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The War Within Continues

An update on a Christian leader's struggle with lust.
The War Within Continues
Image: Vladamir Kramer

Five years ago LEADERSHIP published "The War Within" (Fall 1982), a candid description of one Christian leader's fierce, protracted battle with pornography and lust. The article generated more mail than any single article, before or since, in the history of LEADERSHIP. Though responses were diverse, their sheer volume showed how troublesome the problem is for many Christian leaders. Since then, much has happened.

Pornography became the focus of national attention with the Attorney General's Commission and its landmark report last year, which among other things, documented the rapid spread of porn in recent years.

Technology has made sexually-oriented material much more easily available. Sales of hard-core porn videos, for example, more than doubled from 1983 to 1986.

This trend has not spared pastors, according to a LEADERSHIP survey (see How Common Is Pastoral Indiscretion?). Of the pastors responding to the survey, 20 percent said they look at sexually oriented media (in ...

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