| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"johac" |
| Date: |
27 Mar 2006 01:57:03 AM |
| Object: |
Ex-Stripper Spreads Gospel to Those in Sex Industry |
Stripping for Jeebus. Pat Robberson calls her a "Holy Hottie."
---
Ex-Stripper Spreads Gospel to Those in Sex Industry
Heather Veitch and volunteers do their evangelizing in strip clubs and
online.
By Stephen Clark
Times Staff Writer
March 25, 2006
The phone rang again and Heather Veitch answered from her
three-bedroom tract home in Riverside. It was yet another radio station,
this time from Detroit, and the DJ wanted to hear the tale of the
stripper turned evangelist.
"I don't try to change their life," she said of the women she seeks out
at strip clubs. "I just want them to have a relationship with God."
The DJ then throws a curveball: Isn't it a sin to strip?
"It is a sin to strip," she answered quickly, adding, "But it's OK to
strip for your husband." Veitch then makes an on-air confession. "I
strip for my husband," she said with a wide smile, "and I teach women in
my church how to do it too."
She has been called the pin-up preacher and porn again. On Thursday she
was introduced on evangelist Pat Robertson's "The 700 Club" as a "holy
hottie."
Veitch describes herself simply as an evangelist, the head of a trio of
missionaries called JC's Girls Girls Girls.
Every month, JC's Girls (JC is for Jesus Christ) and a few female
volunteer church members visit strip clubs, where they pay for lap
dances. While alone with a stripper in a booth, they forgo the dance and
share the Gospel.
In January, JC's Girls went to Las Vegas for the AVN Adult Entertainment
Expo, regarded as the nation's largest trade show in the porn business,
and handed out more than 200 Bibles wrapped in "Holy Hottie" T-shirts.
Veitch, 31, who was a stripper for four years, founded the outreach
ministry last March.
A few months later, she and fellow member Lori Albee launched an edgy
website http://www.jcsgirls.com that trades on the sex appeal of JC's
Girls to attract visitors. Against a violet background, provocative
appeals appear: "If you are a CHRISTIAN Š See us in ACTION."
None of this caused much of a stir until the Daily Telegraph in England
published a story on the ministry Dec. 5. The phone has not stopped
ringing since then.
Veitch has been profiled in newspapers and on radio and has made the
rounds of network and cable television.
She has appeared on tabloid TV, but this week's appearance on "The 700
Club" took her straight into Christian homes. Robertson's show drew an
average of 863,000 viewers a day during the 2004-05 television season,
Nielsen Media Research said.
And the offers keep pouring in: movies, books, reality shows, more
documentaries. Veitch sees a higher purpose in all the publicity. "Every
time I go on a radio station," she said, "I'm spreading God's message."
Not everyone agrees.
"I'm a little offended that she would use the Bible in such a sensuous
manner," said the Rev. Ray Turner, pastor of Temple Missionary Baptist
Church in San Bernardino. He noted that JC's Girls does not urge
strippers to leave the sex industry.
"How can you stay in the industry and have a relationship with God?" he
asked. "You can't serve two masters at one time."
Turner, however, did praise her efforts. "I commend her for her zeal and
desire to reach the lost for Christ," he said.
The Rev. Matt Brown, founder and pastor of the 1,700-member Sandals
Church in Riverside, home of JC's Girls, approved a budget of $50,000
for the ministry in January up from $10,000 in 2005.
"Some people in our church were concerned that some of their offerings
and tithes were paying for lap dances," said Brown, 34.
But Brown says that budget a large portion of which goes to Veitch's
salary is a "drop in the bucket" compared to the funding of the sex
industry. "We're really trying to speak to this industry that has been
largely ignored by the evangelical church," he said.
He says some of his church members think it is a waste of time to
minister to strippers. But Brown is not willing to write them off, he
said, especially given Veitch's conversion.
Born in Los Angeles and raised in Muscoy, a town of 9,000 people in San
Bernardino County, Veitch grew up skinny, poor and sad. "I was the girl
from the wrong side of the tracks," she said, recalling how she was
teased mercilessly by her peers.
At 14, she accepted a ride from a stranger on her way to school and
ended up in a hotel room where he raped her. Veitch didn't report it
because she was embarrassed. After that, she says, she became
promiscuous. At 17, she became pregnant while attending continuation
school. The 22-year-old father, she said, turned out to be a deadbeat.
Veitch became a stripper in 1995 when she was 21 and says she eventually
made $1,200 to $2,000 a night. She appeared in four soft-core and fetish
films and lived life on the wild side.
By 1999, though, the thrill of fast money, hard drinking and providing
fantasies to strangers was gone.
Veitch planned to leave the business before the millennium, when she
thought the world would end. "I was starting to get nervous that if I
died I was going to pay the price for how I lived," she said.
That's when she found her faith. Terry Meeuwsen, her interviewer on "700
Club," asked about her conversion: "Who told you about the Lord?"
"Nobody," Veitch said. "That's what inspires me to share with others. No
one tried to reach me."
In September 1999, Veitch married her boyfriend, Jon Veitch, and
graduated from beauty school. She became a full-time hairdresser,
retired as a stripper and had a daughter.
Then in 2003, Veitch learned that one of her good friends, a stripper
and alcoholic, had died.
"It broke my heart that no one was around who could tell her that it's
never too late" to change, Veitch said. "I felt ashamed that I had run
so far away from the industry, that I had forgotten about them. It's
like running away from a burning house and knowing all your friends are
there."
Veitch tries to balance her media appearances and ministry with acting
as a caretaker for her husband, who is terminally ill with brain cancer.
The couple said the ministry helps distract them from his illness. "We
can't change this," she said, "but we can change the world."
Veitch said that her ministry has inspired only seven strippers to visit
her church but that the ministry has reached strippers all over the
country who contact her through the website, seeking a church to attend.
"I want to travel down the same path she's going," said Amber Miller, a
stripper from Upland.
Since she started the ministry, Veitch has gotten back in shape and lost
25 pounds. She wanted the strippers to see that "jealousy is not what's
driving this ministry. I want them to know that if I wanted to, I could
be a stripper again, but I choose to live my life for the Lord."
Leaders of the California Southern Baptist Convention(JC's Girls' home
church is associated with the denomination) support the ministry but
acknowledge that the website may be too edgy for church members. "I
think many Southern Baptists might feel uncomfortable with that look,"
said spokesman Terry Barone.
Barone added that the ministry is not intended for practicing Christians
anyway. "These women are doing what Jesus did," he said.
"He ministered to prostitutes and tax collectors. He had a penchant for
going to the people who needed his message not the religious people."
Veitch, meanwhile, continues doing interview after interview.
She recently held her ground on "Hannity & Colmes" on Fox News. "Can you
be a stripper and a believer at the same time?" Alan Colmes asked.
"The question," she answered, "is can you be a glutton and a believer at
the same time? Can you be a liar and a believer at the same time? Yes."
---
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-beliefs25mar25,
1,2417183,full.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california
or
http://tinyurl.com/jwnag
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
.
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| User: "Sanitys Little Helper" |
|
| Title: Re: Ex-Stripper Spreads Gospel to Those in Sex Industry |
27 Mar 2006 02:56:26 AM |
|
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johac wrote:
Stripping for Jeebus. Pat Robberson calls her a "Holy Hottie."
---
Ex-Stripper Spreads Gospel to Those in Sex Industry
Heather Veitch and volunteers do their evangelizing in strip clubs and
online.
By Stephen Clark
Times Staff Writer
March 25, 2006
The phone rang again and Heather Veitch answered from her
three-bedroom tract home in Riverside. It was yet another radio station,
this time from Detroit, and the DJ wanted to hear the tale of the
stripper turned evangelist.
"I don't try to change their life," she said of the women she seeks out
at strip clubs. "I just want them to have a relationship with God."
ROTFLMAO.
BTW, what has she done with all the money she made?
.
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: Ex-Stripper Spreads Gospel to Those in Sex Industry |
28 Mar 2006 12:14:21 AM |
|
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In article <3KSdnWZKT7BVNbrZRVnyrA@brightview.com>,
Sanity's Little Helper <elvish@noshpam.net> wrote:
johac wrote:
Stripping for Jeebus. Pat Robberson calls her a "Holy Hottie."
---
Ex-Stripper Spreads Gospel to Those in Sex Industry
Heather Veitch and volunteers do their evangelizing in strip clubs and
online.
By Stephen Clark
Times Staff Writer
March 25, 2006
The phone rang again and Heather Veitch answered from her
three-bedroom tract home in Riverside. It was yet another radio station,
this time from Detroit, and the DJ wanted to hear the tale of the
stripper turned evangelist.
"I don't try to change their life," she said of the women she seeks out
at strip clubs. "I just want them to have a relationship with God."
ROTFLMAO.
BTW, what has she done with all the money she made?
Probably opened another strip club, erm pardon me, church.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
.
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