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UN 16 Days of Activism – Day 6: Rachel Starr

by Rachel Starr on

Tell us about yourself. Who are you and what do you do?

Hi, my name is Rachel Starr and I teach biblical studies, gender and theology at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham. Queen’s is ecumenical and we have students exploring theology, discipleship and ministry from Anglican, Methodist and Pentecostal churches.

 It would be hard to say what subject I enjoy teaching most, but I love the energy and creativity of the Masters module on global theologies and migration. Faced with the scale and complexity of migration today, we need more theological resources to help us respond to and receive from migrants. In addition, it is important to make visible the migration of traditions and communities of faith throughout history. The work of Argentine theologian Nancy Bedford has been invaluable in exploring the particular experience of Latin American women migrants and the violence they encounter along the way, as well as naming the multiple forms of resistance and strategies of survival they employ. A powerful example of communal resistance to the death-dealing structures and monstrous borders that confront many undocumented migrants is that of Las Patronas, a group of Mexican women who cook and carry food to the tracks where each day trains carrying hundreds of migrants pass by (watch here).

 I completed my doctorate at Instituto Superior Evangélico de Estudios Teológicos in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I learnt much from organizations such as Movimiento Ecuménico por los Derechos Humanos, spending time with local women’s groups that sought to resist and challenge both domestic, and more public forms of, violence. My book, Reimagining Theologies of Marriage in Contexts of Domestic Violence: When Salvation is Survival (Routledge, 2018) explores how Christian accounts of marriage are often static and idealized, failing to take account of violence and gender inequality within relationships.

 The work of Latin American women theologians and activists continues to inspire and challenge me. Doing theology in another language is a means of resisting dominant theological traditions and ensuring we don’t rely on familiar readings of texts and traditions. Last year, I spent a month in Central America, meeting with theologians and activists working on a range of interrelated issues: increasing access to reproductive health care, a life-or-death issue for women in Central America; facilitating debate around masculinity and violence; and challenging street harassment. The image of birds flying in front of the cathedral in the Nicaraguan city of León speaks to me of how even then most static religious structures are in constant and dynamic relationship with lived experience and movements for change.  

 How do you think the Shiloh Project’s work on religion and rape culture can add to and enrich discussion and action on the topic of gender activism today? Is there more we can do? What else should we post?

 The creativity, commitment and community generated by the Shiloh Project seem to me to be important resources for challenging gender-based violence. At the conference last summer, the creativity of the presentations and discussion reminded me of the gift of collaboration between academics and artists, and how creativity is often a source of resistance to violence and oppression. The passionate commitment around naming and shaming violence within the biblical texts and within our own lived contexts was energizing. In particular, I was struck bythe naming of Abraham as a rapist (see a blog post about this paper by Zanne Domoney-Lyttle here). Why is Abraham (and Sarah’s) abuse of Hagar not identified as sexual violence? It reminded me how fiercely faith communities seek to protect the male ‘heroes’ within the biblical text, and how difficult it can be to name what is clearly stated in the text. Finally, the conference enabled me to connect with other scholars and activists working to challenge gender-based violence. The welcoming and supportive atmosphere of the conference reminded me of how important I had found similar networks, such as the Catholic women theologians’ network, Teologanda, of which I had loved being part while living in Argentina.

 In the year ahead, how will you contribute to advancing the aims and goals of The Shiloh Project?  

 I’m currently working on a new edition of SCM Studyguide to Biblical Hermeneutics (2006), co-written with David Holgate. The revised edition will deepen and develop material on how we read the Bible attentive to multiple identities and contexts, as well as exploring resistant readings of the text, drawing on the work of scholars such as Phyllis Trible and Oral A. W. Thomas. Inspired by Ericka Shawndricka Dunbar’s presentation at the Shiloh Project’s Religion and Rape Conference (see a blog post on this presentation here), we ask what kinds of stories do we allow the Bible to tell? And making further use of the work of Gina Hens-Piazza, we suggest ways of seeing, denouncing and resisting violence present within biblical texts and their interpretation. Hens-Piazza’s commentary on Lamentations, part of the new Wisdom Commentary series, is a powerful testimony to the importance of resisting the violence of the text.

With Dulcie Dixon Mckenzie, Director of the Centre for Black Theology at Queen’s, I recently developed a new module for the Common Awards programme, entitled Intersectional Theologies (see here). While the notion of intersectionality has been part of academic discourse for some time, there has been less attention within theology to the complexities of identity and dynamics of power. A particular hope is that the module will generate theological resources appropriate to contemporary British contexts. This module has the potential to be used by any of the nineteen theological institutions working with Durham University as part of Common Awards. At Queen’s, this module will help students make deeper connections between earlier modules focused on Black Theology and on Theology and Gender.

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UN 16 Days of Activism – Day 5: Rachel Muers

by Rachel Muers on

Today’s activist is theologian and Quaker Rachel Muers.

Tell us about yourself! Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Rachel Muers, a UK-based academic theologian working at the University of Leeds. My specialism is in modern Christian theology and ethics. I’m very fortunate to be part of a group of scholars at Leeds who approach questions about contemporary religion from many different academic perspectives, and I’ve learned an enormous amount by co-teaching and conversing with these colleagues and with a diverse group of students over the years – especially when we can also bring in our shared commitments to social justice, as with a new course on human rights and religion. I’ve taught courses on theology, religion and gender, and have written on issues of feminism and theology.

Given the history of my subject, I’ve always spent a lot of time reading, and writing about, great works by great men from centuries gone by. I don’t think scholars always realise the cumulative effect that such an experience can have; as women we get the message, on some level, that we’re not really meant to be in this conversation, or at least that we showed up really late.Although I’ve been enthusiastic about feminist theology since I was a student, it still felt like I was breathing new fresh air a few years ago when I finally had a project that let me quote and cite lots of women from history as theological authorities. It was a book on Quaker theology, and since I’m a Quaker it was partly also the pleasure of spending time with ‘foremothers’. Given half a chance, I’ll enthuse at length about the formidable seventeenth-century English women – from all social classes – who were preaching in public and travelling enormous distances, conducting furious theological debates in print and in person, and facing down everything that was thrown at them for their infringements of religious norms – especially gender norms.

People who know me will tell you I’m passionate about a lot of things. One of them is promoting my academic subject, in schools and universities and to the general public; I hope to have more opportunities to do that over the next couple of years as president of a UK learned society. I’d love there to be more spaces where more people feel confident enough to join in with seriouscritical discussion of religion – and I think that’s a feminist issue, because the alternative tends to be that ‘shouty men’ in positions of authority dominate the conversation.

I’ve recently become a co-chair of the Women at Leeds Network, which organizes events and networking opportunities for women across the whole (very large) institution – women academics, research students, professional and managerial staff, technical staff. The greatest power of the network, as I see it, comes from putting women from different contexts in the same room for the first time, and letting them discover connections between their experiences, their challenges and their insights. It’s not exactly revolutionary in itself, but it’s probably the way a lot of change starts.

How do you think the Shiloh Project’s work on religion and rape culture can add to and enrich discussion and action on the topic of gender activism today?

Working on the World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order commission, with a genuinely international group of theologians and church representatives, has made me more aware both of how important it is to keep talking about gender justice in Christian theology – and how difficult it can be, when in some contexts even the mention of ‘gender’ is heard as an attempt to impose some sort of Western liberal agenda. The Shiloh Project is enormously valuable here both because it’s hosting an international conversation where diverse voices are heard, and because – with the focus on rape culture – it makes it very clear why these questions matter across the world, why gender justice isn’t optional or trivial.

In the year ahead, how will you contribute to advancing the aims and goals of The Shiloh Project?  

One of my academic writing projects at the moment is a chapter on ‘war and peace’ in modern Christian theology. As a Quaker I’ve always been interested in bringing critical questions about power, violence and nonviolence – including about the links between violence and economic and social injustice – closer to the centre of theological conversation. And I’m increasingly struck, not in a good way, by how much the language and imagery of warfare shows up in theological texts, even when war isn’t the theme. Invading, conscripting, overpowering, conquering are all just fine, apparently, if they are God’s actions. I don’t think you need to be either a pacifist or a feminist to worry about what effect it has within a religious community when the symbolic space is dominated by images of male power. The other thing I’m noticing is that the way questions about ‘war and peace’ are often framed, in theological ethics, leaves gender-based violence out of the picture. Violence only seems to become interesting for ethics when it’s organized groups of men against men; not only rape as a war crime, but the enormous scale of gender-based violence in ‘peacetime’, receives much less attention. I want to ask what that says about the academic conversation, but also what effects it might have in practice.

I’m looking forward to teaching the human rights and religion course again, and – as part of that – working with my colleagues to get students talking and thinking about the complex relationships between religion and violence against women. I’m going to try to keep up with my commitment to read, cite and ‘lift up’ women’s scholarship.

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UN 16 Days of Activism – Day 3: Jo Sadgrove

by Jo Sadgrove on

Today’s activist is Jo Sadgrove!

 Tell us about yourself.  Who are you and what do you do?

I am Jo and over the past 20 years I have developed a hybrid portfolio of work incorporating both practitioner and scholarly aspects. I seek to facilitate dialogue and transliteration across what are often very distinct ways of thinking, feeling and knowing. I am a Research Fellow in the Centre for Religion and Public Life at Leeds University and I have a job as Research and Policy Advisor at USPG, a 300-year-old Anglican Mission agency working in partnership with local churches around the world. With colleagues, we connect our overseas partners to global policy makers to ensure that their voices are represented in conversations about faith and community development.

My interest in questions of gender, faith and power emerged out of my upbringing as the daughter of an Anglican priest in a church which did not ordain women until 1994. My parents were passionate advocates for women’s ordination, and I was always aware that this was an important issue, but that didn’t alter the fact that I grew up in a church in which only men possessed ritual power. Looking back, it was probably exposure to the Church of England – inhabiting itstheological colleges, churches, cathedrals and the strange semi-public spaces of vicarages and deaneries – that fostered my ethnographic interests. You live on the boundary between public and private when you grow up in a vicarage and there is a very permeable membrane between the family and the wider community.

When I was 18 I went to Uganda and spent time living amongst different communities of women. The contexts were diverse, ranging from the staff quarters of a large urban hotel to remote rural Roman Catholic convents. These intimate domestic experiences brought me face-to-face with starkly gendered issues of power, labour, economics, mobility, pregnancy and child-rearing, violence, embodiment and HIV. They also shot through any emergent assumptions I was developing about the ways that women can and do have agency within different patriarchal power structures. I learned more about western patriarchies and the ways that they constitute women’s bodies and imaginations refracted through the teachings of Ugandan women than I ever did in the context of my British education. These experiences radicalised my thinking, and I remain focussed on the ways that different worldviews – be they ‘cultural’, ‘religious’, biomedical, rights-based –both operate as entirely coherent epistemic totalities that need to be understood on their own terms,and intersect with and antagonise each other. It is in such antagonisms that the underpinning assumptions of different worldviews reveal themselves.

Living in Ugandan communities in the 1990s when many were dying of HIV exposed to me the high costs of the mis–understandings between (western) biomedical approaches and the ethos of Ganda community life. The former is premised, amongst other things, on economically independent atomised individuals who perform particular types of health-seeking behaviour. The ethos of Ganda community life is underpinned by social interconnections and respectability, which position men and women differently and can heavily disadvantage women in the negotiation of their own protection from HIV.

My doctorate analysed sexual and religious youth identities in a Pentecostal community in Kampala in the context of the HIV pandemic. I then went on to work on debates about homosexuality in different parts of the Anglican Communion. This project incorporated a period of time working with Gerald West at the Ujamaa Centre which afforded me my first experience of Contextual Bible Study work, something of which I am only now beginning to understand the importance and value. Eventually I left full-time academia in a desire to work more closely with local communities, the context in which I find myself doing my best learning and thinking, and I got a job undertakingresearch with USPG.

In the year ahead, how will you contribute to advancing the aims and goals of The Shiloh Project?  

My work with USPG bridges the worlds of research and policy. With colleagues in the UK and South Africa I have recently engaged in a piece of research to map and analyze the Anglican Church in Southern Africa’s (ACSA) responses to sexual and gender-based violence, in particular following the death of Anene Booysen in 2013. The next year will see us disseminating this work alongside our international partners to a variety of different audiences, beginning with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March.

On 2nd February 2013, 17-year-old Anene Booysen was gang raped and disemboweled in the small town of Bredasdorp, Western Cape, South Africa. Anene was found by a security guard at a construction site near to her home and she later died in hospital from her injuries. This brutal rape and murder horrified the country and re-focused the attention of leaders as to the catastrophic consequences of violence for women and girls in South Africa. At the time of the murder, ACSA’s development arm Hope Africa and staff in False Bay Diocese (in which Bredasdorp is situated)were engaging in community-based work around gender justice. Hope Africa was also part of theinternational ‘We Will Speak Out’ coalition of Christian-based NGOs, churches and organizations against gender-based violence. The murder of Anene generated a number of responses on the part of the Anglican Church engaging different constituent groups.  Survivors of rape and sexual violence were brought together for counselling, peer support and to speak out about their experiences to raise national and international awareness. A number of Christian students at Cape Town’s universities have been involved in Contextual Bible Studies engaging questions of gender using the Tamar Campaign resource. A series of masculinity workshops have engaged men in the Western Cape to think about their own experiences of violence in childhood and reflect on the ways that patterns of violence have been replicated in their own lives, in the lives of their communities and in the churches.

The experiences of those engaged in this work, have revealed a number of things to me about where and how the church both facilitates and mitigates gender parity and abuses of power. When we (and development practitioners) talk about working with ‘the church’ and its leaders we need to think critically about where we locate and identify them. We need to incorporate into our understandings the many different spaces in which groups experience themselves as members of the church and through which ‘the church’ looks and feels very different. The space of Sunday worship, we heard,is a context in which it is very rare to hear anyone talking about gender-based violence, despite the fact that congregations are dealing with it daily. Due to contextual social pressures, parish priests are frequently unwilling to open up conversations that might alienate them from congregants and in turn jeopardize their stipends. On the other hand those who have experienced the masculinities workshops perceive the church to be offering unique homosocial spaces in which men can think and talk about their experiences in ways that are inconceivable in any of the other socialenvironments in which they find themselves. The church here has offered something unique and valuable – a reflective space in which to talk about the violence of apartheid, the violence of childhood and how that violence had, for some, been carried into adult relationships and parenting. Wellness groups for women offer a space of psychosocial support in which women can share the troubles and threats that they face daily, not just in relation to themselves, but also those of the children within their communities. Contextual Bible Study groups using the story of Tamar have opened up discussions between male and female students at local universities as to the complexities of negotiating the differing gender norms of ‘culture’, the Bible and the rights-based constitution. These Bible studies have enabled male and female students to critique the church as lagging behind society, to evaluate the challenges and opportunities of western rights based frameworks and to question the nature of ‘cultural’ authority as embodied by the elders ‘back home’.

There are no easy analyses here and no coherent narratives. The intersections of ‘Biblical’, ‘cultural’ and rights–based norms for gender in South Africa, as everywhere else, are highly complex and varied – mutually reinforcing in certain spaces and highly antagonistic in others. I see the same contests in related work that I am doing within the Church of England around institutional power and sexuality. Across the generations people are struggling with shifting patterns of authority, processes of individuation and the implications for gender norms and the socialization of men and women. I see my own challenge and role in this work as dual and somewhat contradictory; to listen to and amplify the voices that are working hard to redeem the church as irredeemably patriarchal at the same time as broadcasting ever more loudly the critique of all institutions that use their power to marginalize and stratify. We need to remain vigilant and recognize the violent patriarchal biases in the cultural, social and institutional worlds which we inhabit, whilst exploring how norms can be challenged and faith groups can open up distinct spaces of solidarity in which hegemonic gendered worldviews can be resisted.

All this work aside, I actually feel that the most important thing I will continue to do is engage conversations with men and women about gender and power in the home, at the school gate, in the pub, in interactions with colleagues and students and in all of the social contexts in which I find myself. I have benefitted immeasurably from a powerhouse of older female mentors who have gently challenged and steered me through and around my own blind spots. They have helped me to recognize what I might be negotiating as a woman and as a mother and offered me different ways of thinking about what it is to be a feminist in such a challenging set of institutional structures – the church, the university, motherhood. I am supremely grateful to the women whom I meet from around the world who have spent their lives challenging unjust structures and taught me much about how to use my privilege to do my part.

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16 Days of Activism – Day 3: Anna Rowlands

by Anna Rowlands on
Tell us about yourself. Who are you and what do you do? 

I’m Anna Rowlands and I am an academic based at Durham University, UK. I work in the area of Political Theology and have been involved for the last ten years in researching refugee policy and forced migrant experiences. I got involved with this following a life-changing experience volunteering at an immigration ‘reception’ centre near where I was living (at that time) in the South East of England. I was volunteering in a personal capacity, helping with chapel services, visitingdetainees and seeking to offer some human contact with the local community. I was deeply affected by this experience and as a result became involved in grassroots community organizing, working eventually alongside the 2010 coalition government seeking an end to the detention of children and families for immigration purposes. This was a – not altogether successful – experience of learning how to bring together my academic interests in theological ethics, activism and public policy work. Nonetheless, what I saw and heard convinced me that migration is, and will continue to be, one of the key social realities and challenges facing our generation.

Over the course of the last decade immigration has become a massively politicized issue in Europe and North America and new conflicts have caused massive displacement of peoples. Religion, religious belief, and faith-based humanitarian action have become central to the ‘story’ of contemporary migration, as well as to the increasingly political ‘story’ we tell ourselves about migration and the nation-state. I am currently pursuing two main projects addressing questions of religion and forced migration – the first is a 4 year AHRC/ERSC funded project that we have called ‘Refugee Hosts’ (www.refugeehosts.org). We are looking at conflict displacement from Syria into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan and the role of local communities in refugee ‘hosting’. Often this hosting can involve previous generations of refugees hosting a new generation of refugees. Our Principal Investigator (lead researcher) for the project Professor Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh has written widely on the gender-based challenges facing refugees, and our project administrator is pursuing groundbreaking research on the experience of LBGT refugees. We have a great project blog on our website if you want to read more, and also some incredibly powerful poetry written by our poet in residence Yousif M. Qasmiyeh.

Credit: Elena Fiddian Qasmiyeh

My second main project is UK-based and is a partnership with the Jesuit Refugee Service. I’m investigating the experience of asylum seekers in the UK who face destitution, some of whom have also experienced immigration detention as part of their claims process. I’ve interviewed around 30 people who work for and are part of JRS’s day centre for people living in destitution. We’ve talked about the human ‘goods’ (public, private, common) that those seeking asylum see as most important and the ways in which systems either support or frustrate the pursuit of these goods. I asked no formal questions about religion or faith in the interviews, however, all but one interviewee mentioned religion as a key source of resilience and meaning that had sustained them during their asylum process. For many interviewees faith had been tested, changed, found anew, lost and refound. Above all interviewees told me about the ways that their faith traditions offered them texts and narratives that spoke directly to experiences of violence and trauma. The most commonly cited text was Jeremiah 29: as one interview said, echoing many others who cited the same passage, ‘God has a plan for our welfare, a good plan, but it is a plan with unexpected ends.’ Others noted that they were drawn to the Psalms, that they felt they had walked through the valley of death, seen what evil looked like but also known that the presence of God was real for them in this most violent of spaces. The resilience of religious belief itself was a key finding. The interviews had striking echoes of the writing of feminist and self-described ‘indecent’theologian Marcella Althaus Reid who noted in response to her own forced migration experience that she had come to find reading the Psalms as akin to reading ‘letters from our mothers.’ The interviews have also highlighted the extent to which asylum destitution is a profoundly gendered experience, with many women subjected to sexual violence and coercion in order to survivematerially. Women also report the disturbing and difficult ‘choices’ they find themselves making in order to feel more secure whilst living on the streets and sleeping on night buses, attempting to minimise the risk of sexual violence. This work will lead to the publication of a public report on the impact of destitution on the freedom those seeking asylum have to pursue human ‘goods’.

These experiences of moving between research, activism and policy have proved – perhaps inevitably – messy, non-linear and even at times tense processes. But I remain convinced of their necessary co-belonging.

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International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 2018: Interview with Professor Musa Dube

by Musa Dube on

Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, designated as Orange Day by the UN Women campaign Say No, UNiTE launched in 2009 to mobilize civil society, activists, governments and the UN system in order amplify the impact of the UN Secretary-General’s campaign, UNiTE to End Violence against Women. Participants the world over are encouraged to wear a touch of orange in solidarity with the cause – the colour symbolizes a brighter future and a world free from violence against women and girls.

The 2018 theme is Orange the World: #HearMeToo and like previous editions, today marks the launch of 16 days of activism that will conclude on 10 December 2018, International Human Rights Day.

To mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and to kick off our daily interviews with activists during the 16 Days of Activism period, we speak to Professor Musa Dube (University of Botswana) about her academic activism and her hopes for the future.

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Tell us about yourself! Who are you and what do you do? 

My name is Musa W. Dube from Botswana. I work for the University of Botswana as a scholar of the New Testament. My research interest is primarily in reading the New Testament for liberation, which often involves reading for gender, postcolonial, cultural, Earth and international justice. I often interrogate texts for various forms of oppression as well as make attempts to re-read for liberation.

For the past twenty-one years, I have been active working with religious communities  in the struggle against HIV and AIDS. This epidemic, which has claimed millions of lives in three decades, is an epidemic within other epidemics that is driven and propelled by social inequalities. These inequalities include economic, gender, racial and age dimensions, as well as inequalities of sexual orientation and identity. With HIV and AIDS we learnt that the biggest violence we unleash on any group of people, and on the whole Creation Community, begins with structural sins that silence and marginalize creation members from their dignity and liberation to live whole lives. Violence is therefore founded upon the structural sins of patriarchy, imperialism, racism, heteronormativity, anthropocentricism etc., which propound worldviews that legitimize the marginalization of the Other. Gender-based violence, sexism and rape are merely symptoms of the foundational structural sin, which is patriarchy.  

HIV and AIDS activism has stood up to patriarchy and has called for the re-imagination of masculinities. And so, three years ago, I got involved in a movement that culminated in the formation of Pitso ya Banna, an association that seeks to provide space for men to discuss what it means to be a man, as well as to interrogate troubling masculinities and to provide models for liberating masculinities, that do not embrace violence, or depend on subjugation of women.

How do you think the Shiloh Project’s work on religion and rape culture can add to and enrich discussion and action on the topic of gender activism today? Is there more we can do? What else should we post?

Since religion remains a space that gathers communities under some agreed high ethical reflections, a project that looks into religion and rape is definitely important and stands a great chance towards building communities of gender justice. Most religious traditions and communities need conversations, regarding their scriptures, beliefs and practices concerning gender-based violence, and rape in particular. They need skills of naming and recognizing sexual violence and naming it as unacceptable sin. 

It is commonly assumed that members of religious communities are not sexually violent, but research indicates otherwise. It is also common that holy texts that deal with rape and gender-based violence more generally do not get read in worship, or if they are read, they often get interpreted from perspectives that normalize violence against women. Empowering faith communities to break the silence concerning rape and to equip them with skills of reading such texts to expose ideological structures that embrace sexual violence and gender inequalities is vital. Further, religious communities, at least here in Botswana, need to be empowered with skills of counselling survivors of rape.   

Recent rape scandals in a Pentecostal church in South Africa, where young teenagers were subjugated to rape by their pastor, seemingly with the knowledge of the congregation, indicate that both religious leaders and their congregants need to be trained to confront and resist rape. This must include training to empower them to blow the whistle when violence happens.

In the year ahead, how will you contribute to advancing the aims and goals of The Shiloh Project? 

Theology and Religious Studies members of the University of Botswana are active members of the Shiloh Project. Indeed, the Project is partly hosted in my home department. I am committed to and skilled in reading and re-reading texts for exposing all forms of oppressions. Moreover, I can offer positive models of justice and gender justice in particular. Last year I read the story of the rape of Dinah (Genesis 34), exploring how it intersects with colonial desires and ethnic difference. Therefore, I am already strategically placed to interact and collaborate with the Shiloh Project in multiple ways that can advance its aims and goals.

I am also hoping that through Pitso ya Banna, we will collaborate in reaching faith communities and expanding the spaces where discussions concerning non-violent masculinities can be opened. Collaborating with the Shiloh Project might allow us to break the silence concerning rape in faith communities and to empower religious communities to speak out against rape and other forms of violence, within their congregations and in the general public.

In general, my assumption concerning violence is that it begins with structural sin, which is then manifested in various forms, including acts such as rape. The core of addressing gender-based violence, and rape in particular, should therefore begin by empowering religious communities to name patriarchy as a foundational sin, which is inconsistent with any form of acknowledging the Divine Creator. 

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Communal Theodicy and #MeToo

by Jayme Reaves on

It has been a few weeks now since that day when Christine Blasey Ford gave testimony as part of Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in relation to his nomination to be a US Supreme Court Justice.  For several days before and after, my social media timelines were full of women in pain, women who had told similar stories to Ford’s and were likewise vilified, rejected, mocked, or ignored.

The same day Ford gave her testimony, I was interviewed for a research project about growing up in Christian purity culture and the effect that it has had on me and my theology as an adult.  Reasonably, I found myself – like many women – angry and working to make links between my thoughts and what I had been seeing and hearing that day (or over weeks… or years… take your pick).

Feeling tetchy and provocative, I asked on Twitter:

Why, in the context of a female victim of #rape/sexual abuse, does the implementation of pedagogical #theodicy (suffering teaches us) focus on what the woman can learn (e.g. where not to go, who not to hang out with) & NEVER on what men can learn (e.g. don’t rape, believe women)?

See, while answering my colleague’s questions about the after-effects of purity culture on my theology, I told her that I no longer found meaning and comfort in the idea that suffering has positive value because it teaches us something.  Such a way of thinking was common in the purity culture I grew up in: that sexual abuse and assault was directly or indirectly the fault of the one victimized, and that God allows bad things to happen to teach us a lesson.  

Since then, I have continued to pick apart my original question.  Why, when it comes to women being raped or sexually assaulted, do we only focus on what she can learn from her victimization and never focus on what men can learn?  Why does the learning become the responsibility of the victim and not the perpetrator and/or the community at large?

While there are some conversations happening out there about how men can step up, pay attention, test their own behaviour, and join the cause, these conversations remain fairly marginal.  Instead, I think the answer to my original question boils down to two factors:  the gendered ways we understand sexual violence and abuse (obvs) and the individualised way Western Christianity tends to understand theodicy. 

By the term ‘theodicy’ I mean the numerous ways we answer the questions ‘Why does God allow suffering and evil in the world?’, or ‘Why do bad things happen?’ One of the ways to understand the meaning (and, therefore, value) of suffering is in its usefulness in teaching us lessons. This theory is known as ‘pedagogical theodicy’, or Ireanean theodicy, because it became well known based on the 2nd century teachings of St. Irenaeus. 

For Irenaeus, humanity needs evil and suffering in order to develop and grow. He believed that suffering has redeeming value because it teaches us something, and human goodness can only be known and cultivated in a context where there is potential for evil. Setting big questions about God’s role in the creation or perpetuation of that evil aside, we see pedagogical theodicy exhibited by both religious and non-religious people when they say something like ‘Everything happens for a reason’, ‘There must be something we’re supposed to learn here’, and/or ‘God is trying to teach us something’. 

As humans, we need to make meaning out of the bad things that happen to us. It is human nature to try to understand why. We want to believe that there is a lesson to be learned, or a warning sign to avoid for next time. Or, we want to know that there’s something bigger than our pain, some purpose that makes pain endurable. The problem comes when our need for those lessons, or for that bigger purpose, becomes more important than acknowledging the trauma experienced.

We’re all familiar with the rhetoric and speculation that gets said when someone becomes a victim of rape or sexual abuse: ‘You must have done something to deserve it’. You did something wrong; there is a lesson to be learned. Likewise, here at The Shiloh Project and elsewhere, it is well documented that prevailing rape culture says that when a woman experiences rape or sexual abuse, it is somehow her fault. Rape culture denies the equality and viability of a woman’s experience, saying that either 1) what happened to her didn’t really happen; 2) what happened to her wasn’t as bad as she says; or 3) what happened to her was deserved, or for her own good.

Therefore, the first factor in answer to my original question – why is the focus on what the woman (or victim) can learn and never on what men (or perpetrators) can learn? – is that there is a pervasive culture of victim blaming, stigmatising, and shaming in response to suffering. Job’s friends were adamant that he must have done something wrong to cause his suffering, and if he can find this something and rectify it (i.e. learn his lesson), all will be well.  

When the victim is female, this push to blame, stigmatise, shame, becomes all the more pervasive. The pedagogical understanding of theodicy takes on the guises of rape culture by saying: 

‘You were hanging out with drunk boys, so what did you expect?’  

‘You were asking for it by wearing that short skirt.’

‘You know better than to go out at night.’

Whatever the lesson is, the victim is the one to blame. The victim is the one with lessons to learn. Next time, don’t do or be that (whatever that is). And we all know that’s bullshit.

But there is a second factor to my original question that we do not talk about and is more hidden. Western Christianity and its prevailing culture tend to understand suffering, including rape, in an individualised manner and victimisation is generally conceived of as something that happens to an individual, not something that happens to a community. For example, we ask the question ‘Why did this happen to me?’ instead of ‘Why did this happen to us?’ or ‘What can we learn from this experience?’ 

This individualised understanding of suffering is despite the prophetic biblical witness that points to communal suffering and communal guilt (e.g. in Isaiah and Jeremiah), as well as other biblical texts such as Ecclesiastes and Job that say suffering happens for no reason, or – at the very least – for no reason over which we as humans have control.    

Nevertheless, we see this individualised understanding of suffering over communal responsibility play out in conflicts large and small: individual cases that point to a greater, communal truth of oppressive power, domination, and abuse largely remain unrecognised and unaddressed in any wider communal way that affects systemic change.  Of course, change comes in toppling those oppressive powers, which, let’s face it, is not in everyone’s interest to do. To acknowledge and to address communally calls on the community to take responsibility, which, understandably, it may be loathe to do. It is much easier to focus blame and responsibility on one individual.

So, when a victim experiences sexual abuse or violence, the question becomes about the victim as an individual and what that individual could or should have done and not about the community or those who perpetrate or uphold systems that enable oppression and abuse.  

So back to my original question:

Why, in the context of a female victim of #rape/sexual abuse, does the implementation of pedagogical #theodicy (suffering teaches us) focus on what the woman can learn (e.g. where not to go, who not to hang out with) & NEVER on what men can learn (e.g. don’t rape, believe women)?

The obvious answer is that the emphasis is never on the lessons men can learn, because we don’t generally understand suffering in a way that has lessons for all of us, not just for the victim.  ‘We suffer because you have suffered’ just isn’t part of our understanding of theodicy in the West.  Instead, we feel bad for the person who has been traumatised, but secretly thank God it wasn’t us. Or, if we do understand it communally, most often it becomes a scapegoating scenario where it is the victim who is to blame for the ills of the community, rather than the one with whom the community stands to show solidarity.

The #MeToo movement has presented us with an obvious opportunity to challenge this individualised notion of theodicy. Because for so many of us – it was us too.  These are not individual cases. Sexual violence and rape culture is a communal issue and if there are lessons to be learned here, they are lessons that apply to all of us – men included – and not just to the victims.  

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The Shiloh Project in Ghana

by Johanna Stiebert on

In late October we, Katie and Johanna, travelled to Accra. We were going there to participate in a collaborative project funded by WUN (the Worldwide Universities Network). This project is led by Rev. Dr. George Ossom-Batsa, of the Department for the Study of Religions, University of Ghana (UG). Alongside us three, the project also includes Shiloh’s third co-lead, Caroline Blyth, who will take the lead in compiling and editing a special issue on religion and gender-based violence (GBV) for the journal The Bible and Critical Theory (BCT).

Our project has the title ‘An Intersectional Exploration of Religion and Gender-Based Violence: A Case Study of Accra in Global Context’. The idea for the project grew out of the Shiloh Project.

Just looking out the car window on the way from the airport to our hotel, the prominent presence of religion in public spaces was very striking. Huge billboards depict Christian preachers and advertise crusades and prayer meetings, or promise prosperity and blessings, or proclaim the imminent return of Jesus. Religious leaders on these billboards take up the kind of space reserved in our own context only for mega-celebrities. 

Over the days we would see some publicity also about leaders and revered figures in the Muslim and African Traditional Religions communities – but a dazzling array of Christian churches certainly predominate over other religious communities. We would see all kinds of products sold using Bible verses and allusions to God’s will and endorsement. Be it gear boxes, drains, beauty products or foods – God is all around in public and commercial spheres.

The central part of our visit was a day-long conference followed by a day of workshops to investigate our topic from a range of perspectives. The conference day was opened on 30 October by the Provost of UG’s College of Humanities, Professor Samuel Agyei-Mensah. 

The keynote speaker was Prof. Akosua Adomako Ampofo who, until recently, directed UG’s Institute of African Studies. She is also founder of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy and winner of the Feminist Activism Award. A sociologist by training, Prof. Ampofo has a long and strong record of challenging GBV, including through her advisory role in the process of passing the Domestic Violence Act and criminalizing marital rape (2007), and her extensive empirical work on masculinities in a range of African contexts. Her work on African masculinities resists both what she aptly calls the ‘Western gaze’ and the disproportionate emphasis on South Africa – to the exclusion of other African contexts.

Prof Ampofo was a hard act to follow – but Katie’s and my joint presentation was next on the conference programme. We introduced the Shiloh Project and spoke on rape culture manifestations in the Bible (Johanna) and on the application of religious iconography in popular culture (Katie). 

The next co-presentation was by George Ossom-Batsa and Dr. Nicoletta Gatti, both biblical scholars from UG’s Department for the Study of Religions. Their presentation focused on the Hebrew Bible book of Job alongside prosperity preaching by Ghanaian Pentecostal churches. The paper demonstrated on the one hand, how in the prosperity gospel poverty has come to signify absence of blessing and, on the other, how poverty (and therefore such preaching) disproportionately harms women who are far more likely than men to be impoverished. One distressing statistic cited was that the estimated average hourly wage for women in Ghana is only 57% that of men.

The next two presentations moved away from biblical studies. First Dr. Rabiatu D. Ammah (of UG) explored the Qur’anic verse 4:34, sometimes described as ‘the verse of abuse’ or the verse that condones wife beating. Dr. Ammah describes herself as a scholar-activist and her paper covered a range of interpretations of the verse and infused this with her qualitative research consisting of in-depth interviews with 15 local imams, three of whom openly acknowledged having beaten their wives. Her conclusion was, however, that there is none the less no prima facie or Qur’an endorsed case for GBV in Islam. 

The final presentation of the day was by Dr. Yaw Sakordie Agyemang (University of Cape Coast) and explored GBV in the context of the indigenous beliefs of the Asante people. Again, research was centred on empirical research, this time constituting 16 focus group discussions guided by two questions: How do women and men experience violence? And, how does gender inequality affect violence? The paper offered insight into all sorts of forms of ritual violence, ranging from female genital mutilation, to the harvesting of body parts for ritual purposes, and rites surrounding both apotropaic and polluting qualities of menstrual blood. 

Whereas the first day focused on academic presentations, the second day gave the floor to practitioners, before we all separated into groups to discuss practical strategies to confront, address and eliminate GBV. 

The first practitioner to present was Dr. Angela Aboagye Dwamena, Executive Director of The Ark Foundation. The name of the Foundation already reveals its foundation in religious principles. It is not, however, named after Noah’s Ark but after the Ark of the Covenant, alluding to God as a refuge and strength. The presenter has a background in law and has for over 25 years defended the human rights of Ghanaian women and girls, and sometimes also boys, particularly with regard to GBV. The Foundation focuses on advocacy, community-based education, law reform and services provision. Dr. Dwamena was vocal as to the constraints of the Foundation. For instance, the first shelter for battered women was opened in 1999 but 17 years later it had to be closed, due to lack of funds. A campaign is in progress to reopen and keep open the Ark Shelter (see www.arksheltercampaign.org).

Next up, was a representative from the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice. The Commission conducts research into social justice matters and offers protection on a range of human rights matters, including concerning sexual orientation and gender identity. In Ghana, the law, which has remained unchanged since 1960, designates a number of sexual acts ‘unnatural carnal knowledge’. These acts include ‘sodomy’ and oral sex. Ghana’s LGBT community is particularly vocal in resisting this law. The matter of LGBT rights was seized on in the discussion that followed the first two presentations and members from both Christian and Muslim communities expressed horror at homosexual orientation and acts, comparing them to the sin of murder, to bestiality and pedophilia. Also clearly articulated was that LGBT persons regularly do not receive justice – including in matters that have nothing to do with matters sexual (e.g. when they report crimes of property). The vulnerability to GBV of the LGBT community is likely to be considerable. It was very clear to us both that the conversation around LGBT rights in a setting like that of the conference and workshop, dominated as it was by religious leaders and practitioners, was a particularly difficult and unreceptive one. There was not really a sense that dialogue was possible. 

Three practitioners from the Muslim community presented next. First to present was Sheikh Yacoub Abban, the General Secretary of Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jama, an organization that conducts marriage guidance counseling alongside other dispute settling activities (e.g. concerning inheritance). The organization has only men on its board but the perception by members of the Muslim community in attendance was that it was very supportive of women’s cases. The Sheikh reported a growing number of GBV cases brought before the organization by women. Whereas in 2016 cases (in Accra alone) by 96 men and 264 women were brought to the organization, by 2017 the numbers were 75 men and 384 women. Thus far in 2018, the number of women’s cases already stands at 407. The Sheikh reported that while men’s cases do not reflect physical violence, instead reporting wives’ ‘recalcitrance’ or wives who pressed for divorce in cases where husbands did not want divorce, the cases brought by women are often very disturbing and distressing. The presentation included anonymous examples of severe emotional torture, physical maltreatment and of marital rape. While the Sheikh did not deny the possibility that some men are also enduring physical violence perpetrated by women he confirmed that cases reflect that women are disproportionately victims of violence and that this violence shows no sign of abating.

Next up was Dr, Nas iba Taahir, Educational Consultant and Psychologist of the Montessori Foundation of Ghana. She disclosed that she herself is a victim of long-term marital GBV and reported, too, on her work in the capacity as a school psychologist. Both her accounts of counseling victims of physical violence in domestic settings and her own story of a six-year trial, exclusion from her religious community and of stigmatization were harrowing. 

The final presenter from the Muslim community was Hajia Maliki, a marriage guidance counselor with 15 years experience. She reported that marriages in the Muslim community of Ghana very often deteriorate quickly and end in acrimonious divorce. Unlike in Christian communities, she reported, pre-marital guidance counseling was not a requirement and nor was mandatory post-marital counseling.

The final practitioner to present was the most affecting. This was Superintendent Alice Awarikaro, Regional Coordinator for the Accra Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit. Charged with domestic violence and child abuse issues, the Superintendent had seen many awful violent crimes close-up. In 2017, her unit dealt with 4,511 cases (about one third of total cases country-wide) and, as she stressed, far more cases have gone unreported. Victims of violence, including sexual violence, were male, female, young and old. Again, however, violent crimes against women and girls far outnumber those perpetrated against men and boys. Also, perpetrators were far more likely to be male than female. She showed graphic images of terrible abuse and outlined efforts to address GBV, including sensitization programmes, capacity building, proactive and reactive measures. 

With particular relevance to our project, the Superintendent reported that in her experience religious leaders and religious beliefs play an obstructive role. Advice from religious leaders is often detrimental, delaying the reporting of crime, or adding to failure to report (e.g. on account of instilling stigma with regard, for instance, to divorce). She urged that counselors and advisors be properly trained professionals and advocated the following: creating safe spaces for those reporting GBV, not judging or condemning those who report GBV, education across the sectors, and encouraging reporting and following through with the legal process so that more perpetrators are brought to court and more victims protected. 

Following group discussions and then a plenary session that pooled key points from discussions, we collectively determined that the conference and workshops had done much to explain what GBV is and to begin to plumb the complexity of its causes and effects. We determined that we would endeavour to apply for more funding to harness the energy of the event and to achieve more concrete results through user-led and research-underpinned activities and resources. 

With the funds left in the budget from WUN we will produce and disseminate a leaflet that: 1) defines GBV; 2) supports intervening bystanders, with a section setting out what to do and where to turn (in Accra) if you suspect someone is a victim of GBV; 3) details victim support and legal rights for those who are themselves victims of GBV; 4) contains a section that specifies the rights and services of members of the LGBT community in Ghana.

While in Accra we also had opportunity to interview theologian and activist Prof. Mercy Amba Oduyoye. Mercy Oduyoye recently turned 85. She is a pioneer for African women and remains as active as ever – both in her Talitha Qumi Institute, based at the Trinity Theological Seminary in Accra and through the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, which she founded in 1989. Well before this already she initiated women’s rights initiatives, campaigning for women’s inclusion and against women’s economic deprivation and vulnerability to other inequalities, including GBV. 

We also taught classes both at the Trinity Theological Seminary and at UG, which was a lively experience.

Lastly, no travelling in Ghana should be complete without visiting the coastal fortresses that facilitated the Portuguese-, Dutch- and British-administered slave trade. We visited both Castle Osu and Elmina and saw the awful dungeons where slaves were crammed together in tight, dark stone surroundings before being herded into ships bound for the Americas. While African slaves sat in fear and terror below, the European slave administrators sexually abused those whom they selected, dined while looking out at the sparkling ocean, and prayed in their chapels. Here, too, as everywhere in the streets of Accra today, biblical verses were prominently displayed – mere metres from where massive atrocities took place. 

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White Rose Collaboration Fund Project Update

by Katie Edwards on

On Wednesday 10th October members of our White Rose Collaboration Fund Project met for an update.

The White Rose Collaboration Fund is designed to support emerging collaborative activities across the three White Rose universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. Our project focuses on using religious imagery in popular culture to explore and challenge everyday sexism, sexual harassment and abuse together with secondary school students.

In consultation with secondary schools from all three White Rose regions and Fearless Futures, a third-sector organization offering gender equality training for school-age girls, the network will conduct three pilot workshops with secondary school students (girls and boys) to investigate interactions with religious imagery in popular culture and the ways in which these representations shape understandings of gender, sex and sexualities.

Members of the White Rose universities involved in the project include Professor Vanita Sundaram (University of York), Professor Johanna Stiebert (University of Leeds), Dr Katie Edwards (University of Sheffield), Dr Meredith Warren (University of Sheffield), Dr Valerie Hobbs (University of Sheffield), Dr Jasjit Singh (Unversity of Leeds), Dr Caroline Starkey (University of Leeds), Sofia Rehman (University of Leeds), Dr Sarah Olive (University of York) an Emma Piercy (University of York).

As usual, the meeting buzzed with energy, ideas and enthusiasm. We’re very much looking forward to working with our partners Fearless Futures and the local schools. We’ll update again after our training!

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Religion as Gender Politics

by Daphne Hampson on

Abstract: Far from being an unintended consequence of those ideologies which are religions, the subordination of women may be central to their raison d’être. The form that religions (primarily the Abrahamic religions) have taken would seem to reflect (i) male splitting, and (ii) a desire to trump woman, quite possibly on account of an unresolved relation to the mother. Insofar as the raison d’être of religion is to constitute male as normative, while woman becomes ‘the other’, it is fascism. Male power and control over women is legitimised as only natural. We know control, rather than lust, to motivate sexual abuse. But sexual abuse is part of a wider scenario of male exploitation of women, with seemingly deep roots. To see religion in this light is vital.

This talk was delivered at the 2018 Religion and Rape Culture Conference. Click here to see more videos.

 

Professor Daphne Hampson held a chair in Post-Christian Thought at the University of St. Andrews. In her retirement she is an Associate of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford. The author of Theology and Feminism, After Christianity, and editor of Swallowing a Fishbone?, she is at present writing a book Religion as Gender Politics.

 

Header image:  “Creation of Eve”, a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo [via WikiCommons]

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“A man cannot in law be convicted of rape upon his own wife”: Custom, Christianity, Colonialism, and Sexual Consent in Forced Marriage Cases, British colonial Africa, 1932-1945

by Rhian Keyse on

The mid-twentieth century saw an upsurge in campaigns around forced and early marriage in British colonial Africa, as missionaries, feminist organizations, colonial officials, and African communities contested the terms of marriage and gender relations in colonial settings. The issue of sexual consent in marriage proved an important battleground on which these contestations were fought. This paper seeks to explore how differing notions of consent – those embedded in notions of African ‘custom’, articulated through colonial courts, espoused by European missionaries, and expressed by African women and girls, came into tension in such cases.

This talk was delivered at the 2018 Religion and Rape Culture Conference. Click here to see more videos.

Rhian Elinor Keyse is an AHRC-funded PhD student at the Centre for Imperial and Global History, University of Exeter. Rhian’s doctoral research focuses on imperial, international, and local responses to forced and early marriage in British colonial Africa, 1920-62. Rhian completed her BA in History at Cambridge before moving to Oxford to pursue an MSc in African Studies. She has recently held a Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress, as well as a Global Humanitarian Research Academy Fellowship. She is also an experienced activist and practitioner in the gender-based violence sector.

Header image:  Conference artist Lily Clifford talking Rhian Keyse through the creative response to Keyse’s research.

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