As you may have already heard from Gospel Soundcheck blogger Joanne Brokaw, pastor and Planetshakers band member Michael Guglielmucci, recently confessed to lying about battling terminal leukemia, duping his congregation, fans, and most shockingly, his wife and family.
According to Australia’s Herald Sun, “The deception included conducting performances with an oxygen tube in his nose and telling audiences he had broken bones and other unexplained symptoms.”
Guglielmucci claims guilt stemming from his addiction to pornography actually created physical symptoms that included loss of hair and vomiting, which made it easy to keep his lie going.
Unfortunately, Guglielmucci isn’t the first Christian music star to confess to a porn addiction. Gospel superstar Kirk Franklin confessed a few years ago to stuggling with an addiction to porn since he was 8-years-old.
In an interview with the 700 Club’s Scott Ross, Franklin spoke about how his addiction started:
There’s always the boy who has the big brother who has the magazine under his bed. That’s how it starts. So the first time I ever saw one, I was around 8 or 9. I saw my first magazine, and from there I was addicted.
Franklin also appeared on Oprah in 2006 to bring the story of his struggle to a more mainstream audience, speaking about how as a teen he went to his pastor for help, to no avail.
“He sat back in his chair, and he took a puff out of his cigar,” Kirk remembers. “He said, ‘Oh, you’re young–you’ll grow out of it.’ He had no idea that he spoke death into my life. That shut me down because [I thought], ‘Well, someday I’ll grow out.’ [Instead], I grew in–and I grew in deep.”
Kirk eventually married, and managed to hide his addiction from his wife, Tammy. After he eventually confessed, she stayed by his side and prayed for him.
But that wasn’t enough to help him kick his porn habit. He once threw out all of his pornographic material, but went right back to it.
“I tried to go to sleep that night, and it was literally like a drug calling me,” he remembers. “About 3 or 4 in the morning, in my flip-flops and boxers, I got in my car and drove back to that Dumpster and dug [looking for my porn].”
It was only until Franklin met Pastor Tony Evans did someone finally acknowledge the severity of his problem and actively work to help him overcome it through counseling.
Today, Franklin has been clean for about 9 years. In he recent interview with Beliefnet, he spoke about his struggle with his faith and what keeps him fighting for it.
I think it would be great if Franklin reached out to Guglielmucci to provide advice on overcoming porn addiction. XXXChurch.com is another great resource Guglielmucci–or another else with a porn problem– could utilize for help.
posted August 27, 2008 at 10:00 pm
JJ,
If porn is not addictive, why does it outsell the gross revenue of the NFL, NBA and MLB combined. You ever heard of a sports addict, or rabid fans? Porn is much more addictive and needs to be spoken about. The porn people know what they are doing and they know what sells. Sex sells.
How many pastors look at porn more than once per month? Why?
Simple. Porn is addictive.
You are the minority if you can pick it up and be ‘bored’ with it. Congratulations, you are one of the less than 10% who is not attracted to porn. I don’t know if that makes you ‘normal’ or of greater concern than the other 90%.
I pray for people who cannot resist the pull of the more than 50% of the porn based internet. It starts with the swimsuit issue..and now for teen girls it starts with Abercrombie stores…we are selling our kids down the river and every year more and more people (men and women) will cripple their leadership skills through their porn-problem. Drug and alcohol problems are easier to talk about, which is another reason why porn is the church’s greatest threat!
posted August 28, 2008 at 9:28 am
Nonsense, PP. Claiming it’s ‘addictive’ is merely the losers way out of making a simple choice for themselves not to look at it. Give people the opportunity to use that as an excuse and they will. Every man knows that if he beds down one woman after another he’s going to have his character questioned, at least by Christian folks. So what does he do? Of course, he simply says “It’s not that I WANT to sleep with all these women, I’m just ADDICTED!” It’s garbage, and every sane person knows it.
And your comment about not knowing if I’m ‘of greater concern than the other 90%’ merely reveals the kind of talk-show style victimization mentality that has poisoned so much of evangelical thinking in this country. You honestly think that because I immediately grew bored with watching idiotic, mindless grinding as a teenager than there’s something WRONG with me? I think that reveals more of your pathology than it does mine.
So porn outsells all the major sports revenue in the country, huh? Not only have those statistics been seriously questioned, but it proves nothing about your whole point. Sex does sell, not because it’s addictive but quite simply because people like sex, and in a country where traditional marriage has been largely abandoned and moral common sense is as rare as every other form of intelligence, people will simply give more attention to sexual imagery than normal. They aren’t addicts, just deviants (if you care for that old fashioned terminology).
It didn’t help that for decades the church – contrary to the revisionist history they like to engage in nowadays – was adamant in proclaiming that sex was a base, ugly act that no decent person should ever want to engage in beyond impregnating their wives every few years. I’m sorry, but it took the unabashed success of Hugh Hefner to force Christianity to revise it’s attitudes and start rethinking all the negativity they helped to foster. Some choice, huh? Fundamentalists preaching a neo-Gnostic self-denial or a hedonist preaching self abandon. America is simply a country that never had a culture where the love of good healthy enjoyable marital sex was widespread, as did the Christian cultures of, say, the Netherlands under Calvinist influence or Germany under the Lutherans. We’ve been indoctrinated with nothing but extremes on both sides. I’m glad that modern evangelicalism is trying to do the right thing (at last) by preaching the goodness of healthy marital sex, but they’ve also bought into a TON of contemporary psychotherapy hogwash, including the willingness to blame every personal flaw on outside forces.
Porn addiction? No such thing. Just people with bad cultural understandings of sex going along with the crowd, and lacking the character and discipline to think, and act, for themselves.
posted August 28, 2008 at 9:56 am
Obviously JJ is either in denial or doesn’t know the first thing about addictions. God bless him or her.
posted August 28, 2008 at 10:58 am
JS,
I love your complete lack of argumentation and the way you automatically consider yourself correct. Why bother with debate when simple arrogance will suffice, huh?
And please realize, I understand that some things can be truly addictive, Drugs, medication, alcohol, etc. – things that have an actual effect on your physiology. Pornography is naked people going at it on video. It doesn’t get into your bloodstream. It’s a habit, and a bad one, not an addiction. People aren’t addicted to sports, either (to respond to PP’s first email). They may watch too much of it, and make a habit out of watching too much of it, but that makes them jerks, not patients who need to be treated with feel-good therapy.
For goodness sake, people, quit acting like helpless, effeminate sissies and take charge of your life!
I feel like Don Corleone when Johnny was weeping like a wimp, crying “Godfather, what can I do, what can I do?”
And the Don smacked him in the face and screamed “You can act like a man!”
I guess eternal truths can be found in the weirdest places sometimes.
posted August 28, 2008 at 12:52 pm
JJ and the Guglielmucci’s pastor must be related. That sounds like the personality which would find you broken and bleeding on the side of the road and the first question would be, “What did you do to cause this to happen to you?”
Yeah, nobody is addicted to anything. Everything is our own fault. When my doctor found out that my heart attack (2002) was caused by an completely blocked artery, he should have refused any treatment until I had received a good dressing down about eating properly and so forth.
Not!
posted August 29, 2008 at 12:28 am
Many people eat pizza. Or bread. Are they addictive? No, they are just enjoyable. So is porn. The whole pornography addiction thing is an invention of conservative fundamentalists. I do not question that Mike may have felt guilty because of watching porn when he was a kid, but who made him feel guilty? Probably his parents (conservative evangelicals of fire and brimstone kind), or his church, or both.
posted August 29, 2008 at 1:22 am
Have those that are saying that it is not an addiction ever gone through it themselves? I suppose people that are addictive to gambling are not addictive. I know someone that has wrecked their marriage because of pron. Do you think he wanted that to happen?
I find that people that use porn in their life have other problems maybe going as far back as their childhood. Some are insecure in their lives and abilities (sexual insecurity causes a lot of people going to porn. Usually starts in when they are 14 years of age. Many times by one person telling another about the experience and feelings. Go to web site e-bible.com and bring up what the Bible says about the subject. This problem is not something new.
posted August 29, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Porn addiction and music can be an interesting combination. However it’s possible that Christian music might have a good effect on the addiction. It is possible that any kind of music can have a positive effect on the addiction.
posted August 30, 2008 at 8:32 am
It seems that our friend, Guglielmucci, has a much bigger problem than a so-called addiction to porn. Fabricating a severe medical condition to win support and sympathy from family and fans is one of the ‘sickest’ things I’ve ever heard. While I do not doubt that one may become addicted, not to porn, but to the pleasure one may find while utilizing porn, it seems that this person’s real problems revolve around self-esteem and truth.
Utilization of porn for self-gratification is emblematic of another form of self-absorption, which this so-called Christian music performer needs to address in his life. While we are all on a singular journey toward life fulfillment and self actualization, Guglielmucci appears to be one person with a very great whole in his soul and I’m glad I do not have to share life with such a person up close.