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Contemporary Culture

The verdicts on the Pelicot trial are a victory – but only a partial one

by Tasia Scrutton on

Today’s post is by Tasia Scrutton. Tasia is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds and Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Religion and Theology.

In Genesis 12:14–20 we read how Abram (later Abraham) asks Sarai (later Sarah) to pretend she is his sister, rather than wife, to protect himself (cf. Genesis 20). This allows Pharoah to have sex with Sarai without knowingly committing adultery. In the words of the thirteenth century commentator Ramban, Abram ‘commits a great sin’ by failing to protect his wife from rape. Sarai is seen as fair game for attack by men who do not know her, and the man who does know her; indeed, the man closest to her does nothing to protect her.

Fast forward to today, when we see Dominique Pelicot and fifty of the men he recruited over almost a decade to rape his wife Gisèle being convicted, following a long, arduous trial. Dominique was given 20 years for aggravated rape, the maximum possible sentence, and Gisèle’s decision to waive anonymity indeed meant that shame changed sides: it is the rapists who now face the shame and censorship that have often been experienced instead by the victims of rape.

At the same time, Gisèle’s victory – which is a victory on behalf of all violated women – is still only a partial one. Many of the men who assaulted her received far shorter sentences than Dominique Pelicot, some as little as 3 years. That figure is striking, given that some Just Stop Oil protesters, for instance, were jailed for as many as 5 years for non-violent crimes. We must ask, what does this reflect about the crimes our societies think are ‘really’ serious – and (relatedly) whose lives do they think matter?

Calling for retribution is not an attractive look – but the low sentences are significant, and deeply problematic, for reasons other than retribution. One of the strongest arguments for having a prison system at all is that it can – or should – deter people from committing crimes. Many of the men who raped Gisèle will be out of prison in just a few years – a span of time less long than the duration of the legal trial (which began in 2020), let alone the length of Gisèle’s almost-decade-long ordeal. They will be free and, while it is to be hoped that some will be reformed characters, those who are not reformed will be free, including free to perpetrate sexual violence again.

In addition, low sentences also send out the message to others that, while rape is not acceptable, it is somehow not such a very bad crime after all – perhaps (someone might think) it might even be worth the risk committing it, given that conviction rates are low to begin with and the length of incarceration they would face if convicted not considerable.

A distinction is sometimes made between ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’: my freedom to smoke cigarettes on trains (for example) might be at the expense of your freedom from a smoke-filled carriage. In the case of no- and low-imprisonment rape trials, freedom to rape is, it could be argued, protected at the expense of the freedom from sexual violence and the risk of sexual violence.

Most of Gisèle’s most vocal supporters have been women, and lower support among men should worry us too. Many men have been quietly sympathetic, yes; while others have begun another #NotAllMen campaign. While it is true, thankfully, that not all men are rapists (or would want to be rapists), this discourse serves to deflect attention away from the real atrocities and from those who have had those atrocities inflicted on them. It says, ‘look at us’ (and so ‘not at them’). We should not have to give credit to our fathers, husbands, brothers, sons and male friends for not being rapists. Surely, we should just be able to trust that they are not.

In her moving post-verdict speech today, Gisèle called for a future with ‘respect and mutual understanding between men and women’. Amen indeed to that. Women like Gisèle have done everything in their power to lay the foundations for that – male allies, and legal systems, and social structures, now need meet us halfway to make it a reality.  

Editors: We want to thank Tasia for her post, written today, on the day of the verdict. We want to add that the argument used by the defence that some of the men charged with raping Gisèle Pelicot assumed consent, is also sometimes applied to interpretations of the story in Genesis 12 to which Tasia makes reference at the beginning of the post – that is, that Sarai’s consent to follow Abram’s instruction and submit to sex with Pharaoh are assumed. To us the biblical story suggests rape and, with that, no consent. The suggestion that Gisèle Pelicot consented to the violations perpetrated against her is despicable.

[The featured image is from Shutterstock Images. The author image below is courtesy of Tasia Scrutton.]

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Tidar: A new film about domestic violence in Ethiopia

by Johanna Stiebert on

Dear Shiloh Community,

October is drawing to an end, and therewith concludes UK Domestic Violence Awareness month. We have been invited by Project Manager Dr Natalia Paszkiewicz to share with you a docudrama called Tidar (Marriage), now available on the new YouTube channel of  Project dldl/ድልድል (Building Bridges of Faith Against Domestic Violence).

From the Project Team: “The aim of the film is to raise awareness about the complex role that religion can have in situations of domestic violence in the Ethiopian Orthodox community, influencing both victim and perpetrator rationalisations and behaviour. We would be grateful if you could share it with your colleagues and students.”

The film is about 40 minutes long and has English subtitles: Tidar – Marriage – Full movie with English subtitles (youtube.com) The film is also available with Tigrigna and Afaan Oromoo subtitles on the same channel. 

Content Warning! Please be advised that the film includes scenes of domestic violence at the beginning and ending.

Tidar is one of several educational films produced by the project, which is funded by UK Research and Innovation . The film is based on real people’s stories and testimonies, which were collected during research in Ethiopia. It tells the story of Genet, who is experiencing domestic violence. It shows how Genet’s community responds to her predicament and how personal faith, religious mediation and theological teaching influence how she thinks through her situation.

The film was written and led by Dr Romina Istratii, directed by Yidnekachew Shumete of Kurat Pictures and produced by Hermon Hailay and Max Conil of Exile Pictures. It has been re-enacted by Amharic-speaking actors in Ethiopia, with subtitles in Tigrigna, Afaan Oromoo and English produced with the help of two exceptional translators, Dr Haile Gezae, and Mesfin Wodajo. The film was screened for the first time in 2023 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and again in London and Cambridge, UK in 2024. 

Dr Romina Istratii, Principal Investigator of Project dldl/ድልድል and writer of the film, has shared the below comments on the occasion of the film’s release:

I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the director and co-producers, Yidne, Max and Hermon, for their exceptional passion and commitment to bringing this film to fruition. The extended team, Kedest and Gedam, Haile and Mesfin, but also the all-Ethiopian crew on the ground – including the amazing actors – made this film possible. Without each and every person contributing to its production, including the communities supporting us, this film would not exist. 

Similarly, the film would not be as it is without the contribution and support of numerous theological experts and translators in Ethiopia who directly or indirectly informed our theological approach of the issue, including Henok Hailu, Selam Reta, Kesis Aklil Damtew and many collaborators affiliated with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. 

For those less familiar with the film, Tidar is based on stories and testimonies of real people in Ethiopia collected through years’ community-based research with women and men, clergy, monks and church teachers on the ground. The film does not seek to represent the teachings of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and theological experts were consulted in the making of the film where theological references are made. The film also does not seek to suggest how clergy should respond to domestic violence victims but rather depicts how different members of the clergy currently respond based on the findings of the research. The aim of the film is to problematise these responses, positive or negative, and to start a conversation within the Church and beyond.

The film is released to be used for educational purposes by any individual or organisations working on raising awareness about and responding to domestic violence in faith communities. While Genet’s story takes place in an Orthodox Christian community in Ethiopia, the challenges she faces as she seeks a solution to her situation are cross-cultural and can inform conversations and approaches elsewhere. The film should be understood as an attempt to present the complexity of the problem with all its nuances and not to essentialise the problem to Ethiopia only. So please use it with the appropriate context.

Viewers who are curious about the motivations and approach taken to produce the film, may want to watch the short video ‘Making of Tidar,’ also created by the project with the assistance of Kurat Pictures in Ethiopia and Chouette Films in the UK: Making of Tidar (youtube.com)

The Project Team hopes that the film will prove educational and insightful and that it does justice to the topic. They welcome all feedback! 

A huge congratulations to everyone from Team Shiloh!

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Sexual abuse in the context of Christian purity culture in Britain

by Johanna Stiebert on

Today’s post is by Chrissie Thwaites, a PhD student in sociology of religion at the University of Leeds (UK). Chrissie’s research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC/UKRI). You can follow her on twitter or keep up to date with her work on LinkedIn.

Researching purity culture in Britain

I’m currently in the final stages of my PhD at the University of Leeds, where since 2020 I’ve been researching the impact of evangelical Christian purity culture on women in Britain. Earlier in my PhD, I wrote for the Shiloh Project about the need to investigate purity culture in the UK. Since then, I have conducted research and begun to share my findings. 

Thus far, most research on evangelical Christian purity culture has focused on the US (e.g. by Sara Moslener and Linda Kay Klein), given that the movement was especially prominent there. There have been a few studies looking at purity culture in some way with both American and British participants (as in Katie Cross’s chapter in Feminist Trauma Theologies, or a chapter on purity culture in Katie Gaddini’s book The Struggle to Stay). But as mine is the first more substantial piece of work specifically and exclusively on purity culture in Britain, I needed to build up a picture of this context, to provide background.

Consequently, my PhD has involved mixed methods research, consisting of an online survey and some one-to-one interviews. The survey gave sufficient breadth and garnered quite a wide reach – the link was opened by 1300 people, 863 then clicked through to somewhere in the survey itself, and over 600 filled it out all the way to the end and submitted a response, of which 580 were considered eligible and included in my study.[1]

Meanwhile, I also conducted five interviews to provide more depth and to ground my research in select personal stories. These were also helpful as I wanted to explore British evangelical youth subculture in the 2000s and 2010s in a bit more detail than the survey allowed, and to hear more about the role of this subculture in people’s lives. Having said that, I also ended up with quite a lot of qualitative data in the survey too – I was very privileged to have a lot of people share their experiences with me in the open-ended questions. I also had a much higher response rate than I’d anticipated, which suggests that I’d tapped into something people wanted to talk about, and that a good number of people were looking for an outlet to share their stories.

Findings: abuse in the context of purity culture

Most of the respondents did not recount personal experiences of abuse, and there were no survey questions to prompt such a disclosure. But some people, of their own accord, did disclose such experiences – including one of my five interviewees. Similarly, the majority of participants didn’t mention any knowledge or awareness of experiences of abuse by their peers or those around them. But again, some did. I felt that the seriousness of this topic meant it required attention, even if the number of people discussing it was in the minority. This was especially the case given that anyone who shared these experiences did so without prompting, as it wasn’t a part of the survey structure. Those who did discuss abuse tended to focus on sexual assault specifically, usually in one of two ways: either in responses to sexual assault (and how purity culture can shape these), or, in some cases, on how purity culture creates an environment which actually facilitates sexual assault. 

With regard to the first, some participants talked about the role of purity culture in the aftermath of sexual assault. One participant described “in response to reporting a rape being told God would forgive me for having sex before marriage (as the first response)”. Not only does this fail to provide trauma-informed support to someone who has experienced sexual assault, the notion that this person is in need of forgiveness implies some sort of transgression and fault on her part. Another survey respondent describes a similar experience: “when I told the pastor’s wife that I had been sexually assaulted in my 20s, she led me through a prayer of repentance, as the assumption was I had done something to cause the assault”. These are different people, but their experience is dreadfully similar, and the implications of both responses are the same: guilt and culpability. 

Multiple survey respondents discussed how the idea that pre-marital sex makes a person tainted had shaped (and worsened) the aftermath of sexual assault. One person, for example, discussed an assault at university: “I was sexually assaulted in uni when I was still a virgin. Purity culture caused me to view myself as ‘used’ and unlovable”. Immediately after this assault, she attended a relationships session at an evangelical church, “which basically boiled down to if you have sex before marriage you’re dirty and unlovable …  The message also made me feel extremely upset and angry as I already believed in Jesus and I still got assaulted, so where was I supposed to go?”. In a place where she expected comfort she was instead told that she was now (in her words) dirty and unlovable. She also reports leaving the church for a period of time because of this, and experiencing guilt and shame. 

Others too described feelings of shame and self-blame. “I 100% blamed myself for my own perceived failings,” one woman said. “Nobody ever told me I had a voice … When I lost my virginity it wasn’t exactly by choice,” which she says led her to a very dark place: “I truly felt like now I was no longer a virgin, I couldn’t do any of the things I had wanted to do – missions work, marry a lovely Christian guy, even play in the worship team at church. It felt like my world had ended and I didn’t know what to do with it”. This idea of the loss of community and the possibility of living a fulfilling Christian life also appeared in others’ stories: “when I was raped in my adolescence I didn’t share my story because I was afraid I had lost my purity and was no longer worthy of love or welcome in the Church or in general,” another participant shared with me. In other words, she remained silent out of an internalised fear of what would happen, and an anxiety that she was no longer lovable or welcome in her church community. For another woman, this fear was realised, and she describes being “thrown out of my church” when she was raped “outside of marriage”. 

With regard to the second, some participants in my research felt that the environment of Christian purity culture did not safeguard them from, but rather enabled, sexual abuse. One woman talked about a boyfriend from a particular church, who raped her during their relationship. “I believe the church contributed to his decision to do so,” she says harrowingly. Another discussed how purity teaching came predominantly from youth events growing up and how in this context, “because sex was wrong, it fetished [sic] force and non-consent. (As that could be the only other way to experience sexual contact!?!?) I had friends as young as 12 or 13 who would talk about rape as a positive thing”. When describing her experience of purity culture, another participant attributed her experience of sexual assault in her late teens to it: “I hold it largely responsible for my rapes in my abusive relationship,” she says. 

Evangelical Christianity has had a number of high-profile abuse scandals in recent years, which have documented serious and devastating abuses of power from those in leadership positions.[2] I was reminded of these news stories when I read one survey submission, in which the respondent disclosed being sexually abused in her mid-teens by the leader of her evangelical youth group, who was over 10 years her senior. As she describes it: “He said that God had been leading him to me, and said ‘God says it’s all right’ when he touched me. In retrospect, I was groomed and sexually abused by him.” This man’s position of power and appropriation of spiritual authority seems to have facilitated his behaviour flying under the radar – and all the while, he outwardly maintained the unacceptability of pre-marital sex. There isn’t much for me to say here; the idea that vulnerable adolescents exist within these environments – ones purporting to keep them safe – is not one easy to make peace with. 

Additionally, many of the examples given by these participants constitute secondary victimisation. The European Institute for Gender Equality defines this as follows: “secondary victimisation occurs when the victim suffers further harm not as a direct result of the criminal act but due to the manner in which institutions and other individuals deal with the victim” (2016). It can be caused, for example, by “repeated exposure” to the perpetrator, or “the use or inappropriate language or insensitive comments” by “those who come into contact with victims” (ibid.). So, take, for instance, the women who shared with someone that they had been sexually assaulted and were immediately told they needed forgiveness. This would be an example of secondary victimisation due to the victim-blaming undertones of these responses, and thus the further harm that comments like these can inflict.

Charting the path forward?

A short article like this one only begins to scratch the surface – there is more to discuss about sexual assault in the context of purity culture. But I find it helpful to categorise my main findings and recommendations based on these into two broad categories: first, how purity culture can shape the aftermath of sexual assault; second, in some cases, how purity culture can even facilitate and conceal abuse.

As I’m approaching the end of my PhD, I’ve spent a significant amount of time poring over my data and re-reading people’s answers, and I am cognizant of the lived experience within them. I am strongly aware that behind every survey ID number is a person – someone who has lived a whole life with nuance and emotion and who at some point, took the time to fill out a survey for the research of someone they don’t know. I get the impression that some of these people also felt silenced because they are seen by some Christians, first and foremost, as a threat with the capacity to tarnish Christianity. What I see first is their need to be listened to.

In my research, I take a sociological approach to studying purity culture; mine is not a theological study, and I don’t attempt to offer a confessional response for people to use going forward. I will leave that up to others, as I am not the right person for it. What I do want to do, however, is shine a light on the experiences that have been shared with me. To do my respondents justice by telling their stories. What comes after this, I am not sure – but it is my hope that in doing this work, all of these people know that someone has heard them. And realise that they are not alone. 

[1] In my research I focus specifically on people who were “raised as girls” within this Christian context, following the language of Klein (2019). This means that my participants are either cis women (the vast majority), or assigned female at birth non-binary (a very small percentage).

[2] In the UK, this includes the lengthy and ongoing investigation of John Smyth, former leader of Iwerne Trust which ran evangelical Christian camps; former leader of Emmanuel Church Wimbledon and prominent evangelical leader Jonathan Fletcher; more recently, Mike Pilavachi, former leader of the charismatic evangelical Soul Survivor festivals and ordained vicar of its church in Watford. The latter prompted the Evangelical Alliance to call for evangelicals to “do better”. 

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Introducing the Contributors to “The Bible and Violence” – Susannah Cornwall and Victor Moulder

by Johanna Stiebert on
Bible picture with a 'warning' sign.

Today, let’s meet two more of our many fabulous contributors. We are delighted to introduce Susannah Cornwall and Victor Moulder. (For our earlier post about the Bible and Violence Project, see here.)

Susannah Cornwall is Professor of Constructive Theologies at the University of Exeter, and Director of EXCEPT, the Exeter Centre for Ethics and Practical Theology. Her latest monograph is Constructive Theology and Gender Variance: Transformative Creatures (Cambridge University Press, 2022), which focuses on gender transition and gender diversity in relation to Christian doctrines of creation, Christology, theological anthropology, and eschatology. Her current research focuses on structural sin and institutions. Susannah is writing the chapter on Bible, Intersex Being and Biomedical Violence.

In some of my earlier work, including my first book, Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Condition and Christian Theology (Routledge, 2010) and my 2011–2013 research project ‘Intersex, Identity, Disability: Public Policy, Healthcare and the Church’ at the University of Manchester, I problematized the early corrective surgery paradigm for people born with intersex characteristics. In the last decade there has come to be increased legal protection for intersex people in various countries in Europe and beyond.

It’s also less common now than it used to be for conservative Christian theologians to hold that early corrective surgery is an appropriate social response to the birth of people with intersex characteristics, not least because of the crucial work done in these communities by evangelical scholars and activists such as Megan DeFranza and Lianne Simon in the Intersex and Faith Education Project. 

My chapter for this volume, however, focuses on the Bible, intersex being, and biomedical violence. I will show that the continuing invocation by many conservative theologians of the Genesis ‘creation mandates’ that uphold the idea that intersex is a particularly and peculiarly fallen state, which should prompt compassion and will be erased in the world to come, is damaging and undermines the good of intersex people’s bodies and experiences today. 

I’ll also show that such accounts continue to inform the biomedical logics within which non-consensual ‘corrective’ surgery on people with intersex characteristics remain thinkable in some medical contexts. Furthermore, I’ll suggest that the conservative move away from calling for such surgeries stems in part from increased conservative theological desire to cast suspicion on trans identity and so-called ‘gender ideology,’ and is therefore not unproblematic. 

You can find out more about Susannah and her research here

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Victor Moulder is an emerging scholar based in Wales. Victor graduated recently from Cardiff University with a BA (2021) and MA (2022) in Religion and Theology. His research has focused on eschatology, apocalyptic literature, and violence, and his 2021 dissertation explored violent and non-violent intertextualities between apocalyptic texts. Alongside such topics he also has passion for queer theology, gender-based hermeneutics, and angelology. Victor’s aim as a fledgling academic is to explore the harmful narratives and imagery of Scripture without resorting to apologia or excision. Victor is contributing the chapter on Violence in Daniel.

It is my aim with this chapter to explore the multifaceted nature and role of violence in the Book of Daniel. This will include contextualising the book as both (post)exilic and apocalyptic literature, born of war, mourning, displacement, and imperialism. But I will also spotlight the bodily violence faced by some characters in the narrative portions, and the symbolic violence of Daniel’s frightening dreams. I will explore the violent potential of accepting this book as a text where violence is divinely ordained or justified, and explore God’s role as violator, redeemer, liberator, and comforter, harming but also suffering, and ending systems of oppression. 

In a world where peril, the notion of end-times, and imperial domination – all prevalent in Daniel – still hold sway, navigating this text and its violence remains a challenge.

You can find out more about Victor and his work on Twitter: @VictorMoulder.

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“A Universe of Ontological Terror”: A Comparative Analysis of Genesis 34 and the Rape and Murder of Sarah Everard.

by Isobel Wood on

Isobel Wood has recently graduated from the University of Leeds after studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Her research critically reflects on feminist approaches to global social justice and gender inequality issues. In particular, her most recent research centres on the intersection of religion and gender, namely the similarities between contemporary and biblical rape culture, which this blog focuses on. Her other research interests include popular culture, Marxism and identity politics. Following graduation, she will be moving to London where she begins her career as an Associate Consultant at one of the world’s leading technology companies.

Deena Metzger (cited in Blyth 2010, p.91) introduces a horrifying reality for women in her definition of rape.[1] She argues that women live in a “universe of ontological terror”, whereby the very essence of womanhood is threatened by sexual violence and misconduct. This post explores Metzger’s claim by addressing similarities between biblical and contemporary British rape culture through a comparative analysis of the 2021 rape and murder of Sarah Everard, contemporary rape rhetoric, and the biblical story of Genesis 34.

Sexual violence towards women continues to be a prominent issue in the United Kingdom, with recent surveys estimating 1.6 million adults aged 16 to 74 years have experienced sexual assault by rape or penetration (including attempts) since the age of 16 years. This, however, is no contemporary phenomenon. There is a common consensus amongst feminist biblical scholars that the Bible has been highly influential in the creation of Western rape culture due to its authority in both faith-based communities and pop-culture as well as the recurring themes of patriarchy and gender-based violence present within its narratives (see, e.g., Scholz, 1999; Stiebert, 2021; Thiede, 2022). Such a connection warrants an exploration into the similarities between biblical and contemporary rape cultures.

Genesis 34

This blog post focuses upon the narrative of Genesis 34 which recounts the rape of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, by a Canaanite prince called Shechem. The story begins by introducing Dinah’s journey to see the “daughters of the land” (Genesis 34:1). Here, she is intercepted by Shechem, son of Hamor the Canaanite, who ‘takes her by force’ (Genesis 34:2). Following the rape, Shechem’s father Hamor meets with Jacob to negotiate marriage terms between Shechem and Dinah. Hamor also suggests that further intermarriage and assimilation take place between the Hivite and Jacobite communities. Though Jacob remains silent on the matter, Dinah’s brothers (Simeon and Levi) are enraged and, in a plot to avenge their sister, demand that all the Hivite men must first be circumcised before any intermarriage can occur. The brothers then invade the town whilst the Hivite men are recovering from surgery, proceeding to slaughter the recovering Canaanites, taking their wives, and pillaging their wealth (Klopper, 2010, p. 656).

“File:The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 170. Dinah and Shechem. Genesis cap 34 v 1. Borcht.jpg” by Phillip Medhurstis licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Genesis 34 and Sarah Everard

In early March 2021, Sarah Everard, aged 33, was walking home from a friend’s house in Clapham when she was intercepted by Wayne Couzens, a Metropolitan Police officer. Couzens falsely arrested Ms Everard on the pretence that she was breaking COVID-19 legislation. He drove her to a secluded rural area in Kent where he raped and murdered her.

The case of Sarah Everard echoes the plight of Dinah in Genesis 34, and whilst the most obvious comparison is the sexually violent nature of the crimes,[2] the similar responses to both cases offer an insight into the perpetuation of rape mythology and culture.

Victim Blaming and the Policing of Women

The first point of comparison centres around rape myths, including victim-blaming and the subsequent policing of women in both biblical Israel and contemporary Britain.

Much of the victim-blaming response to Dinah’s story is elicited by the first verse, which details Dinah’s journey to see the Canaanite daughters: “Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the region” (Genesis 34:1). For instance, Aalders (1981 cited in Parry, 2002, p.7) confidently surmises that Dinah has “natural desire to be seen by the young men of the city” and is disturbed that she would “flippantly expose herself” to these men. His response exemplifies a victim-blaming stance, making assumptions about Dinah’s character and placing her at fault for the crimes perpetrated against her. This maintains another rape myth: that ‘normal men’ do not commit rape but are driven “to such an extreme form of sexual behaviour” by female promiscuity (Blyth, 2010, p.3).

This same stance of victim-blaming has been repeated in the policy and rhetoric of senior UK government officials in response to the Sarah Everard case. North Yorkshire Commissioner Philip Allott exhibited these attitudes in his statement, arguing “she [Sarah] never should have submitted to the arrest” and “women need to be streetwise”. The government action which follows Sarah Everard’s rape and murder also reinforces the opinion that the surveillance of women and girls is necessary for their own safety. The “immediate steps aimed at improving safety for women” included “an additional £25m for better lighting and CCTV” and a “pilot scheme which would see plain-clothes officers in pubs and clubs”. Surveillance is an important facet of victim-blaming, insofar that it monitors women ensuring that they are in keeping with the “ideal rape victim” construct (Larcombe, 2002). Here, women are chaste, sensible and cautious, modifying their behaviours to demonstrate caution in interactions with the opposite sex (Larcombe, 2002, p.133). Furthermore, the introduction of plain-clothed officers perpetuates the “damsel in distress trope,” academically termed “benevolent sexism” (Glick and Fiske, 2001). Though a more covert form of prejudice, benevolent sexism is “disarming” through its “promises that men’s power will be used to women’s advantage” (Glick and Fiske, 2001, p.111). This form of sexism is innately patronising, by positioning men as saviours it condescends the role of women, implying men’s dominance and depicting women as a liability (Dardenne et al, 2007, p.765).

Similarly, victim-blaming rhetoric is littered throughout contemporary media, specifically newspaper articles. A recent Daily Mail article included details about Sarah’s education, the value of her parent’s house, and the clothing she was wearing before the attack. By including these details, the Daily Mail attempted to position Everard as an “ideal rape victim’” (Larcombe, 2002) deserving of sympathy and retribution. For instance, she was presented in the article as a sensible, responsible woman with a university degree who came from a respected middle-class family; consequently, she would have understood the risk of rape and chose to wear modest dress. Circulating this information reinforces the opinion that certain characteristics of women make them more or less susceptible to or culpable for violence. 

Just as Lange (1899, pp.563-564) describes Dinah’s story as a “warning to the daughters of Israel”, Meyers (1997, p. 24) argues that problematic news coverage “serves as a warning and a form of social control over women and a guide to appropriate female behaviour.” By sharing intimate and unnecessary details of a woman’s character, and responding to such acts with further forms of policing and surveillance on women’s freedoms, society is merely perpetuating the rape myth that women are culpable for the crimes committed against them. The mere act of going out becomes an invitation for sexual violence. In fact, the disclosure of intimate details about rape victims continues to be a legitimate judicial defence strategy, contributing to the extremely low conviction rates seen today in the United Kingdom[3] (Larcombe, 2002, p.136). Therefore, contemporary media outlets must understand their complicity in perpetuating rape culture and accept responsibility for ceasing the propagation of rape mythology (Meyers, 1997, pp.xi).

Race and Rape Culture

Sexual violence against women intersects with race to the detriment of already marginalised groups. The media hysteria surrounding the Everard case may be wrongfully credited to the appearance and social standing of Sarah, who, as a privileged white woman received more publicity and attention than other victims of similar crimes (Stiebert, 2021, p.48). For instance, Sabina Nessa’s murder, which occurred six months after the murder of Sarah Everard, received minimal coverage and, according to internet analytical tools like Google Trends and Crowdtangle, markedly less public engagement.

Similarly, the fate of the Canaanite women who are abducted (and presumably raped) by Dinah’s brothers during the raid of the Hivite city (Gen. 34:29) receive very little attention in both the text and its interpretative traditions. The injustice they face is rooted in the identity politics of Ancient Israel, where boundaries are set between different groups through geography, ethnicity, and allegiance. Outsiders are demonised in an attempt to justify violence against them and to form stronger group boundaries (Bechtel, 1994, p.22). Consequently, genealogy is understood to be essential in maintaining purity within the precincts of different groups, and so the concept of a woman being raped by an “outsider” is considered especially abhorrent (Bechtel, 1994, p.22).

Both Simeon and Levi share a disdain for the inter-ethnic sexual relationship between Shechem and Dinah and the proposal of long-term interdependence between Canaanites and Jacobites, which “threatened to put the colonized and the colonizer in a relationship of equality (although not gender equality)” (Dube, 2017, p.54). Subsequently, the Canaanite women (Gen. 34:29) are simply depicted as plunder, and as restitution for the sins Shechem conducted against the Jacobite family (Dube, 2017, p.54). These women are silenced by the text, just as Sabina Nessa’s story is omitted from much contemporary media coverage.

Rape Rhetoric

In Genesis 34:2, where we read about Shechem’s act of rape, Dinah is repeatedly referred to using pronominal suffixes, which “depersonalise and objectify her” (Blyth, 2010, p.87), limiting her to a sedentary object of Shechem’s desire and subsequent abuse.  Dinah is referred to by name eight times throughout the narrative, and in most cases, she is identified in relation to her family (particularly her father and brothers): she is “the daughter of Leah”, “our sister” and “Jacob’s Daughter” (Genesis 34) (Scholz, 1997, p.151-2). This kinship language reinforces the discourse that a woman’s plight is only valued at the cost to her male counterparts; her status as a rape victim only deserves sympathy in relation to others.

However, recent British media campaigns have criticised the usage of such language within rape culture rhetoric. This is illustrated by an image created by popular Instagram page and blog @Ladbible, which was shared as part of a campaign during Sexual Abuse & Sexual Violence Awareness Week. The image features the statement “She is Someone’s” followed by ‘Daughter,Sister, Mother, Wife, Girlfriend, Friend’ which are all crossed out.

The use of slogan, “She is Someone’s” (Ladbible, 2021) is particularly poignant, insofar that it acknowledges the use of kinship language within contemporary “lad” culture to wrongfully evoke sympathy towards the victim, much like the language used to describe Dinah within Genesis 34. The campaign implores readers to consider victims (in this case women) as simply people in their own right, as opposed to those deserving of empathy by virtue of their relationships with others. Ultimately, a victim’s background, sexual history and race should not influence the condemnation of the crime.

Concluding Remarks

This blog post offers a damning indictment of the pervasiveness of patriarchy and sexual violence, concluding that despite millennia, the responses of both biblical and contemporary societies to sexual violence are almost identical in their semantics, their mistreatment of minority groups, and their recitation of rape mythology. The female rape survivor’s experience is focalised by an exclusively androcentric ideological framework, where male voices take precedence (Blyth, 2009, p.485), confining the survivor to the limitations of the “ideal rape victim” (Larcombe, 2002). Here, a woman’s race, background and the most intimate details of her personal life are derised and critiqued, until she is rendered culpable to her own defilement, despite exercising the most basic of freedoms.

Nowadays, rape mythology is no longer limited to the pages of ancient texts but a reality of the very essence of womanhood.

Works Cited

Bechtel, L.M. 1994. What is Dinah is Not Raped? (Genesis 34). Journal for the Study of the Old Testament62 (1), pp. 19–36.

Bible: New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Blyth, C. 2009. Terrible Silence, Eternal Silence: A Feminist Re-Reading of Dinah’s Voicelessness in Genesis 34. Biblical Interpretation 17 (1), pp.483–506.

Blyth, C. 2010. The Narrative of Rape in Genesis 34: Interpreting Dinah’s Silence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cates, L and Penner, T. 2007. Textually Violating Dinah. The Bible and Critical Theory 3 (3), pp. 37.1–37.18.

Dardenne, B., Dumont, M. and Bollier, T. 2007. Insidious Dangers of Benevolent Sexism: Consequences for Women’s Performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93 (5), pp. 764–779.

Dube, M. 2017. Dinah (Genesis 34) At the Contact Zone “Shall Our Sister Become a Whore?” In: Claassens, L.J and Sharp, C.J. (eds), Feminist Frameworks and The Bible: Power, Ambiguity, and Intersectionality. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, pp. 39–58. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Musa-Dube/publication/323839710_SHALL_OUR_SISTER_BECOME_A_WHORE_Introduction_Colonial_Contexts_Race_and_Sexual_Violence/links/5aaed3bc0f7e9b4897c03807/SHALL-OUR-SISTER-BECOME-A-WHORE-Introduction-Colonial-Contexts-Race-and-Sexual-Violence.pdf

Glick, P and Fiske, S. 2001. An Ambivalent Alliance: Hostile and Benevolent Sexism as Complementary Justifications for Gender Inequality. American Psychologist 5 (2), pp. 109–118. 

Klopper, F. 2010. Rape and the Case of Dinah: Ethical Responsibilities for Reading Genesis 34. Old Testament Essays 22 (1), pp.652–665.

Ladbible.  2021. SHE IS SOMEONE. [Instagram]. January 31st. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/CZZXNfvMuFN/

Lange, J. 1899. Genesis, or, The First Book of Moses. Together with a General Theological and Homiletical Introduction to the Old Testament. 5th Edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Available from: http://www.orcuttchristian.org/John%20Peter%20Lange,%20Critical,%20Doctrinal%20and%20Homiletical%20Commentary_Genesis.pdf

Larcombe, W. 2002. The “Ideal” Victim v Seccessful Rape Complainants: Not What You Might Expect. Feminist Legal Studies 10 (1), pp. 131–148.

Meyers, M. 1997. News Coverage of Violence Against Women: Engendering Blame. London: SAGE. 

Parry, R. 2002. Feminist Hermeneutics and Evangelical Concerns: The Rape of Dinah as a Case Study. Tyndale Bulletin 53 (1), pp. 1–28.

Scholz, S. 1997. Rape Plots: A Feminist Cultural Study of Genesis 34. New York: UMI. Available from: https://search.proquest.com/openview/650d9a9842518cf704771516cce932ed/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

Scholz, S., 1999. Was it Really Rape in Genesis 34? In: Washington, H., Graham S.L. and Thimmes, P. (eds), Escaping Eden: New Feminist Perspectives on the Bible. New York: New York University Press. pp 182–198.

Stiebert J., 2021. Rape Myths, the Bible, and #MeToo. Abingdon: Routledge.

Thiede, B., 2022. Rape Culture in the House of David: A Company of Men. Abingdon: Routledge.

The featured image at the start of the blog post is by Tim Dennell, “Reclaim These Streets: Vigil for Sarah Everard in Sheffield.” On Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/2kKAaZR.

[1] Metzger (cited in Blyth, 2010, p.91) describes rape as when “a woman is brutally stripped of her humanity and confronted with her definition as a nonperson, a function…Rape asserts only combat, brutalizing the communal aspect of sexuality, destroying meaning, relationship, and person, creating a universe of ontological terror”. I have used part of this quote in the title of the blog post.

[2] It is important to note that whilst both crimes involve the abduction and rape of women, their fates are very different. Dinah returns to her household following her brothers’ attack upon the Canaanite men, whereas Sarah is murdered following her rape.

[3] 1.3% of 67,125 rape offences recorded by police in 2021 led to a prosecution.

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Q&A with Joachim Kügler about his new book

by Johanna Stiebert on

There is a new volume in the Routledge Focus series ‘Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible’! The title is Zeus Syndrome: A Very Short History of Religion-Based Masculine Domination, and the author is Joachim Kügler, who has featured earlier on the blog as one of our 2019 activists (see here).

Tell us about yourself. How does this book fit into your work more widely and how did you come to write this book?

I am a professor of New Testament studies with particular interest in religious history and topics of gender. Alongside this, I am also an ordained priest of the Catholic Church, and I am upset and outraged about the many scandals of clerical sexual abuse. This book has grown out of a decision to use my academic skills to find some answers to how such abuse happens – not only in the Church but in multiple social spheres. My first step was to go to the Egyptian and biblical source materials that I knew and to investigate the intersections of masculine domination, sexuality, and religion. I try to inform readers beyond the inner circle of academia to better understand what is going on and why. 

What is the key argument of your book?

The key argument is that we have to overcome masculine supremacy if we want to create a new kind of sexuality that serves as a language of love. As long as sexual activities and symbolisms primarily reflect and promote dominant masculine power and the submissiveness and subordination of women and of men who are symbolically feminized, we will continue to see rape culture phenomena at the core of our social interactions.

Please give us a quotation from the book that will make readers want to go and read the rest.

My quotation is on the perils associated with sexuality: “Penetration in particular is often deployed as a body-sacrament of masculine domination, and as a means to subjugate women (and men). But the generalized demonization of sexuality cultivated by Christianity under Platonist influence is no solution; it is even part of the problem.”

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Introducing … The Bloody Bible Podcast

by Caroline Blyth on

The Shiloh Project is excited to announce the launch of our latest creative endeavour: the Bloody Bible podcast. Hosted by Shiloh co-directors Em Colgan and Caz Blyth, the podcast takes a deep dive into some of the violent and bloody traditions that are found throughout the Bible, including stories of murder, genocide, colonialism, rape, intimate partner violence, coercive control, and sex trafficking. Em and Caz explore these violent tales, drawing connections to contemporary cases of crime and criminality. What they discover along the way is that the violence we read about in ancient biblical texts remains all too familiar today.

The inspiration for this podcast grew from Caz and Em’s mutual fascination with all things related to true crime. During their many conversations about the topic, they started to recognise that true crime stories share many patterns and themes with biblical narratives of violence, including the perilous potential of human emotions such as envy, anger, and shame; the violent foundations of patriarchal power and toxic masculinity; the sexualization of “dangerous” women; the timelessness of rape culture ideologies; and the erasure of certain victims by virtue of their race, class, sexuality, or gender. The Bloody Bible podcast explores these themes in depth and considers how narratives of crime and criminality – both ancient and contemporary – can shine a light on the socio-cultural, emotional, and ideological forces that underpin so much violence in our families and communities

To get a taster of some of the texts and topics covered in the Bloody Bible, listen to the podcast trailer here. The first episode will be available on 1 June 2022, where Caz and Em take a close look at the Bible’s first murder mystery – the killing of Abel by his brother Cain (Genesis 4). Subsequent episodes will be available weekly throughout this 11-part series.

The podcast is co-produced, recorded, and edited by Richard Bonifant, and is supported by funding from the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Shiloh Project research grant. It will be available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and you can also find each episode on the podcast website.

You can follow the Bloody Bible on Twitter (@BloodyBiblePod), Instagram (@BloodyBiblePodcast), and Facebook (@TheBloodyBiblePodcast).

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Theology in a Divided World: Five Poems

by Hannah Buckley on

Today’s post is written by Hannah Buckley, a third-year Theology and Religious Studies student at the University of Aberdeen.  In the post, Hannah reflects on the topic of sexual violence and the murder of Sarah Everard from a Christian theological perspective.

As part of my course, “Theology in a Divided World,” I was asked to produce a creative case study that explores a topic related to theology, division, power, and conflict/conflict transformation. Violence against women is a topic I am passionate about but find difficult to express in standard academic prose, so I decided to use poetry. I chose to focus on Sarah Everard’s murder – it is a topic that’s quite literally close to home for me (Sarah lived 15 miles away from my family home in London). Through my poetry, I explore theological responses to Sarah’s murder in ways that capture raw and sometimes uncomfortable realities. Each of the poems is followed with a commentary on individual verses that offers further explanation and scholarly engagement with the themes raised. Some of the verses speak for themselves, so no commentary is required. The aim of these poems is to introduce my understandings of God’s intentions for women as witnessed in creation. Women has a salvific role for the man, and they rule in harmony until Genesis 3. I also dwell on the ways that humanity has failed to honour God’s intention through Sarah Everard’s murder and the police response at her vigil. Finally, these poems introduce a theological response that explores how the theology of the cross must be embraced by the church, but also by women through forgiveness. True forgiveness is not viewed as giving the perpetrator the upper hand but liberating the victim so they can heal. It is not simply, ‘forgive and forget;’ there is no demand to forget. Instead, it releases the victim from a prison of trauma so they can experience God’s healing, and trust in his justice.

Poem 1: God’s intention for creation

God’s intention for creation

1. The Hebrew phrase ‘ezer kenegdo illustrates equality,and Freedman suggests that this title signifies a “power (or strength) that can save” (cited in McCant 1999, p11). This suggests that the woman is defined equal to the man to be his helper but not his inferior.

2. God’s omniscience demonstrates that sequential creation was deliberate. The process of naming the animals enhanced the man’s loneliness and desire for companionship (Groothius 2005, 86). So the purpose was not to establish a hierarchy, but to emphasise companionship.

3. The woman was created from the man’s rib, a body part located in the centre to represent her literal equality (Groothius 2005, 86).  

5. Relationships are defined using the theory of fusion. The man and woman were psychologically and intellectually fused together with God (Hégy and Marios 2016, 191). Their lack of comprehension, however, caused them to fuse with the snake and abandon harmony.

6. This refers to the doctrine of original sin, how our nature was contaminated, and so I have used the imagery of decomposition.

7. Jerome’s mistranslation of Genesis 3:16 removes the man from temptation and places responsibility on the women (Parker 2013, 737).

8. This refers to Tertullian who says, “you are the one who opened to the door to the Devil” (cited in Parker 2013, 732). This shows how theologians, such as Jerome and Tertullian, have misused Scripture to oppress women.

10. This illustrates the issue of gendercide. The writers summarise the crisis by pointing out that in the twentieth century, the slaughter of females outnumbers that of males in war (Gerhardt 2014, 16).

11. Introduction of Sarah Everard’s murder.

12. Psalms will convey problems before focusing on God to change perspective towards the remedy – God.

13-15.The first section of the book of Psalms (Psalms 1-41) ends with a doxology and amen: ““Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,  from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen” (Psalm 41:13). See Lawson (2014, 85).

Poem 2: Ruin and “redemption”

Ruin and “redemption”

Verses 1-9 present the events that led up to Sarah Everard’s murder (BBC News, 30 September 2021).

6. This is a quotation from Sarah’s mother’s statement, “I go through the sequence of events. I wonder when she realised, she was in mortal danger” (BBC News, 30 September 2021).

9. This verse is a description of a photo of mourners paying tribute to Sarah Everard (see Sinclair 2021). This relates to peacebuilding because it emphasises the absence of peace that women presently experience. Sarah’s murder sparked the “Reclaim These Streets” movement, members of which planned Everard’s vigil, and strives to make the streets safer for women. This protest movement is concerned with liberation, so women aren’t afraid to walk outside at night; it isn’t about forgiveness but reform.

10. This links to the previous poem, which shows that God’s will in creation was for harmony and equality, not for division and gendercide.

11. The emphasis in the second section of Psalms (Psalms 42-72) is on redemption. Sarah Everard, on the other hand, was not redeemed, and women are still victims of abuse. Asking for redemption through prayer is the only alternative.

12. This links to the theology of the cross that will be discussed in the next poem.  

13-15. The second section of Psalms (Psalms 42-72) finishes with the doxology included in these the verses: “Praise be to the Lord God, the God of Israel, who alone does marvellous deeds. Praise be to his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen” (Psalm 72:18-19). See Lawson (2014, 86)..

Poem 3: The “sanctuary” of Christian theology

The “sanctuary” of Christian theology

1. Quotation from Sarah Everard’s family (BBC News 29 September 2021).

2. The church does not believe that this violence is a theological issue that requires a unified response (Gerhardt 2014, 5). Biblical interventions are thwarted because sexual violence is perceived as a secular problem that does not happen inside the church.

3. Despite this misogynistic root, the church response is passive and sexual violence remains trapped in a secular bubble.

5. The church denies that violence against women exists. For example, they preach sexual purity yet fail to recognise that 25% of the girls in their flock have been sexually assaulted. This is detrimental, as no response is given to those who had their “sacred purity” taken away through sexual violence (Gerhardt 2014, 6).

6. One method the church employs is to compartmentalise violence, making it a problem that only women can solve (Gerhardt 2014, 17).

7. A change in perspective is paramount for anything to happen. Despite manipulative teachings, involuntary suffering is not redemptive but opposes God’s intention (Gerhardt 2014, 91).

8. The continuity between poems is established by this numbing truth.

9. Changing the church’s perspective on this violence will enlighten the church to the fact that it is a sin because it deviates from God’s intention.

11. Changing language from violence against women being wrong to being a sin is not enough. The church must embrace their confession of faith to end gendercide.

12. By embracing a theology of the cross and Christ-centred actions, churches can remove their pride and devote themselves to helping their hurting neighbour.

13. If the church resists and actively opposes this evil, women will be restored as equals, and other misogynist beliefs will be challenged.

15. Because of the church’s silence, it is a bystander that allows this evil to continue.

16. This is a reference to Ravi Zacharias’s scandal of sexual abuse as a direct result of the church’s lack of accountability and care (Silliman and Sellnutt 2021).

18. When confronted with his victim, Zacharias manipulated her by shifting the responsibility of his ministry and those who follow his teaching onto her, instead of reconciling or allowing justice (Silliman and Sellnutt 2021).

19. Zacharias’s victim saw his ministry destroyed as an answer to [her] prayer (Silliman and Sellnutt 2021).

20-21. The third section of the Psalms (Psalms 73-89) concludes with a doxology.: “Praise be to the Lord forever! Amen and Amen” (Psalm 89:52). See Lawson (2014, 86).

Poem 4: The vigil as relapse

The vigil as relapse

The first 12 verses of this poem are presenting the events that occurred during the vigil (see BBC News 15 March 2021a).

1. Although public gatherings were prohibited during lockdown, COVID guidelines did allow some exceptions in cases where there was a “reasonable excuse” to gather, but it was unclear if the circumstances surrounding the vigil met this criterion (see BBC News 15 March 2021b).

8. Couzens was accused of indecent exposure in 2015, and this was not adequately investigated at the time. So, if the police force had proper accountability, Sarah’s murder should have been avoided. Instead, women were arrested and given a fine for breaking COVID guidelines as seen in the vigil.  

10. This refers to the photo of Patsy Stevenson being arrested at the vigil for Sarah Everard. Her face covered the front page of many newspapers, highlighting police brutality and the continual oppression of women (BBC News 15 March 2021b).

14. The church has been noticeably absent in discussions about Sarah’s vigil and her murder. This suggests that the church did not see this as a theological issue, and therefore did not respond.

15. This response reflects the theme of recovery and longing for the Promised Land in section 4 of the Psalms (Psalms 90-106).

16. There is a continuous reference to prayer, and this is seen as the primary step to defeat gendercide.

17-20. Section 4 of the book of Psalms ends with a doxology: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say, ‘Amen!’ Praise the Lord!” (Psalm 106: 48). See Lawson (2014, 87)..

Poem 5: The perfection of God’s word

The perfection of God’s word

2. The main challenge for the church is to look upon the cross so it can understand that the task is to help women and not oppress them.

3. Although the church’s primary concern is the gospel, when accepts the mission of protecting women, it is presenting the gospel through its actions. More people will appreciate Christianity when the church becomes Christ for the hurting.

4. This refers to Luke 9:23 (NRSV, 1989). So, to be a disciple is to do what Jesus did and help women even if it results in your death instead of theirs.

5. In Luke 23:34, Jesus asks his father to forgive his murderers. Throughout the gospels, Jesus teaches us to forgive our enemies. This poses an opportunity for women who have experienced violence to offer forgiveness as a gift of liberation to themselves and the perpetrator (Tutu 1999, 16).

6. To ask for the church to draw their attention to the theology of the cross also encourages women to begin the process of forgiving the perpetrator. There are no boundaries to forgiveness because, as Demond Tutu says, “we may not always reach to that ideal but that is the standard.” Therefore, for one to experience healing, it is beneficial to begin on the path of forgiveness. However, this is a choice and a long process, but with their eyes on the cross, survivors know that with God it is possible.

7. Desmond Tutu’s ability to forgive others is an example for this crisis, as he was able to do the impossible and encourages us to work for reconciliation and peace.

8. Tutu took apartheid as an opportunity to mend division so there is an opportunity to allow Everards’s legacy to likewise mend division through reform by means of reconciliation.

9. This ties back to the first poem that shows gendercide was not God’s intention. God created harmony in the garden as a template of how we should interact with the world and each other (Tutu 1999, 200). So, Christians should strive to display God’s intention through forgiveness.

10. This refers to Tutu’s teaching that emphasises that true forgiveness takes away the sting and allows peace (Tutu 1999, 207). This suggests that women can achieve peace, but it is unclear whether this will make the streets safer or only provide therapeutic benefits.

11. Tutu speaks about clinging onto unforgiveness can place us in a prison of trauma where we relieve the memories of tragedy instead of living in liberation (Tutu 1999, 200).

12. Forgiveness shows it liberates and reflects God’s intention to heal the broken through reconciliation (Tutu 1999, 206).

13. The emphasis on God’s perfection is supported by Revelation 21:4, which promotes comfort to those who are suffering because God’s intention for the future is to remove our suffering and pain.

14-15. The last section of the book of Psalms (Psalms 107-150) ends with a doxology: “Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens.  Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness. Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!” (Psalm 150). See Lawson (2014, 88).

References

BBC News (15 March 2021a). ‘Sarah Everard vigil: ‘All I wanted was to stand with other women.’” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56402418

BBC News (15 March 2021b). “Sarah Everard vigil: Boris Johnson ‘deeply concerned by footage.’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56396960

BBC News (29 September 2021). “Sarah Everard murder: ‘Our lives will never be the same again.’” https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-58739421

BBC News (30 September 2021). “Sarah Everard: How Wayne Couzens planned her murder.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58746108

Gerhardt, Elizabeth (2014). The Cross and Gendercide: A Theological Response to Global Violence Against Women and Girls. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Groothuis, Rebecca Merrill (2005). Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Hégy, Pierre, and Joseph Marios (2016). “Understanding the Dynamics of Gender Roles: Towards the Abolition of Sexism in Christianity.”In Equal at the Creation, edited by Joseph Martos and Pierre Hégy, pp. 181-202. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016.

Lawson, Steven J. (2014). Preaching the Psalms: Unlocking the Unsearchable Riches of David’s Treasury. Darlington: Ep Books. 

McCant, Jerry W. (1999). “Inclusive Language and the Gospel.” Religious Education 94 (2): 172-87.

Parker, Julie Faith. (2013). “Blaming Eve Alone: Translation, Omission, and Implications of ‘mh in Genesis 3:6b.” Journal of Biblical Literature 132 (4): 729-47.

Silliman, Daniel, and Kate Shellnutt (2021). “Ravi Zacharias hid hundreds of pictures of women, abuse during massage, and a rape allegation.” Christianity Today, 11 February 2021. https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/february/ravi-zacharias-rzim-investigation-sexual-abuse-sexting-rape.html

 Sinclair, Leah (2021). “Tearful mourners gather at Clapham Common Bandstand to pay tribute to Sarah Everard.” Evening Standard, 13 March 2021.  https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/sarah-everard-vigil-mourners-clapham-bandstand-b923948.html

Tutu, Desmond. (1999). No Future Without Forgiveness. London: Rider.

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Remembering Sarah Everard and Reflecting on Violation of Boundaries, Sexual Violence, and Victim Blaming Through the Song of Songs

by Johanna Stiebert on

Today’s post is by Karina Atudosie and Katherine Gwyther. 

Karina Atudosie recently completed her MA by Research at the University of Birmingham (UK) with a thesis exploring hegemonic power in the Song of Songs. She is currently examining how queenship, gender, and power are constructed and imagined in the Hebrew Bible. Her Twitter handle is: @KAtudosie 

Katherine Gwyther is a third-year PhD at the University of Leeds (UK) researching utopia and the book of Exodus. She can be found on Twitter: @katgwyther

______________________________________________________________________

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the kidnap, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, then a serving police officer. Sarah’s murder sparked a wave of grief, outrage, and public protest, and debate around women’s safety and the prevalence of gendered violence and abuse of male power throughout the UK.[i]

Only a week after Sarah’s murder first appeared in the news media, came the results of a UN Women survey, which confirmed that sexual harassment, one form of gendered violence, is endemic in UK society. 80% of women of all ages had recently experienced some form of sexual harassment. 86% of women aged 18–24 reported experiencing sexual harassment in public spaces; 76% of women of all ages recognised this experience. Only a shockingly small minority of a mere 3% of women did not recall ever experiencing any sort of sexual harassment. In the year since, multiple reports about other abuses of power and the rape culture underlying them, both inside the police and within our wider culture, have emerged.

But gendered sexual violence is not, of course, a modern phenomenon or a sign of just our times; we find it abundantly in our ancient and religious texts, too. Within the Hebrew Bible, we can call attention to Dinah’s rape in Genesis (34:2), to the ‘taking’ of captive Midianite girls for rape in Numbers (31:18), to the women offered as a sexual sacrifice in Judges (19:24), and to the mass rape ‘marriages’ of the women at Shiloh in Judges (21:21–24). These are just a few examples to be found in the biblical corpus. 

It may come as a surprise that the Song of Songs provides a further example of gendered sexualised violence. After all, many readers of the Bible regard this biblical book as benign love poetry. But that evaluation is deceptive and ignores the text’s traces of horror. We will read Song of Songs to reflect on Sarah Everard’s murder and on how we can use biblical texts to contemplate issues of power, boundaries, and victim blaming in situations of gendered violence perpetrated by men who have and who abuse authority. One aim of ours is to point out how important it is to recognise and to detoxify such situations even when – as in Song of Songs – they are all too rarely acknowledged and confronted. Sarah’s murder was shocking and widely mourned for its violence and for taking the life of a young woman with so much life to live. But such extreme sexual violence – in the police force as elsewhere – is underpinned by other forms of sexual violence, down to microaggressions. We advocate that these, too, must be called out – in our own time and place, including in sacred texts.

The Song of Songs is a series of sensual poems centred around two unnamed lovers who move in the landscapes of the city and nature to be with each other, overcoming obstacles along the way. The Song’s cyclical nature allows the lovers to continually part ways and reunite in different settings. We will focus on the two instances where the female lover encounters the city’s watchmen, or sentinels, as she wanders in the city at night. 

The female lover’s first search for her lover appears in 3:2-3: ‘“I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves.” I sought him, but found him not. The sentinels found me, as they went about in the city. “Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”’ 

The description of the watchmen invokes contemporary experiences of police officers patrolling cities by night to ensure that citizens are safe and protected. Both the watchmen and modern police officers are in positions of authority to enforce the law, and, as these verses demonstrate, the watchmen and their vigilant gaze are believed to have their uses: they are relied upon to provide information that could help the female lover find her beloved. In short, 3:2-3 implies that interactions with watchmen, as so often with police officers or other authority figures in our communities today, are not expected to end in harm or violence. Instead, there is an assumption of trust and an expectation of reliability.

But the female lover’s second time wandering around the city at night describes a rather different experience. And this one is also all too familiar for very many women. This time when the female lover searches for her beloved (5:6-7), she is met with a completely different reaction from the watchmen. Describing her experience of wandering in the city on the second occasion, the female lover recounts the following: ‘I sought him, but did not find him; I called him, but he gave no answer. Making their rounds in the city, the sentinels found me; they beat me, they wounded me, they took away my mantle, those sentinels of the walls.’ 

‘The Watchman that went about the City’ (courtesy of Birmingham Museum).

The watchmen’s actions stand in stark contrast to their earlier interaction with the female lover. Earlier on, their role was passive. This time the watchmen do not only keep watch – they act violently. As well as physically assaulting the female lover (‘they beat me’), it is also implied that they sexually assault her: this is hinted at through the removal of an unidentifiable garment which is here translated as ‘mantle’. Stripping or exposing can be a euphemism or a prelude for sexual assault. 

Some scholars speculate whether the watchmen’s sudden and decisive reaction in 5:7 is in response to the female lover being dressed provocatively while wandering around alone at night, deducing from this that she is a sex worker. This, moreover, carries the implication that a sex worker invites and deserves the watchmen’s violence, or that their violent action is somehow defensible or ‘understandable’.[ii] This a very dangerous implication that legitimates violence, and demeans sex workers, erasing their human dignity and agency over their bodies and sexual encounters. Focus on the female lover’s removed clothing is quite prevalent in scholarship on the Song, and its depiction in the biblical text, without any criticism, let alone outrage, of the watchmen is indicative of victim-blaming. It serves an apologetic function, explaining, even excusing, the watchmen’s actions. Effectively, this echoes the well-known refrain from our own times: ‘she was asking for it.’ 

Such accusations might be launched at the female lover for walking alone at night searching for her lover: ‘She is looking for sex… She is asking for sex… No wonder people assume she is after sex’ – with the word ‘sex’ all too often actually pertaining to ‘rape’. As it happens, the female lover is looking for her beloved – not for sex. And if she is looking for sex, it is for sex with her lover, not sex with anyone or everyone. To imply or argue otherwise is rape suggestive. 

In chapter 3 we saw the female lover’s first search for her beloved; here she wanders by night and encounters the watchmen without any violent consequences. So, what happens in chapter 5 that results in such violence? Apparently, nothing about the female lover’s behaviour has changed; rather, it is the watchmen’s behaviour that has changed: this time they transgress boundaries and abuse their authority. They cross a corporeal boundary by physically and sexually assaulting the woman and inflicting pain on her. But they also cross a boundary in their role as watchmen, by digressing from keeping watch over the city and perpetrating an act of violence against a citizen. In their assault of the female lover, the watchmen go from those who are at the city walls, protecting its citizens, to abusers who use their authority to commit outrageous acts instead of guarding and protecting. In a vicious reversal, the watchmen, who should be protecting the city’s inhabitants, become the ones that women need to be protected from. 

The Song, composed over two thousand years ago, contains a violent motif that is eerily reminiscent of events in our own times, and which speaks to the tragic fate of Sarah Everard, and to that of many other women who have suffered at the hands of men or authorities who should have protected them. Moreover, with these contemporary stories, too, we still often find the same problematic questions being asked: What was she wearing? Why was she out at night? Why was she walking alone? Why did she not see this coming? Such questions reinforce a system where people in safeguarding roles or positions of power can abuse their authority by blaming the actions of the victim rather than the actions of the perpetrator. 

Asking such questions facilitates victim-blaming; at its worst, it conveys that certain lives matter more than others – for instance, that sex workers matter less than ‘respectable’ persons. It says that a woman walking alone at night can expect, in some cases deserves, to be kidnapped, raped, or killed; her clothing and behaviour can become a justification for such horrors. Victim-blaming takes the focus away from perpetrators, from those who cross boundaries and who should be held accountable. 

In both the Song and in Sarah Everard’s case, accountability should be with those who abuse their authority and positions of trust – the watchmen and Wayne Couzens. Whereas the fact that Wayne Couzens was a serving police officer who violated and violently abused his authority added to the horror and outrage of the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, the actions of the watchmen are often passed over. Similarly, many less grave infringements of authority by police officers and other authority figures in our own times are also passed over. It is only in very recent times and in response to the emergence of multiple cases that so-called ‘banter’ between police officers on WhatsApp and other media is finally beginning to be taken as seriously as it deserves to be.

Allegations and concrete examples of police malpractice and abuse of power are, unfortunately, neither rare nor isolated. The Sarah Everard case is tragic and has elicited outrage, heartache, outpourings of grief and calls for investigations. All indications are that while Sarah’s kidnap, rape and murder are particularly brutal examples of fatal violence executed by a police officer, Couzens was not a case of ‘one bad apple’. Instead, investigations and tip-offs have shown the scale and depth of both racialized and misogynist abuses of power within the police to be far greater.[iii]

The Song might lull us into thinking about all kinds of sensualities, but we should remain alert to its abusive elements, no matter how fleeting these are. By drawing attention to the actions of the watchmen we can and should reflect also on sexual violence and on the abuse of power in our own contemporary society. 

The anonymity of the female lover in the Song makes it easier to see her as everywoman. Her encounters with the watchmen show us how an ordinary and everyday experience might turn into a nightmare for any one of us when those in power decide to transgress their boundaries and abuse their position. 

We mourn for Sarah Everard and for the many, many women who have suffered violence and lost their lives at the hands of abusers.

References

Davis, Ellen F. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.

Exum, J. Cheryl. Song of Songs: A Commentary. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.

Fox, Michael V. The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

LaCocque, André. Romance, She Wrote: A Hermeneutical Essay on Song of Songs. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1998.

Longman III, Tremper. Song of Songs. The New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 2001.

Smith, Mitzi. Womanist Sass and Talk Back. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018.

[i] The rallying cry of public protests, ‘she was just walking home’, is now the name of a movement seeking change.

[ii] Davis (p.278) and LaCocque (pp.119–120) argue that the guards assume that the woman is a sex worker. Fox (p.146) offers a sexual, and arguably inappropriate reading of the text, noting that the description of the lover’s mantle invites the audience to ‘imagine the Shulammite running about the city hastily dressed and half-naked.’ Longman (p.169) and Exum (p.197–199) reject this designation. 

[iii] For just a few of distressingly many examples from the UK, see here, here, and here. The last example pertains to revelations of police misogyny and racism following the brutal murder of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman. Alongside appalling WhatsApp messages there are also examples of police officers charged with rape (e.g. see here and here). There are also very many examples from beyond the UK, with the US case of Daniel Holtzclaw constituting a particularly shocking example (see here). Womanist biblical scholar Mitzi Smith has discussed this case alongside the book of Susanna (pp.118–140). 

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Christmas, Mary, and the new Nationality and Borders Bill

by Tasia Scrutton on

Today’s post is by Tasia Scrutton, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Leeds. Tasia’s research lies in the intersection between religion and human experience, including experiences of mental illness, bereavement, and displacement. Her most recent book, Christianity and depression: interpretation, meaning, and the shaping of experience came out with SCM Press in 2020 and you can find out more about it here. Outside of her academic work, she enjoys walking her dog Lola. She also volunteers with an asylum seeker charity, BEACON, whose work you can find out more about here: Bradford Ecumenical Asylum Concern (beaconbradford.org)   

Kelly Latimore, Our Lady of the Journey (jpg purchased from the artist and reproduced with kind permission: kellylatimoreicons.com)

Kelly Latimore’s icon, Our Lady of the Journey, depicts the episode early in Matthew’s Gospel in which Mary, Joseph and the newborn Jesus flee to Egypt to escape the persecution of an oppressive government (Matthew 2:13-23). While many paintings have depicted the ‘Flight into Egypt’ in relation to the plight of refugees, one of the most striking features of this icon for me is the way it highlights the experience of Mary, and especially her fear.

In this respect the icon is realistic, since the fear of asylum seekers who are women and girls is very real, and very well-founded. Women who attempt to flee their country of origin in hope of better, safer prospects are at risk from the same very-real threats to life that men experience, as was devastatingly laid bare with the recent Channel crossing drownings (see here). But women who flee their countries of origin are also vulnerable to additional dangers: to rape, to sexual trafficking, and to other forms of sexual exploitation, both on their journey, and in the place where they seek refugee status. In the words of one woman, who fled from Cameroon, where homosexuality is illegal:

“I came to the UK because I was raped, beaten and locked up in my country because of my sexuality. When I arrived, I didn’t know where to go or what to do and I had never heard of asylum. I thought I was coming to a country where I would be accepted for who I am but that was not the case.

Being a refugee in a new country, you don’t trust people easily, especially if you have been through so much hatred, so much abuse. It took me a while to trust people who told me about the asylum process. When I applied, it was a very long journey of stress and struggle. The Home Office said they didn’t believe my story and refused my asylum claim. I was depressed and had nowhere to go for support. I had to sleep on the bus and the only way to survive was to have sex to get food. It was traumatic and degrading.” 

(‘Anna’, quoted in Women for Refugee Women : Legal Opinion: The Nationality and Borders Bill will harm women)

Detail from Kelly Latimore’s Our Lady of the Journey

In addition to the sexual violence and exploitation they face, women are also more likely to be travelling with children, whose presence makes the journey harder, and the stakes even higher – since women asylum seekers are risking not only their own lives, but also the lives of their children. And especially if the children are girls, they too are vulnerable to violence and hardship, including sexual violence and exploitation.

These dangers might make one wonder, why would any woman take these terrible risks? The answer, of course, as ‘Anna’s’ story highlights, is that the things that make women risk all these things are yet more terrible and fearful still.   

The way in which female asylum seekers are especially vulnerable – what we might call the ‘gendered aspect’ of asylum seeking – makes the UK government’s Nationality and Border Bill, passed by the House of Commons last week, all the more cruel and unjust. Briefly, the Bill allows the government to deprive a person of citizenship, without even notifying them. This can be done, either if the Home Office does not have the person’s contact details, or if notifying them is ‘not reasonably practical’ (see here).

In addition, the same Bill criminalises anyone taking part in the rescue missions in the English Channel. To put this another way, it means that the people we regard as heroes for helping persecuted people escape torture and death (for example, people who smuggled Jewish children to the UK during the Nazi regime), would be regarded as criminals in the UK, according to the new law.

Although it doesn’t explicitly target women, the new Bill is, in practice, misogynistic, since it will disadvantage women and girls especially. This is for a number of reasons, but I will highlight just three here. First, the new Bill will introduce a ‘two-tier system’ that discriminates especially against asylum seekers who arrive in the UK via what the Home Office considers illegal means, such as in small boats. People coming from Afghanistan are among those asylum seekers especially likely to arrive in small boats – and women and girls from Afghanistan are highly likely to be fleeing, because of the newly-installed Taliban regime, which has, since the 2021 offensive, severely constrained women’s and girls’ movements, including access to education. In other words, the new Bill won’t discriminate against women explicitly and directly, but by virtue of discriminating against people who come via ‘illegal routes’ on small boats, it will effectively discriminate against people who are forced to flee from places such as Afghanistan, for gender-based reasons. 

Second, the new Bill will mean that there is a ‘heightened standard of proof’ expected of asylum seekers, and that cases will be considered at a more rapid rate (see here for the Executive Summary).  But women and girls who have frequently experienced rape and other forms of sexual torture are often traumatised to the extent that they do not have a coherent narrative about what has happened to them. Narratives of trauma often emerge only long after the traumatic event itself, because victims of sexual violence and exploitation experience guilt and shame, because being a victim of sexual violence is still a cause of stigma in many cultures, including our own. The asylum process is stacked against them. And asylum seekers are oftentimes interrogated without sensitivity about the violence and torture they have experienced.

Third, as human rights lawyers have pointed out, the new Bill’s clauses about modern slavery and trafficking will make it harder for women and girls who are victims of trafficking and modern slavery to be identified and protected. This is contrary to the UK’s obligations according to international law. In addition to that, the much swifter process that will lead a woman or girl to be deported may well mean that there is not enough time for trafficking claims to be determined (see here, for the Executive Summary).

I could go on about the other ways in which the new Nationality and Borders Bill will harm female asylum seekers, not just because they are asylum seekers, but (additionally) because they are women and girls. But those who are interested can read more about the reasons here.

So instead, I want to return to where we started – to the Bible – and provide just a few passages for reflection about the way the Scriptures encourage us to show solidarity with the oppressed, and hospitality to asylum seekers in particular. At the very end, I suggest four  ways in which we can help.

You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt (Exodus 22:21).

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:34).

You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 24:22).

Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and she will repay her for her deed (Proverbs 19:17).

Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute (Psalm 82:3).

 Learn to do good;
 Seek justice,
 Rescue the oppressed,
 Defend the orphan,
 Plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:17)

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another (Zechariah 7: 9-10)

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

Let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. (Matthew 25:34-40)

Four ways you can help:

  1. Join, donate, or volunteer for Women for Refugee Women: Women for Refugee Women
  2. If you are in the UK, write to your MP and oppose the Nationality and Borders Bill. You can find out who your MP is, and how to write to them, here: Find out who your MP is / mySociety . If you’re stuck for what to write, you can copy or adapt the template here: #antirefugeebill (asylummatters.org)
  3. Sign up to receive campaigning news and opportunities from Asylum Matters: Home | Asylum Matters
  4. Encourage your church and any other organisations with which you may be involved to join the Together with Refugees coalition: Join the coalition – Together With Refugees
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