The Development and Deployment of the Idea of Pornography Addiction Within American Evangelicalism

ABSTRACT

Based on an archival analysis of the popular evangelical magazine Christianity Today, the story of evangelical thinking about pornography during the course of the magazine's history from 1956 to 2014 is traced. This article shows how evangelicals have developed and deployed the idea of pornography addiction, and in doing so, have communicated messages about pornography that have made it more likely for evangelicals to perceive themselves as being addicted to pornography. This article investigates the motivations behind these messages, and suggests that these messages may, in fact, tell us less about individual pornography users and more about those who are developing and deploying such messages.

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Acknowledgment

The author thanks Laura Thomas, DJ Williams, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions; thanks also to Brian Bither for his assistance with data collection.