LIZ HOGARTH examines the prevalence of pornography on the internet and the temptation net porn can be for those in ministry.

A report by the Australia Institute, published earlier this year, suggested that 24 per cent of boys and seven per cent of girls ‘accidentally’ encounter sex sites on the Internet every week. What the report did not highlight was that much of the temptation to visit dubious sites comes unasked. One click on the link to a website on an unsolicited email can take the receiver to a pornographic site.

Some experts estimate that more than 40 million emails are produced each day, of which more than one-third are ‘spam’ – and most of which are touting sex sites. Rogue emails cost the big free email services such as Excite, Yahoo! and Hotmail huge amounts in network fees.

Stanley Leong, Technology Manager for the Secretariat of the Diocese of Sydney, says he receives an increasing number of queries from church workers and ministers on how to deal with unwanted emails from pornographers. The worst offender is the free email service, Hotmail.com.

“A lot of people use Hotmail because it is convenient and free,” says Mr Leong. “But it does attract a lot of pop up ads of a pornographic nature, and unpleasant emails. One of the most common concerns from church workers is that someone passing their desk might think they were looking for porn, when in fact they were just innocently accessing their emails.”

To counter this problem he suggests using an alternative free email service that is known to have fewer problems, such as Telstra, Yahoo! or mail.com.

Looking deeper, however, it is not just the nuisance value of these emails and adverts that worries many Christians; it is the temptation they pose. Evidence already exists that many Christians around the world are addicted to Internet pornography.

A recent pilot survey from a three-year research project into the production and consumption of pornography by the University of Sydney revealed that consumers cover a wide range of people, including a significant number of Anglicans.

According to the National Campaign to Stop Pornography (NCSP), in the United States, some Christians, and more particularly ministers and church leaders, become addicted to Internet pornography sites after visiting them accidentally or because they wanted to see what members of their flock were struggling with.

Another risk, which particularly applies to ministers, is that ‘friends’ may get a kick out of putting a Christian minister on the email contact list for a pornographic website. If the clergyman or woman has a high enough profile, it doesn’t even have to be anyone they know. “Be vigilant,” says Mr Leong. “Your personal email address is valuable. Identity fraud is rife on the Internet.”

According to the NCSP, church leaders and ministers are especially vulnerable to Internet pornography because they are often isolated and under pressure. “The pastor really feels that he doesn’t have a whole lot of meaningful relationships because of the expectation that he is going to be serving the needs of everyone else,” claims the NCSP.

“Church members all too often put their pastor on a pedestal as the perfect example of a godly man. When you are only on stage being applauded, you are not really seen for who you are.”

Bishop Peter Tasker of Sydney’s Georges River region confirms that loneliness and stress can be a problem for clergy. “We are often isolated and sometimes we isolate ourselves,” he says. “When ministers are emotionally drained, often as the result of one to one ministry, they are most open to temptation.”
He also confirms that the Sydney Diocese has come across cases of church workers addicted to Internet vice. “We need to face reality and acknowledge that this pressure is there,” he says. “Even though we are forgiven in Christ, the temptation is still there.”

So what more can ministers and lay people do to protect themselves from the trials and temptations of the World Wide Web? One obvious answer is to invest in devices that filter out dubious material. However, programs such as Net Nanny are often expensive, a turn-off for many cash-strapped church workers, and designed to protect children rather than adults. “As an adult if you want to get round a filtering programme like Net Nanny, you can,” says Mr Leong, “because you are the one who knows the pass word.”

Ben Beilharz, 23, who with wife Karen publishes online magazine ‘Hippocampus Extensions’, suggests getting a friend to set up the filtering program and retain the password.

Mr Beilharz, currently a ministry trainee at Wollongong University, also believes that filters, which are built into some search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and AltaVista, and email programs such as Outlook Express, provide protection in blocking unhealthy emails and websites.

Many of them also, he says, offer a ‘preferences’ section, allowing the user to upgrade their level of protection and select certain words they don’t want to see. “But it cannot offer complete protection,” he says. “There are still big problems with spam or randomly generated emails.”

There can be little doubt that pornographers are becoming more and more clever at circumventing guards. For instance, one can install a filter that blocks the word ‘sex’ and they return with a site labelled ‘s/e/x/’. “Some pornography sites have software that tells search engines who they are,” says Ben. “But many don’t. So a lot does depend on how upfront they are.”

Some Christians, including Bishop Tasker, suggest that the only way forward is accountability. He believes that it is particularly important for men to try to be in small accountability groups if at all tempted by Internet pornography.

“I’ll go out on a limb here and say that I think this is an issue that is different for males and females,” he says. “Because of that, I think, it is harder for either to understand the other’s reaction to it.” Having said that, he does feels that women should make a serious effort to talk to the men in their lives, particularly husbands and boyfriends, about the issue.

One accountability idea that has had some success in the United States is an innovative computer program, x3watch, pioneered by California pastors Mike Foster and Craig Gross. It is set up to tell a nominated friend when a user strays onto a dubious site. Every 30 days a trusted friend, who has agreed to help the user with their addiction to Internet pornography, receives an email showing the questionable sites visited that month.

The accountability partner can be axed or changed, but the user cannot stop the program sending the partner an email telling them they have been discarded. The hope is that, one way or another, someone is going to ask some difficult questions about those lonely hours on the computer, thereby helping to break the addiction or prevent it gaining a strong foothold.

Having the courage to ask awkward questions is one thing Bishop Tasker thinks is of prime importance in the growing battle against the all-pervasive power of Internet pornography.

“While a secret like that is still in the darkness it is insidious, and [it becomes] a downward spiral, and those concerned often don’t know how to break free of it,” he comments. “The saddest thing is that when people are found out they often say they wish they had been found out, and stopped, earlier.”