A new cell carrier called Radiant Mobile just launched with a unique pitch: we'll keep you away from content the Bible disapproves of. The Christian-marketed network is the first of its kind in the U.S. to permanently block pornography at the network level – and the first to bundle that block with a default filter on LGBTQ+ content.
The controversial package has been met with enthusiasm from some Christians, but has drawn fire from others.
What Radiant Mobile Is Doing
Radiant runs on T-Mobile’s infrastructure as a mobile virtual network operator, sorting websites into more than 100 categories using filtering technology. Some of those categories – pornography in particular – are blocked at the network level and can’t be changed by anyone on the plan, even adult account holders.
A second filter, on by default, covers “sexuality” content. Radiant says that category includes LGBT and trans-related material. “We are going to create – and we think we have every right to do so – an environment that is Jesus-centric, that is void of pornography, void of LGBT, void of trans,” said Radiant Mobile’s founder, Paul Fisher.
The network even scans websites by their subdomains. For example, Yale University’s main site stays reachable under the filters, but lgbtq.yale.edu does not. Chief Operating Officer Chris Klimis, an Orlando minister, has framed the project as a response to what he calls a pornography and culture issue crisis in Christian communities.
So how do people of faith feel about this kind of technology?
Where Most Christians Agree
In some ways, this project is nothing new; Christians have been campaigning against the proliferation of pornography for years now.
Pope Francis called it a brutality believers must reject. Evangelical leaders have spent decades describing it as a spiritual threat to marriages and ministries. There are also Christian accountability apps like Covenant Eyes that have built entire businesses around helping believers stay away from explicit content.
For plenty of Christians, Radiant’s permanent block is just a more extreme version of tools they already use. But it’s a fairly big leap in reality. Accountability software typically alerts a friend or pastor when a user slips; Radiant simply refuses to load the page.
Computer scientist David Choffnes, who studies network-level filtering, told MIT Technology Review that this kind of unremovable block is more often associated with state censorship than with consumer products in the United States.
Where Christians Don’t Agree
The LGBTQ+ filter is a different story. Major Christian bodies have come down in very different places on LGBTQ+ inclusion. The United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ordain openly queer clergy and recognize same-sex marriages.
Other large traditions – Southern Baptist, Roman Catholic, and much of evangelical Protestantism – continue to teach that same-sex relationships fall outside biblical sexual ethics. Even inside those groups, individual pastors and congregations land in different places, and Christian opinion on LGBTQ+ rights has been shifting overall.
Radiant’s filter ignores those distinctions and bundles LGBTQ+ content under the banned list, right alongside pornography, labeling it “sexuality” content.
Critics say this decision treats queer identity itself as adult, off-limits material. That’s a categorization many affirming Christians reject on theological grounds. Others feel that conflating it with pornography flattens the issue.
A Walled Garden for the Faithful
It’s yet to be seen how much interest there is in this new type of cell phone plan. For those who worry about temptation online, or who feel their family should be shut off from topics that don’t align with biblical teachings, it might seem like a good option.
Radiant also plans to fill the content gaps with its own library: AI-generated Bible videos, saint stories, and children’s programming built around classic fairy-tale characters.
As for the future, the company says it hopes to go international and expand into places like Mexico and South Korea.
This operating model raises plenty of interesting questions. When does separation from “the world” cease being a healthy expression of faith, and become a form of avoidance? And when the gatekeeper is an algorithm rather than a pastor, who’s accountable for those decisions?
What is your reaction?
