Grey Matter: 50 Shades, pornography and the shaping of our brains

Grey Matter: 50 Shades, pornography and the shaping of our brains

Grey Matter: 50 Shades, pornography and the shaping of our brains, Fifty Shades of Grey hits UK cinemas this Valentine’s day.

Six years on from writing a major feature on porn and the UK Church for Premier Christianity, Martin Saunders explores the growing impact of sexually explicit content on modern culture.

Porn, and the way it is shaping our individual and collective cultural mindset, has moved on dramatically since I last wrote on the subject for this title six years ago. Sexually explicit material is no longer on the fringes of our culture; it’s in the mainstream. 

Yet while the ‘dirty secret’ about porn is well and truly out, Christians still haven’t made much of a dent in the problem. In fact, porn use is rife among Christians and Christian leaders. In putting this article together I conducted a simple online survey of British Christians (see the box for more details) and, even knowing what we do about the prolificacy of porn, the results make for surprising reading. 

The survey suggests that more than half of Christian men and around a fifth of Christian women in the UK are using porn on a regular or semi-regular basis. Pornography isn’t just something unpleasant going on in the world; it’s right at the heart of our churches. 

Why, when the Church has apparently woken up to its porn problem, is its use even more prolific than we perhaps imagined? What has enabled this? Is it time to respond in ways other than the existing, and seemingly flawed ones? To answer these questions, let’s take a step back and look at how society’s relationship with adult material has shifted in recent years.

Martin Saunders  is the creative director at Youthscape, a contributor to Premier Youthwork and Premier Christianity and a host at the annual Youthwork Summit.