page_title: JC's Girls
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: JC's Girls / Reception
caption_attribution_description: Celebrity photographer and author Michael Grecco at the launch of his book, Naked Ambition
context_page_description: JC's Girls is an evangelical Christian women's organization in the United States whose members evangelize to female workers in the sex industry. The organization supports women wishing to leave the industry, but does not try to persuade them to do so. The group does not focus upon conversion but rather on communicating its message that Christians exist who are not judging female sex workers and are willing to accept them. The organization also helps both women and men seeking to overcome pornography addiction.
  The organization was founded by Heather Veitch, who worked as a stripper for four years before becoming a Christian and leaving the sex industry in 1999. She founded JC's Girls on Good Friday in March 2005; it was based at Sandals Church in Riverside, California, with the support of the California Southern Baptist Convention. In January 2006, JC's Girls went to Las Vegas to operate a booth at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo that received much traffic and news coverage.
  By 2008, Veitch had moved to Las Vegas and based the organization at Central Christian Church in nearby Henderson, Nevada.
context_section_description: When JC's Girls first started receiving funds from Sandals Church in 2005, some of the church's members were displeased that their tithes and offerings were being given to strip clubs. In 2006, Brown said that funding the activities of JC's Girls was worthwhile because the sex industry "has been largely ignored by the evangelical church," and the budget allotted to JC's Girls is small compared to the money made by the sex industry.
  Sandals Church members were also concerned that ministering to strippers would be ineffective. Brown responded by referring to Veitch's conversion, suggesting that other strippers could have similar experiences. Terry Barone of the California Southern Baptist Convention asserted that JC's Girls members "are doing what Jesus did ... He ministered to prostitutes and tax collectors."
  Brown said that the most common complaint that he received about JC's Girls was "the way Heather Veitch looks... her breasts are too big, and she looks too much like a stripper", a complaint to which he responded that "God can use any individual to change the world".
  Veitch said in 2008 that Christians commonly say that JC's Girls dress like sex workers, but she said that the look is intended to help women in the sex industry identify with the group. Annie Lobert of Hookers for Jesus, a similar group that collaborates with JC's Girls, said around the same time that Christians make the same kind of comments about her and her ministry—"They say my T-shirt is too tight", said Lobert, "but, hey, when in Vegas, do as Vegas does".
  Controversy regarding his involvement with JC's Girls threatened to lose Brown his church facility on the California Baptist University campus, but the church united in support of JC's Girls and remained in the same location. Barone said that Baptists might find viewing the JC's Girls website awkward, but that it was not intended for them.
  Stephen Clark of the Los Angeles Times called it "an edgy website [with] provocative appeals." Sarah Sumner, author of Men and Women in the Church, said in Bill Day's 2008 documentary film The Pussycat Preacher that some Christians might oppose the female-led JC's Girls because of 1 Timothy 2:12, a Bible verse that can be interpreted as restricting positions of authority in church to men. Brown said elsewhere in the film that it made more sense for women to lead JC's Girls "because a woman would be the most welcome in the industry".
  In its first year, JC's Girls was criticized for allowing DiGiorgio to take glamorous photographs of Veitch, Albee and Huerter for their website. Veitch responded to this criticism with the assertion that "it is not a sin to be attractive or dress cute," and that the photographs were intended to persuade women in the sex industry to dismiss the idea that Christianity is about "being locked up in a house with a Bible." DiGiorgio said that JC's Girls is correct in believing that many women in the sex industry need to be rescued from self-destructive behavior, but he did not think that encouraging the women to become Christians would necessarily help them.
  The Family Research Council, an American Christian lobbying organization, has endorsed JC's Girls. In his 2013 book Evangelicals and the Arts in Fiction, writer John Weaver writes that science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote about evangelicals as being sexually repressed and eventually undergoing a sexual revolution. Weaver offers JC's Girls and XXXchurch.com as evidence that Heinlein's fiction is becoming a reality. By 2007, adherents of UFO religion Raëlism had responded to JC's Girls by forming "Raël's Girls", an organization with a similar outreach program but a very different message, encouraging sex workers to try to maximise their own sexual pleasure while serving clients.
  In 2006, a Baptist minister from San Bernardino, California criticized JC's Girls for not explicitly encouraging women in the sex industry to quit. He commended Veitch "for her zeal and desire to reach the lost for Christ", but asked, "How can you stay in the industry and have a relationship with God
caption: Photographer Michael Grecco included an image of Veitch, Albee, and Huerter in his 2007 book Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry (pictured).
exif: {}