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Cultural Studies

Daniel in the Homophobic Lion’s Den

by Johanna Stiebert on

Here’s a post by Shiloh Project co-director Johanna Stiebert about her second research visit to Nairobi, where she participates in a project with Ugandan LGBTQ+refugees. The project has the title “Tales of Sexuality and Faith: The Ugandan LGBT Refugees Life Story Project”and is funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust. Its lead investigator is Adriaan van Klinken. 

The project is focused on stories: life-stories, stories of the Bible, and stories that combine the two. At its heart and centre is a group of refugees, a collective called The Nature Network. Johanna talks about the project and its intersections with Shiloh-relevant themes, such as religion and vulnerability to violence, in an earlier post. Here are some of her reflections on the project’s recent developments. 

Stories and Lives

Stories matter. In my life certainly stories and story telling have played a major part since as far back as I can remember. Growing up, I was the youngest member of a multi-generational household and even before I learned to read stories, stories were told and read to me. I loved folk stories and fairytales but I especially liked stories about me, set in the-time-before-I-could remember. I loved the stories of when I was very small, about the funny or naughty things I did. 

I demanded to hear such stories of my earliest life over and over again. I demanded details and eventually heard multiple versions, with different embellishments (and probably some exaggerations and inventions). Those stories somehow linked me to the protagonists of other stories; they made me feel important, an agent. They linked me to the past, to a bigger, world-connecting meta-story. I like stories to this day.

My academic work focuses on the study of the Bible. It was the stories that first drew me in but also the people I met through studies and teaching – and their stories. Approaches of biblical interpretation have become more honest about how our identities and experiences shape our interpretation and increasingly, life stories and Bible stories have been coming together for me.

Nairobi Stories

Adriaan has been travelling to Kenya, making friends, hearing stories, making stories, and gathering material for his publications for some years. When he and the people who move into and out from The Nature Work developed ideas around life stories and Bible stories, I was eager to get involved. By then, I had also become involved in a number of other projects, all of them relevant to the Shiloh Project, that explore the use of stories and images derived from the Bible to open up discussions about gender-based violence. Because the Bible – while variously interpreted in different settings – is a shared text, it has been an effective medium for connecting me with people whose identities, lives and experiences are very different to mine.

I have only been to Nairobi on two short visits – the second was last month, in January. My impressions of the city are a succession of little snapshots – of bustle and crazy traffic, but also of sweeping parks with leafy trees; of roadsides displaying an array of wares, from potted plants to double beds, playground items to beaded bracelets; of colourful roadside fruit and vegetable markets and little enterprises selling cut flowers or grilled corn on the cob. We drove several times through Kibera, Africa’s largest urban slum, which is highly concentrated with busy-ness – washing drying, wood being cut, tiny shops crammed together selling everything from cellphone units to clothes alteration. Sometimes, such as in the large malls, I could completely forget where I was – other times, in Kibera, or seeing grazing warthogs by the roadside, marabous perched on monuments, or monkeys on the walls of residential buildings, you knew you were definitely in Kenya.

But back to life stories. When something sharp happens in our lives, when we are, for instance, accused of something we haven’t done, then the telling of our stories becomes more carefully constructed. We choose our elements with care, so as to recount vividly and persuasively what really  happened. This also happens when we are treated unjustly in other ways – and many of the stories we heard at The Nature Network reported being accused of ‘recruiting’ minors, of being willfully deviant, of choosing depravity to dishonour family and community and religious affiliation. The life stories collected as part of this project were invariably told with vividness and fluency. The refugees were used to telling their stories – they were often telling them for survival, including as part of their efforts to secure resettlement with UNHCR. 

The stories told featured rejection, threat, violence, vulnerability, condemnation from family and community and church representatives. Sometimes there were stories of a painful past and of a present in which the story was turning towards more hope. New families were formed within The Nature Network, families not of blood ties but of ties of love and solidarity and acceptance. New religious networks were established, with prayers that bonded together and with a God who loved unconditionally – a God who created queer and whose image was therefore queer. 

The Story of a Project: Tales of Sexuality and Faith

The first stage of the project consisted of collecting life stories of refugees associated with The Nature Network. The majority of this was conducted by two members of the Network one of whom, Raymond Brian, is its co-founder. During interviewing, contributors were asked about the role and presence of religion in their lives and whether they had a favourite Bible story. Some interesting things emerged here. Many stories – from all over the Bible – were sources of inspiration. Jesus was repeatedly identified as an ally – as someone who embraced those on the fringes of society and who spoke out against condemning others. One interviewee mentioned identifying with David in the story of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17). The reason was that the interviewee felt small and up against a Goliath of mighty and imposing challenges in day-to-day life. Like David they had little to work with – a small stone, metaphorically-speaking. But that small stone could be utilized to achieve something bigger and assert their rights and be vindicated. A second story that popped up was Daniel in the Lions’ Den (Daniel 6) – because the interviewee this time identified with the threat all around but simultaneously with a strong sense, too, that like Daniel they had done nothing to justify such threat and hostility. It was this story that seemed like a good one to draw on more.

Daniel in the Homophobic Lions’ Den

Before Adriaan and I arrived in Nairobi, the members of the Nature Network spent time reading the story of Daniel in the Lions’ Den and discussing it in groups. By the time we joined them the story was quite familiar. Now it was time to relate it to personal experience.

On 12 January we all gathered at the Network’s main venue, on the outskirts of Nairobi.

We shared breakfast and introduced ourselves and each other; we discussed expectations for the day – which ranged from the practical (to receive a refund for travel expenses) to the experiential (to learn, be entertained, and form connections and new friendships) – and rules (to respect one another and listen, and to all participate). 

Next, Chris gave a summary of the earlier meeting – where the text of the Bible was read and discussed in focus groups. A decision was made to read the text again – this time with the specific plan to try and make the story relevant to the present.

In our groups, as soon as we sat down with the biblical text, printed out on paper, to read it aloud together, a mood of seriousness descended. I think this is discernible in the pictures.

When we all got together to pool what had taken place in our groups, the discussion got very lively. We looked together at the characters and at the events of the Daniel story – who and what could these be in the present setting?

In the Daniel story there is a king, King Darius, who is somewhat sympathetic to Daniel but none the less submits to his governors who remind him of the laws. Who is this king today? Who are the governors?

Suggestions came in thick and fast: the king is the government of Uganda, or the President of Uganda. The governors are oppressive elements of African culture and pastors using the Bible to condemn, as well as members of parliament. Daniel is the LGBTQ+ community – being unjustly persecuted. The lions are maybe family members who are sometimes harmful and obstructive but not always, or enemies within the LGBTQ+ communityitself who sometimes deny their sexuality, or who choose to blackmail others when it suits them to do so. The den is identified as Kenya and as prison… Some spoke up to say they found the punishment of the governors’ wives and children wrong, others saw this as collateral damage, or as the punishment of those who didn’t speak up but benefited from their powerful family members’ privileges. 

After some discussion, a play was put together, performed and recorded. This all happened very quickly– from discussion to completion of the recording took no more than 3 hours. The idea of weaving stories together and of transporting an ancient story into the lived present was quickly embraced and vividly imagined and reenacted. There were some fabulous spontaneous ideas and there was much articulate expression both of condemnation encountered and liberation desired.

The King is the President of Uganda. (In this reenactment he has a consort.)

The governors are members of parliament and representatives of churches, as well as a mufti from an Islamic congregation. 

Daniel is a representative of the LGBTQ+ community.

The den is prison.

There are also in this reenactment members of the police force, of the press and supporters of Daniel.

God’s voice can be heard at the beginning and end.

Here is the recording, ‘Daniel in the homophobic lion’s den’. Enjoy.

It was a real joy watching the play at each of its various stages. The strength of feeling and the power of story telling really come across. There is a new immediacy and resonance to the old story of Daniel. I, certainly, will never read this story again in the same way. And when we all watched the completed recording together everyone was very engaged and delighted with the end result.

In time, we – members of the Network, Adriaan and I – hope to publish a book about the project. 

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Let Him Romance You: Rape Culture and Gender Violence in Evangelical Christian Self-Help Literature

by Emily Colgan on

Last year Dr Emily Colgan (Trinity Theological College, New Zealand) visited the UK and gave papers at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield. For those who missed them, you can catch up by listening to the recording below.

Emily is an active Shiloh Project member and will be publishing a book with our project series Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible with Routledge Focus. Emily’s research on Christian self-help literature and gender-violence is published in the Christian Perspectives volume of the Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion series edited by Caroline Blyth, Emily Colgan and Katie Edwards (Palgrave, 2018).

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“The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate’” (Gen. 3: 12): Shifting the blame in the story of The Fall

by Sara Stone on

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Sara Stone (@wordsfromastone), University of Glasgow

Kate Millet (1970: p. 53) declares that the myth of The Fall is “designed in order to blame all this world’s discomfort on the female.” With this in mind, I will use a literary perspective to investigate the link between The Fall as told in Genesis 3 and the existence of a victim-blaming culture in the Hebrew Bible. Specifically, I will explore how the case surrounding Jephthah and his unnamed daughter in Judges 11 echoes the blame-shifting attitude we see in Genesis 3. By “victim-blaming culture,” I mean a society that places the blame for a crime or act of violence (whether sexual or otherwise) onto the shoulders of the victim rather than the perpetrator. In other words, the victim is held entirely, or partially, at fault for the harm that befell them.

The Bible is an influential book that holds great significance, both historically and in contemporary society. Therefore, by investigating the notion that the very first book of the Bible exhibits harmful attitudes and highlighting how these attitudes are reflected in narratives that come later, we can recognise a pattern of toxic traits held by those in higher positions within biblical power structures. Regarding the relevance that this has today, I suggest that the presence of victim-blaming in the opening book of the Bible has paved the way for the same victim-blaming to take place historically as well as from a narrative perspective. Victim-blaming is part of the wider phenomenon of rape-culture, which describes a culture whose prevailing social attitudes normalises, or trivialises, sexual assault and abuse (Gay, 2014). By recognising the blame-shifting attitudes that exist in biblical texts, we can challenge them and recognise these same attitudes as they materialize in contemporary society.

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The events of The Fall in Genesis 3 are integral to the story of humanity’s creation (Genesis 2). After discovering Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, God asks Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen. 3:11). In his response to God, Adam attempts to shift the blame onto both Eve and God: “The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I [subsequently] ate’.” (v. 12). Verse 12 suggests that Adam only ate the forbidden fruit because the woman whom God had created gave it to him, implying that if Eve had not been present then Adam would have kept the command that God prescribed him in Gen. 2:17. Moreover, his words “The woman whom you gave me” implicates God in the blame too. Everybody but Adam seems to be at fault for the actions that Adam himself did. However, we are able to hold Adam accountable for his actions for a number of reasons.

First, as Eryl Davies (2003: p. 102) notes, to claim that Eve was ultimately responsible for the events of The Fall is a complete misunderstanding of the narrative. For, the serpent addresses the woman with plural rather than singular Hebrew forms in Gen. 3:1–5. Therefore, the original Hebrew suggests that the man was indeed present with the woman when she was being seduced by the serpent. If that were not evidence enough, Gen. 3:6 explicitly tells us that, after taking a bite of the fruit herself, Eve gave some to the man, “who was with her.” Eve was not alone in the initial disregard of the command in Gen. 2:17.

Second, in Gen. 3:6, Adam took the forbidden fruit from Eve without question and therefore denies his own individuality. Yes, Eve did initially take the forbidden fruit. However, Eve was not told directly by God to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because Gen. 2:16–17 only addresses the man; woman was not created until after this command from God. Therefore, the responsibility to uphold God’s command was arguably left in the hands of Adam. Indeed, it can be speculated whether or not Eve could hear God’s command, as at that point, she was still a rib in Adam’s side. However, we know that Adam was undoubtedly present and had the ability to hear God’s instruction.

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Nevertheless, Eve herself is not entirely irreproachable in this blame-shifting scenario as she attempts to relocate the blame that Adam gave to her onto the serpent: “The woman said, ‘The serpent tricked me, and I [subsequently] ate’” (Gen. 3:13). Indeed, Gen. 3:12–13 demonstrates that neither man or woman are taking responsibility for their actions and the subsequent harm that will befall them in Gen. 3:16–19. Instead, the couple both project their guilt onto someone else. Notably, both Adam and Eve blame others that are below them in the perceived power structure; Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent. Thus, both Adam and Eve are illustrating a blame-shifting mentality at the very start of humanity. And, as parents to humankind (Gen. 3:20), they are setting an example for their descendants to follow.

Regarding contemporary society, similar acts of blame-shifting are still very prominent, both in cases of sexual assault and otherwise. For example, during the sexual assault case involving Brock Turner, Turner was characterised as a promising student and “champion swimmer” by the media, whilst the woman he attacked (Chanel Miller) simply became known as the “drunk girl at the party,” strongly suggesting that she was responsible for the harm that Turner perpetrated against her (Brockes, 2019). In a similar act of victim-blaming, Jacob Rees-Mogg made comments whilst doing a radio interview claiming that the Grenfell Tower fire victims did not use their “common sense” and leave “the burning building”; according to Rees-Mogg, they should have ignored the advice given by the fire department to “stay-put” (Proctor, 2019). Both examples illustrate the way that people can shift blame from themselves onto victim(s) whom they perceive to be lower than them in the power hierarchy, in a similar way to how Adam and Eve blamed those whom they believed had less power than them.

The story of The Fall thus suggests an inherent propensity for a perpetrator to shift the blame onto their victim; this allows us as readers to recognise the existence of a blame-shifting mentality in our own social context. If we fail to recognise and challenge this mentality, then we allow for the dangerous rhetoric of victim blaming to continue. The victim-blaming culture illustrated in Genesis 3 is also echoed in other parts of the Hebrew Bible, and I turn now to the unnamed daughter of Jephthah who appears in Judg. 11:34–40. When the elders of Gilead are being threatened by the Ammonites, they turn to Jephthah and appeal to him to be their commander (Judg. 11:5–6). Jephthah agrees after being enticed by the promise that he will become the leader of “all the inhabitants of Gilead” (Judg. 11:8–9). Jephthah subsequently turns to YHWH for a guarantee of success by vowing that he will sacrifice “whoever comes out of the doors of my house [first] to meet me” if his success is assured (Judg. 11:31). Jephthah proves to be successful in battle, however his rejoicing is short-lived when it is his daughter that comes out of his house to greet him, and therefore it is she whom Jephthah needs to sacrifice in order to fulfil his vow to YHWH (Judg. 11:34).

Jephthah remains committed to his vow and yet blames his daughter for his misfortune: “When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said ‘Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble for me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow’” (Judg. 11:35). Arguably, this is a mournful cry from Jephthah, and the tragedy of this affair is emphasised in Judg. 11:34, where we are told that his daughter is his only offspring. This deepens Jephthah’s conundrum as the eradication of a linage was one of the worst fates that could befall any person in biblical Israel (Frymer-Kensky, 2002). The shifting of blame from Jephthah onto his daughter indicates his sense of horror and tragedy at the situation he has found himself in. Arguably, Jephthah’s anguish is a disguise for his self-centred expression of self-pity; he is only distressed because of the loss he will face, rather than feeling guilt or lamenting over everything his daughter will lose as a result of his vow. Jephthah’s daughter has unknowingly dealt her father an unavertable blow simply by being the first to greet him after his return home.

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Yet, while Jephthah vows to YHWH that he will sacrifice the first to come out of his house, the nature of said sacrifice is unclear. Phyllis Trible (1984: p. 97) notes that the masculine gender of the terms used is standard grammatical usage in biblical Hebrew, which on its own does not indicate either the sex or species of the promised sacrifice, and thus a certain vagueness prevails. Did Jephthah intend for a male or female human sacrifice? Perhaps he expected a servant, or even an animal. The horror Jephthah expressed in Judg. 11: 35 confirms that he was not expecting his only child to come forth. Yet, Jephthah does not question why it is his daughter that came out first. Instead, he immediately expresses his horror and straightaway blames her for what he subsequently needs to do in order to keep his vow. Jephthah’s narrative thus echoes sentiments from Genesis 3; particularly, the fact that Jephthah does not question his daughter’s actions echoes Adam’s own failure to ask Eve why she chose to eat the forbidden fruit in Gen. 3:6.

Jephthah does not attempt to argue with God or his daughter in an effort to spare her life and thus prevent his lineage from becoming obsolete. Instead, he is submissive to the requirements of the vow and to his daughter’s insistence that he kill her (Judg. 11:36); this is akin to the way that Adam complied with Eve when she passes him the forbidden fruit. And just as Jephthah blames his daughter for the action that he needs to take in order to obey the vow that he made, Adam ultimately blames Eve in Gen. 3:12 for the actions he took after she gave him the fruit.

However, it should be noted that Jephthah does acknowledge his own part in his conundrum when he says, “For I have opened my mouth to the Lord” (Judg. 11:35). In contrast, Adam does not acknowledge his own culpability for his downfall: “she gave me fruit from the tree, and [subsequently] I ate” (Gen. 3:12). While it is commendable that Jephthah acknowledges the role he played in his downfall where Adam does not, he still ultimately shifts the blame away from himself and onto his daughter – the victim of a horrific act of violence. Judg. 11:35 is a classic example of victim-blaming in the Hebrew Bible, that arguably reflects a blame-shifting mentality similar to what we see in Gen. 3:12. I argue that Jephthah, as a biblical descendant of Adam and Eve, illustrates the inheritance of blame-shifting passed down from his earliest forebears. The implications of Genesis 3, and other biblical examples of blame-shifting, demonstrates how a person who has greater power than their victim can use victim blaming to escape culpability and further marginalise those whom they have already victimized. This, as I mentioned earlier, can also be seen in contemporary contexts too.

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Overall, the notion that the myth of The Fall has been “designed in order to blame all this world’s discomfort on the female” (Millet, 1970: p. 53) requires an investigation into the blame-shifting attitude that this myth exhibits, and the consequences of that from a literary perspective. Blame-shifting sentiments in Genesis 3 are reflected in the story surrounding Jephthah’s unnamed daughter. Both Adam and Jephthah tried to avoid the blame for their actions onto the shoulders of a woman. Arguably, Genesis 3 introduces a wider blame-shifting mentality in the Hebrew Bible. The case regarding Jephthah’s unnamed daughter illustrates how women are blamed for the very violence perpetrated against them. Moreover, in Ezekiel 16 we see Jerusalem portrayed as an ungrateful and faithless wife to whom God has given so much; the narrator implies that if Jerusalem had been grateful and loyal to her “husband’” then no harm would have come to her. Moreover, in the Book of Job, Job’s comforters attempt to console Job, an upright person, that the misfortune he is currently enduring must be divine retribution for the sins he has to have committed. While Job’s “comforters” are not the preparators of his downfall, they still demonstrate a blame-shifting mentality by insisting that he must have done something wrong for God to punish him so badly. The reader knows from the book’s prologue, however, that this is not the case: Job is completely innocent of all wrongdoing.

In conclusion, Adam and Eve are presented in the Bible as the forebears of humankind, and their own propensity to shift the blame appears to have been inherited by their “offspring.” In a literary sense, the placement of The Fall at the very start of the Hebrew Bible has given “permission” for blame-shifting to take place in later narratives. By recognising the victim-blaming attitudes that occur throughout the Hebrew Bible, we are able to challenge and critique such behaviour and highlight its continued, toxic influence in contemporary society.

 

Works Cited

Brockes, Emma. (2019). ‘Chanel Miller on why she refuses to be reduced to the ‘Brock Turner

       sexual assault victim’. Accessed 6 November 2019.

Davies, Eryl W. (2003). The Dissenting Reader: Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible.

Aldershot, Burlington: Ashgate Publishing.

Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. (2002). Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of

their Stories. New York: Schocken Books.

Gay, Roxanne. (2014). Bad Feminist: Essays. Great Britain: Corsair.

Millet, Kate. (1970). Sexual Politics. New York: Doubleday & Company.

Proctor, Kate. (2019). ‘Rees-Mogg sorry for saying Grenfell victims lacked common sense’.

        Accessed 6 November 2019.

Trible, Phyllis. (1973). ‘Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation’. Journal of the

       American Academy of Religion, vol. 41, no. 1: pp. 30 – 48.

Trible, Phyllis. (1984). Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives.

Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 14 – Megan Robertson

by Megan Robertson on

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

My name is Megan Robertson and I have recently completed my PhD at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa. My doctoral research focused specifically on investigating how the lived experiences of queer clergy in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) co-constitute the institutional cultures and politics of the Church. Since 2018 I have had the privilege of working at the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice, at UWC. The Centre seeks to contextually, theoretically, and methodologically challenge asymmetrical systems of power. It thus allows me a space to research and teach in ways which bridges the false binary between academia and activism and places justice at the centre of the work I do.

How does your research or your work connect to activism?

The picture of me in this blog is taken in front of Church Street Methodist Church, the congregation which I was a member of until my late twenties. For me this is a site of my own identity negotiation and also the space which continues to drive the activism which is integral to my research. The church which I grew up in not only shaped my belief systems but perhaps more significantly provided me with a place to which I felt I belonged. As a teenager and young adult I became more involved in the broader provincial and national structures of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) and thus more aware of how the Church which provided a ‘home’ for me was also deeply patriarchal, heteronormative, racially segregated and hierarchical. I was also quite actively involved in the Church at the time when a minister, Ecclesia de Lange, was excommunicated for declaring her intention to marry her same-sex partner. Therefore, for me, the church and religion became both a place of significant belonging as well as a space for a great deal of injustice. These experiences inspire my research which explores how different people navigate religious belonging and exclusion and indeed transform those spaces in positive ways.

In my research I incorporate activism by exploring how politics of belonging, body politics and politics of the domestic and erotic are evident in the narratives and experiences of queer clergy who occupy positions of power and marginality in the Church. I argue in my work that the MCSA’s internal conversations around the inclusion of women and same-sex marriage are too narrow to do justice to queer experiences of exclusion, discrimination and violence in the Church. For the MCSA and other denominations seeking to become truly inclusive of queer, women (and all other) members, bringing lived experience into conversation with institutional cultures in research sharpens understandings of how the church can indeed be a place of inclusivity instead of rejection. In my work I am also interested in the activism participants themselves are engaged in as they inhabit the norms of the institution. In a complex religious context where gender-sex identities are contested I found that participants engage in activism in relatively covert ways through living their domestic and erotic lives, embodying clerical and Methodist identity and through silence. In illuminating these subtle forms of activism, the political project of my research explores the possibilities that varied ways lived experience can trouble normative powers of race, class, gender and sexual orientation.

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

My fuel for doing research is activism. Before beginning my PhD and working in the Desmond Tutu Centre, I was disillusioned by academia and bought into the idea that dismantling social injustices and researching them were two separate tasks. However, I soon realised that the binary between activism and academia was a false and unhelpful one. It is my anger and frustration that continues to drive me to work towards a just and equitable society and it is in academia where I am able to make productive meaning of that anger and frustration.

Through the writing up of my dissertation, I have continued to be in conversation with some of the clergy who participated in my doctoral research. In these conversations we have begun to explore the ways in which my research findings can feed into the committees and activism work which they would like to pursue. Further, in my post-doctoral research I want to further explore the nature of queer activism in South Africa. My other passion is dance and theatre and I hope to explore the ways in which popular artists and performers in Cape Town interrogate the intersections of religion and sexuality on stage.

 

 

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#MeToo Jesus: Naming Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse

by David Tombs on


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by Jayme Reaves and David Tombs

Since giving a Shiloh Project Lecture at SIIBS, the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, in January 2018 we have been continuing our work on ‘#MeToo Jesus’. Our paper ‘#MeToo Jesus: Naming Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse’ has now appeared in the International Journal of Public Theology (December 2019) and is available on Open Access here. In the article we explore ways that recent readings of Jesus as victim of sexual violence/abuse might connect with #MeToo, and vice-versa. 

We start with Matthew 25:40, ‘You have done this to me too…’ as affirming a metaphorical connection between the experience of abuse survivors and the experience of Jesus. We then look beyond the metaphor, and discuss more literal and direct readings of Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse. We consider the work of David Tombs (1999), Elaine Heath (2011), Wil Gafney (2013), and Michael Trainor (2014), who each read Jesus as a victim of sexual violence and we note similarities in their work. The last part of the article tackles a question that we are sometimes asked about this reading, ‘Why does it matter?’ or ‘What good does this do?’. Exploring this question has been at the forefront of much of the work since the lecture, as part of the ‘When Did We See You Naked?’ project. We are particularly interested in how this reading might help to address the victim-blaming and victim-stigmatising which often accompany sexual violence. You can read more about the ‘When Did We See You Naked?’ project here, and listen to David’s interview (4 mins) with Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report (18 April 2019) here.

To examine this, we have been working with another colleague, Rocío Figueroa Alvear, at Good Shepherd College, Auckland (New Zealand). In 2018 Rocio interviewed a group of male sexual abuse survivors on their responses to naming Jesus as victim of sexual abuse. You can read the report on interviews with male survivors here. It is striking that this group of survivors were split on whether the reading is helpful for survivors, but they all agreed it was important for the church. 

Rocío and David are currently interviewing nuns and former nuns who have experienced sexual abuse. This has involved discussion of an abridged version of David’s article ‘Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse’ (see here). The shorter version was first published in Estudos Teológicos in Portuguese, and is now available from the University of Otago also in English, Spanish, French and will soon be in German. We hope to share our findings from the interviews next year.

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David and Rocio have also been part of a New Zealand group led by Emily Colgan, which includes Caroline Blyth and Lisa Spriggens. We are developing a tool-kit for use in churches on understanding sexual violence. It was really good to pilot some of the resources in November at a workshop with Anglican clergy and church leaders in Auckland.

During 2019, David has also had a research grant to work with Gerald West, Charlene van der Walt, and the Ujamaa Community at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on a contextual bible study on Matthew 27:26-31. This looks at how the stripping and mockery of Jesus might be read as sexual violence in a South African context. It has been interesting to see the difference that translation can make to responses, and to hear from students how the bible study was received when they used it.

Jayme Reaves has been leading workshops with church groups, activists, and clergy both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.  While these workshops are not aimed at victims/survivors of sexual abuse, they are facilitated sensitively with the understanding that there are no guarantees as to who is in the room. Building on this work and on the workshops conducted by Rocío and David elsewhere, Jayme is forming plans for a potential project in Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia and is currently seeking funding and local partners that will expand the work in two areas: working directly with victims of sexual violence in conflict contexts and their support networks, and building in an ecumenical and interfaith dimension with a view to developing a faith-based resource towards addressing the stigmatisation of victims of sexual violence.

Looking ahead, we are excited to have two books in preparation. The three of us (Jayme, Rocío and David) are co-editors for the book When Did We See You Naked?’: Acknowledging Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse with SCM Press (forthcoming in 2021). We are delighted to be working with a fantastic group of international scholars on this collection. Meanwhile, David is writing for the Routledge Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible Series on The Crucifixion of Jesus: Torture, Sexual Abuse, and the Scandal of the Cross, for publication in 2020.

To promote further discussion of #MeToo issues, Jeremy Punt (Stellenbosch University) is planning a session on ‘#MeToo and Jesus’ in the Political Biblical Criticism Session (see here) at the 2020 International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Adelaide, Australia (5-9 July 2020, see here). The Call for Papers is here and still open until 29 January 2020. We plan to be part of the conversation. If you are going and interested, why not send Jeremy a proposal? Or come along and join the discussion: we would love to hear what you think. 

David is also looking forward to seeing Shiloh colleagues and others in Dunedin in August 2020. The New Zealand Association for the Study of Religions (NZASR) are hosting the 22nd Quinquennial World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR). Colleagues in the University of Otago Religion programme have been working hard on all the organisation. It promises to be a great conference in a beautiful setting, so why not plan to come to Otago in 2020?

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Professor Johanna Stiebert Inaugural Lecture: “Why I Love Studying the Bible even though (and because) It’s Perverse”.

by Shiloh Project on

On 10 October 2019, Johanna Stiebert delivered her inaugural lecture as Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Leeds. The title of her paper is “Why I Love Studying the Bible even though (and because) It’s Perverse”.

“In this inaugural lecture Professor Stiebert discusses her chequered and international career learning and teaching about Hebrew language and biblical studies. Her lecture focuses especially on biblical texts that surprised her – not least on account of their graphic nature. Her concluding remarks focus on the responsibilities of professors and on academic integrity.”

Click here to view the lecture. 

About Johanna Stiebert

Johanna Stiebert majored in Biblical Hebrew, alongside English Literature, at the University of Otago (New Zealand), graduating with honours in 1992. She continued her studies with a two-year MPhil in Hebrew Bible at the University of Cambridge and then her PhD on shame in biblical prophetic literature at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 1998. By this time she had started her first teaching post at St. Martin’s University College (now the University of Cumbria) in Lancaster. Wanting to travel, she was about to go teach English as a second language with VSO in Madagascar, when she was appointed to a teaching post in Hebrew Bible at the University of Botswana. Three years in Botswana were transformative, including professionally. There at the height of the HIV/Aids pandemic, it became sharply clear that the Bible played an active part in matters of life and death. The Bible has since become in her own research much more than ‘just’ a fascinating, ancient object of study. Johanna has continued to work with scholarly and other communities in southern Africa and, more recently, also in other parts of the continent. After Botswana and before joining the University of Leeds, she worked at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. This environment, too, being in a state University in the buckle of the Bible Belt during the Bush years, was formative.

Johanna has been at Leeds for ten years and teaches modules on the Bible and Judaism. She has just completed her fifth monograph, her third in Leeds. She is currently involved in four research projects, all centred in some way around the Shiloh Project, an initiative exploring the intersections of rape culture, gender-based violence and religion. She has still not got to Madagascar.

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St Paul’s Cathedral Panel Discussion – Two Years on from #MeToo: What Have we learnt? (Video)

by Shiloh Project on

It’s two years since the world was rocked by allegations about high-profile men harassing women, who often felt they had to stay silent in order to keep their jobs. As the social media storm grew, more and more stories emerged from around the world and in every workplace sector. Women at all levels of working life had experienced discrimination, sexualised behaviour, and abuse. Has anything changed since then?

On 19 November Shiloh Project co-director Katie Edwards took part in a panel discussion at St Paul’s Cathedral reflecting on progress and change in the last two years since the start of the #MeToo movement.

Speakers included:

  • Sarah Churchman OBE, Chief Inclusion, Community & Wellbeing Officer, PwC
  • Ayesha Hazarika, journalist and political commentator
  • Dr Katie Edwards, University of Sheffield
  • Sarah Whitehouse QC, Senior Treasury Counsel, 6KBW

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

by Sarah-Jane Page on

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

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

 How does your research or your work connect to activism? 

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

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

 

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

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

by Laurie Lyter Bright on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 9 – Chris Greenough

by Chris Greenough on

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

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

 How does your research or your work connect to activism?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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