TGC Senior Editor Suggests Watching Perverse TV Shows Gives Him ‘More passion than ever to spread the gospel’

Staff Writer

The Gospel Coalition continues to demonstrate why it should be regarded exclusively with contempt and scorn, exemplified by Senior Editor Brett McCracken’s continued promotion and justification of watching pornographic TV shows and films and the hypocritical and theologically bankrupt advice he gives about them.

You’ll recall McCracken’s Top 20 list of favorite shows in 2021 featured several that were rated ‘R” for language, violence, and frequently for scenes of sex and nudity, that his 2022 best movies list is full of graphic sex and nudity, and that mercifully, his best films of 2023′ only featured a bit of sex and nudity

In a new piece for the ERLC, How to Evaluate Pop Culture in a Sex-Saturated World, McCracken seeks to offer “Christian wisdom for interacting with arts and culture” while answering the question, “How can I maintain my Christian witness and keep my soul nourished with truth, even as I engage with a pop culture landscape that’s often full of untruths and spiritually toxic material?”

Explaining that “It is vital we think wisely about how to interact with and evaluate media that advances perspectives on sex and gender at odds with biblical truth,” he offers that some “HBO shows may have extreme explicit content that make them obviously off limits for discerning Christian viewers” and that “Wise Christians should not hesitate to abstain from pop culture of this sort—even when it’s “critically acclaimed” or popular with masses of our friends, colleagues, or critics we respect.”

By “obviously off limits,” he apparently is NOT talking about one of the HBO shows he included on his list of favorite TV shows that he published at the Gospel Coalition. This six-episode show is rated TV-M and contains tons of filthy language, sex jokes, sex scenes, copious amounts of male nudity, and some female nudity as well. 

In fact, it contains (warning, graphic description ahead)  a graphic sex scene featuring two fully nude men, where one has his face in the back-end of the other, doing very homosexual things to his anus with his mouth. 

According to McCracken, who shamelessly shared this on TGC, these shows are apparently “on-limits” to “discerning Christian viewers.”

He concludes with the ridiculous insistence that the perverse content he consumes leaves him with “more passion than ever to spread the gospel,” which is a wild take given that a substantial number of the shows he recommends (much less watches and doesn’t publicly tell Christian Twitter about) are best watched alone in the dark at 1 A.M with spouse asleep, accountability partner’s phone number muted, and a box of tissue and bottle of lotion at hand. 

My ability to resist the secular onslaught regarding sex and gender has depended on the fact that I know and love God’s Word….I am utterly compelled by God’s vision for sex and gender and thoroughly convinced that it is truer, more beautiful, and better for the world than what Hollywood pitches. Therefore, when I watch a film or show that advances a skewed vision of sex or depicts some aspect of gender confusion, I am not captivated by it; I grieve it. I pray for the lost souls these pop culture narratives reflect and are shaping. And I leave with more passion than ever to spread the gospel that is better than the false sexual gospels of our age.”