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16 Days of Celebrating Activism… Saima Afzal!

by Johanna Stiebert on

Saima Afzal is founder and director of SAS RIGHTS, a Community Interest Company that is all about dynamic and creative ways of problem solving and generating community-led activism. 

Saima has often collaborated with the Shiloh Project. You can read an interview about her organisation SAS RIGHTS, and she was one of our 2018 activists and participant in our lockdown series. Saima also  ran numerous campaigns last year aimed at challenging Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG), some of which were profiled on our blog (see here and here.)

This year, too, Saima has worked tirelessly at reaching the most isolated and marginalised members in her community of Blackburn with Darwen, facilitating support, information, and networking. This has included a fabulous vaccination drive (in two languages). Given the constrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as Saima’s personal hardship with aggressive treatment for cancer, these activities were particularly challenging. All the while, to keep things going, Saima also had to raise funds for her various projects: this in an environment where funding streams are fewer and donations harder to raise. Quite simply: in insecure times like the present, with many struggling financially and feeling anxious, it’s tough to fundraise.  

But… Saima is resourceful. And she has also gathered around herself a loyal and committed team of specialists and volunteers. Somehow, she has managed to do a great deal, partly with the help of grants from the National Lottery Fund, which help cover expenses.. 

Saima and her work in action – see @saimaafzalmbe

The VAWG work Saima leads has the title, ‘Truth, Art, Action and Activism’. This has a number of separate ‘branches’: such as, the ‘From Isolation to Cohesion’ project, offering talking therapy, including by Zoom, during times of social distancing and restrictions; the ‘Take A Break Project’, providing fun online exercise and wellbeing sessions; and the ‘Opening Minds – Love Difference Project’, opening up important conversations on topics that can be difficult to talk about (such as sexual orientation or domestic violence). Quite often, participants from one project find themselves opting in to another – with chats after the exercise class, for instance, leading on to involvement in group discussions, and from there to talking therapy or referrals. 

Saima has decades of experience of working in safeguarding, specialist advising, and human rights advocacy. Most of her work has been in supporting women who experience or live within controlling relationships, or in community structures and cultures that make accessing support difficult. Alongside facilitating help and support to minoritized women, another kind of work Saima does so brilliantly is building bridges of communication and understanding between disparate groups: such as between people of different religions, backgrounds, professions, or ethnicities.

Thank you, Saima, for the invaluable work you are doing and for the goodness and optimism you model and exude. 

If anyone can donate to Saima’s work, please visit here

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16 Days of Activism… Celebrating Transformation Through the Arts and Humanities

by Johanna Stiebert on
University-of-Leeds-PRAXIS-Transforming-Conflict-and-Displacement-through-Arts-and-Humanities-Alternative-Spreads-1121Download

Today’s post is bitter-sweet. Bitter, because 2021 is the first year since 2013 that the UK has not met its 0.7% of Gross National Income spending target for Official Development Assistance (ODA). Instead, the UK contribution has decreased to 0.5%, with devastating consequences for many vulnerable human beings. The impact of the cuts is profound, and far-reaching.

The cuts have also severely impacted all ODA research funding, with many grants suspended, reassessed and reduced, or withdrawn (see here). Many Humanities subjects, including the study of religion, were already vulnerable in the higher education sector, and now international research on religion and development, too, is further compromised.

More sweet, is the release today of the research report “Transforming Conflict and Displacement Through Arts and Humanities,” by Robyn Gill-Leslie (PRAXIS, Arts and Humanities for Global Development. Leeds: University of Leeds, 2021), see attached.

The report makes a very strong case for what the Arts and Humanities bring to the fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Goals, and to human flourishing. 

Dr Neelam Raina puts it beautifully in her foreword: 

“What is especially relevant about this report are the invisible, faint lines of emotions,
reflections, shared experiences, resonances which are echoed across communities and geographies. These lines, best captured by Arts and Humanities approaches to understanding our world, need urgent recognition and exploration, as they are our connection to the possibilities of creating and living in an equitable, peaceful world.” 

Dr. Mmapula Kebaneilwe at Women’s Rights NGO Emang Basadi (Gaborone, Botswana in 2018)

After an introduction, the report illustrates this claim with several case studies and impact assessments. Two of these are projects led by academics associated with the Shiloh Project. One is the recently concluded project “Resisting Gender-Based Violence and Injustice Through Activism with Biblical Texts and Images” (see pages 74-79 of the report), which was centred in southern Africa and led by Shiloh Project co-director Johanna, together with Katie Edwards and Mmapula Kebaneilwe. The other is ongoing and led by Adriaan van Klinken (one of our activists from 2018 and a participant in last year’s lockdown series). Adriaan’s collaboration is called “Sexuality and Religion Network in East Africa” (see pages 86-91 of the report). 

Please take a look at the report and you will see how collaborative, creative, meaningful and purpose-driven both these projects are. (And the same is true of the other wonderful projects profiled in the report.)

Tom Muyunga-Mukasa, campaigns for TB, HIV and Covid prevention and care (Nairobi, 2020)

Moreover, these particular projects show that some literacy at least, and preferably nuanced understanding, of religions and religious studies is not only desirable but, we would say, essential for working in Sub-Saharan Africa. After all, as Adriaan points out, in this vast region between 50% and 70% of all health, education and development services are provided by faith-based organisations, which means “religion must be incorporated into development analyses and interventions” (p.87).

Today we are grateful for a report, which acknowledges and describes friendships made and productive collaborations forged towards sustainable development initiatives. 

We are fearful of the consequences of sharply reducing ODA, especially at a time when populations already vulnerable are battered also by the Covid pandemic and its many repercussions. Alongside keeping up pressure for the reinstatement (and, if possible, increase) of previous levels of UK ODA spending, we also hope for more recognition of the Arts and Humanities, including the study of religion. 

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16 Days of Celebrating Activism… A Collaboration between The Circle and The Bible in Africa Studies series!

by Johanna Stiebert on

Today we want to celebrate the culmination of a wonderful collaboration: namely, the publication of Covid-19: African Women and the Will to Survive. The collaboration at the heart of this special journal issue is between first, the West Africa chapter of The Circle for Concerned African Women Theologians (‘The Circle’) and second, the Bible in Africa Studies/Exploring Religion in Africa series, based at the University of Bamberg, in Germany. 

The publication is open access and available here. The reference is Bible in Africa Studies 31/Exploring Religion in Africa 8 (2021). 

To give a little more background…

The Circle is a wide-reaching network of African women theologians. It was founded by scholar and activist Mercy Amba Oduyoye. (The Shiloh Project conducted an interview with Mercy Oduyoye and Joyce Boham in late 2018. Please see here.) 

Professor Mercy Amba Oduyoye, founder of The Circle

At the heart of The Circle is the aim to encourage, support, guide, and promote women theologians in writing and publishing. But its concerns are also very much wider and deeper than this. Circle members acknowledge and understand the multiple discriminations at work in their various African contexts. These discriminations are made, for instance, on the basis of sex, gender, poverty, HIV status, as well as in terms of access to health and reproductive care, to education, and to legal and political representation. And all these discriminations impact disproportionately on women and girls. 

The Circle, in the face of this, provides safe spaces, mentoring, and forums for discussion and solution finding. Equipped with solidarity, advice, and support, many go on to empower, motivate and sustain their families and their wider communities – be these scholarly, or faith, or educational, or workplace communities.

The Bible in Africa Studies/Exploring Religion in Africa series (BiAS), meanwhile, is a peer-reviewed, scholarly, open access series promoting research on religion in African settings. The series is led by Professor Joachim Kuegler, one of our 2019 activists. Joachim is Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Bamberg. He has a long-standing commitment to advancing scholarship in and about religions in Africa. He has supervised numerous postgraduates and hosted many scholars with specialisation in this area.

Professor Joachim Kuegler (second from left) with some members of the Bible in Africa Studies seminar.

Joachim writes, that exchanges with African students and scholars at his department in Bamberg are “based on the principle of pluriform equality” and further, that “[u]sing the opportunities offered by a rich country (Germany) we try to give academics from Africa a chance to display their talent in exploring the Bible in a contextual life-oriented way.” 

BiAS has been a superb venue for publishing and disseminating scholarship on religion and theology in African settings.

This BiAS publication shows what can happen when two different groups of scholar activists work together. The initial spark came from gender-specialist Joyce Boham (another 2019 Shiloh activist), who directs the Talitha Qumi Institute of Women in Religion and Culture in Legon, Ghana. Joyce opened a conversation about gender justice in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Joyce’s colleague at the Trinity Theological Seminary, Dr. Mark Aidoo, an academic of the Hebrew Bible, endeavoured to take the conversation forward with her. (You can see Mark at work in his classroom here). Next, Joyce and Mark called for contributions, primarily from Circle members in their region. Contributions of many kinds poured in – academic articles, empirical studies, reflections, exegeses, poems… These were then edited by a team that also included Professor Helen A. Labeodan, immediate past general coordinator of The Circle, and Dr. Rose Mary Amenga-Etego, an academic at the University of Ghana. 

This publication arose from this combined effort, and it offers multiple and diverse theological responses to and reflections on the Covid-19 outbreak and pandemic. All contributions are by African scholars and authors. Some contributions are academic, some experiential, and others creative, or impressionistic. 

Reflecting the ethos and commitment of the Circle to nurture and promote the publications by and about African writers, this issue contains the writings of some established but, predominantly, of emerging theologians. For some contributors, this is their first publication in an international series. 

The Circle, furthermore, is committed to social justice and positive change. Covid-19 has, like other crises, thrown into relief social injustices and gendered inequalities. While the pandemic has, indeed, been global, taking a toll on all parts of the inhabited world, striking both rich and poor, the burdens in its wake have not been borne equally. Lockdowns and economic downturns have hit those already afflicted by poverty hardest – and here the nations of Africa are disproportionately represented. Many African citizens have lost their livelihoods and access to education. Where women and girls are concerned, the bulk of caregiving and home-schooling has fallen to women; most of the children no longer receiving an education and forced into marriages are girl-children. With domestic abuse accelerating, the majority of victims are female. Hence, Covid-19 is a worldwide pandemic, but it is also a pandemic with particularly severe consequences for the economically vulnerable and for women and girls. 

Taken together, the contributions in this publication offer a snapshot of (mostly) West African responses to a testing time. 

We celebrate this publication and what it represents in terms of effort, collaboration, resourcefulness, and resilience. Please take a look and please help us spread the word.

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Announcing the Launch of Our Informal Mentoring Scheme

by Johanna Stiebert on

The Shiloh Project in Collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence (CSBV) has now launched its informal mentoring scheme for postgraduates and early career researchers working on violent and distressing topics in the area of religion/the Bible.

Postgraduate and early career research can be lonely and stressful. Sadly, the academy is not always a friendly or supportive space. Research on topics of violence is often particularly emotionally difficult. With such challenges in mind, we are offering an informal mentoring scheme.

The mentoring scheme exists to offer encouragement and support to emerging scholars working on subjects of violence in the discipline of religious and/or biblical studies. It aims to pair up more experienced scholars with emerging scholars for informal and flexible mentoring.

Teaming up with CSBV, we have secured the involvement of a number of more experienced scholars willing to offer informal mentoring in this way. We welcome offers from other scholars beyond our networks who would be willing to help mentor through this informal scheme.

Some notes about the scope and limitations of what we are offering:

  • Mentoring may be one-off, or more ongoing, may take place virtually, or in person, and will be with the expectation that meetings will take place and resume by mutual agreement
  • Either party will be free to terminate the relationship at any point
  • There is no expectation that the mentor will read or review written work, or provide technical input into the mentee’s work
  • The mentor relationship will in no way supplement or overlap with doctoral supervision
  • The mentor will not offer counselling
  • The mentee is not expected to and shall not repay the mentor in kind or in any other way, at any point 

Mentors and mentees who choose to participate in the scheme will be understood to have agreed to these guidelines.

If you are interested in our scheme please contact Helen Paynter (who directs CSBV) [email protected] and/or Johanna Stiebert (who co-directs the Shiloh Project) [email protected]

We have already heard from some individuals, and we are looking forward to hearing from more. Let’s do more to help one another.

Please help us spread the word.

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Noirthern

by Johanna Stiebert on

Shiloh directors have been busy with their day jobs, but work goes on and there are some great posts in the pipeline…

If you haven’t already, please check out Noirthern – the magnificent blog and podcast on crime fiction in Scottish and Northern English settings. Given that the hosts are none other than Caroline Blyth and Katie Edwards, the (wide-ranging and wonderful) conversations often veer into the territories of rape culture and religion. But it’s far from relentlessly grim.

Shiloh followers might appreciate particularly Episode 4, ‘Saints and Saviour Syndrome’ (focused on Durham) and Episode 5, ‘Tartan Noir’ (focused on Glasgow and Liam McIlvanney’s The Quaker, which draws inspiration from the notorious and unsolved Bible John case).

We hope to have some exciting updates soon… including about restarting suspended research project activities and a call for papers for a fabulous publication.

Watch this space!

[The feature image is adapted from artwork by Melody Clark. Please see: https://www.etsy.com/people/mellyemclark? ]

Noirthern is funded in part by a grant from AHRC/UKRI.

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Opening Conversations about GBV with Visual Media

by Chris Greenough on

Images can be very powerful and can communicate an abundance in an instant.  

Visual media can be effective tools for teaching.  

Because gender-based and sexual violence are distressing, images depicting or implying gender-based or sexual violence are highly likely to be distressing, too. It can be difficult to negotiate communicating a truth, being sensitive to and respectful of victims of violence, and avoiding voyeurism, all at the same time. 

Using images to open conversations and for teaching can be very effective in moving closer towards the elimination of gendered violence. 

Here are three quick examples.  

In an earlier post we presented the artwork of graphic designer Pia Alize. Her work depicts accounts of gender-based violence from the Bible. These images have now formed the focus of two well attended interactive workshops with ministerial candidates, both led by Dr Mark Aidoo of the Trinity Theological Seminary in Legon, Accra (Ghana). Church leaders are highly likely to be confronted with situations of gender-based violence in their parishes. Consequently, training in first response to disclosures of gender-based violence, and knowledge about how to facilitate support and protection for victims is crucial. Mark reports that the images generated lively engagement and that participants reported feeling transformed and reading the Bible with new sensitivities.  

Workshop with Dr Mark Aidoo of the Trinity Theological Seminary in Legon, Accra (Ghana) [2]
Workshop with Dr Mark Aidoo of the Trinity Theological Seminary in Legon, Accra (Ghana) [3]

Episcopal Relief & Development has produced a wide array of images to stimulate conversations about a range of difficult and complex topics – including about economic abuse and also gender-based violence. Each of these images tells a story. Episcopal Relief & Development leads group work on reflecting on the images, encouraging participants to associate the themes portrayed with events in their own lives, and exploring the repercussions of abusive actions. This then leads on to devising active strategies of resistance. 

Resource from Episcopal Relief & Development

Lastly, here are ‘Lent doodles’ by Charlotte Gibson. Charlotte is a Church of England ordinand and reads the Bible together with groups of women in the Women’s Theology Network. Their aim is to explore the continuing relevance of the Bible’s stories. This has included also discussion of stories of violence against women of the Bible, like Bilhah, Dinah, and Hagar, depicted here. 

‘Lent doodles’ by Charlotte Gibson [1]
‘Lent doodles’ by Charlotte Gibson [2]
‘Lent doodles’ by Charlotte Gibson [3]

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Graphic Artwork on Sexual Violence in the Bible by Pia Alize

by Johanna Stiebert on
Sexual Violence in the Bible

Here’s hoping 2021 brings positive action and results after what has been a difficult and challenging 2020, not least for groups already very vulnerable to and suffering from gender-based violence. 

Here’s a resource we hope many of you will find useful. This artwork is by Pia Alize, a graphic artist who has produced stunning images responding to gender-based violence and MeToo in India. You can see some of her other magnificent art, or contact Pia at: www.pigstudio.in

We hope these images, capturing references to gender-based and sexual violence in the Bible, will open up conversations that lead to social justice action in faith-based communities and beyond. We will be using them in workshops and teaching sessions. Our hope is they will appeal to a wide and inclusive audience.

If you require jpg files, please contact Johanna: [email protected]

Funding for the production of these images was provided by the generous support of a grant from the AHRC UKRI, ‘Resisting Gender-Based Violence and Injustice Through Activism with Bible Texts and Images’. 

Sexual Violence in the Bible
Sexual Violence in the Bible
preliminary cartoon
an early sketch, by Pia Alize
Sexual Violence in the Bible
Sexual violence in the Bible
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Remembering the Victims of Forced Marriage and of Murder in the Name of ‘Honour’

by Johanna Stiebert on
SAS Rights & Shiloh Project poster.

Today many community members will remember victims of so-called ‘honour’ killings. This day is marked annually on 14 July, the birth date of Shafilea Ahmed (born 1986, murdered 11 September 2003).

We want to hold in our thoughts the survivors of forced marriage and the victims of ‘honour’ killings and to acknowledge the courageous and important work of many grassroots organisations, service providers and activists to resist and to eliminate these scourges.

This year many of us cannot come together in person, but our vision remains united. We won’t just light candles, we will continue to take action. 

The Shiloh Project in collaboration with SAS RIGHTS

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Q&A with Nancy Tan, author of Resisting Rape Culture: The Hebrew Bible and Hong Kong Sex Workers

by Nancy Tan on
Resisting Rape Culture book cover by Nancy Nam Hoon Tan.

Nancy Nam Hoon Tan has featured as activist on the Shiloh Project. From Singapore, where she is now resident, she taught Hebrew Bible at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her published work demonstrates acute sensitivity to power dynamics, focusing particularly on the intersections and tensions between gender, ethnicity and notions of belonging. Nancy’s earlier work showcasing this includes her monograph The ‘Foreignness’ of the Foreign Woman in Proverbs 1-9 (De Gruyter 2008) and her chapter on women, colonialism and whiteness in The Bible, Centres and Margins (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018).

Her latest book is in the Routledge Focus Series Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible. Entitled Resisting Rape Culture: The Hebrew Bible and Hong Kong Sex Workers (2020), this a tour de force combining scholarship and advocacy.

Here is a Q&A with Nancy…

1. Tell us about yourself! How does your book relate to your work as a whole and how did this book come about?

For many years I was based in Hong Kong, where I taught and researched the Hebrew Bible. I opine that interpretations of biblical texts, both by academics and by faith communities, matter— maybe especially for individuals and communities who use the Bible to guide how they should behave and act. But the Bible and how it is interpreted also has bearing on society well beyond this – maybe more so than we think.

Most of my work has focused in some way on women, gender, power and oppression – and this book is no exception.

While living in Hong Kong, I volunteered as a teacher of English at the Jei Jei Jai Association (JJJ), the city’s first self-help and independent organization run by sex workers. This opened up for me the opportunity to get to know the sex workers as friends and to learn about their profession. This engagement also confirmed for me that the current interpretations of biblical texts on “prostitutes” and “prostitution” promote stigmatization and victimization of today’s sex workers.

With the help of Ms Sherry Hui, the co-ordinator for JJJ, I was able to hold the reading exercises on biblical texts with the sex workers that are at the heart of this book. It was Professor Johanna Stiebert who invited me to contribute the outcomes of these reading exercises in the framework of “rape culture”. Indeed, this couldn’t have been more apt, because the injustices that Hong Kong sex workers are subjected to stem from rape culture. And so… here is the book!  

2. What are the key arguments of this book?

First, this book debunks rape myths such as: “sex workers cannot get raped”, “sex workers are immoral and deserve punishment”, and “if women don’t resist, they aren’t really raped”, etc. The book shows how such rape myths contribute to the escalating violence that Hong Kong sex workers are facing.

Second, the book also shows that biblical scholars rarely consider how certain biblical texts and interpretations of them, too, promote stigmatization of today’s sex workers and rape culture. This is thrown into relief by engaging Hong Kong sex workers in the reading and analysis of three biblical texts of the Hebrew Bible where the Hebrew root word znh, often translated as “prostitute” occurs: namely, Genesis 38, 1 Kings 3:16–28 and Hosea 1–3. Each reading unpacks where rape culture and the stigmatization of sex workers lie and through the sex workers’ standpoints, these texts are revealed in a new light.   

3. What do you hope readers will take away from reading this book?

I hope readers will see the humanity and dignity of sex workers. Sex workers deserve to be respected in every way, and the hatred that society has mounted against them is cruel and unjust. I hope this book will change the way we talk about and the way we treat sex workers. 

I also hope that this book will persuade readers that interpretations of the Bible need to be re-evaluated. I hope it will encourage readers to ask themselves, “Do interpretations do justice to marginalized communities today? Do they promote hatred and reinforce oppression?”

I hope readers will be informed and come to realise how subtle and dangerous rape myths can be: rape myths find support from biblical texts, and, consequently, biblical texts can become justifications for violence against humanity.  

4. Give us one quotation from your book that you think will make readers go and want to read the rest!

“One of the sex workers disagreed with the statements the others made concerning women’s decision to return to abusive men because of the children. … She would not allow anyone to harm her in this way and would rather lose her life to fight for freedom. …She said if women would not protest against such wicked threats on their lives, then the children would not learn to fight for what is right and just. In this way, cycles of abuse continue. She regretted that that is how abusive men keep oppressing women…” Find it and read the rest!

Photo of Nancy Nam Hoon Tan.
Nancy Tan

Nancy’s book is available for pre-order (see here) and will be dispatched by 1 September.

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