Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 32:4 (Autumn 2018)
Article: Book Review "Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire" by Jessica Johnson (Duke University Press, 2018)
Author: Jamin Hübner

PP 32:4 (Autumn 2018) p. 29

Book Review
Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire
by Jessica Johnson (Duke University Press, 2018)

Jamin Hübner

Jamin Hübner (ThD, University of South Africa) is a theologian, musician, and entrepreneur. In addition to being the former dean of John Witherspoon College in Rapid City, South Dakota, he is the author of A Case for Female Deacons.

Few evangelical Christians have not heard of pastor Mark Driscoll, and few are therefore unaware of his scandalous history at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. After building up one of the fastest growing church networks in America (see www.acts29. com) from the late 1990s to 2014, Driscoll was let go by the very fellowship of churches he helped build, on various charges of unethical behavior. Aside from some literal Bible-thumping at stadium altar-calls, threats of hellfire, calls for local spiritual revival, vitriolic homophobia, top-down hierarchies of power, constant intimidation of dissenters, cult environment, etc., his regime was known for its hyper-sexualization and endless commands to live a godly masculine or feminine life.

Jessica Johnson, an anthropologist with no religious affiliation, finds the ethos and orientation at Mars Hill as incarnating “biblical porn” (hence the title of her book). Two intersecting concepts explain what she means by this arresting designation. The first is “affective labor,” which is work intended to produce emotional experiences in people. The second is “biopolitics,” which generally refers to all of the power relations that relate to people’s bodies, their particular features, and their understandings of themselves and others—in this case, as sexual persons.

Biblical porn is not generated through sexual performances per se . . . [rather] “emotional and physiological energies, desires, and sensations” are created and capitalized on during the affective labor of its cultural production and mediation as a social imaginary, marketing strategy, and biopolitical instrument. . . . At Mars Hill, such affective labor entailed a variety of service opportunities that primed the church’s atmosphere and fostered networks of care, such as worship band, media production, security team, and children’s ministry. . . . Practices of confession and processes of imagination were bodily and virtually mediated and networked. . . . This religiously inflected form of biopower directed a collective sense of conviction in support of Driscoll’s vision for Mars Hill’s empire. . . . (8–9)

In other words, Driscoll intentionally capitalized on Christian men’s addiction to pornography to build up his own ecclesiastical kingdom. This came into fruition by preaching sermons and creating...