Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Prostitution And Evangelization As ‘Entertainment’
Prostitution And Evangelization As ‘Entertainment’
Apr 30, 2025 10:48 AM

Most of us would say we don’t like “reality” television, yet many of us have been sucked into some show that purports to show the real lives of rich people, poor people, large families, little people or drunk college kids. In all these cases, the people featured sign on for the privilege of broadcasting their lives in excruciating detail.

Now, A&E (which used to mean “arts and entertainment” but it lost the “arts” at some point) is planning a show called 8 Minutes. A pastor by the name of Kevin Brown (who is a former police officer) will attempt to evangelize and “save” a prostitute in an 8 minute time frame. Really.

Brown will surprise escorts in hotel rooms and offer to rescue them from a life of trading sex for cash. Brown has eight minutes to make his case to the women in each episode.

Executive producer Tom Forman told EWthat the show was inspired by a past article in the Los Angeles Times,about a pastor who worked with his church to create an undercover prostitute intervention operation.

There are plenty of faith-based groups that do excellent work trying to help persons who are trafficked in the sex industries. (Check out The Mary Magdalene Project and Sacred Beginnings as examples.) The premise of 8 Minutes is not that. Note that “prostitutes” are typically women who are being forced to sell themselves for money. They are being used and abused. To use them for television “entertainment” (especially “undercover”) is spurious.

Then there is the whole question of sharing the Gospel in a sound-bite time-frame. How can someone even begin prehend the story of salvation in 8 minutes? Forget about the relational aspect of Christianity; this show is just about “shock and awe Good News.”

This is no way to treat Scripture. This is no way to treat human beings. This is not entertainment.

Read “Reality Show: Pastor Gets 8 Minutes to Turn Prostitutes From Turning Tricks” at Breitbart.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Advice to graduates: Reject the calls to ‘find yourself’ and ‘follow your passion’
Graduation season is upon us, and with it is sure e a flurry mencement addresses crammed with platitudes about self-actualization, self-indulgence, and self-fulfillment. Though panied by occasional urges to “change the world” and “make a difference,” all will still fit neatly within a much broader cultural aim: “finding ourselves,” “trusting ourselves,” and “being true to ourselves.” “It’s about living the life you want,”Oprah says, aptly capturing the spirit of the age, “because a great percentage of the population is living...
Does Central America need a ‘Marshall Plan’?
Julián Castro is running for the Democratic nomination for president. Castro was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under president Barack Obama, and before that he was mayor of San Antonio, TX. He is currently polling at a little over 1%, and he reported raising $1.1 million in campaign funds in the first quarter of the year. As a Mexican-American, Castro is currently the only Latino candidate. As such, it is not surprising that he has put immigration at the...
Should Notre Dame be rebuilt to reflect secularism?
The flames that consumed the spire of Notre Dame and burned the 856-year-old church to its foundations could have been doused by the tears of the faithful. If France heeds calls to rebuild the cathedral as a reflection of what modern “French people want,” the new structure may be flooded by their tears. The fire, whose origins remain under investigation, was initially reported to have left little more than medieval stones, rose windows,and – make of this what you will...
7 Figures: How long do criminals spend in prison?
As the old saying goes, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” But how much time do you have to do if mit a crime? Probably not as long as you’d imagine. The Bureau of Justice Statistics recently released a report—Time Served in State Prison 2016—that reveals how long prisoners serve for a variety of criminal offenses. Here are seven figures from the report you should know: 1. The average time served by state prisoners released in...
Free market environmentalism: Conserving and collaborating with nature
In an age of rapid industrialization and ever-accelerating technological change, many have grown fearful of environmental neglect and impending natural catastrophe. Such concerns tend to be based in a pessimistic view of economic opportunity, through which more individual ownership will surely lead to more reckless exploitation. Yet the bigger story of our newfound economic freedom and prosperity would seem to paint a different picture—one in which the expansion of economic ownership is actually helping us better protect and preserve our...
A secular Jew makes a surprising discovery about Christians and American slavery
“Christians ended slavery. Do you think that’s a conservative simpleton’s mock-worthy bombast, embarrassing the rest of us with his black-and-white, unapologetic caricature of American history?” asks John B. Carpenter in this week’s Acton Commentary. “No. It is the considered conclusion of a Nobel laureate, a munist, a secular Jew, and arguably the foremost scholar on American slavery.” The moral question: If Southern slavery was profitable, even providing for the slaves a relatively decent material life, then why is it evil?...
Left-wing college administrators are a mirror of American political reality
Samuel J. Abrams’ article Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators published by the New York Times last October was a turning point in his life. Abrams, a political science professor at Sarah Lawrence College, has been living through a hellish backlash that involved “a national media storm in which I was slandered and defamed, my family’s safety was threatened, and my personal property was destroyed on campus.” His sin? He called our attention to the fact that administrators of...
How Rod Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’ misunderstands Christian liberalism
Rod Dreher is once again exasperated. He is frustrated by a rumor that George Weigel hasn’t bought the tireless promotion of his ‘Benedict Option’: A few months ago, Weigel appeared atan event in Providence, RI, to discuss the Benedict Option. I had a couple of Catholic friends in the audience that night. One said Weigel sneered at the Benedict Option, and just wanted to talk about all the good things going on in the Catholic Church now. The other, a...
How the Fed worked before the Great Recession
Note: This is post #119 in a weekly video series on basic economics. The U.S. Federal Reserve controls the supply of money—which gives it a huge influence on the world economy. But as economist Tyler Cowen notes, how the Fed does this has changed since the Great Recession. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Cowen explains how the Fed can change the federal funds rate—the overnight interest rate for when banks lend money to each other—and how that influences...
Acton Line podcast: Mourning the Notre-Dame cathedral inferno; Rev. Robert Sirico on education
On this episode of Acton Line, host Caroline Roberts is joined by Acton’s director of research, Samuel Gregg, to touch on the historical and religious significance of Notre-Dame in the wake of the fire that consumed much of the cathedral this past Monday. After that, research associate Dan Hugger sits down with Acton’s president and co-founder Rev. Robert Sirico to discuss current issues in education, including some of Betsy Devos’s policies. Check out additional resources for this podcast: France’s churches...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved