music on the EDGE" or the "xxxChurch" then I say so be it. We have to at least try. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to all of humanity because America is the World Leader. You travel the world and you can see many countries are copying America.
Kinda like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." : )
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.