Is it weird that Mike Johnson’s underage son is his porn accountability partner?

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 13, 2023.

The latest theater of conservative evangelicalism’s multiple-front spiritual warfare cosplay is being dubbed the “War on Technology” by Cypress Baptist Church of Benton, La.

It began as a gathering in October 2022 that promised to “help families win the technology battle in their homes.” The event, which was advertised as being “for adults only” made the news this week after it was discovered that during an interview, new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told the audience he and his underage son are porn accountability partners.

“I’m proud to tell you my son has got a clean slate,” he boasted. Johnson believes he knows this because he and his son utilize a program called Covenant Eyes that monitors electronic devices for their online activities.

“It’s accountability software. So men in a church, you know men’s Bible study groups will do it. That’s how it was presented at Promise Keepers,” Johnson explained. “But they also mention, hey, when your kids become teenagers, especially if you have boys, dads, they’re talking to the guys at this event, you might want to think about doing this with your sons.”

How exactly does Covenant Eyes work?

“It scans all the activity on your phone or your devices, your laptop … and then it sends a report to your accountability partner. So my accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. And so he’s 17. And so he and I get a report of all the things that are on our phones or all of our devices once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice,” Johnson told the congregation. “It’s really sensitive. It will pick up almost anything. It looks for keywords, search terms, and also images, and it will send your accountability partner a blurred picture of the image.”

Of course, subscribing to Covenant Eyes doesn’t guarantee anything. Josh Duggar was able to get past the Covenant Eyes software on his devices prior to being found guilty of having images depicting sexual assault against children on his computer.

But when Rolling Stone published the story last week about Johnson, many people outside evangelicalism began wondering why evangelicals would consider this behavior to be normal.

Evangelical men’s obsession with porn

One of the reasons Promise Keepers promotes Covenant Eyes is that 20 years ago, they discovered more than half the men who attended their rallies admitted to watching pornography within the previous week. More recently, according to Barna, 57% of pastors and 64% of youth pastors say they “have struggled with porn, either currently or in the past.”

According to a pornography survey of Christian men by Proven Men Ministries:

• 97% have viewed pornography
• 65% watch pornography at work
• 64% view it at least once a month
• 37% view it several times a week
• 21% believe they are addicted

Despite the fact that it’s hard to take evangelicals seriously when they constantly use battle and war language for everything, the reality is that evangelical men watch pornography at the same rates as the national average, with the one exception being that evangelical men are more than twice as likely to claim they are addicted.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.