Annette John-Hall: A slow trip back from porn addiction

Brent McNamara probably didn't realize it, but his addiction to pornography took root in the 1960s, when, as a second grader, he'd sneak prolonged peeks at the stash of Playboy magazines hidden in a guitar case belonging to his father's buddy.

By the 1990s, McNamara's addiction had metastasized into a full-blown, debilitating obsession that eventually cost him his family, his career, and his home - not to mention his ministry.

At 15, McNamara says, he received his call to ministry. Well, his God and his porn have been doing battle ever since.

Don't be shocked. Just look at the pedophile priest scandal. And though McNamara's destruction was limited to himself, as my grandmother used to say, the so-called righteous need forgiveness as much as if not more than your garden-variety sinners.

Now 52, McNamara serves as an assistant pastor at Crossbridge Community Church in Woolwich, Gloucester County, and runs a Christian addiction recovery group.

And as part of his recovery, he's written No More Hiding, No More Shame: Finding Freedom From Pornography Addiction, a memoir-testimonial that offers Bible-based advice on how to free oneself from addiction.

"I wrote the book as a confession and as a way to keep myself accountable," McNamara says. "I don't want to go back - and it's so easy to go back."

McNamara writes that he is part of a staggering 51 percent of pastors who have confessed to viewing porn on their church office computers, and among the 37 percent who say it's a current struggle, according to a Christianity Today leadership survey he cites in his book.

I remember a couple of years ago, when the Grammy-winning gospel artist Kirk Franklin told Oprah about his porn addiction. Franklin, who was adopted, said years of insecurity and low self-esteem caused him to turn to porn "as company."

McNamara writes about growing up in upstate New York - abandoned by his mother and physically, mentally, and sexually abused by his stepmother. Pornography became an escape, a comfort.

"All I needed were those paper ladies to give me that feeling again. . . ." he writes in his book. "The girls on the pages never hurt me. I felt safe with them."

Decades before personal computers ushered in a burgeoning cyber-porn industry and sexting, McNamara, at the time a husband with a toddler daughter and another on the way, was secretly buying girly magazines at a smut shop at 17th and Market, only blocks from the old Philadelphia College of Bible, where he went to school.

"I'd buy a magazine, get rid of it, and fall to my knees and ask for forgiveness," he recalls. "I'd always feel like a hypocrite. . . . It became a big source of my discouragement - how come I can't overcome this?"

At the height of his addiction in the 1990s, McNamara - who worked from home in sales - was downloading so much porn, his computer hard drive couldn't handle it. So he burned hundreds of CDs that he collected and sold.

He built his own porn site. Not only did he have a problem, he was contributing to it.

His wife of 24 years finally left him. In 2002, he was found to have stage three melanoma. Surgery and chemotherapy followed. He couldn't work. He lost his house.

"All of that was what it took for me to see the mess I had made in my life," McNamara says. " "That was the one thing God used to stop me in my tracks and turn me around."

With his own mortality staring him in the face, McNamara did the hard work of self-examination: Did he believe he was worthy of love? Could he forgive himself? Did he want to continue to serve two masters?

He got rid of his computers and his porn library.

And he started going back to church and was offered a job at Crossbridge with no judgment.

McNamara believes he's been delivered - from the cancer, that is.

But from the porn? All he can do is take it one day at a time.

"I asked Trish [his second wife] to password-protect all the computers so I can't access any of the stuff," he says. "And I ask God to give me the strength to resist the temptation - because it's everywhere."