Joshua Broome, a former adult film star turned pastor, has released a new podcast, titled “Unmentionable: The Story of the Prodigal Pornstar,” which details his life story.
The docuseries simultaneously tells two stories at once, chronologically recounting Broome’s journey from adolescence to the present day, while also tracking the birth of the pornography industry and how it has influenced our culture and the church.
Today, the pornography industry is larger than Disney and Netflix combined.
Lee Shelton, a former youth pastor and CEO of Compel Studios, hosts the podcast. In the series, Broome and Shelton set out to convince listeners that pornography is detrimental to society and that true love requires helping people eradicate pornography from their lives.
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“There’s so many things that we just aren’t talking about that we desperately need to be,” Shelton told ChurchLeaders. “That is why we titled the podcast ‘Unmentionable.’”
Shelton explained that the goal for the podcast is to “give real life examples, like humanize people in the industry to a degree, as well as give language to how we can have a healthy discussion about” a topic that makes many Christians uncomfortable.
“We wanted to bring this dark subject out of the shadows into the light by telling real life stories and have a conversation about it,” Shelton added.
Broome said that he was motivated to do a podcast that provided “personal testimony” alongside “empirical data” to produce a “burden of proof” so that people can’t continue to claim that pornography isn’t hurting anybody.
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After traveling the nation and speaking at numerous churches, Broome shared that he keeps hearing a reoccurring theme: “I love Jesus. But I’m struggling with porn.”
The podcast is titled “Unmentionable,” because, “Well, when you don’t mention the thing that’s holding you captive, you create a prison for yourself, and you’re actually holding yourself captive by believing that thing is unmentionable,” Broome said. “And in many churches, you know, throughout the U.S. and throughout the world, pornography is something that seems to be unmentionable.”
