In a small town like mine, it only took one person knowing one thing about your life for everyone to know that thing. And the thing people knew about me was that I was fatherless, even though my dad lived right down the street.

Despite this—or perhaps in some way because of it—I was driven to achieve, to make something of myself. My work ethic turned me into a great student, a standout athlete, and eventually a well-trained actor and model. This pursuit of “enough” was relentless, and before long, it landed me in Hollywood to pursue acting and modeling full-time.

Early in my career, I had an agent and was working with some regularity. But no amount of success could satisfy. After a few years in Hollywood, some women recruiting for the porn industry asked if I would be interested in doing a film.

For context, I was exposed to pornography at age 13. Having grown up without any example of healthy relationships between men and women, I quickly fell into consuming pornography and living a promiscuous lifestyle. Nine years later, when I was invited to enter the world I first encountered in magazines as a teenager, I had no good reason to refuse.

Photography by JerSean Golat for Christianity Today

That choice cost me more than I could have imagined. Soon after my first adult film, my mainstream agent stopped representing me. The sting of shattered dreams remained fresh when my mom learned about my first foray into pornography. I shudder to recall the humiliating conversation we had.

Despite my reservations about doing adult entertainment, I truly believed this was my only viable career path. Trapped in a downward spiral of shame, I allowed my initial bad choice to redefine my entire identity, convincing myself I was without options.

Six years later, I had starred in many award-winning films, and I’d even tried my hand at writing and directing porn. During that period, I pocketed millions of dollars. But no money, fame, or accolades could overcome the inferiority complex that stemmed from my father’s absence. If anything, my career success only amplified my anxiety and deepened my depression.

Early in 2013, I resolved to take my life. Before carrying it out, I wanted to hear someone confirm that I was as worthless and disgusting as I felt. So I walked into a bank to deposit a check from a porn film, hoping the teller would notice the memo on the check indicating where the money came from. On some level, I wanted the teller to gasp; it would give me permission to kill myself. It would seal my shame and self-loathing.

I also had not heard my real name uttered in over a year. In the porn industry, you typically choose a pseudonym to conceal your identity and suppress the shame associated with your line of work. So over the last six years, I’d deposited checks at ATMs or with mobile phone apps to avoid interacting with an actual person.

My Dreams Had Come True. But the Panic Attacks Remained.

Kyle Zunker

As I slid the check across the counter, I locked eyes with the teller and waited for a dismissive headshake, a judgmental under-the-breath muttering, or maybe, if I was lucky, an antagonistic remark made directly to my face. Instead, she said nothing until I was about to walk away. Then, as my eyes watered and I started shaking, she said, “Joshua, can I please help you? Joshua, are you okay?”

Her compassion pierced through my numbness, and my instinctive reaction was to run home, have a long cry, and call my mom. When my mom picked up the phone, she told me she loved me and I would always be her son. She begged me to leave the porn industry and come home. I moved back that very day.

Looking to make a fresh start, I got a job at a gym in Raleigh, North Carolina. For two years, I tried doing enough good to cover up my bad deeds to compensate for my feelings of worthlessness. I had great mentors and a community that cared about me as an individual. And even though my prior career in pornography surfaced before long—it was, after all, only an internet click away—I didn’t experience any rejection because of it.

One day, I met a beautiful, athletic, and incredibly smart but very reserved young lady whom I asked out on many dates. She turned me down at first but eventually agreed to go on a run with me. As I waited for her to arrive, I decided not to withhold my past from her. I told her that I was a former porn star and someone unwanted by his own father.

Her response changed my life. After pausing for what seemed like forever, she assured me that I was not defined by the worst thing I’d ever done—or by the greatest thing I would ever do. God, she told me, was the creator of heaven and earth and everyone on the earth—and he alone determines who you are.

She asked if I knew God. I told her I knew about God, but clearly I didn’t have the kind of personal relationship she enjoyed through Jesus. We walked and talked, and eventually she invited me to church.

I went along with her, believing I had no business there but also knowing I wanted to be wherever she was. On that day, I heard the gospel for the first time from an older Baptist pastor. Dressed in jeans and sporting tattoos on his arms, he shared his own imperfections, measuring them against the ultimate perfection of Jesus. He preached from 2 Samuel 9, where King David shows grace to a man named Mephibosheth, a grandson of Saul.

Mephibosheth, unable to walk after a childhood accident, wonders why the king would extend mercy to a “dead dog” like himself (v. 8). As I sat there, hearing about the grace of God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, I likewise wondered why God would show any favor to me, given all the wrongs I had done and how worthless I felt.

My Deconstruction Turned to Deconversion. But God Wasn’t Anxious.

Lindsay Holifield

Then the pastor read Hebrews 12:2, which says how Jesus “endured the cross, scorning its shame” for the sake of “the joy set before him.” Right away, I understood why Jesus had given his life: because he loved sinners like me. In that moment, I surrendered my life to Christ, letting the blood he shed on the cross wash over my shame. I stood up weeping, knowing I was now a son of my Father in heaven.

My story gets better. That incredible woman, Hope, has been my wife for nearly a decade, and we have four incredible sons. What a joyous reversal from the day I thought would be my last, when I remember writing down the reasons I no longer wanted to live. I knew I wanted to become a father (to make up for my own father’s absence) and a husband (who could give someone the kind of love my father never gave my mother). And I thought my porn career had disqualified me from ever fulfilling these roles. Yet God stood ready to do abundantly more than I could have imagined.

And he continues to use me for his glory. After years of discipleship and a theological education from Liberty University, I have preached hundreds of sermons; given talks at events, universities, and conferences; and appeared on major podcasts. Currently, I serve as director of operations for a nonprofit called Momentum, which helps people find purpose and heal from sexual brokenness.

My story is an example of the grace of God that is available to all, no matter what you have done or what pain you have experienced. Because of what Jesus did on the cross, you can experience the healing, wholeness, and purpose he offers to anyone who will surrender their life to him.

Joshua Broome is the author of 7 Lies That Will Ruin Your Life: What My Journey from Porn Star to Preacher Taught Me About the Truth That Sets Us Free.

The post I Made Millions as a Porn Star. It Nearly Cost Me Everything. appeared first on Christianity Today.

During a period of seven months in 1981, nine faculty members of Luther Rice College and Seminary—virtually the entire administration—left the school after a number of disagreements with its president and founder, Robert Witty (CT, Dec. 11, 1981, p. 49). The main issue was whether Witty was moving fast enough to bring academic integrity to the unaccredited school. The faculty members said he was not. Witty said he was. The school, in Jacksonville, Florida, is Southern Baptist in orientation, but is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. It offers off-campus degree courses.

When the blowup occurred, Witty had already announced that he would be stepping aside. Last spring a new president took over, and today Luther Rice is moving ahead quickly.

The new president is Gene Williams, who received a Th.D. in homiletics in 1955 from New Orleans Baptist Seminary. Williams has been a Southern Baptist evangelist who led 770 revivals, and he taught evangelism at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist Seminary from 1972 through 1976. Williams was hired because of his wide contacts, conservative theology, evangelism experience, commitment to academic excellence, and noninvolvement in Southern Baptist wrangles. “Some of the regents asked me if I would be involved in denominational politics,” Williams recalls. “I said, ‘No.’ They said, ‘Good.’ ” Williams took over last May. Witty, who started the school in 1962, was named chancellor, with no administrative duties.

One of the new president’s first tasks was to find new professors. Past practice had been, with few exceptions, to hire Rice alumni. Williams has hired five new men with doctorates from accredited institutions, and is looking for more. Among the five is the new dean of undergraduate studies, Nevin S. Alwine (Ed. D., University of Northern Colorado), who came from Liberty Baptist Seminary. Dean of graduate studies Harold McNabb (Ed.D., New Orleans Seminary), a former classmate of Williams, was among the teachers who stayed after the 1981 walkout.

Williams says two of the nine who left now want to return, but cannot be accepted unless they are actively working on an accredited doctorate. Faculty members without accredited doctorates who did not leave and were inherited by Williams are also being required to pursue one.

After less than a year as president, Williams can point to seven of ten full-time teaching faculty who now have accredited doctorates. Williams doesn’t intend to stop until every faculty member has an earned, respected doctorate.

Williams also brought in a professional librarian, registrar, and director of admissions. Next to be hired is a director of development. Williams wants to increase gifts (tuition, at $40 an hour, does not meet the current million-dollar annual budget) and build a strong endowment.

Admission procedures have also been tightened. A new student may begin work on the basis of a preliminary application, as is true in many schools, but cannot be formally admitted until credits are provided from an acceptable school. The admission of students without enough credits for college work was a sore point under Witty’s administration.

The school is looking toward eventual accreditation by the Assocation of Theological Schools (ATS), the American Association of Bible Colleges, and the regional secular accrediting body, the Southern Association. ATS, the only recognized agency for accrediting theological education, is at the top of the list. Williams says, “We have a long way yet to go. We need to make more progress with our faculty, library, endowment, and work with external [nonresident] students.”

Luther Rice claims an enrollment of 1,900, and all but 200 are off campus, including 400 taking Luther Rice courses in 62 foreign countries. The resident enrollment is about twice that of last year. Luther Rice faculty member Paul Enns, whom Williams calls “our foremost scholar” [author of commentaries on Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, and at present preparing the Ezekiel volume in the Zondervan Bible Study Commentary series], thinks the imbalance between resident and nonresident students is making accreditation difficult. “If we were only a resident school, we could soon complete the requirements. The ATS can’t compare our external program with anything.” Enns is assistant dean of graduate studies and professor of Bible. He was one of the faculty who stayed on during the troubles of 1981.

The school wants to increase “interfaces” with nonresident students. At present, communication is by correspondence, telephone, and tape cassettes, with faculty members holding periodic tutorials in large cities. Williams thinks videocassettes will help, especially in grading sermon delivery.

Wayne Upton, director of international studies and another New Orleans graduate, says the foreign outreach has grown from students in 16 countries to 62 in six years. “We graduated 5 in 1976 and 64 in 1982.” Most foreign students, he says, are “key pastors in their areas, who attended only Bible schools and cannot leave to attend accredited schools in their own countries.” Overseas enrollment includes a number of U.S. missionaries who are upgrading their education to satisfy new laws in nations where they serve.

The typical Luther Rice student in the U.S., according to Dean McNabb, is “age 35 with a wife, three kids, and a pastorate. He lives too far to commute and can’t resign to attend a regular Bible college or seminary. Because of this we are not in competition with standard seminaries.”

The highest Luther Rice degree now offered is the D.Min., with about 100 enrolled. The M.Div. (84 hours) and the M.M. (40 hours) are also offered on the graduate level with the B.A. or equivalent required for admission. A B.A. in Biblical Studies (120 hours) is provided. Special modules for those with degrees are available in preaching, education, counseling, missions, music, evangelism, church growth, biblical theology, and biblical languages. The school stopped offering Th.D. and Ph.D. degrees several years ago; that practice brought charges that the school was a degree mill.

JAMES HEFLEY

Grady Lee Nutt, 47, ordained Southern Baptist minister known to millions as the cornpone “prime minister of humor” on the television show “Hee Haw”; November 23, in Cullman, Alabama, in a plane crash.

Nikolai Khrapov, 68, outspoken Russian Baptist evangelist who spent almost 26 years in Soviet prisons for his religious activities; in November at Mangyshlakskaya Prison, USSR, of a heart attack.

William Childs Robinson, 85, professor emeritus of Columbia Theological Seminary, author of seven books and numerous articles; November 23, of natural causes.

William Murray Rebuts Atheist Mother’S Stand

An atheist loves his fellowman instead of a God.… He seeks to know himself and his fellowman rather than to know God. An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.… He believes that we cannot rely on God, channel action into prayer, or hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter.…

(Taken from a statement written by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, included in a petition that was among the initial legal steps taken to have prayer removed from the public schools.)

At age 63, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, one of Christianity’s most passionate antagonists, is as active as ever. In a New Orleans, Louisiana, district court, she is fighting to have the slogan “In God We Trust” removed from U.S. currency. She is advocating the removal of all references to Christianity from textbooks in a Colorado school district. In this case, she has even challenged statements discouraging drug abuse, claiming they spring from Christian doctrine. The list goes on.

One of O’Hair’s sweetest moments came when the Supreme Court decided in 1963 to ban mandatory prayer from public schools. The plaintiff of record in that landmark case was O’Hair’s son, William J. Murray III, who was only 14 when the court proceedings began.

O’Hair has not changed much since 1963. But her son has.

He became a Christian in 1980, culminating a three-year search for God, which was triggered by a growing awareness of the emptiness of the atheism he had embraced since childhood.

In his first book, My Life Without God (Thomas Nelson, 1982), Murray candidly describes life with his mother, recounts the events surrounding the 1963 high court decision, and tells the story of his journey through atheism. Murray, 36, spares few of the details of his tragic youth. He remembers his mother attacking his grandfather (her father) with a butcher knife, and cursing God during a lightning storm, daring God to strike her dead. Murray remembers his mother smashing his precious collection of model airplanes. He describes his involvement in the historic court case in terms of his constant efforts to gain his mother’s approval, and in terms of his mother’s reckless rage.

“Sometimes I view my mother not as an atheist,” Murray said, “but as someone who’s having an argument with God.” In his book, he briefly addresses the little he knows of his mother’s own tragic youth. Murray remembers that his mother was never able to hold a job because of her volatile personality and radically Communist political persuasions. After being denied citizenship by the Soviet Union, according to Murray, O’Hair sought revenge, and the first thing she found was the issue of prayer in public schools. “I honestly believe,” said Murray, “that prayer was removed from public schools because the Soviet Union rejected my mother.”

Anticipating legal action by his mother, Murray has spent hundreds of hours videotaping statements testifying to the book’s accuracy. Murray was aided by O’Hair’s brother, who is also leaning away from atheism. The author boldly proclaims his is “the most documented autobiography in the history of literature.”

His efforts were wrought with great personal struggle. After all, Madalyn O’Hair was and is his mother. “But,” Murray said, “my feelings were not as important as the truth about how and why prayer was taken out of schools. Also, I wanted people to understand what happens inside an atheist home.”

In My Life Without God, Murray is equally candid about his own past, including his dealings in drugs and alcohol, his broken marriages, and an extramarital affair. In a telephone interview, Murray said the major criticism of his book, which has sold more than 55,000 copies, is that it is “too honest.” Murray said, “The book is blatantly honest because I’ve read too many watered-down Christian testimonies and I want people to know what living in sin is really like.” Murray adds, “I believe the book offers hope for those who can identify with my struggle.”

In another effort to help others, Murray has established the William J. Murray Faith Foundation, a referral service based in Dallas, Texas. His organization receives calls and letters and seeks to provide counseling for people with spiritual needs, especially those who have atheistic backgrounds.

As for Madalyn O’Hair: “I pray daily for her deliverance,” Murray said. He continues to write to her, seeking to communicate his faith. But so far, there has been no response.

RANDALL FRAME

North American Scene

The Department of Health and Human Services has separated abortion activities from all family-planning services financed by the federal government. According to the Public Health Service Act, no federal funds may be used for “programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” The new guidelines also prohibit family-planning and abortion clinics from sharing office space, personnel, publications, stationery, and medical equipment or supplies.

Everett Sileven, a Nebraska pastor and the director of the Faith Christian School, is back in jail. Sileven, who refuses to have teachers at his school certified by the state, had been released to ask the legislature to consider changing the law on teacher certification for church schools. But after a special session in November ended without addressing the issue, Sileven returned to jail to complete a four-month sentence.

Pornographic materials have begun to disappear from the newsracks of stores in Mesa, Arizona. Many local shopkeepers have voluntarily removed the materials from their establishments at the urging of the Mesa Decency Coalition, which conducted a “public awareness” campaign. According to an article in the National Decency Reporter, the coalition takes no credit for removal of the magazines, but is interested only in making the community aware of the problems presented by pornography. Revco, Smitty’s, Scaggs Drugs, Thrifty Drugs, and two of Mesa’s three Safeway stores were among the businesses to discontinue pornographic magazines.

Several national churches have jointly filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Sun Myung Moon, the Korean-born leader of the Unification Church. Moon is seeking the reversal of a court decision in which he was found guilty on charges involving his alleged personal use of church money. Among church organizations filing the brief were the National Council of Churches, the United Presbyterian Church, the American Baptist Churches, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. According to a press release of the Unification Church, other groups supporting Moon included the American Civil Liberties Union and the Christian Legal Society. In the document, friends stress that their actions were motivated not by “sympathy for the defendant,” but by concern for religious liberty.

Sixteen conservative evangelical Lutheran pastors have strongly criticized the recent statement of the Minnesota Council of Churches supporting homosexuals. David A. Barnhart, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church of Minnehaha Falls, said the statement violates everything he understands the Bible to say about homosexuality. “There is a definite, organized movement here,” Barnhart said. “And it has an agenda. It includes the ordination of homosexuals into the ministry. And it would involve marriage of persons of the same gender.”

The 40-member Episcopal church executive council has denounced a planned video arcade game called “Custer’s Revenge,” which depicts a naked male ravishing an Indian woman. The council passed a resolution condemning the game as “prurient, lascivious and pornographic.”

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops have voiced support for expanded dialogues with women and for a study aimed at locating historical precedents for the ordination of female deacons. Bishop Michael F. McAuliffe, chairman of an ad hoc committee on the role of women in society and the church, told his colleagues at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops that “there are persuasive, convincing reasons for actions at this time.”

Spencer W. Kimball, president of the Mormon Church, has announced a reorganization in the church’s First Presidency, the church’s highest governing body. The announcement came after the death of N. Eldon Tanner, a counselor to four church presidents. A church spokesman said the 87-year-old Kimball named Marion G. Romney first counselor and Gordon B. Hinckley second counselor in the three-member body.

Cartoon violence increased last spring by 20 percent to a level of 36 violent acts per hour, according to the National Coalition on Television Violence. In a recent newsletter, the coalition noted that 60 percent of the violent Saturday-morning programs are sponsored by five companies—General Mills, McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, General Foods, and Mattel Toys.

An internationally known theologian at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has come under fire from Arkansas Baptists who are demanding that he be dismissed. Dale Moody, a 67-year-old senior professor of theology, teaches that it is possible for Christians to lose their salvation, a position at variance with that held by many Southern Baptists. Representatives of the seminary say Moody can be dismissed only by a two-thirds vote of the trustees at their annual meeting in April. Moody received a Ph.D. from Oxford University and has studied with such theological heavyweights as Emil Brunner and Karl Barth.

The Thompson Chain Reference Bible, New International Version, will be released in the fall of 1983. The publication will result from a joint effort of the B. B. Kirkbride Bible Company, publishers of the Thompson Chain Reference Bible, and Zondervan Bible Publishers, which produced the bestselling New International Version.

New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean has vetoed a bill requiring New Jersey public schools to provide a mandatory moment of silence at the beginning of each school day. Kean said that public school teachers in New Jersey have the right to order a moment of silence as part of ordinary classroom procedures and that he preferred to “leave it to the discretion of … teachers to decide if students need time for contemplation.…”

Personalia

George G. Hunter III has been appointed dean of the E. Stanley Jones School of Evangelism and World Missions, scheduled to open this fall. Hunter serves on the United Methodist Board of Discipleship as assistant general secretary for evangelism.

After serving for 17 years as secretary for the Evangelical Missionary Alliance in Britain, Ernest Oliver has retired. Oliver received a standing ovation at the end of EMA’S annual conference.

World Vision International has named German missionary Fritz Urschitz the recipient of the third annual Robert W. Pierce Award for Christian Service. The award recognized Urschitz’s pioneer work among the stone-age Niksek people in Papua New Guinea. Urschitz has served for 19 years as a missionary from the Liebenzell Mission of Germany. He will receive $20,000 and a commemorative medallion.

David G. Schmiel has accepted appointment as president of Concordia College in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Schmiel has been dean of instruction at Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis for almost two years. Concordia College is one of 16 colleges and seminaries owned and operated by The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Floyd Thatcher has announced his retirement as vice-president, editorial director for Word Books in Waco, Texas. Thatcher, who spent 34 years in religious publishing, will still serve part-time as Word’s editor-in-chief.

Internationally known writer, lecturer, broadcaster, and one-time Communist party member Malcolm Muggeridge, has been received into the Roman Catholic Church at the age of 79. Muggeridge’s journey from atheism to Christianity has been widely publicized, but until now, he has always refused to identify himself with any particular denomination, and has never gone to church. Now he plans to attend Mass every Sunday.

The post Luther Rice: Upgrading a Seminary and Hoping to Be Accredited appeared first on Christianity Today.

But while the stock analyses of black rage were assembled like Fords on a production line, one columnist’s query stood out.

His simple question: Where is the white outrage? As black leaders were saying, Stop destroying your community; you’re only hurting yourselves, why were white leaders not saying they were committed to seek justice, that they shared the moral outrage at the many less-publicized miscarriages of justice against racial minorities in the U.S.?

Where is the white outrage, indeed?

Satanic Indifference

If a violent response to the Rodney King verdict was the sin of the largely black community of South-Central L.A., perhaps indifference to morally evil social conditions and racial discrimination was, and continues to be, the sin of white America—including Bible-believing, church-going white Christians.

In his perceptive study of the Hebrew prophets, Abraham Joshua Heschel noted that the great contribution of those men who were moved by the mind of God was to declare the evil of indifference. “The wrath of God is a lamentation,” wrote Heschel. “All prophecy is one great exclamation; God is not indifferent to evil! He is always concerned, He is personally affected by what man does to man.… This is one of the meanings of the anger of God: the end of indifference!”

To be holy as God is holy is to be kindled by his passionate concern for the well-being of the creatures he has made, the children he has ransomed. Anger, outrage, and wrath are fearful and potentially destructive emotions. And Christians have wisely been suspicious of them. For anger, when it becomes a ruling emotion, continuously stoked by spite, recklessness, and tenacious grudges, is Satanic. But anger is not in itself sinful. And when, like God’s purposeful wrath, it springs from deep concern for others, it becomes the fuel that energizes constructive activity in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Patience is a Christian virtue, but shoulder-shrugging acquiescence to the suffering of others is surely a vice.

Our suffering cities will not be healed by social programs alone. Government money and good intentions may help or hurt. In the past, they have done both. Our fractured race relations will not be mended by programs imposed from the top, for programs do not motivate. And sufficient motivation to break free of our inertia and do the constructive thing is what we white American Christians seem to lack.

We may feel we lack the physical resources to remedy completely the poverty that results from racism and classism. But we should take a cue from the Christians of all ethnicities who joined their fellow citizens in the spontaneous broom brigades to clean up South Central L.A. Not all of them lived in the immediate area; not all had friends there. But stirred by the passion of the time, they spent themselves.

We may feel we lack the ability to change significantly the complexion of many of our churches as long as our home communities are ethnically monochrome. But the churches can provide a real opportunity to see the full range of God’s richly hued palette. Volunteers can be recruited simply to hold “crack babies,” to help rehab deteriorating housing, or to visit and shop for urban seniors—to name a few activities that will put faces and names on the marginalized. The problem is not opportunity, but inertia.

Passion. Fire in the soul. Burning concern. Compassion. This is the stuff from which change springs. Acquiescence and resignation may lie on the path of the Buddha. But passionate concern for the well-being of others is an indispensable element of what translator Clarence Jordan called “the Jesus movement”—the kingdom of God. And passion is the substance in which the poor in spirit can be rich.

The post The Church After Rodney King appeared first on Christianity Today.