On Porn and Religion, Part 1

Today we hope to open a discussion about porn and religion.  (PornHelp neither endorses nor opposes any religious doctrine - see our statement here).  This is a huge topic.  Many of its facets exceed the scope of our learning and insight.  So, we’re going to throw some thoughts out there and ask our readers to weigh in.  Hopefully, you all will.

We resolved to try and tackle this topic after tweeting an opinion piece from a Minneapolis newspaper which makes impassioned and overtly religious arguments about the dangers of pornography use.  We shared the piece because it appeared in a large-circulation publication in a major American metro area, and because the author spoke about his firsthand experience counseling young men struggling with problematic pornography use.  Whether or not our readers shared the author’s religious sensibilities, we thought his piece made a worthwhile contribution to the public discussion.

Soon after we tweeted the piece, we became aware of criticism of that same article by skeptics of pornography addiction.  What struck us about these criticisms was that they pointed, among other things, to the author’s religious bona fides as evidence of his lack of credibility.  We’ve seen this before.  Some critics dismiss concerns about porn’s impact on individuals and society at large as “moral panic”.  They tend to discount individuals’ reports of problem porn use as largely driven by religion-induced shame.   And, they count the pornography counseling efforts of faith leaders like the author in the piece we shared as misguided, and potentially harmful to their parishioners insofar as religious beliefs may lead them to diagnose porn use problems where none exist.

These objections raise some issues we find interesting, including the role religion does play, and ought to play, in the public discussion of pornography, how religion influences pornography use and feelings about its use, and the considerations in addressing problem pornography use through a religion-inspired lens.

Like we said, all really huge topics.  So, we’re going to try to tackle this in bite-sized chunks. 

Today, we start by offering up some basic statistics.  These figures show (perhaps unsurprisingly) that religion and pornography both play a large role in American public and private life.  (For the time being, we limit our discussion to pornography use and religion in America, because most research on the topic has studied U.S. porn users).  They also lead to some baseline conclusions that we invite others to discuss and expand upon in the comments section.

Some statistics about religion in American life

According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2014, approximately 77% of the U.S. population identified itself as religiously affiliated, with the vast majority (70.6% of the total U.S. population) identifying as Christian (including Catholic), and the remainder consisting of small minorities of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and various other religions. 

Among the 23% of non-religiously affiliated Americans, the bulk (15.8% of the U.S. population) were noncommittal about identifying with an organized religions (though roughly half of those considered themselves religious, but merely unaffiliated), while the remainder were evenly split between self-identified agnostics and atheists.

Religion occupies a “very important” place in the life of just over half of all Americans.  A large majority of Americans considers religion at least “somewhat important” in their lives.

Some statistics about pornography use in America

Pornography, defined broadly as material designed and used to stimulate sexual arousal and aid masturbation (which we equate to Potter Stewart’s “know it when I see it” standard for obscenity), is a fixture of American life, too.  

According to an exhaustive survey of American pornography viewing habits and attitudes released last year by the private polling firm Barna Group (available here), 33% of all Americans, male and female, seek out porn at least monthly, 20% of all Americans seek it out at least weekly, and 6% of all Americans seek it out daily.  Men comprise the greater portion of porn users.  11% of Americans males 13 and over (that’s roughly 12 million male teens and adults) use porn daily.  Over half (roughly 60 million) use it at least monthly.  1% of American females 13 and over (roughly 1.4 million female teens and adults) use porn daily, and 7% (roughly 10 million) use it weekly.  The vast majority of users consume porn via the internet.  Personal sexual arousal is the most often cited reason for using pornography (accounting for 2/3 of men, and over 1/2 of women).  

According to Barna, pornography use is higher among non-Christians than Christians, though the degree of difference in porn use habits between those groups may be difficult to pin down, given the potential for underreporting of porn use among Christians.  Indeed, many of the numbers cited above, though collected by reputable organizations with long track records, risk some softness around the edges.  What it means for religion to be “very important” will vary across survey participants, for example.  That said, they’re the best numbers we could find thus far.  If others want to cite different statistics, please do so in the comments.

Some Conclusions We Draw From These Statistics

Looking at these raw numbers leads us to a few conclusions. 

• First, given the prevalence of religious faith and pornography use in America, it seems logical that Americans should demand that their religious leaders weigh in on the topic of pornography use.  Porn use is just too common of a human activity in this day and age to expect otherwise. 

• Second, given the central role that American religious institutions stand to play in the public discussion of pornography, it seems important that they be well-informed and disseminate accurate and useful information and guidance.  We would expect that guidance to encompass practical and spiritual considerations, and that it should therefore be grounded in both scientific fact and religious doctrine.  (The turbulent confluence of these veins of guidance, we suspect, is the crux of the issue for many critics of religious counseling about porn.)  

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• Third, given the first two conclusions, it seems to us both illogical and counterproductive to use a person’s standing in the religious community, alone, as a basis for criticizing his expression of views about pornography.  We should fully expect, and encourage, institutions that play an “important” role in the majority of Americans’ lives to participate in the public discussion of pornography.  After all, if the numbers show anything, it’s that neither religion nor pornography is going away anytime soon.

This is a topic that begs for discussion.  Thoughtful comments welcome.

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