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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 9 – Chris Greenough

by Chris Greenough on

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

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

 How does your research or your work connect to activism?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 6 – Barbara Thiede

by Barbara Thiede on

I teach full-time in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and serve as the Program Director for our department’s graduate program. I am also an ordained rabbi and teach for ALEPH – Alliance for Jewish Renewal.

In both settings, I teach a range of courses focused on gender, power, class, and race. These fall, broadly, into two categories. As a historian of Jewish history, I teach the history of European antisemitism and the marketing of the Holocaust. As a biblical scholar, I teach a wide range of courses that focus on gender, power, and violence in the Hebrew Bible. I am currently writing a full-length monograph entitled Male Friendship, Homosociality and Women in the Hebrew Bible. I am also working on a volume for the Routledge series “Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible” entitled Rape in the House of David: A Company of Men.

Writing about causes I support has been a significant part of my activism in public realms, too. For some twenty years I wrote for a regional section of The Charlotte Observer as well as for the Observer’s Viewpoint page as a community editorial columnist. Here, I was able to address a range of issues, from domestic violence and sexual assault to antisemitism and racism. Likewise, my blog, Adrenalinedrash, includes writing on sexual violence, racism, and antisemitism from a rabbinic perspective.

From my earliest days at UNC Charlotte, when I created the first women’s group for addressing eating disorders, to my campus involvement today in our annual Sex Week, addressing the very real concerns of my students has been one of my primary goals. One in every four of my female students will be the victim of sexual assault during their undergraduate careers. While teachers of Religious Studies regularly engage with class, gender, race, sexuality, and ability, classroom conversations are often detached from the rape culture that surrounds them. But the rape culture of the Hebrew Bible is familiar to my students for a reason; like today’s rape cultures, it relies on a web of male friendships, alliances, and social relationships that are essential to its preservation. In the classroom we can analyze how hegemonic masculinity that supports rape culture works both in ancient texts and in contemporary settings. And we can talk about what must be done to change the statistics and make college campuses safe for women.

Though I am involved with efforts to combat racism and gun violence as a speaker and rabbi, much of my activism has centered on working with local church and civic groups. For almost two decades, I have regularly addressed sexual violence and hegemonic masculinity in the Hebrew Bible in a wide range of denominational settings. Because biblical authors present sexual violence against women as permissible, we need to interrogate the texts we hold sacred.

I participate in marches and rallies and speak for a host of causes I support – from protecting voting rights to winning citizenship for undocumented immigrants to saving our broken planet. And I have found that my greatest impact takes place in classroom, faith, and community education. There, I can develop relationships, open doors, unpack a conversation, and empower those I am working with – from the eighteen-year-old college students to eighty-year-old grandmothers. We are all needed in the struggle against rape culture.

Between now and the 16 days I will be helping students at UNCC with the organization of this year’s Sex Week (sexual violence is a key topic), writing a piece for my blog on the male alliances that support rape culture in both the Hebrew Bible and our own time, and working with a full class of students who are writing their final papers – almost all of which center on sexual violence in Hebrew Bible. Teaching in two different academic settings, spending many Sunday mornings with faith groups, and writing offer me opportunities to address and confront the rape cultures we must combat and eradicate. And in our time.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 3 – Nancy Tan

by Nancy Tan on

I’m Nancy Tan – the one in the salmon pink shirt. This picture was taken last month at a retreat for the female pastoral staff and I gave a talk on “Interpreting the Bible: from Feminist and Masculinities Perspectives”. It was an overnight retreat for the sisters to relax from their busy schedule at church and to encourage and empower each other.  Each of the sisters in this picture are activists: actively protecting the rights of the marginalised, oppressed, harassed and frightened people living in HK now – from victims of abuse to the asylum seekers. I am very honoured to be in this picture!

I am currently an Associate Professor in Hebrew Bible at Divinity School of Chung Chi College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I teach courses related to the Hebrew Bible, and also Gender Critical Interpretation of the Bible and Contextual Interpretation of the Bible. Through these courses, and some of my current research interest and work, I hope to challenge conventional interpretations that propagate the suppression and denial of the rights and self-esteem of women and some men in the Bible and especially today.

 I am now working on a book entitled Resisting Rape Culture: The Hebrew Bible and Hong Kong Sex Workers with the Routledge series on Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible. I have been working on a project reading Bible passages that mention sex workers with the sex workers in Hong Kong. This book is part of the output of some of the readings.

 Activism is an inherent component to negotiate issues of injustice. It is the only avenue to raise the awareness and consciousness of the public the stories of injustices suffered by the society. It compels the public to make ethical judgments. From now until the 16 days of 2020, I hope to complete the book I have mentioned above, get it published and also promote it. I hope this small token could become part of the larger on-going efforts to instill respect for sex workers in more people, and also to eliminate rape culture in our society.

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International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 1 – Ericka Dunbar

by Ericka Dunbar on

To celebrate the first day of the 16 Days of Activism Campaign, which coincides with International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, we spotlight activist Ericka Dunbar. You can learn more about Ericka’s work here.
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I am Ericka Dunbar, a Ph.D. student at Drew University, completing my studies in the area of Bible & Cultures. My focus is the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. My dissertation is entitled: “Trafficking Hadassah: An Africana Reading of Collective Trauma, Memory and Identity in the Book of Esther.”

My research connects to activism in several ways. Foremost, in my research, I utilize intersectionality and polyvocality as frameworks that enable me to expand traditional interpretations of biblical texts. The application of these frameworks illuminates the ways that Africana girls and women often experience intersectional oppression at the hands of patriarchs and colonial entities. For example, both Hagar in the book of Genesis and the virgin girls from Ethiopia and other African locales in the book of Esther, are taken from their native lands and sexually exploited by patriarchs and colonial subjects.

When reading the narratives intertextually, systematic oppression of Africana females due to intersectional identities becomes evident. Africana girls and women are sexually exploited at the intersections of ethnicity, gender, class, and in relation to interlocking systems of power and domination by patriarchs and colonial subjects. In these texts, ideologies of Africana inferiority are promoted and social hierarchies are created, frequently relegating Africana females low on the hierarchy (as concubines and slaves). Both the ideologies and hierarchy function to justify the abuse and oppression of Africana females.  Consequently, Africana girls and women become sex slaves to patriarchs and kings that extract their bodies from their natal homes and transport them to other locales for the patriarch/king’s sexual pleasure.

In addition, the application of these frameworks provides an opportunity to integrate the voices and experiences of Africana girls and women regularly ignored or minimized by interpreters, namely the nameless virgin girls in the book of Esther. This type of activism resonates with the type of activism reflected in the #SayHerName movement.

#SayHerName raises awareness of the countless Black girls and women that are victimized by police and anti-Black racialized violence. It centers the stories of those whose experiences of police and racialized violence are muted in both historical and media representations.  My work parallels this movement in that I give voice to the often overlooked and ignored experiences and traumatization of Africana girls and women in the ancient biblical contexts. However, not only do I focus on Africana girls and women in ancient contexts but I also illustrate how the girls’ and women’s experiences in the biblical narratives resonate with the experiences of Africana girls and women trafficked and rendered sex slaves during the transatlantic slave trade and even into the present.

While, the #SayHerName movement focuses on Africana girls and women that are killed by police in the US, I focus on sexualized violence perpetrated against Africana girls and women. I also emphasize that Africana girls and women were recognized as property of colonies in ancient contexts and during the slave trade. Therefore, they received no legal protection from rape and sexual enslavement. I point out these facts as a means of highlighting that current police brutality against Africana females is a legacy of patriarchy and colonial domination. In addition, the failure of law enforcement and legal systems adequately to protect Africana victims from sexual exploitation or to punish offenders is in large part a horrendous legacy of racist stereotyping and colonialism.

Perhaps some contemporary examples of the sexual exploitation of Africana females will illuminate the types of injustice that advocates such as myself are speaking out about. Three women, Cyntoia Brown, Chrystal Kizer, and Alexis Martin who were trafficked and sexually exploited in the USA as minors, either have been or are being prosecuted for defending themselves against their traffickers. The forfeiture of protection by police and legal systems is another form of violent brutality. Moreover, the lack of protection from an abuser and the criminalization of victims exacerbate their suffering.  Girls and women should not be criminalized for protecting themselves or escaping abusive exploitation. Therefore, I not only emphasize intersectional oppression and elucidate damaging ideologies but I also critique systemic oppression and the failure of legal entities to uphold justice and protect vulnerable persons.

Secondly, I teach with an emphasis on trauma and social justice. It is essential for me to prepare students for the world and ministry by shaping lives that are committed to not only critical thinking but to justice as well. When I help students to recognize inequalities and trauma in the ancient world of the text and in our very own contexts, we create conscientious communities that are responsive to discriminations and disparities. As co-learners, we help each other recognize the mechanisms of power and how power can be used to transform systems and conditions to ensure justice and equity for all members of society.

One way that we promote equity and justice is by creating a space that affirms the humanity and dignity of all. We allow diverse knowledge, experiences, and interpretations to enhance the learning space and we respond to critical issues that impact humans globally. I find that in addition to contextualized learning, interdisciplinarity is a great asset for social analysis, promoting critical thinking, and interpreting information to discern solutions. Moreover, we discuss and respond to these issues both inside and outside of the classroom. Practices that demonstrate an orientation to social justice include a trip to the Civil Rights Museum, activism through social media engagement, involvement in protests/rallies/marches/voter registration drives, implementing and organizing church programming to address social issues, and/or involvement in organizations that create/impact legislation. There are a wide range of practices that our learning community engage in as a means of embodying our scholar-activist identities. We supplement book-knowledge with experiential knowledge to produce changes in the communities in which we serve.

Alongside teaching at Spelman College and the Interdenominational Theological Center, I serve as a representative on the Joint Action for Advocacy for Justice and Peace Convening Table, National Council of Churches (USA), and on the faculty team for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor’s Dale Andrews Freedom Seminary hosted by the Children’s Defense Fund. The seminary course is an immersion experience for seminarians who desire to engage and cultivate prophetic voices with communities that contend against systemic injustices that directly impact children and youth. Scholars, community and church leaders, and activists gather at this week-long Institute to describe and model non-violent direct organization and collective action for justice though public theology, communal, and congregational praxis.  This past summer, I took two of my former Spelman students to the institute and transported two others from Candler School of Theology at Emory. I’ve taught students at Spelman that participated in other CDF programming as well. I have become a mentor beyond the classroom to many of these students and to other students that I’ve met through the Forum for Theological Exploration. These relationships are meaningful to me because of our relatedness as Africana women and our shared focus on child advocacy and on challenging sexualized violence against Africana women in ecclesiastical structures and society.

In late October, a Clark Atlanta University (Atlanta, USA) student by the name of Alexis Crawford was sexually assaulted by her roommate’s boyfriend and then allegedly murdered by her roommate and the roommate’s boyfriend. This atrocious event shook the Clark Atlanta community as well as the members of the other schools of the Atlanta University consortium, (two of which I serve as an adjunct professor) and the wider community surrounding these institutions. Specifically, the students in my Intro to Old Testament class at Spelman were traumatized by this killing because of the sheer callousness of Alexis’s abuse, their proximity to Alexis’s apartment and school, the failure of legal entities to protect Alexis, and because many have expressed experiencing similar instances of unsolicited sexual advances in their lifetimes. This killing illuminated for us that our scholarship is not divorced from the world around us. Rather, our scholarship is informed and impacted by the communities and societies that surround us. This semester, it has become increasingly clear that there is an exchange between the theories we engage in the classroom and our lived experiences beyond the classroom. In the last couple of class sessions since Alexis went missing and was found murdered, my students have been reflecting upon experiences of trauma and assessing how the educational processes we’ve engaged in this semester continue to aid in our ability to identify and challenge social injustices in practical ways.

Besides writing, teaching, and mentoring, I also travel and present papers on sexual trafficking and collective trauma at international conferences. Two of my papers/presentations are being turned into an article and book chapter and published in the next couple of months. Last summer, I presented a paper entitled, “For Such a Time as This #UsToo: Representations of Sexual Trafficking, Collective Trauma and Horror in the Book of Esther,” delivered at the 2018 Religion and Rape Culture Conference at the University of Sheffield (Sheffield, England). This paper has been turned into an article and is being published in a special edition of the journal Bible and Critical Theory. This past summer, I presented a keynote paper entitled “Sisters of the Soil: Surviving Collective, Cultural Traumatization: Intertextualities Between Hagar, the Ethiopian Virgin Girls in the Book of Esther and Mother Africa,” at the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians 5thPan-African Conference (Celebrating the 30thAnniversary of the Circle) at the University of Botswana (Gaborone, Botswana). An excerpt of this paper was translated into German and published in FAMA (Switzerland). The longer keynote paper will be published as a chapter in a book entitled Mother Earth, Postcolonial and Liberation Theologies by Lexington Publishers.

Activism is important to me because it galvanizes persons to participate in collective action to ensure every member of society is treated fairly and equitably. Activism and advocacy are means to inspire and create change. Students are capable of effecting social change thus it is important to reflect on and engage in advocacy and activism within and outside of the classroom. During the 16 Days of Activism I will continue to educate persons about the mechanisms of sex trafficking and its psychological, emotional, and physical impacts on Africana girls and women. I intend to tell the stories of girls and women whose lives have been impacted by sexualized violence as a means of increasing awareness of gender-based violence and to prevent and end sexualized violence against girls and women. I also hope that any efforts to decriminalize the sexual exploitation and trafficking of person will be thwarted.

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Religion and Gender Journal: Call for Manuscripts for Special Issue on Religion, Gender and Violence

by Sarah-Jane Page on

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Religion and Gender Journal

Call for Manuscripts for Special Issue on Religion, Gender and Violence

The journal Religion and Gender invites article proposals for a special issue on Religion, Gender and Violence. The relationship between religion and violence is highly contested and has come under considerable scrutiny by scholars of religion.  Less understood is the relationship between gender, religion and violence and this special issue aims to contribute to understandings of the ways in which religion intersects with institutional, familial and public gendered violence as explored through current research via an interdisciplinary lens.

With the current roll out of public inquiries into institutional child sexual abuse across Ireland, England and Wales, Scotland, Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it is clear that at a global level, it is religious organizations that have had the most widespread and highest levels of abuse against children with characteristically poor institutional responses to victims and their families. Public inquires have clearly established that religious organizations made strategic decisions to limit reputational damage at the cost of child safety and the implications of this for religious institutions is yet to be fully understood.

Violence against women and children in domestic settings where religion is a significant factor has also been the subject of ongoing and recent research indicating that there are specific issues at play for women and children in experiencing and reporting abuse and how it is managed by faith traditions. In important public debates on the status of gender diversity and difference, for example the marriage equality issue, there have been forceful responses to vulnerable cohorts from religious leaders, in social media and religious publications.

At the same time, there has been an important counter discourse articulated by religious groups around building religious and social capital that contributes to a pluralist understanding of the value of multi-religious societies and gender diversity. These discourses, most often articulated by more liberal religious groups but also increasingly by mainstream faith traditions, utilize the language of social justice and theological interpretation to construct narratives of gender inclusion and equity. This brings faith traditions into conflict within themselves over the framing of gender relations for the new century.

For this special issue, we invite manuscripts that address this convergence from a variety of perspectives on the function and meaning of gender, religion and violence and its counter-discourses.

The editors are particularly interested in receiving manuscripts that showcase empirical research that address, but are not limited to, the following areas and/or questions:

o What role does gendered violence play in mainstream religious groups re maintenance of the faith tradition?
o How are the impacts and experiences of gendered violence managed by religious organisations with regard to pastoral care and processes of remediation?
o Who are the victims of gendered violence in religious organisations?
o In what ways can feminist theory and theology contribute to and expand understandings of religion, gender and violence?
o What role does non-religion and/or secularity play in relation to responding to and managing the disclosure of violence in religious organisations.
o How well do public inquiries address gendered religious violence and what are the impacts on religious organisations with respect to particular case studies?

Submissions should be between 5000 and 8000 words in length (including abstract, footnotes and references). See Brill’s page for further information on submitting an article https://brill.com/view/journals/rag/rag-overview.xml Affiliation and email address should be supplied in the first submission. In order to guarantee a blind review process, all submissions should be anonymized with the name of and references to the author removed from the text. We are happy to receive inquiries about prospective submissions.

Please send all queries to the special issues editors:

Kathleen McPhillips, University of Newcastle, Australia

Email: [email protected]

Sarah-Jane Page, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

Email: [email protected]

SUBMISSION DATES

15 January 2020: Abstract Submission

15 August 2020: Full manuscript submission

 

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#MeToo 2 Years On: What Have We Learnt – Event at St Paul’s Cathedral, 19 November

by Shiloh Project on

Shiloh Project co-director Katie Edwards (University of Sheffield) will speak at this event, reflecting on the #MeToo movement, at St Paul’s Cathedral later this month. Booking details can be found here.

Two years on from #MeToo – what have we learnt?

Tuesday 19th November 2019, 6:30pm-8pm
OBE Chapel, St Paul’s Cathedral, St Paul’s Churchyard, London, EC4M 8AD

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?

This event will reflect on the last two years: the nature of debate, the experiences of women and men, and the consequences for working life.

Speakers include:

  • 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

The entrance for this event will be the Crypt Door. If you have any accessibility needs please let us know by emailing: [email protected]

This event is open to all who wish to attend and is free of charge. However, we would welcome a donation (we suggest £5-£10) to help cover the running costs from anyone who wishes to make it.

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Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible Book Series: Inaugural Volume Out Soon!

by Shiloh Project on

We’re delighted to launch the inaugural volume of our book series with Routledge Focus.

Rape Myths, the Bible and #MeToo by Shiloh Project co-director Johanna Stiebert (University of Leeds) will be available in all good bookshops from 5 November.


We’ll be celebrating its publication with a launch event at The University of Sheffield on Friday 20 December 4-7pm G11 – Workroom 2, 38 Mappin Sheffield.

Talks from Johanna Stiebert and Dr Mmapula Kebaneilwe (University of Botswana) will be followed by a wine reception and seasonal buffet.

If you would like to join us, book your tickets here.

If you would like to submit a proposal to the series editors for consideration, contact us at [email protected]

We look forward to reading your ideas!

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Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Book Review by Rabbi Dr. Barbara Thiede

by Johanna Stiebert on

The recently published book Rape Culture and Religious Studies:Critical and Pedagogical Engagements is edited by (Shiloh contributor) Rhiannon Graybill, Meredith Minister, and Beatrice Lawrence. This review is by Barbara Thiede, Department of Religious Studies, UNC Charlotte.

Rape Culture and Religious Studies is an important book for all Shiloh Project supporters. Please order copies for your courses and libraries! More details can be found here.

Rape Culture and Religious Studies

Edited by Rhiannon Graybill, Meredith Minister, and Beatrice Lawrence

Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2019 (vii + 207 pages, ISBN 978-1-4985-6284-3, $95.00)

Once the #MeToo movement was taken up by celebrity (and white) victims of sexual harassment and assault, it sparked a public conversation that spread across the globe. A wide range of media outlets offered venues for personal disclosures, painful discussions, and, it was hoped, increased awareness of the rape cultures women are forced to navigate every day.

Religious studies teachers, in the meantime, continued to address sexual violence in the texts and traditions they studied. And yet: conversations in Religious Studies classes, that so often focus on class and race, gender and sexuality, sexual violence and abuse, seemed detached from the rape cultures that (literally) surround students and teachers alike.

In their co-edited volume, Rape Culture and Religious Studies, editors Rhiannon Graybill, Meredith Minister, and Beatrice Lawrence put the question: how do religious texts and traditions that justify, support, and maintain sexual violence intersect with contemporary rape culture?

The volume contains an introduction and nine essays. It includes studies that treat Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu traditions. Topics are wide-ranging. T. Nicole Goulet, for example, assesses the place and power of recently emerging “sacred literature” in the discussion of sexual violence and rape culture. Her discussion of Priya’s Shakti, a comic book that emerged after the gang rape and death of Jyoti Singh Pandey in 2012, describes how the comic revived Hindu practices while urging women to “speak without shame.” Goulet notes that while the comic does not critique existing power structures, the women it invites to speak have done so. Goulet’s essay demonstrates: there are significant intersections between religious tradition and contemporary rape culture.

Other essays provide similar insight, sometimes with surprising effect. Minenhle Nomalungelo Khumalo asks what happens when we read the biblical gang rape and death of the Levite’s Concubine in Judges 19 as a rape fantasy, one which can be profitably compared with non-consensual pornography. Kirsten Boles explores the way #MosqueMeToo can be situated when #MeToo adherents engage in racializing sexual violence; such as when Islam is accused of inherent misogyny and Muslim women are depicted as needing to be saved from violent brown men by Western (white) feminists. Meredith Minister offers a trenchant critique of the fetishizing of consent to counter rape culture. In her essay, she makes clear why consent, too, is an instrument of power. Rhiannon Graybill explains why analyzing rape culture demands more nuanced approaches to issues of harm, describing the relationship between race, sexual violence and colonialist visions of women as victims. She also points out that the Religious Studies classroom which addresses rape culture must deal with the ambiguities sex and sexual pleasure introduce to the discussion.

Some essays disappoint. Susanne Scholz’s essay on what she calls “cop-out hermeneutics” not only fails to offer new or innovative insights, it also deploys language about students that seems potentially flippant (“students may shed tears” when asked to relinquish “privatized, personalized and sentimentalized” biblical meaning). Teachers in Religious Studies classrooms can aim to ensure that their students feel safe when they are introduced to academic analysis of their religious traditions. No one benefits from internal eye-rolling or dismissive responses to this challenge.

But other essays in this volume provide models for Religious Studies teachers, like the essay by Gwynn Kessler, which demonstrates deep pedagogical self-reflection. Kessler also offers a model lesson plan that layers Deuteronomist texts on genocide, slavery, and rape and consciously brings those texts into conversation with contemporary manifestations of violence and sexual abuse. She walks the reader through her lesson plan, providing a fine example of thoughtful pedagogy for teaching texts of terror.

When I teach texts of sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible, I know that one – or more – students in my classroom will likely self-disclose in some way; rape victims are among my students. Rape Culture and Religious Studies acknowledges that survivors sit in our classrooms and that many come from religious traditions that promote or, at least, make a home for sexual violence.

Religious Studies teachers and their students live and work on campuses where rape culture is normalized. Today, teachers of religious traditions and sacred texts cannot afford a pedagogy that examines sexual violence of the past and simultaneously shuts out the rape culture of the present. Religious Studies teachers should read Rape Culture and Religious Studies. It will help us begin the work of exploring, analyzing, and exposing the intersections of religion and rape culture. That, too, is our work.

Barbara Thiede, Department of Religious Studies, UNC Charlotte

 

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The Shiloh Project Visits Legabibo

by Johanna Stiebert on

Today, Shiloh Project co-directors Katie and Johanna, returned to Legabibo headquarters in Gaborone to meet with Bradley and Lebo, two members of the committed team at this fabulous organization working towards full human rights and inclusion for LGBTQ+ persons in Botswana.

Since the last time they met up, in December of last year, much has happened. Most excitingly, last month saw Botswana’s High Court unanimously rejecting section 164, the law that imposed up to seven years in prison for same-sex relationships.

Homosexuality is now decriminalized – for the first time since 1965 when the law was brought in by the colonial British government of the protectorate of Bechuanaland.

Bradley and Lebo reported that this legal victory was still hard to take in. They have been fighting so long and so hard and now there is a real prospect that LGBTQ+ persons of Botswana can finally access rights – not just the right to free expression of their orientation but also to legal protection from discrimination in the workplace and health care sector.

Of course this is not the end of the road. Legabibo will be busy for a long time to come. An appeal to the court decision from the Government is in progress and there has been a backlash from a number of quarters, in particular from factions of the media (including social media) and from the Evangelical Fellowship of Botswana. This has included threats and incitement to violence against gays and lesbians.

But Bradley also reported that many influential religious communities, notably the Botswana Council of Churches, have been supportive of Legabibo. Support has also come from neighbouring South Africa in the form of the Interfaith Network, which has provided valuable training to LGBTQ+ individuals of faith.

The court case has been a tremendous boost but it also reminds the team at Legabibo how much more is left to do. There is still no legal same-sex marriage in Botswana and same-sex marriage formalized in countries where it is legal is not recognized here. Moreover, the rights of the Trans community, including the right to change gender markers, have a long way to go.

Legabibo is planning a range of campaigns aimed at consciousness raising and disseminating information about the impact of the ruling. These include workshops with religious leaders, traditional leaders, educators, health workers, the police, and with miners.

After a wonderful morning at Legabibo and feeling thoroughly impressed by all the work being done, Katie and Johanna joined Legabibo as members. We look forward to many years of collaboration to come. Given their organized, upbeat, collaborative and holistic approach, we have much to learn from Legabibo.

 

Legabibo

Legabibo stands for Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana and is an LGBTQ+ non-governmental membership organization, registered in 2016 after winning a freedom of association case at the Botswana Court of Appeal.

Legabibo promotes the value of botho. Botho is a Setswana term for a concept better known by the isiZulu term ubuntu. Botho and ubuntu refer to humanity and inclusiveness and are associated with the expression ‘I am because we are’.

Legabibo also promotes and practises integrity, transparency and accountability.

For more information and to become members and receive regular updates on their mailing list, see: www.legabibo.org. For press articles on Legabibo, see: www.legabibo.wordpress.com  

 

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