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Focus on the Family has launched a Web-based effort to help those addicted to online pornography ( www.pureintimacy.org). The site offers a self-test to help users determine whether they have become addicted. It offers a variety of essays ranging from singer Clay Crosse's testimony about his struggle with pornography to a help page for struggling Christian leaders. (According to the site, one out of seven calls to the ministry's Pastoral Care Line concerns pornography.) There is even a page to connect spouses of porn abusers with needed resources.

Faithful and True, a 12-stepish ministry to sex addicts and their families, also includes online pornography among its concerns. Its Web site (www.helpandhope.org) includes a helpful list of questions for a Christian sex addict to ask of any potential counselor.

We commend Focus on the Family for committing its considerable resources to this effort, but the anti-pornography cause cannot be limited to national parachurch ministries.

The battle must also be waged locally:

• From pulpits, where pastors can highlight the hazards and temptations of porn and the remedies of grace.
• In hundreds of thousands of small groups, where people pray and support each other.
• In homes, where filtering software can help us "make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires."
• In the counseling office, where Christian counselors help abusers grow in insight and learn to live free of the bondage of sin.
• In the human heart. There, though the technology of temptation may metamorphose, the healing power of grace is unchangingly available to the sin-sick soul.

Focus on the Family's PureIntimacy.org has areas both for those struggling with online pornography and for those who know someone who is.

HelpandHope.org is mainly geared at getting people involved with the Christian Alliance for Sexual Recovery.

Another Focus on the Family site offers a solid overview of how Christians should deal with online pornography.

Christian psychologist Gregory Jantz's book, Hidden Dangers of the Internet, discusses online sexual addiction and how to escape.

iBelieve offers a two-part article with helpful advice for men looking to break free from their addiction to pornography (part 1, part 2).

In Leadership, a Christian leader discussed his struggles with lust.

The Center for On-Line addiction looks at the reasons why some people become snared by cybersex. Jantz's Center for Counseling and Health Resources and The Center for On-Line Addiction deal with online addiction, including addiction to pornography.

In June, U.S. presidential hopeful George W. Bush sat down with ZDNET to discuss his views on cyberspace, including so-called cybersmut. Last fall, Donna Rice Hughes and a former porn star debated the value of cyberporn.

Time magazine's watershed 1995 cover story on cyberporn is still available, as is criticism of its reporting.

The Four Loves , the book in which C.S. Lewis discusses the various types of love, is available at the Christianity Online Bookstore. Other books on the subject of Christians and sex include: The Sexual Man, Sexual Ethics, and False Intimacy.

Yahoo! offers an extensive list of filtering software and filtered Internet service providers.

Previous CT reporting on pornography includes:

Internet Pornography Use Common in many Libraries, Report Says | Librarian-researcher claims American Library Association thwarted study (March 21, 2000)

Christian Singer Shares Struggles with Pornography | Secret sin of Clay Crosse's youth reappears in midst of ministry (Feb. 11, 2000)

Smut Magazine Publishers Convert (April 26, 1999)

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June 12 2000, Vol. 44, No. 7