An angry New Jersey minister wants an 11th Commandment that would bar married couples from using Facebook.
The Rev. Cedric Miller is demanding that his church elders delete their accounts on the social-networking site because it is leading to too much sexual temptation and ruining too many marriages.
Miller said that 20 couples out of 1,100 in his Living Word Christian Fellowship Church have hit the rocks after one of the spouses resparked relationships with old flames on the site.
With this flood of Facebook-inspired trouble, Miller has given the roughly 50 high-ranking officers at the Neptune church until Sunday to log out for good.
“I’m going to ask them to lead by example,” he told The Post. “I’m going to say if the potential for evil is there, then cut it off, and I will make a strong biblical case for them to oblige.”
Miller had already asked that members of the church give their spouses their log-on info, so that they couldn’t secretly reconnect with their past loves or meet new paramours online. But it hasn’t been working.
He said that the problem of Facebook-inspired cheating really hit home when he did three marriage counseling sessions in two days with people who said the Web site was the origin of their troubles.
“I’ve been in extended counseling with couples with marital problems because of Facebook for the last year and a half,” he said. “What happens is someone from yesterday surfaces, it leads to conversations and there have been physical meet-ups. The temptation is just too great.”
Miller said he’s not a Luddite who hates technology and even preaches from an iPad. But he believes that Facebook has become an online hook-up joint that’s open 24 hours a day and it’s creating a new form of marital stress.
“This is what pastors are supposed to do,” he said. “My job is to disseminate truth, and then it’s up to the people to do what they want.”
Although he is ordering the church leaders to delete their Facebook pages, he is not going to make the same demand of his church’s members. Although he said he is going to “strongly suggest” they dump the site.
“I’m not going to give them an ultimatum,” he said. “My congregants know me well enough to know that I’m level.”
Hugh Hinds, 44, one of the church elders told The Post that he and his wife, Audrey, aren’t on Facebook, but that they fully support the reverend’s call to get off the site.
“We are in agreement with whatever he says because he is our pastor,” Hinds said. “If we were on Facebook we would have to get off.”
Additional reporting by Ada Calhoun and Post Wire Services