15AR20-30

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AR 20:30 - Nearly forty percent of Adventists leave

IApologia Report 20:30 (1,259)

August 26, 2015

n this issue:

CULTURE - theater which asks "How is porn changing society?"

+ are Hollywood and TV swapping their leads in depicting sex?

SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM - its 40-percent net loss rate revealed

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CULTURE

"How is porn changing society?" by Holly Williams -- summarized: "How is the wide availability of Internet pornography changing society? Several new stage works in the UK and US are exploring this question - and the results are thought-provoking. ...

"[T]his hot topic for media debate is also finding its way onto theatre stages - not literally, I hasten to add. Playwrights are finding dramatically inventive ways to ask questions about how easily accessible hard-core pornography might be influencing our society."

One play "asks difficult questions about the degree of responsibility we must take for our online actions." Williams is referring to The Nether <thenetherplay.com>, written by Jennifer Healey. "A chilling tale, the play is set in the near-future where the Internet has become a total virtual reality. Plug in and visit The Hideaway, a pseudo-Victorian mansion where visitors have sex with, then violently murder, little girls, all without consequence. The Nether asks difficult questions about the degree of responsibility we must take for our online actions - but it also puts the audience in an uncomfortable position of spectatorship: they may be playing digital creations, but the little actors are flesh-and-blood."

Williams reports one blogger's conclusion that "There are no easy solutions, but she hopes that a play will encourage discussion." Another example is British playwright "Anya Reiss' take on Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening last year: when re-writing his play about sexually confused and suicidal teenagers (which was accused of being pornographic even in 1891), she couldn't exactly ignore the Internet. The production used Skype, Facebook and YouTube, with troubled teens swapping videos of S&M porn." BBC News, Jun 17 '15, <www.goo.gl/V03zTh>

In anticipating the tidal wave of its influence, we are led to wonder how much Internet porn may come to resemble for western culture what cheap whiskey became for the American Indian.

Of course, Internet porn is merely the icing on the cake. We've been heading down this dark road for quite some time already. Another BBC News item, "How TV Lost Its Fear of Sex While Hollywood Lost Its Nerve" (home page tag-line) by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, provides some insight on how Brits interpret change in show business, one of America's most influential exports: "While Hollywood becomes more conservative in its depiction of sex, US TV is pushing the boundaries."

Armstrong finds that "The US TV network HBO has been at the forefront of TV's sexual revolution." She begins: "From its first episode in 2011, HBO's Game of Thrones gave us sex like nothing else that had been seen on US television: incest, oral sex, orgies, brothels, breasts, breasts and more bare breasts. The next year, the network's very different new show, Girls, made headlines for a similar reason: its young stars' penchant for stripping down to perform in graphic sex scenes. By 2013, after so much skin and so many titillating trysts, an entire show about sex - Showtime's 1950s period drama Masters of Sex, about researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson's unusual lab work and relationship - seemed almost quaint."

So while TV slides into a sink hole, "movies have moved in the opposite direction, becoming less and less graphic as they struggle to reach larger - that is, more mainstream - audiences. With family moviegoers as their target audience and without broadcast's unifying potential, the film industry has chosen a different tack. ...

"The biggest factor in this reversal is that the two media have essentially switched roles in US culture. Until recently, film was the 'cooler': more artistic, more visionary, the place where boundaries were pushed. TV was the minor leagues, a place for crass, mass diversions, not art or even 'mature' entertainment. TV was supposed to be for everyone. In fact, in 1975, just as TV was becoming more sophisticated and complicated, protests from the Christian right forced the Federal Communications Commission to call for a 'family viewing hour' during the first 60 minutes of prime time. The action was ultimately overturned in court in 1977, but not before it wreaked havoc on networks' schedules, prompting a deadly move to Monday nights for the long-running Saturday-night CBS hit All in the Family and possibly hastening the end of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

"But in the early 2000s, HBO rose to grand prominence with television series that aspired to art." Armstrong finds it came "first with The Sopranos [which] brought a new level of maturity to TV storytelling - and a willingness to depict graphic sexuality." And, "From there, TV got serious, with anti-heroes, beautiful cinematography, well-crafted scripts, great acting - and lots of serious adult content - in series such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Lost, Dexter, The Good Wife, Homeland and House of Cards. Cable and streaming services also played a major part: with fewer restrictions from the Federal Communications Commission to holds them back, their programmes could catch viewers' attention in more provocative ways. TV became in the 2000s what film had been in the 1960s and '70s."

Back in Hollywood, "bigger and bigger investments for major stars and massive special effects have meant that these movies play to the widest audiences, both in the United States and abroad. The result: lots of CGI and explosions but very little sex. In targeting a global audience, Hollywood has become very aware of regional sensitivities and taboos regarding explicit content. The few hits that do feature lots of skin, like Fifty Shades of Grey and the Magic Mike franchise, are all but labeled 'THIS IS ABOUT SEX.' There is little room for subtlety here. ...

"Writer-producer Shonda Rhimes' explosive breakthrough with Grey's Anatomy in 2005 started US network TV simmering with its large cast of beautiful doctors getting it on in supply closets and break rooms in between lifesaving surgery. And Grey's didn't just exploit sex; it made TV sex feminist, with cunnilingus scenes, serious lesbian relationships and a prominent call-out to the 'va-jay-jay' almost by name. ...

"Orange Is the New Black, meanwhile, has rescued lesbian sex scenes from pornography. ... But Orange has humanised such interactions, making them as idiosyncratic as the women who engage in them. Some are sweet. Some are exploitative. Some are romantic. Some are cringe-worthy. Several of the women do not have traditionally idealised body types. In the end, what's most clear is that woman-on-woman sex in prison is normalised. We root for some of the relationships and hate others, the same as we have done for decades of heterosexual relationships on screen." The last show mentioned is "Netflix's Grace and Frankie [which] does the same for older people's sex lives."

Armstrong concludes: "These shows may prove the worn adage that sex sells, but they often sell it to us in innovative, artistic thought-provoking ways that challenge society's norms. That's the kind of 'adult entertainment' it's worth staying home from the movies for." BBC News, Jul 20 '15, <www.goo.gl/z3GUHS>

More and more, we who live in the West clearly have need for repentance on an increasingly greater scale. May God have mercy.

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SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM

"Nearly forty percent of Adventists leave organization" by Colleen Tinker -- "Statistics released by David Trim, director of the office of archives, statistics, and research for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, on July 3, 2015, at the 60th General Conference Session, show that attrition from Adventist membership during the past 50 years is higher than previously thought."

Trim refers to membership "audits of the last four years" and discusses "the numbers of those who have left the church. We currently describe them in official statistical reports in two ways: first, there are the 'dropped,' a term that has replaced the older term 'apostasies'. Second is the category of 'missing': that is, people who simply can't be found when an audit is carried out. The result of the widespread audits over the last five years was that a total of 3,068,141 members were dropped or registered as missing, and 261,888 deaths were recorded, while a total of 5,563,377 were added by baptism or profession of faith. The number of reported deaths increased slightly but remained relatively stable, whereas the totals of the missing and those dropped from membership increased steeply. ...

"Our net loss rate is 39.25%: in effect, four of every ten church members have slipped away over the last half-century."

Tinker adds: "The fact that essentially 40% of Adventists have left the organization over the past 50 years reveals the lack of certainty with which many Adventists live. In 2011 the General Conference Nurture and Retention Committee oversaw the development and implementation of two surveys. One was administered to former members, and the other was given to members who had left for a while but returned. The surveys showed that 58% of those who have left 'still believe in the gift of prophecy manifested in Ellen White'...." Proclamation!, Sum '15, p13. <www.goo.gl/yf4jnR>

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