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UN 16 Days Of Activism: Day 15 – The Salvation Army Family Ministries Team

by Caroline Blyth on

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do? 
Hello! We are David, Liz and Deb and together with 7 colleagues based around the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland we form The Salvation Army Family Ministries Team. The Salvation Army is a denomination of the Christian Church which believes in putting Christian faith and love into practice. The Family Ministries Team exists to empower, equip and enable people of all ages to journey together, building appropriate relationships with others, having the intention of bringing them to faith in Christ and spiritual maturity. 
Family Ministries within The Salvation Army provides resources, support and training for children, adults and families including Toddler Groups, Parenting Programmes, Women’s and Men’s Groups and much more.
As a team we have decided that one of our priority areas of work will be continuing to develop an effective and helpful Salvation Army response to victims and survivors of domestic abuse, as well as holding perpetrators to account for their behaviour. The ‘In Churches Too’ research published in 2018 indicates that individuals within Christian relationships experience a similar level of domestic abuse to the general population and in some cases the Church is poorly equipped to respond. The Salvation Army has a long history of responding to the needs of victims and we want to ensure our response is as good as it can be. 
How does your research or your work connect to activism? 
At the present time we have anecdotal evidence of domestic abuse being a significant negative factor for many people we come into contact with, whether through our Churches, community programmes, Lifehouses [hostels] and many other settings. Many different individuals within The Salvation Army have some expertise through personal experiences and specific community and residential victim programmes and we are seeking to draw this knowledge and expertise together to promote good practice in our response to victims.
We also engage with the public debate around domestic abuse, responding to Government consultations and keeping up to date with the agenda. 
The Salvation Army Family Ministries Team has recently engaged in a conversation with the Centre for Public Life at Leeds University and we are very much hoping to build on this relationship in order to collaborate on research into Domestic Abuse and further develop our response to victims and perpetrators. As part of this we are very interested to hear about the work of the Shiloh Project. 
And with regard to the issue of  modern slavery, the Salvation Army is responsible for delivering safe houses and all the much needed support for victims and is very much engaged in speaking out against this evil wherever we can. 
Why is activism important to you and what do you hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020? 
Activism has always been at the heart of The Salvation Army, from it’s campaigns in Victorian times to raise the age of sexual consent to 16 or to challenge unhealthy and dangerous working conditions to more recent government challenges on gambling legislation or benefit changes.  Activism is therefore important to within Family Ministries and to coincide with the 16 days of activism regarding violence against women and girls, we set up a stand at our UK Headquarters to raise awareness amongst our work colleagues. We attach a picture of us with our colleagues from the International Development Team who work to raise the issue of violence against women and girls internationally. 
Additionally  we also visited the TLC art exhibition at The Salvation Army’s International Headquarters, show casing art created by a group of domestic abuse survivors from a Salvation Army project. This project was led by an artist who is herself a survivor of domestic abuse. Once this exhibition finishes, the art will be sold and the proceeds given to the TLC Project. 
In the intervening year before 2021’s 16 Days of Activism, we hope to have fully established our Domestic Abuse Steering Group and begun the work of educating, training and resourcing our colleagues to always respond well to victims and perpetrators, and to have progressed our research relationship with Leeds University.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 13 – Amanda Pilbrow

by Katie Edwards on

Tēnā koutou.

My name is Amanda Pilbrow. Like you, there are many parts to who I am. Creatively interwoven are strands of being an artist, a theologian, a speaker/presenter/guest lecturer, a mum, a wife, a tattooed pixie-cut introvert that loves gin and single malt whiskey. Open water gives me a sense of breadth, room to breathe, a sense there is more to life, a hope for the future. I can do small talk but prefer real connections, listening to peoples lived realities. I’m an x-pastor, who through her breakthroughs and breakdown, discovered a loving, inclusive, pursuing God. I have recently completed my master’s in applied theology: Navigating Faith, Sexuality, and Wholeness in Aotearoa New Zealand: Seven LGB-Christian Narratives. While this is finished, I sense it is just the beginning of my next chapter.

Breaking down stereotypes that form and contribute to a sense, or indeed a lived reality of second-class citizenship glues my soapbox firmly to the ground. I grew up believing, without any opportunity to question, that men ruled – they had the last say, the deciding vote, the position of privilege. Don’t get me wrong – I love men – one fine man in particular for over 30 years. He holds a mighty high standard for others to meet. In saying that, we have been on this journey together, discovering equality, mutual respect, honour, and believing the best of each other.

The journey was not without incident, without debate, without apology. How do you unlearn so much that has undergirded your upbringing? Moreover, how do you crawl out from under that second-class citizen rock, find the courage to climb up, and even more, stand in the place you were always meant to be – equal – wholehearted – authentic? How do you help the other crawl out? To lift some of the burden? To cheer them to climb further.

For me, I can only describe this painful process as a holy conviction, an invitation, an awakening that changes how I see – forever. As a woman who was meant to know her place, God, or the Divine, or the higher power – whatever fits well with you – called me to discover who I was. And here’s the catch. Once you discover or is it uncover, the dark shadow of imposed second-class citizenship it becomes impossible not to see it in other places; in other people; woman and children. It is also impossible to not recognise the structures and belief systems that enforce, intentionally or otherwise, power and cultural structures that secure and support inequality, that enable violence, that ensure subjugation, causing some to exercise power and control over others.

This ‘seeing’ became so uncomfortable for me; it formed into ‘righteous’ anger. A sense of disorder that continually left me feeling off-balance. An anger and disorder that became an unrelenting hunger to learn, to read, listen, interview, and write and ultimately change. A hunger to discover peoples lived realities as they found themselves in marginalised and un-equal situations, violent or simply overlooked.

From this place, my master of applied theology thesis was conceived, gestated, and delivered. My sense ofmarginalisation forced me, in the very best way possible, to see the marginalisation of others. And while the theme ‘orange’ is focused on violence on women, as we crawl out from this particular rock, find the courage to stand and be heard, may our voices reach and be heard far and wide and high to other areas of marginalisation and diversity. As we uncover and expose the culture and power structures that enable and even incite violence against women, may we too be caught into seeing violence towards otherness and be righteously angry, disordered and off-balance so that we have to act? So that we can peel and take a bite of the orange on behalf of others.

I’m not sure I ever considered myself an activist until now. Perhaps more a peacemaker – as opposed to a peacekeeper. A resistance fighter if you like, rather than a status quo bystander. But what if an activist is a better fit? What if acting on my righteous anger and discomfort means standing on that rock and claiming equality and equal citizenship for others, for all. What if, by exposing the culture and structures that divide people causing such destruction, wholeness and authenticity prevail making us all safe, valued, equal, seen, and known? These thoughts continue to invite and awaken me to act in 2020. I hope to extend the invitation into righteous anger, discomfort, and a sense of being off-balance. I hope my research will encourage and permit others to listen to the lived realities of others. I hope to promote the unlearning necessary to re-learn and re-discover equality and hope.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 12 – Sarah-Jane Page

by Sarah-Jane Page on

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

 My name is Sarah-Jane Page and I am a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. My research focuses on how religion intersects with gender and sexuality. I map the ways in which religious individuals experience tensions between their identities and their faith, also recognising that individuals also utilise religious belief as a source of support. The projects I have worked on have included looking at how young religious adults navigate their sexual identities, and the challenges and opportunities this brings. I have also focused on the discriminations clergy mothers in the Anglican Church face from an institution that has not prioritised their needs and experiences. I am currently working on two projects: assessing the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and its focus on the Anglican Church (I am undertaking a sociological analysis of this to determine the discourses of the Inquiry, who gets to speak, and what the implications of this are); as well as a project focusing on public forms of activism against abortion (e.g. prayer vigils at abortion clinics) and how we manage the tension between freedom of religion and belief, vis-à-vis the right to access healthcare services without fear of harassment.

 How does your research or your work connect to activism? 

 My work focuses a lot on tensions around religion and making sense of this. Sociological research has the power to explore beyond anecdote to understand a phenomenon in more detail – its broader patterns, and understanding how certain experiences are more widely shared. From this basis we can then start to propose solutions. I am currently co-editing a special issue with Dr Kath McPhillips (Newcastle University, Australia) on Gender, Violence and Religion, for the journal, Religion and Gender. This special issue focuses on howreligion intersects with institutional, familial and public gendered violence. We currently have a call for papers out, inviting contributions.https://shiloh-project.group.shef.ac.uk/religion-and-gender-journal-call-for-manuscripts-for-special-issue-on-religion-gender-and-violence/

Why is activism important to you and what do you hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020?

 

I see research as a fundamental step in being better-informed about issues of gender violence and discrimination, making it far harder to make claims such as the commonly-heard view that “gender violence is rare and exceptional”. Qualitative research in particular gives voice to marginalised stories and accounts, so that they can be heard and recognised. Research is not perfect, and can contain its own biases, but the power of research to recognise the patterns of discrimination should be taken seriously. This is why I am a strong advocate for research funding into this area. I will be showcasing my research in the coming year, including at the Australian Association for the Study of Religion conference, where I will be taking about child sexual abuse in the Anglican Church. I also have a book coming out (co-authored with Dr Heather Shipley of the University of Ottawa) called Religion and Sexualities: Theories, Themes and Methodologies, which focuses on how we make sense of the role religion plays when we analyse sexuality, noting on the one hand the scale of injustices, but also on the other, the religious spaces which do affirm equality and justice regarding sexuality and gender identity. I am also writing a new book (with Dr Pam Lowe, Aston University) on anti-abortion activism in the UK.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 11 – Laurie Lyter Bright

by Laurie Lyter Bright on

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

I’m Rev. Laurie Lyter Bright – mom of two, writer, Presbyterian (USA) minister, doctoral candidate in education, non-profit executive director, and activist.  All of that keeps me busy, but in my free time, I like to feed my curiosity about the world by traveling with my husband and little ones!

How does your research or your work connect to activism? Be sure to mention your proposed volume for the Routledge Focus series and your PhD research, as well as work you may be doing in the church.

Both my personal life and professional work center on the celebration of humanity in its fullness, and a desire to create a more just world. The focus of my dissertation is on the church as a site of co-creation of rape culture, and as a potential site of disruption of rape culture, using pre-existing pedagogical pathways in the church. My proposed volume for the Routledge Focus series is examining the prophetic nature of #BlackLivesMatter and the #MeToo movement. While my desire to create a world without rape culture has been an inherent part of my work since high school, my newer role as a mom (my daughters are two and two months) has only increased my desire to co-create a world that honors women and respects the autonomy and humanity of all people.

Why is activism important to you and what do you hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020?

Activism matters to me because it is a chance to use the privilege and platforms I have access to to amplify the experiences of others, to draw attention to spaces of injustice, and to encourage the complacent toward involvement. As a pastor, I advocate in my preaching and teaching, particularly examining the radical inclusivity practised by Christ. As a non-profit executive director of an interfaith organization in Israel and Palestine, I practice activism by challenging the assumptions in the U.S. of a complex and frequently misunderstood part of the world. And as a scholar, I am an activist in my writing and research. In the next year, I hope to complete my dissertation, stretch my own knowledge and understanding, and invite new communities into conversation about the ways we historically/currently support rape culture and the ways we can help dismantle it instead.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 10 – Helen Paynter

by Helen Paynter on

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

I am a Baptist minister and an Old Testament specialist. I teach Old Testament and Biblical languages, based at Bristol Baptist College. In particular, I am the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence.  The CSBV is a study centre dedicated to working in the area of the interpretation of biblical texts of violence. It exists to promote and conduct high-quality scholarship, and to serve the churches in the UK and internationally by offering accessible resources to equip them to read the scriptural texts of violence well, and the challenge the ways in which the Bible is sometimes weaponised for the promotion of violence. We hope thereby to enable the church to offer counter-violent counter-extremist narratives in situations of conflict or tension.

 

How does your research or your work connect to activism?

One of the areas that I am passionate about is the interpretation of biblical sexual violence, which has been interpreted – at various times in the history of the church – in some very disturbing ways. I have recently completed a book on the dreadful story of the Levite’s wife from Judges 19, called Telling Terror in Judges 19: Rape and Reparation for the Levite’s wife. This will be coming out soon in the Routledge Focus series. In this book, I offer what is known as a ‘reparative’ interpretation of the text; that is, while acknowledging the horrors it presents and the ideology that may lie behind it, seeking to read for some suprising positives that the narrative offers. As part of this work, I did quite a lot of research into modern situations of sexual violence with which this ancient text has contact, particularly the horrific Delhi Bus Rape. I draw these comparisons in the book.

Another project I have been involved in was the #SheToo podcast series, produced by Rosie Dawson for the Bible Society. I was a consultant and contributor for this series, wherein Rosie interviewed various female scholars from different faith perspectives on some of the narratives of sexual violence in the Bible.

The other arm of the CSBV, which looks at the weaponisation of the Bible, has led me to write a second book this year, to be published by BRF in 2020. The title is still under negotiation, but the current working version is ‘The Bible Doesn’t Tell Me So: Why submitting to abuse is not a Christian wife’s duty’. Tragically, domestic abuse is sometimes sustained by abusers through appeal to various biblical texts, and churches also sometimes contribute to this by the misapplication of biblical principles. As a Christian minister, I am not only deeply disturbed by this, but feel a sense of responsibility to attempt to address it, and this book is intended for that purpose. It is aimed at women who are trapped in abusive marriages where the Bible plays a part in their abuse, and also at those who seek to help them, and at church leaders. I am hoping that it will reach an international market as well as a domestic one, and that through it, women will find themselves empowered to find places of safety and resist manipulative attempts to keep them trapped in situations of abuse.

 

Why is activism important to you and what do you hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020?

I think I’ve probably covered the first question above. Between now and the beginning of December next year, I hope that both of these books will have been published, and that I will be able to speak on the subject at various national and possibly international platforms. In particular, I am hoping to be in a position to attend and contribute to the Baptist World Alliance quinquennial meeting in Rio next year, where there will be a specialist subject stream on gender based violence.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 9 – Chris Greenough

by Chris Greenough on

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

My name is Chris Greenough and I’m Senior Lecturer in Religion at Edge Hill University. I research and teach on gender, sexuality and religion. My research to date has mostly focussed on LGBTQ+ religious and spiritual identities, queer theologies and queer biblical studies.

 How does your research or your work connect to activism?

As an academic, I engage and contribute to activism in various ways. When we think of activism we think of protest and the public assembly of like-minded individuals, collaborating to fight against injustices and for change. But, aside from this, we are all activists in our communities: in our classrooms, on social media and in our one-to-one interactions. I am a former secondary school teacher and part of my current role is initial teacher education and I work hard to ensure our future teachers are confident to work with LGBTQ+ issues.

Reflecting on how I am activist in the classroom, I have an article in the special edition of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, edited by Johanna Stiebert. In the article, I explore the notions of risk, experimentation and failure, as well as of tackling specific issues relating to resistance of queer biblical criticism based on religious faith.

There are regular TV and media discussion panels debating questions about how LGBTQ+ lives and Christianity are seemingly incompatible. In conservative religious settings, we see how verses selected from the Bible are used to condemn same sex relationships/marriage, transgender recognition, gay and lesbian parenting or adoption and these form the positional statements of major Christian denominations. In this sense, my work is activism that speaks back to what is, in fact, really toxic theology. My first monograph, Undoing Theology, highlighted the harmful effects of traditionally dominant theology in Christianity on the lives of non-normative individuals. In his review of my book, Adrian Thatcher says, “We need to learn the pain that we cause. This is a bold, truthful book”.

Yet, being bold is not always easy. Activism comes with challenges and obstacles. Sara Ahmed puts this perfectly, “when we speak about what we come up against, we come up against what we speak about” (Living a Feminist Life, 2017: 148). As a queer scholar, I am undisciplined. That means I do not hold much allegiance to any of the traditional disciplines I work across: they each require a critical undoing of the powers and privilege which has produced and shaped them. As someone who writes on queer theologies and biblical studies, I am occasionally confronted with furrowed frowns as a reception to my work. If queer research makes people feel uncomfortable, it highlights the hegemony, gatekeepers and ‘methodsplainers’ at work in our disciplines. It highlights prejudice and discrimination to queer individuals. For me, resisting academic normativity in the pursuit of social justice is activism. I am entirely grateful to my academic scholars and friends at SIIBS and the Shiloh project for their support.

Why is activism important to you and what do you hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020?

The next twelve months are going to be busy! I’m delighted and incredibly proud to be working with Katie Edwards on a book for the Routledge Focus Book Series on ‘Rape Culture, Religion, and the Bible’. Our title aims to explore contemporary reactions and readings to the naming of Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse: #JesusToo: Silence, Stigma and Male Sexual Violence. In contemporary culture there is undeniably a culture of stigma associated with male sexual abuse. Despite this stigma, at least 1 in 6 men have been sexually abused or assaulted: https://1in6.org/ . There are also numerous myths around male sexual abuse that need further discussion.

I’m also going to be Guest Editor for a special edition of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies on Queer Theory and the Bible. The term ‘queer theory’ was first coined in 1990, so this seems a fitting edition to celebrate 30 years of queer!

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 8 – Raymond Brian (AKA Mother Nature)

by Raymond Brian on

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

I am Ugandan, Transgender refugee who lives now in Kenya. I came to live in Kenya in 2015 and from then on I started working as a social change agent in Kenya. As a social change agent, I was in charge of mobilizing Refugees. In this, I had to link Refugees to the various social services which included getting full documentation; going for HIV Testing at various health services centers including Kenyatta National Referral Hospital; aiding in assessment and interpretation work with UNHCR/HIAS.   But, before that I had worked with grassroots in various ways in Uganda. First, I worked with the National Referral Hospital’s Skin Clinic, under the Most at Risk Populations’ Initiative (MARPI) as a Peer Educator. Secondly, I was a mobilizer for a self-help group called Youth on Rock Foundation; I was the Secretary for another Self-help Organization called Come-Out Post Test Club (COPTEC); and I was also a mobiliser for Icebreakers Uganda (IBU).

These introduced me to the needs of marginalized communities. Also, this experience got me enough skills to work under Dr. Stella Nnyanzi as a Field Work Officer for a project called Law, Gender and Sexuality (LGS) which lasted for two years. Then, from there the Doctor left to join a newer post at the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR). I also got an opportunity to join her there. I worked as a Research Assistant then. All in all I worked for four years under Dr. Stella Nnyanzi. Then, I left Uganda and came to stay in Kenya. I co-founded the Nature Network after I realized many of the refugees were seeking support from me. The support ranged from conversation, companionship, forming a social support group which we called Nature-Network which eventually got funding for group activities. Nature-Network is modelled on a Family-Based Therapy Model where we take on the titles of respect in a family unit. So, I had to take the responsibility to become the full-time leader of Nature Network.

How does your research or your work connect to activism?

Right now, I do various activities. These include managing Nature Network; we have a coalition under which all organizations are joined. Nature-Network is part of this coalition. I work there as the Field officer. I got fortunate and now work with a firm specializing in Digital Media Organization called None On Record (NOR). I work as a Personal Assistant to the Executive Director. This has helped me improve on my management and documentation skills. I use these both at the job as well as at the Nature Network.

My activism includes: Ensuring safe space in form of housing support toward Refugees; Nutrition support; mobilizing life support resources; providing a space for continued interaction among Refugees; ensuring there is formal documentation for Refugees to avoid arbitrary arrests; ensuring we have an open arm reception for New Refugees; engaging in networking with other service providers to address targeted needs; and connecting with well-wishers and friends with whom we interact on a number of levels.

Why is activism important to you and what do you hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020?

When I read about 16 Days of 2020, it reminded me of the incidences of vulnerability and risks faced by marginalized communities including: LGBTIQ+; People Living with HIV; Refugees; Victims of Torture; Victims of Rape; Victims of Gender Based Violence; and Orphans and Vulnerable Children. Secondly, it reminds me that there are solutions to the problems people face. What I hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020 are the following:

  1. Participate and be able to paint the whole world “Orange.” This way, I shall contribute to the conversation on eradicating rape and gender based violence in our communities.
  2. To network with all those organizations working to eradicate rape and gender based violence.
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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 5 – Al McFadyen

by Al McFadyen on

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

My name is Al McFadyen. I am a senior lecturer in systematic theology at the University of Leeds. In my academic work, I write (and teach) mainly around themes related to theological anthropology – which is to say, Christian understanding of humanity. I am especially drawn towards those often complex and ambiguous situations where humanity is threatened, vulnerable, at risk or somehow in question and so drawn therefore also to institutionalised practices that attempt to engage human beings in difficulty, often equally ambiguous and complex. I have always felt the need to ground my academic work and understanding by working also in non-academic contexts alongside the university (psychiatric nursing; suicide counselling; youth work; policing) in a kind of triangulation between academy, church and the diverse ways of living out humanity in the ‘real world’.  In this triangulation, I am hoping to find mutually enriched understanding and wisdom about what it means to be human in situations where humanity itself is at some risk. To put that theologically, I am trying to work out what it means (and why it might be worth trying) to speak of Christian faith, of sin and salvation, of good news, in situations such of human vulnerability.

 

How does your research or your work connect to activism?

I am hesitant to describe the sorts of things I do under the heading of activism. And I suspect others will be too, since what I do looks very different from the range of involvements that generally go under that heading. I spend on average over 60 hours a month working as a frontline police officer (unpaid), often working single crewed answering emergency calls; calls that take me to places where often someone is or has been made vulnerable, and sometimes where I will act in ways that also make someone vulnerable by using force against them or depriving them of their liberty in order to bring them to justice. I appreciate working in the police might be regarded as the opposite of what activism might mean. However, policing in the UK is one of the places where you will find institutionalised practices and nuanced understanding of some of the concerns that motivate many activists: gender-based violence; the cultures and processes that aid the creation, maintenance and exploitation of gendered vulnerabilities; hate crime, including those based on racism and homophobia; human trafficking; child sexual exploitation; community cohesion; the precarity of asylum seekers; radicalisation (including white right wing), violent extremism and terrorism (Leeds is where the 7/7 bombs were made, a short walk from the University).

I first wrote extensively on child sexual abuse almost 20 years ago (in my book, Bound to Sin), before I joined the police. Working in the police has both developed and further grounded my understanding of these and other situations where humanity is at risk. These have included work (not all of it published) on counter-terrorism; faith-based community engagement; street grooming for sexual exploitation; loving enemies & loving the neighbourhood. Most recently, I have written on the just introduced offence of coercive control, which is to appear in a book that has grown out of Shiloh-related work: namely, the ‘Feminism and Trauma Theology’ project. My contribution has the title, ‘”I Breathe him in with Every Breath I Take”: Framing Domestic Victimisation as Trauma and Coercive Control in Feminist Trauma Theologies’ and it will be published in February in Karen O’Donnell & Katie Cross (eds), Feminist Trauma Theologies.

Why is activism important to you and what do you hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020?

Organisations like the police effect change for people in often incomplete, messy and ambiguous ways and sometimes can’t do much more than stave off the immediate risk and crisis or create a space where a victim and offender might make decisions that could have positive life-changing consequences. I suppose I am committed to the ideas that much valuable humanizing transformation happens like that and at that small, face-to-face human scale. It’s not a scale that is always taken with appropriate seriousness by academics or policy makers and maybe also not always by activists. (Nor are the fallible, all too human institutions that we have available to make change or to support the conditions that enable human flourishing become reality.) And I am afraid neither are the people – extraordinary in their ordinariness – that work in those institutions – nurses; bobbies; firefighters; paramedics; council staff – making neighbourhoods work as places that might be habitable spaces for flourishing human diversity. We need somehow to help students gain a sense of the importance of commitment to and working in and with such institutions, alongside the importance of more abstract ideas and values that can shape policy and more conventional notions of activism.

What I hope to achieve between now and the next 16 days of activism in 2020 is similarly scaled. I hope I can make a difference to some of the people I will deal with. I hope that I won’t mess up, especially by failing to identify and assess risk appropriately. Domestic incidents are the ones where the difference between an incident that seems superficially to be trivial and one that will prove fatal in absence of decisive intervention is not always clear. They are also amongst the most volatile and unpredictable. So, I also hope that I don’t get seriously injured. Since the last 16 days, I have been assaulted several times on duty, though without anything more than a very minor injury.

But I also hope to do some further work and thinking reflecting theologically on policing, including domestic violence.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 4 – Joyce Boham

by Joyce Boham on

Today’s activist is Joyce Boham of the Talitha Qumi Institute of Women in Religion and Culture in Legon, Ghana. You can read her earlier contribution to the Shiloh Project here and watch an interview with both Joyce and Mercy Oduyoye here.

 

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

My name is Joyce Boham and I am Manager of the Institute of Women in Religion and Culture, Trinity Theological Seminary (Legon, Ghana).

Born to Thomas Yamoah (of blessed memory) and Essie Ewusiwa Yamoah, a retired midwife, in the early 1970s, I am the fourth of five children. I am married to a Ghanaian building engineer and blessed with four children: three girls and a boy. Growing up in the 1970s was characterised by community living: your children belonged to just you as long as they were in your stomach; after birth, they were the responsibility of the whole community who collectively ensured that children would become good citizens. Our home always had a minimum of four cousins in it at any one time and other people, too, who were not relatives but just enjoyed the lively company. The issue of rape never came up for me while growing up, mostly because any discussions of sex was forbidden until puberty; then our grandmother (the wife of a Methodist minister) would give us a long lecture on sex education. These lectures were quite frightful as most of the discussion centred on getting pregnant – even if you just talked to boys.

I remember my grandmother giving me an egg and saying, “eat it; do not bite into it. You will have many children.” The egg was the symbol for fertility. The belief was that a girl would have many children when married if she did not bite into the egg. That was the ice breaker for my first lesson on sex! My grandmother then said, “if any boy looks at you in a ‘funny’ way, that is a gesture of interest; if he smiles or tells you that he loves you, RUN, RUN, RUN far from him, run to the house. When you see him coming from east, run north; when he comes from the south, run to the east. If you speak to him or he touches you even your hands, you will get pregnant, then you will have to stop going to school and join the workers on your grandfather’s cocoa farm.” As funny as it may sound to me now, that was caution enough against boys and men at the time. Her strategy was to protect us, as she did not have the voice or strength to fight the oppressor (abusive men, harmful cultural and social factors). What my grandmother did not consider was that this was a caution also against boys who were civil; being left alone with any boy was to be avoided. Also, she warned us about boys, not considering the possibility of men who might feel entitled to our bodies, even though we were young girls.

The story is different today. I have to teach my children to be cautious regarding both men and boys. Alongside receiving quite comprehensive and age-appropriate sex education from me, they also have discussions on the topic with friends and they consult the internet. I had to tell them that even though their bodies are God-given and they are entitled to wear what they please, there are some people out there who feel entitled to violate them just because they can and have the power. Moreover, when something awful happens there is inadequate support. I struggled to answer these questions from my daughters: “Do we not have laws that prohibit that?”, “Where is the police?”, “Mummy, don’t these people go to church? What is the church doing?”

I struggled to explain that while the laws on paper are protective, the wider culture and the social structures, in some cases even the family, will not protect them adequately. I struggled to explain that though Ghana subscribes to the Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 5 (pertaining to gender equality) and Goal 10 (aimed at addressing inequality more widely) the reality is that our wider society does not reflect that women are entitled to full human dignity and human rights. I had to tell them that they have to try to protect themselves and each other. And, as was handed down to me, I said to them, “SPEAK! FOR YOU HAVE A TONGUE IN YOUR MOUTH.”

 

How does your research or your work connect to activism?

Since completing my undergraduate degree, I have worked as a liaison for The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, a gender-centred, interreligious, interdisciplinary, intersectional and transformative association of African women. The work of the Circle, as we call it, is to carry out academic research on issues relating to religion and culture, to investigate how they affect women’s lives and how they can be interpreted for the empowerment of women and their communities. I am currently responsible for the Anglophone West Africa zone.

My role as the Anglophone West Africa Coordinator is to encourage our member countries (Ghana, Nigeria and English-speaking Cameroon) to take a closer look at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and advocate on issues that concern us as a sub-region. SDGs 5 and 10 (focused on achieving equality) apply directly to issues that underpin our work, but we are also concerned about the environment (SDG 13) and quality education (SDG 4). Focus on both is essential to empowering ourselves and to taking part at the decision-making tables in our various communities. Issues like poverty, hunger, lack of basic education, lack of affordable housing, unavailability of jobs and many other factors also contribute immensely to women’s vulnerability and are, therefore, part of the discussion on rape. It is important to note that rape has damaging and distressing impact not only on the physical body, but also on emotional, academic and psychological wellbeing. The Circle intends to continue promoting research and publications by African women theologians, as well as to keep calling institutions with power to action on behalf of women.

I have also worked for the Institute of Women in Religion and Culture, a multi-faith educational project established in 1998 to advocate for the urgent need for gender sensitivity and gender justice in all issues concerning women in Ghana. The Institute works primarily through public education. Currently, I am the Manager and the Institute is based in the grounds of Trinity Theological Seminary (Legon, Ghana). We work to ensure gender sensitivity among seminarians and we advocate for a violence-free society where my daughters are free to be girls and unencumbered to contribute their quota to the development of the country without fear. We have worked on a range of women’s concerns encompassing harmful traditional practices, women’s health, women’s economic development, women’s empowerment, trafficking, and advocacy for the recognition of the humanity and human rights of all women. We work with women who are opinion leaders in their communities, religious spaces, basic and high schools, and universities and we also partner with the media and with Non-Governmental Organisations. But our work at the Institute is crucial especially for the women at the grassroots. The publications of the Circle, often produced in collaboration with opinion leaders, are not only for those able to read and interpret them. At the Institute we also take these publications and present them (in workshops for instance) in ways that non-academic and also non-literate women in the rural areas or communities can learn from. Our Queen Mothers who wield much influence as opinion leaders in their respective communities fulfil an important role in our work. The Institute also works with churches (charismatic, Pentecostal, and mainline churches), women’s rights groups, as well as various Muslim women’s groups to find out about, discuss and address the issues that affect their lives. We involve also the next generation of women and men (primary and high school children and university students) in our work.

 

Why is activism important to you and what do you hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020?

Just about four months ago, the whole country was outraged about the government of Ghana’s new policy on Comprehensive Sexuality Education. This policy proposed that sex education will be taught at all school levels beginning from first grade. It was interesting to watch how church leaders, irrespective of denomination, from charismatic to orthodox churches, as well as the Chief Imam, the leader of the Muslim community of Ghana, and also teachers and head teachers, many parents, the media, businessmen and women, the urban and rural men and women, all rose up against it. This united outrage stirred up questions in me: Why is the Church and why are all these other groups not on the streets with anger and outrage about the increasing number of rape cases? Why are countless cases of violence against women taking place all over the country and there is comparatively little said about it? Most of the so-called defilement cases involve girls living in the slums. Are our leaders quiet because they think rape of impoverished women does not matter? Is rape considered simply inevitable, or trivial? Is rape less offensive than sex education for grade one children? Why does the issue of rape not stir up the same anger as the prospect of sex education?

There is so much happening that needs fixing. Some children are raped and killed; others are raped and silenced with fear of death or misplaced social judgement when they disclose the identity of the perpetrators. This was worsened by the BBC coverage of the issue of ‘sex for grades’ in Ghana and Nigeria with the main defence from Ghana being that it was a plot to smear the country’s name. Much of the blame landed on the victims.

In this country rape is still taboo and rarely spoken about. When it is, then usually behind closed doors. Even when brave souls dare to bring the case into public forums, the identity of the perpetrators is protected. Many are the anonymous stories of rape and abuse that affirm the reality that trusted and often publicly respected individuals – teachers, lecturers, fathers, uncles, pastors, house helps – are perpetrating this violence. And often the victims have either been silenced for fear of further victimisation or for the sake of protecting their family name.

But there is also the bold decision of Elizabeth Ohene, a prominent journalist, BBC columnist and former government minister, who told her story about how she was sexually abused at the age of just seven years old and raped at the age of eleven, more than sixty years ago (in 1952). Ohene speaks of the physical, emotional and psychological effects this violence had on her and also of the “scandalous acceptance of the sexual molestation of children in our society as part of life”. Ohene’s open account won her much support and admiration but she also had friends who were puzzled and even angered at her decision to go public. To them, she should have taken her pain and suffering to the grave; after all, she had suffered it in private for more than sixty years. This drew my attention, however, to the fact that silence is no longer an option. It never was but now that the silence has been broken, we need to turn our voices into action for change.

It is time to speak up as loudly as we can and to work with the media about the menace of rape in our society. Sexual violence has settled itself into the very fabric of our society, feeding on our culture. But we have been given the responsibility by God not to just pass through this world as spectators but to contribute our share to making our world better. It is important that we continue to speak about these issues to holler our outrage and remind society at large and the generation after us that our shared humanity is a gift from God. It is important that we continue to empower our women. It is important to continue to nurture our daughters and to impress on them that they are not responsible for the crimes committed against them.

It is my hope that the Institute, with the help of stakeholders, will be able to provide public education to effectively address and eliminate violence against women and girls. In doing so, we will continue to question the role of the church in these issues.

Let me finish with some of my writings on the topic of sexual abuse.

 

WHEN THE TELLING ITSELF IS A TABOO: SPEAKING OUT AGAINST SEXUAL AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE.

  • It is Thursday in Black and my heart bleeds for all those women and girls, made in the image of God, who have endured sexual violence and cannot speak, because telling of being raped is itself a taboo. It is black Thursday and I stand in solidarity with those who are suffering quietly as victims of rape and of stigma.

 

  • My heart bleeds for the countless young children who are raped daily by their teachers, who shamefully violate the responsibility they are entrusted with. I stand in solidarity with the girls who are raped by relatives who are supposed to love and protect them, just as Christ loved and protected “The Church”. Where, I ask, is these girls’ refuge? I cry with all girls and boys who are raped. Where shall they turn?

 

  • Who will come to the rescue of the street girls who are raped – made so vulnerable by their poverty?

 

  • Who will speak for the countless women who are raped by their abusive husbands? Where is their refuge? Who is their hope, shield and fortress? Where is the Church? How my heart bleeds.

 

  • Its Thursdays in Black and I ask, where are the girls who were kidnapped in Takoradi? Are they forgotten so soon? My heart bleeds for the world we are leaving for the generation after us.

 

  • We shall refuse to keep quiet over the rape and violence that is stalking our homes, communities, public and private institutions. Do not be afraid to speak out for fear of being branded a bad girl, or for fear of dying as threatened by your rapist.

 

  • Though it may ring in your mind, we are here to help you yell it out. We shall yell together. Speak, for you are human with a tongue in your mouth.

 

  • Speak out, for the Church with a commandment to be a refuge for its people is YOU. Until we begin to shout it out together, sexual and gender-based violence will not stop.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 2 – Gordon Lynch

by Gordon Lynch on

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

I currently work as the Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology at the University of Kent. I’ve been an academic at different universities for nearly twenty-five years now (that time’s gone very quickly…!) and over that time my work has crossed over a number of disciplines including sociology, history and practical theology.

Although my research has been on quite an eclectic set of issues, a fundamental interest I’ve had through this work is on what values shape people’s lives and the role that moral meanings play in society. Over the past eight years, I’ve become increasingly interested in issues of historic abuse, particularly in how abuse took place in welfare initiatives that were ostensibly seen as morally defensible in the past. Part of what I’ve learned through that process is to recognise how welfare interventions like the industrial school system in Ireland or native residential boarding schools in Canada weren’t necessarily seen as morally unproblematic in the past, but that these systems carried on for a range of reasons despite knowledge of their failings. Recognising this is important. Sometimes organisations look at histories of institutional abuse in their work and argue that this took place in the context of well-intentioned initiatives that were simply less enlightened than today’s standards. The reality is often more complex and more uncomfortable than that.

Over the past seven years, I’ve become increasingly involved in researching the history of British child migration schemes that sent around 100,000 children to other parts of the British Empire and Commonwealth between 1869 and 1970. These schemes were often funded by British and overseas governments, but run by leading charities and major churches. I’m particularly interested in the schemes which operated in the post-war period which ran increasingly against the grain of progressive child-care thinking of that time, and in understanding the institutional and policy factors which made that possible.

How does your research or your work connect to activism?
I’m really interested in how we can take academic research on institutional abuse and make it accessible to different public audiences. I’ve been lucky enough to have been involved in a number of projects along these lines. In 2014, I worked with researchers in Ireland and the digital channel TrueTube to put together a film on women’s experiences of life in Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. I’ve co-curated a national exhibition about the history of British child migration at the V&A Museum of Childhood, and learned a lot through that about how objects and images can be presented in ways that make people more aware of complex and emotionally difficult histories. As a spin-off project from that exhibition, I was able to work with the production company 7digital to commission a number of leading British folk musicians who created a collection of songs, ‘The Ballads of Child Migration’ which has been released as an album and been performed at different venues around the country. I see part of this work – particularly in relation to the child migration schemes – as raising awareness of a history that’s not always well known. Another part of that is trying to think about what the factors are that give rise to institutional abuse, some of which might still be relevant today.

More recently I’ve become involved in supporting the work of two national child abuse Inquiries which have looked at the historic abuse of British child migrants as an expert witness. Working with another colleague, Stephen Constantine, we spent most of a year doing archival research that informed the report on British child migration by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. I learned more through that work about how historical research can go beyond just providing context for public investigations into historic abuse to develop more forensic analysis of archival sources which helps to show how and why systems of care failed. By looking at organisational correspondence and reports in Britain and Australia, for example, it was possible to piece together how the British Government had failed to put proper safeguards in place to ensure that standards of care for British child migrants were adequate.

Why is activism important to you and what do you hope to achieve between now and the 16 Days of 2020?

I came from a non-traditional background as a student and am always conscious – despite the pressures of modern academic life – of the considerable resources we still have in our universities. I’ve always thought that our research should be put to the service of wider communities and that this work should feed back into how we think our academic disciplines should be cultivated and taught.

I’ve been working with the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry over the past year and the work I’ve done with them is going to come into the public domain next spring (so can’t talk about it much yet, unfortunately!) – but I hope that will take forward a bit further some of our understanding of the circumstances in which British child migrants were abused. I think there’s a growing critical mass of people doing very important work on religion and abuse across a range of settings and I want to continue to think about how I can best support that. I’m also going to start publishing work more specifically on historic abuse of child migrants sent overseas by the Catholic Church and (hopefully) the Church of England which will hopefully be available over the next year. More ideas are the pipeline as well…

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