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Most Christians Use Porn, MacArthur’s Health, and Kepler’s Theology
The shocking percentage of Christians who use pornography, some beloved ministers’ health updates, Johannes Kepler’s theological approach to science, and much more.
Anthony Langer
February 01, 2025
It’s Saturday, February 1, 2025.
Already, one month of 2025 is in the books! Today’s edition covers a new Barna report on the shocking percentage of Christians who say they use pornography, some beloved ministers’ health updates, Johannes Kepler’s theological approach to science, and much more.
Enjoy!
Of Christian Concern
MORE THAN HALF OF PRACTICING CHRISTIANS USE PORN, BARNA FINDS
Photo: Anete Lusina
Barna’s latest study of pornography use, Beyond the Porn Phenomenon, reveals that 54 percent of “Practicing Christians” admit to viewing porn at least occasionally. Here’s how that figure breaks down:
Daily: 7%
Weekly: 15%
Once or twice a month: 10%
Less often: 22%
This 54 percent of Christians is contrasted with 68 percent of non-Christians—a mere 14-point difference.
Perhaps even more shocking, The World View reports how Christians’ porn usage breaks down by sex: 75% of Christian men and 40% of Christian women.
JOHN MACARTHUR, PHIL JOHNSON STILL HOSPITALIZED
John MacArthur (left) and Phil Johnson (right)*
Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church and popular media ministry Grace To You has been hospitalized for six weeks with ongoing heart, lung, and kidney issues.
The executive director of Grace To You, Phil Johnson, who is also currently hospitalized for his final dose of chemotherapy for blood cancer, reports that MacArthur “seems super-optimistic” despite “no significant change” in his condition. On the other hand, Johnson’s “personal sense of sunniness is somewhat befogged.”
Many on social media responded by saying they were praying for these men.
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Also Noteworthy
→ The U.S. House of Representatives passed a born-alive bill “to protect babies who survive abortions,” Daily Citizen reported last Thursday. “However, an identical bill failed in the Senate on Wednesday, with Senate Democrats filibustering the legislation.”
→ California has agreed to end its years-long litigation against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt related to their undercover reporting exposing Planned Parenthood’s illegal selling of aborted fetuses.
→ Parliamentarians in Chile signed a multipartisan commitment to oppose the government’s draft law to legalize free abortion. “We are a large majority that defends life,” claimed Mauro González, deputy of the National Renovation party.
→ President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday stopping federal government funding of transgender drugs and surgeries for anyone under age 19.
→ Nondenominational churches are growing in the U.S. while denominational churches are declining numerically, the Washington Times reports.
→ New York doctor Margaret Carpenter and her practice, Nightingale Medical, have been indicted by a Louisiana grand jury for prescribing abortion pills to a Louisiana teen. This is a “first of its kind case,” Daily Mail reports. The teen’s mother has also been charged.
→ A OnePoll survey of 10,000 Brits found, contrary to expectation, that atheism is declining. The survey’s commissioner, author Christopher Gasson, reports:
A small minority (11%) “worship regularly and accept the authority of the leaders of their faith”
A large majority (30%) are atheists or non-believers
For the remaining majority (59%) “it’s something in between, they may use religious labels or even participate in religious services but with their own thoughts about the nature of God.”
Still, the “data seems to suggest that organised religion may now be on the way back.”
Content Catch-Up
Recent, notable content of Christian interest.**
→ Huff and Jenkins Missed the Gospel?: Wretched TV and Radio host Todd Friel says Wes Huff’s and Dallas Jenkins’s recent high-profile media appearances, billed by many (including Project 18:15’s article about Huff) as presentations of the gospel, did not present the gospel. They were talking about the gospel, Friel says, but not presenting it. He outlines the five essential elements of a gospel presentation and reveals a vital doctrine that many Christians neglect. (Video)
→ Trump Shutting Down Christian Ministries?: Writing for Blaze Media, Chris Enloe evaluates an Anglican minister’s claim that Trump is shutting down Christian ministries. (Article)
**Not necessarily an endorsement
Church History Tidbit
Kepler’s Theology of Science
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a German astronomer whose discoveries included:
“three major laws of planetary motion”
“a new and correct account of how vision occurs”
“a novel explanation for the behaviour of light in the newly invented telescope”
“several new, semiregular polyhedrons”
“a new theoretical foundation for astrology”
Notably, his education included theology at a famous Lutheran seminary, but, as Messiah College science history professor Edward B. Davis writes for Christian History, “It soon became evident that Kepler’s greatest talent lay in mathematics, not theology.”
Still, his scientific work was deeply informed by his Christian beliefs. Davis writes:
Ultimately Kepler found his faith only strengthened by his scientific work—leading him to say, “I wished to be a theologian; for a long time I was troubled, but now I see how God is also praised through my work in astronomy.”
Kepler believed that God wants us to know the laws of nature “since he created us in his image, so that we might think the same thoughts God has revealed to us, and thus commune with God through reasoned thought.”
He considered the human ability to do mathematics a gift from God. Davis reports that Kepler followed the earlier Lutheran theologian Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) in believing that, unlike our knowledge of morality, our understanding of arithmetic, geometry, and logic had been unaffected by the Fall.
Thus, Kepler approached science “from the top down by abstract mathematics.” This sharply contrasts the approach of another important scientist whose Christian faith also informed his work, Robert Boyle (1627–1691).
We’ll consider Boyle’s approach in the next Church History Tidbit.
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