Dark (porn) secrets in modern sanctuaries

At some point before 35-year-old Jesse Ryan Loskarn hanged himself in his parents' home outside Baltimore, he wrote a painful letter soaked in shame and self-loathing in which he attempted to explain the unexplainable. The former chief of staff for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) had lived a secret life, hiding memories of child abuse and his addiction to child pornography. Even as U.S. Postal Inspection Service agents used a battering ram to enter his house, it appeared that he was trying to hide an external hard drive -- containing hundreds of videos -- on a ledge outside a window.

"Everyone wants to know why," he wrote, in a Jan. 23 letter posted online by Gay Loskarn, his mother.

"I've asked God. I've asked myself. I've talked with clergy and counselors and psychiatrists. I spent five days on suicide watch in the psychiatric ward at the D.C. jail, fixated on the 'why' and 'how' questions: why did I do this and how can I kill myself? ... There seem to be many answers and none at all."

Shock waves from these tragic events were still rippling through closed-door gatherings of Beltway insiders this week when the Rev. Jay Dennis came to Washington, D.C., for meetings linked to the Join One Million Men anti-pornography initiative approved last summer by the nearly 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention. Associates who thought they knew Loskarn were, of course, shocked by the details of his terrible secrets.

"Secrets always have power. ... Here was a secret that literally put this man in chains," said Dennis, the veteran pastor at First Baptist Church at the Mall in Lakeland, Fla. "People are still grieving, of course. They are shocked and in a state of disbelief. ...

"When I read that letter, there were many words and phrases that sounded familiar. There are so many men in our churches that are having some of those same feelings of shame and guilt and hopelessness. They are suffering in silence and they're afraid to talk about what they are doing."

Obviously, he stressed, Loskarn's involvement with child pornography raised criminal issues that are far more serious than the lusts and lies that threaten relationships at the heart of many Christian marriages and homes. Any pastor who sees evidence of abuse and child pornography must immediately appeal to professional counselors and to legal authorities, he said.

In some cases, legal pornography can lead to sexual addictions that require professional intervention. Also, he said, clergy now work in an age in which many children are exposed to online pornography by the age of 10 or 11. Often the initial exposures occur accidentally, a form of digital abuse that can leave children shocked and ashamed and terrified to turn to anyone for help.

"What ties all of this together is silence," said Dennis. "We have resources to help people with these issues and those resources will only get better. .... But nothing really matters if our pastors and our people remain silent and refuse to take this issue seriously. At some point, we have to talk about pornography in our pulpits and pews."

Three years ago, a LifeWay Research survey of 1,000 American pastors about the impact of pornography yielded one very disturbing statistic, he noted. While 69 percent of the pastors agreed that pornography has "adversely affected the lives of our church members," a solid majority -- 62 percent -- thought that 10 percent or less of the men in their flocks were exposed to pornography on a weekly basis.

"To be blunt, that number is too low to be real," said Dennis. "I'm convinced that some of our pastors are not facing the facts about the dark side of life in this day and age. ... There are men and women out there who are hiding dark secrets and they feel alone and afraid. "

Many, he said, would identify with key passages in the Loskarn letter.

Consider these words, for example: "Today the memories fly at me whenever they choose. They're the first thing I see when I wake and the last thing I think about before falling asleep. I am not in control of anything anymore, not even my own memories. It's terrifying. ... To those who choose to sever all ties with me, I don't blame you. No one wants to think or talk about this."

Culture wars in the App Store, part II

At first glance, the original rules written to govern the Apple App Store seem to be simple, logical and easy to enforce. After all, who wants one of the world's most powerful corporations to circulate digital forms of hate? Consider, for example, the guidelines governing "personal attacks" and "objectionable content."

The former rejects, "Any app that is defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited, or likely to place the targeted individual or group in harms way." This does not apply to humorists and satirists, of course. The "objectionable content" rule forbids, "Apps that are primarily designed to upset or disgust users."

The section on "religion, culture, and ethnicity" offers another variation on this theme, stating: "Apps containing references or commentary about a religious, cultural or ethnic group that are defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited or likely to expose the targeted group to harm or violence will be rejected."

The problem, of course, is that apps that gladden the hearts of gay mainline Protestants, Reform Jews and other doctrinal liberals will be deeply offensive to Southern Baptists, Orthodox Jews and other conservatives -- and vice versa. And one person's evangelism app may, by its very existence, be seen by those in other faiths as a tool for spiritual violence.

The bottom line: It's hard to produce products built on religious doctrine without offending someone. So do Apple leaders ban all of them or listen only to the religious voices they find the most sympathetic?

In recent years, media leaders have "increasingly bought into the idea of minimizing content that they view as potentially offensive," said Quentin Schultze of Calvin College, a media scholar who has been studying online religion for two decades.

"The larger and more influential the media outlets, the more likely they are to want to take the edges off, because they have the most to lose. ... It's the unique, unusual minority points of view that will keep getting clipped off, of course."

Back in the early 1990s, when Web browsers and email were foreign terms to ordinary Americans, Schultze began exploring the implications of online discourse and publishing for religious believers and their institutions. Soon this led to his trailblazing "The Internet for Christians" website -- a weblog-style project years before that term was coined -- and then a 1995 book with the same title.

The key, Schultze said during those heady days, was that the lower costs and accessibility of World Wide Web publishing would create a "somewhat level playing floor" allowing small, innovative ministries to compete, or cooperate, with larger religious institutions. During times of turmoil, for example, a dissident religious group's online publication could publish information and viewpoints that would be ignored in a major denomination's traditional ink-on-paper newspaper or by secular newspapers.

"Clearly, the Net is becoming a place for religious discourse that is being ignored in public media and isn't being allowed in the sanitized world of official church publications," he told me, in an "On Religion" column interview in 1996.

Decades later, it's hard to imagine what the marketplace of religious ideas and debates with be like without the legions of alternative voices and viewpoints found in the global religious blogosphere and in social media.

The problem, said Schultze, is that if powerful digital corporations -- think Apple, Google and Facebook -- insist on pushing religious voices out of the mainstream public square, the online result will almost certainly be even more strident rhetoric and propaganda on the fringes of public life.

"The wild, wild west of the Internet is still out there, but all too often what's being said out there is very narrow and self-fulfilling. That's where you have websites that just keep telling small groups of people want they want to hear, over and over, with little or no contact with other groups and other points of view," he said.

"But when the leaders of Apple endorse something, or reject something else, they are primarily worried about how that action will affect the reputation of their corporation, not whether their decision promotes a healthy diversity in our public discourse."

In tense atmosphere, he added, religion is a uniquely dangerous subject.

"The passion and the commitment that religious believers bring with them into public discourse is precisely what makes this subject seem so flammable and threatening and dangerous to people in places like Apple."

Culture wars in the App Store (and what they mean)

In a career packed with sound bites, the late Steve Jobs offered one of his best when describing his vision for a family-friendly Apple App Store. "We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone," he famously responded, in an email to a customer. "Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone."

This stance was clear, but hard to apply in the flood of information and images on the World Wide Web. After all, many consumers are very easy to offend, when hot buttons get pushed. What about that Playboy app, which was accepted?

In the introduction to the App Store guidelines, which many observers believed were written by Jobs, it's clear where Apple executives expected to encounter trouble -- sex and religion.

"If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app," stated this 2010 document. "We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, 'I'll know it when I see it.' "

Sex is sex, but many consumers are just as offended by religious views they consider dangerous or judgmental. Mix sex and religion and Apple team really gets nervous.

Brian Pellot, a London-based reporter on religion-liberty issues, recently dug into App Store history and produced a list of symbolic faith-based products rejected by Apple.

"I basically just searched around until I came up with five that were somewhat relevant to religion," he said, via email. "I think a lot of these were flagged because of perceived or feared offense. Not so much because they had to do with religion but because Apple doesn't want to upset users."

It doesn't help, he added, that it's "easier for people to pick fights behind the online mask of anonymity."

In his Religion News Service essay, Pellot focused on these apps:

* "Me So Holy," which allowed "users to paste their faces onto the bodies of religious figures including nuns, priests and Jesus."

* The "Jew or Not Jew?" app helped users investigate Jewish celebrities.

* 3. The "iSlam Muhammad" app pointed readers toward "violent and hateful" Quran passages that "encourage Muslims to attack and behead anyone who does not agree with them." Apple accepted some apps that "ridicule other religious texts, including the Bible," noted Pellot.

* An app from the "ex-gay" ministry Exodus International was removed after protests from gay-rights organizations.

* The Manhattan Declaration app promoted the work of those affirming the "sanctity of human life and the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife." It also was deemed offensive by gay-rights groups.

This latter decision was especially aggravating to leaders of traditional religious groups -- Protestant, Catholic and Jewish -- active in the drafting of the online manifesto.

"Apple is, obviously, a private company with the right to allow or disallow any apps it wants," said Russell Moore, the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

"The exclusion of the Manhattan Declaration app is troubling because it signals one more example of a cultural marginalization of the expression of belief held by those of various faith traditions. ... The freedom of consumers to download an app obviously doesn't imply endorsement of a viewpoint by Apple, so why exclude this one?"

It's crucial to understand that Apple and many other digital trailblazers have evolved into corporate giants guided by lawyers and public-affairs consultants armed with opinion polls and market surveys, said George Gilder, author of digital-culture works such as "Telecosm: The World After Bandwidth Abundance" and "The Silicon Eye: Microchip Swashbucklers and the Future of High-Tech Innovation."

"All such institutions respond abjectly to intimidation" and that is especially true when they encounter issues as politically volatile as homosexuality and radicalized forms of Islam, he said. Also, when it comes to offending elite digital executives, some voices are more offensive than others.

Thus, the "wimps in Silicon Valley" are often quick to pull religious material that will cause controversy in their own cultural circles, he said.

"It's pretty pathetic but it is just the way it is," said Gilder. "It's good news for smaller companies, though."

NEXT WEEK: Are religious debates being driven from the digital mainstream?

Baptists rethinking the use of catechisms (plural)?

This joke may be the most famous in all of Baptist humor. While crossing a high bridge, a traveler encounters a distressed man who is poised to jump. The first man asks the second if he is religious and a Christian. The suicidal man answers, "yes," to both. Catholic or Protestant? The jumper says, "Protestant." And, as it turns out, both men are Baptists.

"Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?" The second man, in a classic version of this joke found at the "Ship of Fools" website, replies: "Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?" Second man: "Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?" Second man: "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915."

So the first Baptist pushes the second to his death, shouting: "Die, heretic scum!"

The amazing thing is that they didn't even get to fight about biblical inerrancy, the first chapter of Genesis or the precise details of the Second Coming of Christ.

For centuries, Baptists have had their share of arguments about doctrine and church life and they cherish their approach to the "priesthood of all believers" and the authority of every local congregation.

As the old saying goes, put two Baptists on an island and you will soon have the First Baptist Church of the Deserted Island and the Second Baptist Church of the Deserted Island.

Thus, it's interesting that some educators, on the Baptist left and right, now believe that it's time for modern Baptists to use an ancient tool -- the catechism -- in their struggles against rising levels of biblical and doctrinal illiteracy. Catechisms are short documents written in a simple, question-and-answer format to help children and new believers learn the basics of the faith.

"This used to be Sunday school for Baptists and the way that they taught and handed down doctrines from generation to generation," said Thomas Nettles, who teaches historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Catechisms "showed you what you believed, in common with other Christians, but they also told you what you believed, as a Baptist, that was different from other Christians."

For many Baptists today, proposing a Baptist catechism may sound as strange as talking about a Baptist creed or even a Baptist pope. The key, explained Nettles, is that while Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and others can rally around a common catechism that expresses their tradition's authoritative stance on doctrine, Baptists through history have freely chosen different catechisms at the local, congregational level.

For example, while early versions of the Sunday School Board -- back in1863 and 1891 -- published catechisms for Southern Baptists, some churches used them while others did not. The final doctrinal authority remained in local pews and pulpits. Some congregational leaders even wrote their own catechisms.

Tradition says there can be one Catholic catechism. By definition, Baptists have always needed multiple catechisms.

"Still, the reality was that there was more of a sense of shared faith and practice back then, compared with Baptist life today, which has been shaped by decades of conflict and arguments," said Nettles. "We can't go back to where we were. ... Right now, I don't think Baptists could even agree on what it would mean for us to try to hold doctrines in common. Too many things have happened to push us apart."

Ironically, he said, some of the modern forces behind the creation of many Baptist niche groups -- the Internet, parachurch ministry conferences and megachurches with superstar pastors -- are now inspiring people to rally around documents that resemble catechisms. For example, some Baptists have begun to rebel against a kind of doctrinal "libertarianism" that denies the need for doctrinal specifics, period.

"You go online and this is what you see," said Nettles. "People are speaking out and then other people will rally around that persuasive voice. Before you know it, a network has formed around a set of common beliefs and people start sharing what they know and what they believe.

"Then they start writing things down. Pretty soon they're sharing books and educational materials. They even end up with things that look a lot like catechisms."

Apple, iSacraments and this lonely age

Probing the mysteries of Christmas, Pope Benedict XVI asked his flock gathered in 2006 to ponder what this season might mean to people living in the Internet age. "Is a Savior needed," he asked, "by a humanity which has invented interactive communication, which navigates in the virtual ocean of the Internet and, thanks to the most advanced modern communications technologies, has now made the earth, our great common home, a global village?"

What the world really needed, quipped Gizmodo writer Brian Lam, responding to the pope, was a new spiritual tool. Thus, digital believers were waiting for a John the Baptist -- Apple's Steve Jobs -- to "unveil Apple-Cellphone-Thingy, the true Jesus Phone" during the upcoming rites of the Macworld Conference.

That online exchange set the stage for an Apple advertisement that serves as a stained-glass image moment revealing the mysterious role that digital devices now play -- moment by moment -- in the lives of millions, according to University of Notre Dame business professor Brett Robinson, author of "Appletopia: Media Technology and the Religious Imagination of Steve Jobs."

In the ad, a human finger reached out of darkness toward the rows of icons on the glowing iconostasis of the new iPhone screen above this incantation: "Touching is Believing." For Robinson, there is no way to avoid a connection with the biblical image of Jesus inviting the doubting St. Thomas to put his finger into the wounds on his resurrected body and, thus, "be not faithless but believing."

"It's all about the metaphors," said Robinson, in a telephone interview. "You cannot explain what cannot be explained without metaphors. Technology needs metaphors to explain itself to the world and the same is true for religion."

Thus it's significant that, for some many consumers, the use of Apple products have become what scholars have long called the "Apple cult," he said. It's also clear that Jobs -- drawing on his '60s driven devotion to Eastern forms of religion -- set out to combine art, technology and philosophy into a belief brand that asked consumers to, as stated by another classic ad, to rebel and "think differently."

"It's easy to get into arguments about what is a religion and what is not," said Robinson. "But there's no question that the giant glass cube of the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue" in New York City serves as "a cathedral and that people go travel there on pilgrimages and that their local Apple Stores are like local parishes. ...

"The goal is to consume something bigger than themselves and then they can draw a sense of identity from those products."

Jobs knew all of that. After fleeing the Missouri Synod Lutheranism of his youth, he went out of his way to rattle traditional cages throughout his career. This was, after all, the man whose company logo was a rainbow apple -- minus one Edenic bite. He tested an early product with a prank call to the Vatican, pinned a $666 price tag on the Apple I and dressed as Jesus at the company's first Halloween party.

In his famous 2005 Stanford University address, Jobs told the graduates to "trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. ... Don't be trapped by dogma. ... Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."

At the heart of the Apple mythos, stressed Robinson, is an amazing paradox, the yin-yang doctrine that Jobs was trying to sell consumers good computers in order to help them escape a chilly world dominated by bad computers. He sold his refined, graceful devices by using images of enlightenment and community, while users may end up spending untold lonely hours staring at digital mirrors in their hands or on their desks.

The bottom line: Have the products inspired by the "Jesus Phone" turned into narcissistic rosaries?

"That iPhone provides some of the comforts and a sense of security that religious faith provides," said Robinson. "It promises to connect you to the world and to the transcendent. ... Yet most people spend most of their time looking at the same five or six sites online -- like Facebook -- that primarily are about their own lives.

"They spend untold hours in this intimate ritual of touching those phones, clicking and clicking their way through their own interests, their own desires, their own lives. The emphasis ends up being on the 'I,' not the other."

That Superman debate: Moses or the Messiah?

Without a doubt, it's one of the most famous and magical incantations in American pop culture. "Look, up in the sky!"

"It's a bird!"

"It's a plane!"

The last line in this mass-media chant is, of course: "It's Superman!"

However, whenever a major product is released in the Superman canon -- such as "Man of Steel," which grossed $113 million on its first weekend -- many fan boys and scribes will immediately begin arguing about two other potential identities, symbolically speaking, for their favorite superhero.

Visit almost any online Superman forum and "someone is going to be saying, 'It's Jesus!' and someone else will immediately respond, 'It's Moses!' and then back and forth it'll go, 'Jesus,' 'Moses,' 'Jesus,' 'Moses' on and on," said the Rev. Gary D. Robinson, pastor of North Side Christian Church in Xenia, Ohio.

The 58-year-old Robinson freely admits he is a passionate participant in these kinds of debates, both as the author of the book "Superman on Earth: Reflections of a Fan" and the owner of a inch-plus scar on his left arm created by his attempt -- at age 6 -- to fly like Superman through a large glass window.

Like many theologically wired fans, he can quote the key Superman facts, chapter and verse. He thinks the parallels are fun, but shouldn't be taken too seriously.

"I see the Superman myth as a shadow thrown by the Light itself," he said, referring biblical accounts of the life of Jesus. "In it's own way, it's a crude substitute ... but there is no question that there is some kind of allegory in there."

First of all, the future Superman was born on the doomed planet Krypton into the "House of El" and, in Hebrew, "El" -- from a root word that means strength and might -- is one word for God. His father gave him the name Kal-El, or in Superman lore "Son of El," a kind of science-fiction parallel to names such as Dani-el or Samu-el.

Then again, his mother and father saved their baby from persecution by casting him into the river of time and space, hoping he would be a source of hope and protection for others. They used a rocket, not a wicker basket, but it's hard to miss the Moses connection. It also helps to know that writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster -- both were sons of Jewish refugees from Europe -- created Superman in the tense 1930s, inspired in part by anti-Semitism at home and abroad.

Experts in both camps can offer litanies of similar details. Meanwhile, "Man of Steel" director Zack Synder has packed his film with iconic images and symbolic facts. The film stresses that Clark Kent soars into his Superman role at age 33, the same tradition says Jesus began his public ministry. Told by the techno-ghost of his father, "You can save them. You can save all of them," Superman pauses in space -- arms extended and legs together, as if on a cross -- before racing back to fight a demonic figure who is attacking in the earth.

In one audacious scene, Superman visits his local church in Kansas while wrestling with the question of whether he should willingly surrender his own life so that humanity can be saved. Over his head is a stained-class window of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, before his crucifixion.

The question, of course, is how seriously to take this often dark and humorless video-game era salute to "The Matrix," "Avatar," "The Dark Knight" and hosts of other recent blockbusters, with a few undeniable 9/11 images in the mix as well. "Popcorn and a (World)view" columnist Drew Zahn argued: "Though I won't claim it was written by an author the caliber of C.S. Lewis, nonetheless, the metaphors and messages make 'Man of Steel' a sort of 'Chronicles of Narnia' for an 'Avengers' generation."

Robinson is convinced Superman and other pop-culture myths are fine hooks for conversations about deeper issues and truths. But, in the end, how can ordinary women and men, struggling with the pitfalls of daily life, form a healing bond with Superman?

"Superman is a poor substitute for the Gospel," he said. "Superman offers himself to save our lives. Jesus wants to save us forever, for all of eternity. ... In the end, there's only one real story and we keep trying to create new variations on it."