Religion and Abuse – The Shiloh Project

Podcasts!

by Johanna Stiebert on June 2, 2025

If, like us, you like a good podcast that’s all of information-packed, educative, and interesting, here are a few Shiloh-themed recommendations…

The Shiloh Podcast has some recent new episodes. In the latest one, Gordon Lynch and Richard Scorer discuss mandatory reporting. Both Gordon and Richard are part of the now concluded AHRC-funded project on Abuse in Religious Contexts. With the project now in its reporting phase, listen to some important findings here.

Mitzi J. Smith hosts the fabulous podcast Beyond the Womanist Classroom. There are plenty of lively episodes, but Shiloh Project folk may particularly enjoy Season 1 Episode 16, where Mitzi is in conversation with Shiloh-stalwart Dr Mmapula Kebaneilwe. Hear about Mmapula’s research on the Bible and gender-based violence in Botswana (announced here), as well as about her passion for drawing attention to violence in the Bible – and then challenging the violence to which it gives rise here.

Shiloh co-director Johanna Stiebert has just appeared in a podcast hosted by Patricia Meyer (see here). In this podcast, called Daughters and Their Fathers: It’s Complicated, Johanna revisits some of her research on daughters and fathers in the Hebrew Bible. In the course of this, she also talks about her father, Uwe Stiebert.

Note that our Resources tab on the blog provides not only an annotated bibliography of Shiloh-relevant publications, but also a list of podcasts.

Announcing a day of events on Religion and Violence – 8 October 2025

by Johanna Stiebert on April 9, 2025

On Wednesday 8 October 2025, on the Leeds University campus (West Yorkshire, UK), we are organising a series of events centred on themes of Religion and Violence.

This day of activities will include presentations, panels, displays, mentoring sessions, and a campus walk, and the participation of activists, practitioners, academics, artists and students.

We have sought participation from the Emmanuel Chaplaincy Centre, Leeds Church Institute, Iqbal Centre, Centre for Religion and Public Life, and Centre for Jewish Studies.

The events will lead up to the imminent publication (scheduled for Spring 2026) of our massive Bible and Violence Project (with Bloomsbury).

(Above – the editors of the Bible and Violence project: Johnathan Jodamus, Chris Greenough, Johanna Stiebert and Mmapula Kebaneilwe)

We have some fantastic participants who have confirmed attendance and many more are hoping and planning to attend. These include numerous participants well familiar to the Shiloh Project.

We also hope to organise other, community-centred, events in proximity to the day, to make the most of such a fabulous group being here.

On Thursday 9 October there will be a Centre for Religion and Public Life seminar at the University of Leeds, with Rabbi Dr. Barbara Thiede: 11.30-13.00, Botany House 1.03.

Rabbi Dr Barbara Thiede

The events are organised by Gregorio Alonso (History, University of Leeds) and Shiloh’s Johanna Stiebert (Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds), and precipitated by the coincident proposed visits to Leeds of Dr. Chauncey Diego Francisco Handy (Reed College, OR, USA) and Rabbi Dr. Barbara Thiede (University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC, USA). Since then, the following fabulous people have also confirmed attendance: Rabbi Professor Deborah Kahn-Harris (Leo Baeck College, London), Saima Afzal (MBE, founder of Community Interest Company S.A.S. Rights), Professor David Tombs (Otago University, Aotearoa New Zealand), Dr. Sherry Ashworth (novelist), Ms Victoria Mildenhall, Rosie Dawson (broadcaster), Dr Sam Lewis (Criminology, University of Leeds, founder of FRIVA the Feminist Research Into Violence and Abuse Network), Dr. Katie Edwards (journalist, broadcaster and writer), Dr. Meredith Warren (University of Sheffield), Dr. Sandie Gravett (App State, NC, USA), Professor Joachim Kuegler (Bamberg University, Germany), Professor Sarojini Nadar (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), Dr. Johnathan Jodamus (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), Dr. Mmapula Kebaneilwe (University of Botswana), Emeritus Professor Hugh Pyper, Dr. Eric Vanden Eykel (Ferrum College, VA, USA). Dr. Sarah Nicholson (University of Glasgow), and Katheryne Howe (artist and PhD candidate).

(Above: Dr. Chauncey Diego Francisco Handy)

There will be:

– displays of images and artworks…

– a mentoring session (with Barbara Thiede and Johanna Stiebert) for scholars working in an area of rape culture, religion and/or the Bible who might be interested in publishing in our Routledge Focus series …

– opportunity to see a new book on Judeophobia and the New Testament and to talk to two of the book’s editors (with Meredith Warren and Eric Vanden Eykel)…

– panel discussions…

– presentations…

– a campus walk taking in points of interest with regard to religion and violence…

– opportunity for informal networking and idea-spinning…

– engagement on how to join our energies and sense of purpose to support one another and work towards more peace, more community, and healing from religious violence and trauma.

In the evening there will be a dinner in honour and memory of Professor J. Cheryl Exum whose scholarly integrity and groundbreaking feminist scholarship, including on violence against women, has been significant for many of us. The dinner is by invitation only. (Please contact Johanna.) We are planning an edited volume with Sheffield Phoenix Press centred on Cheryl Exum’s legacy. Cheryl was director of Sheffield Phoenix from its foundation until 2016. If you would like to contribute to the volume, please contact Johanna.

For more information on the events, and planned volume, please contact Johanna: [email protected]

What has the Bible to do with Deepfake Porn?

by Tasia Scrutton on February 12, 2025

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.

The Book of Daniel recounts the story of Susanna, a married woman who is spied on by two lecherous old men while she is bathing (chapter 13). [1] Realising that they both lust after her, the men conspire to blackmail her to have sex with her. When she refuses, the men have her arrested, claiming that they saw her have sex under a tree with a young man – a ‘crime’ punishable by stoning.

Just as she is about to be put to death, Daniel – the hero of the book – interrupts, arguing that the men should be interrogated to ensure that the sentence is just. Daniel separates the two men, asking each of the men what kind of tree they saw Susanna have sex under. The first claims to have seen Susanna and her lover under a mastic tree, the second under an evergreen oak. Mastic trees are small while oaks are large; the disparity between their accounts makes it clear that they are lying and that Susanna is innocent.

The court case against Susanna involves humiliating her: the old men demand that she remove her veil in court ‘so as to sate themselves with her beauty’, and she has to submit to them both putting their hands on her head when they testify against her (Daniel 13:32 – 34). We do not know whether the story of Susanna was based on a historical episode, but it seems reasonable to think that the background state of affairs that it relates (that a woman would be stoned for alleged adultery; that the burden of proof would be on her in court to prove her innocence; that she may have been subject to humiliation during the trial) reflect the time at which it was written, the second century BCE.[2]

Despite the geographical and historical distance between this narrative and our own contemporary context, there are remarkable similarities between Susanna’s story and an all-too-real, horrifying case today. On Sunday the BBC News recounted the story of Hannah, a young woman in Australia. Hannah discovered a website called ‘The Destruction of Hannah’, which involved hundreds of photographs of her face that had been taken from social media and stitched on to violent, pornographic pictures. The website also involved polls in which hundreds of people had voted on vicious ways they wanted to abuse her. Included on the website were Hannah’s full name, her Instagram handle, the suburb she lived in and, as Hannah later found out, her phone number.[3]

Like Susanna, Hannah had an ally – in Hannah’s case in her partner Kris, with whom she set about trying to find the culprit. Kris found photographs of other women on the website who were the couple’s friends, and the couple realised that the person who posted them and created the website must be someone they knew. Eventually they whittled it down to one person, Andy, a ‘friend’ in common with the different women whose images appeared on the website.

But also like Susanna, much less happily, it turned out that the justice system was biased against Hannah. Hannah recounted her shock when she reported Andy at the police station: “We thought they’d go grab him that afternoon”, but instead she was met with disdain. One police officer asked what she had done to Andy; another suggested that Hannah simply ask him to stop. Little was done by the police to protect Hannah, and her own innocence was even called into question when she reported the crime. In so doing, the police were perpetuating a common myth of rape culture: that the victim of sexual violence must have ‘asked for it’ in some way, whether by dressing in a certain way, or doing something to hurt or anger the perpetrator.

Like Susanna, Hannah’s case also involved humiliation from the legal system that should have been protecting her: one police officer even pointed to a picture of her in a skimpy outfit and said “You look cute in this one”. Because of the lack of adequate police response, Hannah and Kris spent £10,200 in order to hire a digital forensics analyst and a lawyer, and lived for a significant period with cameras all around their house, a knife by each side of their bed, and location tracking on all Hannah’s electronic devices. Kris monitored the pornographic website in case there was any sign of escalation while Hannah reported that “I stopped having windows open because I was scared…. The world for you just gets smaller. You don’t speak to people. You don’t really go out”. Another of Andy’s victims, Jess, told the court at which Andy was eventually sentenced that, “The world feels unfamiliar and dangerous, I am constantly anxious, I have nightmares when I am able to sleep”.[4]

The Book of Daniel was written over two thousand years ago, and it is tempting to assume that the circumstances of women have improved since then. And in many parts of the world, in many respects, they have. Since 1882 women in the UK have been able to buy, sell and own property; since 1928 they have been able to vote on the same terms as men and regardless of social class; since 1991 rape within marriage has been recognised as rape and considered a crime. But in other respects women in every part of the world are still subject to many of the oppressive patriarchal circumstances recounted in the tale of Susanna. They are still subject to sexual violence, harassment and abuse; the burden of proof is often still on them to prove their innocence and/or the perpetrator’s guilt; legal systems are often still biased against them, and humiliate and blame rather than protect them. As Hannah and Jess’ reports highlight, women are still often forced to retreat into small and private spheres, not because the law explicitly dictates it, but because the ongoing threat of sexual violence so often makes it the only comfortable and safe-seeming place to be. Stories like these tell us that getting justice for women is possible. But they also tell us that, until violence against women and the threat of violence against women is no more, women throughout the world still lives in oppressive structures surprisingly similar to those experienced by biblical women like Susanna.

Image: Susanna and the Elders, by Artemisia Gentileschi. While many artists’ depictions of Susanna and the Elder in the Baroque era depicted Susanna for an objectifying gaze aimed at igniting male desire, Gentileschi depicts Susanna empathetically, capturing the sense of Susanna’s distress. Horrifically, Gentileschi was also later forced to carry the burden of proof for a sexual crime of which she was a victim and in which the legal system was biased against her, being tortured in order to ‘verify’ her testimony against the man who raped her. Through her empathetic depiction of Susanna, Gentileschi is an ally to women who are victims of violence, depicting the emotional turmoil to which it gives rise. Artemisia Gentileschi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

[1] The story of Susanna is ‘deuterocanonical’ or ‘apocryphal’: it appears in the Catholic and Orthodox canon of the Bible but not in the Hebrew or Protestant one. You can read the text here: Daniel, CHAPTER 13 | USCCB

[2] See Numbers 5 for an earlier biblical example of women being publicaly displayed and humiliated in a legal context

[3] Woman’s deepfake betrayal by friend: ‘Every moment became porn’ – BBC News Accessed 9^th February 2025, 16:35 GMT

[4] Woman’s deepfake betrayal by friend: ‘Every moment became porn’ – BBC News Accessed 9^th February 2025, 16:35 GMT

The Woman from Judges 19

by Hilary Willett on March 10, 2024

Hilary Willett (she/her) fights for gender justice by writing icons and reclaiming the lives of biblical women. Her most recent icon writes the unnamed woman whose story is found in Judges 19. Here, Hilary reflects on the process of writing this icon.

“The Woman from Judges 19” is one of the more confronting icons I have written. I knew I wanted to write it within a few months of learning iconography. I first read about this woman in Phyllis Trible’s book Texts of Terror.^[1] Judges 19 tells the story of a woman in scripture who should be known and mourned everywhere, but is rarely discussed.

The woman in Judges 19 has no name. In many translations, she is rather crudely described as a “concubine” to a Levite man. In even less forgiving translations, she is described as an “unfaithful” concubine (ESV, NIV). But it is hard to know the precise nature of her relationship with the Levite. At times, the Levite is described as her “husband.” Some scholars speak of her as a “secondary wife.” For myself, I do not really want to describe her according to her relationship with a man. It is enough to know that this woman existed and that the biblical authors give her no name.

This unnamed woman appears to be in a fraught relationship with the Levite. While the woman from Judges 19 is not given much agency by the textual authors, she does leave the Levite man at the beginning of the narrative. She travels back home and is away for four months. This hint of autonomy, however, is short-lived. The Levite sets out with a servant, follows her to her home and is welcomed (“with joy!”) by the woman’s father. The father and the Levite enjoy food and drink for five days. The father does not uphold his daughter’s choice to live separately from the Levite in this moment, he focuses on male comfort and social expectations around hospitality.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, the woman’s father encourages the Levite to stay for another night. The Levite wants to leave (a deeply unwise decision). He takes the woman with him; there is no objection to her leaving with him in the text. As they travel, the Levite refuses to stop for the night at many of the safe havens they pass, preferring to keep travelling until they reach a Benjamanite town. Unable to travel any further, the Levite and the woman are stranded. The Levite is unable to find a place to keep them safe for the night.

Eventually, an older man takes pity on the Levite and shelters him, the woman, and the Levite’s servant. However, the house is surrounded by men who wish to rape the Levite man. To protect the Levite, the woman is cast out of the house. She is raped to death. She dies with her hands on the doorstep of the house.

But this story, as horrific as it is, gets worse.

The Levite cuts up the woman’s body and sends the pieces throughout Israel to incite war. Israel goes to war against the tribe of Benjamin, virtually wiping them out. Towns, people, and animals are destroyed, until only 600 men are left alive. Then, fearing a future where the tribe of Benjamin is eradicated, these armies kill the inhabitants of another town (Jabesh-Gilead), sparing only 400 virgin women. These women are given to the 600 Benjaminites to continue the bloodline of the tribe. The men left without wives are instructed to abduct still more women from Shiloh.

There is a reason we don’t often talk about this story. It is depraved. It is a story of extreme male violence and terror, of war justified by patriarchal sin. At the heart of this violence is a woman, whose name is absent, whose voice is silenced, and whose body is not her own. She is used, over and over, by men who care more about protecting their masculinity, upholding social expectations, and enacting vengeance. Her vulnerability is extreme – just like every innocent person who died in the fallout of war, just like every one of those 400 women from Jabesh-Gilead, just like every woman abducted from Shiloh.

To show such vulnerability in this icon, the woman is written naked. To show her stark reality, the shadows are deep; there is no colour apart from the red lines on her skin. These lines indicate where her body will be divided up. In the middle of some of the sections, a tribe of Israel is written on her body. This visual allusion drew upon butchers’ charts for inspiration, which divide up animals according to their meat cuts. Her face is hidden to highlight the absence of her name or any identifying feature. Finally, to show the utter horror of her situation, her halo is fractured, its pieces raining down on her body.

There is a reason why we should tell this woman’s story. It is because the story has not ended. There is so much war and violence occurring in the world today, so much justifying the unjustifiable. Every time we allow violence to reign in the home, in church, in society, and in politics, it is horrifying. Every time a vulnerable body is used, every time women are abused, every time innocent people become fallout or justifications for war, we need to remember this story and say very clearly: “No. No more. Never again. This ends here.”

Find more of Hilary’s icons – including the Woman from Judges 19 – at Lumen Icons: https://www.lumenicons.nz/

[1] Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).

Abuse, engraved

by Johanna Stiebert on February 9, 2024

Today’s post is by Bradley and Maya. Both are second-year undergraduate students at the University of Leeds and enrolled in a module where they take an active part in a research project. Johanna has got them involved in the ‘Abuse in Religious Contexts’ project and the group (which also includes Joey and Annelise) has taken the initiative to explore rape culture manifestations on campus (the topic of this post), to interview churches about safeguarding practices, and run a Bible study on a text with potential to cause harm at the University’s Chaplaincy Centre.

Bradley (she/her) is a second-year Liberal Arts student majoring in English with career aspirations in the film industry. She’s always been driven by matters concerning social justice, with particular passions for queer and women’s issues.

Maya is also a second-year student at the University of Leeds studying Liberal Arts with a major in English Lit. Home for her is the Isle of Wight in the south of England, where she lives right on the coastline. Although she is not sure where her degree will take her, she has close family friends who run a non-profit that provides housing/has initiated controlled drug use in Vancouver, Canada. She hopes to gain some work experience in harm reduction alongside them after University.

Pedophile’s sculpture on display at the University of Leeds – and nobody bats an eyelid?!

Every day hundreds of students on Leeds University campus cross paths with Eric Gill’s stone frieze, Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple. To the average university goer, this sculpture – situated centrally in the entrance of the Michael Sadler building – depicts a well-known Bible story. Yet very few are aware of the artist’s sexual abuse of his wife and daughters, exposed 50 years after his death in his personal diaries. This artwork represents a biblical story but also the deeply ubiquitous nature of rape culture and its intersection with the world of religion and spirituality.

Rape culture is embedded in our everyday lives, manifested in microaggressions and cultural products which vary across communities, countries and social and spiritual groups. Any normalisation of harmful sexual behaviour contributes to rape culture, ranging from the abstract (such as sexist attitudes or jokes) to the concrete (such as sexual violence and rape). Common perpetrators include (particularly violent) pornography, any unsolicited sexual attention, and even our own language. Art is a less common but equally impactful facilitator.

Although rape culture is everywhere, often the willingness to talk about it is nowhere. This very contradiction is what fuels all different sorts of abuse, in which abuse goes unsaid, abusers go unseen, and survivors go unheard. Despite nationwide vandalism of Gill’s statues there is no disclaimer next to the frieze that warns of its harmful effect in a public education setting. Of course, pointing out Gill’s abuse could be triggering for survivors of sexual abuse. But can ignorance be the optimal alternative? What good can come from acting like it never happened, and stigmatising and silencing survivors even more?

In our project Addressing Sexual Abuse Scandals in Church Settings, we first approached rape culture, as guided by our mentor Johanna Stiebert, and its intersection with spirituality in so-called spiritual abuse. Springboarding from research into Gill, we delved into other forms of spiritual abuse, and realised it manifests itself in so many different variations – from excusing violence to manipulating spiritual teachings (Spiritual abuse | 1800RESPECT).

Thus, spiritual abuse is best understood as an umbrella term for the many ways in which people manipulate the power and authority of the church as well as the vulnerability and openness of its followers; perhaps it is best seen as ‘any attempt to exert power and control over someone using religion, faith or beliefs’ (Spiritual Abuse: How to Identify It and Find Help (webmd.com)).

With this in mind, we continued to look at the context of biblical stories and their place in contemporary society. The focus of this blog is a reminder of the strong influence historical texts can have, and their ongoing effects today. Needless to say, the extent of social change that has occurred between the then of certain religious texts and the now of today highlights the importance of context; various injustices found in biblical stories can never justify structures of abuse seen today.

Being critical of the past does not negate the importance of religion and spirituality today, and we hope to direct this energy towards aspects of spirituality which facilitate rape culture without undermining the positive impact of faith and the Church.

Moving forward, our project aims to increase awareness and decrease stigma surrounding spiritual abuse. This begins with collecting first-hand research in the form of interviews in Christian churches in Leeds: All-Hallows church, is our first. Here we met with Revd. Heston Groenewald and Safeguarding Lead Penny Brown. We aim to explore how churches seek to understand, and prevent spiritual abuse among their congregations.

In opening this conversation on spiritual abuse in this blog, we hope to encourage difficult and necessary conversations on how religious institutions and contexts can permit but also resist rape culture. By having these conversations openly we aim to change the discourse for survivors of religious abuse and give them a platform to express themselves, hopefully taking small steps towards a bigger and brighter picture of change. After all, the subtle microaggressions that foster rape culture are best attacked through small and subtle acts, like simply talking about it. Boosting awareness is the beginning to a road of empowerment and change.

[The image shows: Penny, Heston, Joey, Maya, Annelise and Bradley, at All Hallows’ Rainbow Junktion in Leeds].

So when you next look at art – religious or otherwise – we hope you feel inclined to investigate its context, and consider its place in society today.

To read more on the controversy of Gill, click the following links:

The Michael Sadler sculpture was designed by a known paedophile (thetab.com)

Eric Gill: can we separate the artist from the abuser? | Eric Gill | The Guardian

Can Art Created by a Sexual Abuser Ever Be Meaningfully Reframed? – ArtReview

Written in stone | Art | The Guardian

New Book: The Bible and Gender-Based Violence in Botswana

by Johanna Stiebert on January 25, 2024

In this post we feature the forthcoming book The Bible and Gender-Based Violence in Botswana (Routledge, 2024) by Mmapula Diana Kebaneilwe. The book is in the Routledge Focus series, ‘Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible’, which is edited by Emily Colgan, Johanna Stiebert and Barbara Thiede. The book is out in March and ready for pre-order from 22 February 2024. (Yes, this post is early… – but we just couldn’t wait!) Read about the book here first!

How did the book come about?

The current rampancy of gender-based violence (GBV) against women and girls in Christianised Botswana prompted the writing of this book. As a Motswana woman who lives and has lived in this country since birth, I have witnessed uncountable inhumane acts of violence that disproportionately affect women and girls. I have experienced GBV myself, as have many women and girls that I know personally (family and friends), as well as those I only read or hear about on different media platforms, including the national television station, newspapers, etc. They, we have suffered GBV, and many have lost their lives at the hands of men and boys, those who are most often the perpetrators of GBV. Therefore, my identity, experiences, and research created in me the hunger to put together in print Batswana women’s stories of GBV alongside stories of GBV against biblical women. My quest has been to explore how the Bible and the Botswana faith communities it inspires intersect with traditional political landscapes to reinforce GBV.

What does activism mean to you, and how does this book relate to religion and GBV?

Activism means everything to me. I am of the view that keeping quiet about acts of violence and injustice of whatever nature, including GBV, equates to colluding with perpetrators, and hence, I choose to expose, name, and seek ways to correct such. Researching and writing on GBV, as in this book, is a way of campaigning for social change regarding women’s and girls’ rights. Their rights are being stifled by gender inequality, which has resulted in our pandemic of GBV.

The book relates to religion and GBV in that stories of GBV against women in Botswana are read alongside similar stories from the Bible, the sacred literature of Christianity, the dominant religion in Botswana. My research has revealed unbelievable resonance between GBV against textual biblical female characters and Botswana’s real flesh and blood female persons. The exercise of inter-reading or co-reading is an important one, given the authority and respect accorded the Bible in the Botswana context where many people intimately associate themselves with its faith and teachings.

What are the main themes of the book?

The main themes of the book are as follows:

Demonstrating and acknowledging that GBV is endemic in the Bible and in Botswana
Insisting that there should be no recycling of biblical injustices: read it, name it, and fix it
Reading the Bible and its stories of GBV in a quest for transformational revelation and for gender justice in Botswana and beyond.

Who would benefit from the book?

The book will benefit everyone willing to seek positive change in regard to gender equality, and is intended for a wide readership, including researchers, postgraduates, church leaders and other representatives of religious institutions, and upper-level undergraduates.

Give us a quotation from your book and tell us why you chose it?

“Like a mirror, the Bible is an accessible resource—but only if we first, use it and second, use it purposefully and constructively with integrity” (Kebaneilwe 2024, 84).

I choose the above quotation because I believe that the Bible is confrontational in nature by reflecting parts of life that we do not want to see or do not want to admit to: jealousy, passion, anger, violence, etc. Like a mirror, its transformational effect can only be accessible if we first admit what we see when we look into its pages. Ultimately, concealing, spiritualising, or twisting the rottenness in biblical texts will only serve to perpetuate the same in our world, which explains why even in Christianised contexts like Botswana, we still find heinous acts of injustice and violence, including, in this case GBV.

Congratulations to Mmapula from everyone at The Shiloh Project!

Conference: Gender and Religious Exit, Moving Away from Faith

by Chris Greenough on November 16, 2023

Tuesday, 28 November 2023 at 9:00–17:30

Please use this form to register to attend the online symposium: Registration – Gender and Religious Exit (onlinesurveys.ac.uk)

Organisers:
Dr Nella van den Brandt, Coventry University, UK
Dr Teija Rantala, Turku University, Finland
Dr Sarah-Jane Page, University of Nottingham, UK

From the conference organisers:

There have always been reasons for people to move away from a religious tradition, community or movement. Religious traditions are instrumental in providing individual members with a perspective on the world, a community and a relationship with the divine. Religious communities socialize their adherents regarding behaviour, embodiment and emotions. When people move away from their religion, their experiences may pertain to all or some of these aspects and dimensions. Leaving religion is thus a varied and diverse experience.

The one-day online symposium Gender and Religious Exit starts from the premise that motivations for moving away from religion range from experiencing cognitive or emotional dissonance to social marginalisation to a critique of power relations. The notions of ‘moving away’ or ‘religious exit’ should be considered in a layered and nuanced manner: they raise questions about what exactly individuals consider to leave, and what elements of behaviour, embodiment and emotions remain part of their environments, lives and futures.

Moving away from religion can thus involve complex processes and negotiations of all areas of life and understandings of the self. An intersectional perspective and analysis of leaving religious is long overdue, since notions and experiences of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and dis/ability are central in shaping identity and the self. The multidisciplinary symposium invites scholars to investigate the variety of contemporary dynamics of leaving religion in the lives of individuals and communities.

During the opening plenary session, research findings will be presented that emerged from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie funded two-year qualitative research by Dr Nella van den Brandt (Coventry University, UK) on women leaving religion in the UK and the Netherlands. Keynote lectures on gender, feminism, apostasy and non-religion / leaving religion in various national and cultural contexts will be provided by Dr Julia Martínez-Ariño (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands) and Prof. Dr Karin van Nieuwkerk (Radboud University, the Netherlands). During parallel sessions, we will further look into current international and intersectional perspectives on moving away from religion.

Trauma and Theology Conference

by Emily Colgan on October 18, 2023

Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

Earlier this year, St John’s Theological College (Anglican), Trinity Theological College (Methodist), and the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (University of Otago), jointly hosted a two-day Trauma and Theology Conference. This conference was led by Dr Karen O’Donnell, a specialist in theology and trauma, and the Director of Studies at Wescott House, Cambridge, UK.

During the conference, participants were invited to share some of their reflections. These reflections were filmed (with participants’ permission) and have been developed into a short film by two St John’s students, Scott Parekowhai and Grace Cox. This video highlights some of the participants’ impressions of the significant work that was covered in this conference.

New Publication: Marriage, Bible, Violence: Intersections and Impacts

by Chris Greenough on August 15, 2023

In this post, we feature the book, Marriage, Bible, Violence: Intersections and Impacts (Routledge, 2023), by Saima Afzal and Johanna Stiebert, which is out this week! We caught up with them both for an interview.

How did the book come about?

The two of us have been friends for some years. We first met at the University of Leeds when Saima was completing her MA in Religion and Public Life, and we have collaborated on a variety of campaigns focused around preventing gender-based violence.

The book, while succinct, took longer to write than we had anticipated – not least, because of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the harder it was for us to find time for writing, the clearer the importance of this book became. We could see the harm and damage caused by instrumentalising sacred texts to afflict real people, with women and girls disproportionately represented among victims and survivors. This was exacerbated by the pandemic. Resisting such violence on multiple fronts, including with research-based arguments, drove us on.

Tell us about your collaboration – how you met, what work you do.

Like we said, we met at the University of Leeds where Johanna works, and Saima completed an MA. Saima has a wealth of practitioner experience from working in local government, child protection, and as National Crime Agency-registered expert witness and Independent Member of the Lancashire (UK) Police Authority, with a national Equality, Diversity, and Human Rights portfolio. Johanna is a biblical scholar with particular interest in topics of gender and gender-based violence. She co-founded and co-directs The Shiloh Project.

Together we co-direct (together with researchers Mmapula Kebaneilwe and Emma Tomalin) a Community Interest Company (CIC) founded by Saima, called SAS Rights. This CIC is the primary vehicle for much of our activist work. The book is our co-production and an attempt to combine our perspectives as researchers and as activists to explore the multiple ways the topics of ‘marriage’ and ‘violence’ are enmeshed. We use the Bible as our focus for demonstrating some of these intersections and the impact they have on real lives.

What does ‘activism’ mean to you, and how does this relate to religion and gender-based violence?

Activism is central to much of what we do. Religion is central to our research and central to the lives of many in the communities we work in. Each of us identifies as both scholar and activist, even if in our working lives, these carry different emphases. We share a conviction that activism benefits from a basis in research and research benefits from having impact on positive social change.

The book is based on research and analysis of biblical texts, yes. But in the course of this, we are mindful of and remind readers why these matter: that is, because recourse to the authority and ‘plain meaning’ of the Bible has had and continues to have impact on real people’s lives. Sometimes, this impact is violent and traumatic, notably when the Bible is weaponised to justify intimate partner violence. As such, the book explores aspects of family violence and domestic abuse and the role of religion within this. These discussions are increasingly in the public domain, which is a welcome development.

What are the main themes of the book?

‘Marriage’ and ‘the Bible’ are both prominent themes in day-to-day contexts, including in popular culture. One ideology very prominent in claims about ‘biblical marriage’ is complementarianism. One purpose of this book is to explore the disjuncture between, on the one hand, complementarian accounts of biblical marriage and, on the other, intersections of marriage and violence in texts from Jewish and Christian Scriptures.

We challenge authoritative complementarian claims to the Bible’s allegedly clear and unequivocal directions on marriage, and we refute these claims with analysis of the muddled and often violent depictions of marriage in the Bible itself. We focus on the influential pronouncements on ‘biblical marriage’ by the US Family Research Council and Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and analyse such key texts as Genesis 1–3, Malachi 2, and Ephesians 5.

Who would benefit from the book?

This book will, we hope, appeal to students of biblical studies and theology, as well as anyone interested in research-based activism and in how sacred texts are directed towards modern day-to-day life.

Give us a quote from the book you are most pleased with and why!

Can we have two? (We are two authors, after all!)

“[In Genesis 2–3] one woman (Eve) is created to be the companion of one man (Adam), and prior to this humanity is told to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28). Extraordinarily, this story is used to justify all of monogamy; heteronormativity; heterosexual, monogamous, sexually exclusive marriage to the exclusion of all other kinds of marriage; female submission to male headship; and procreation. It is also used to condemn homosexuality, non-binary gender, transgender, polygamy, feminism, abortion, divorce, and, though less often, single life, elective childlessness, and women’s ordination. Wow. For a short mythological story, featuring an anthropomorphic deity, a talking serpent, and magical fruit, in a biblical book that makes no claims to divine authorship or inspiration, a story which never makes any explicit reference to marriage, let alone feminism, or homosexuality, this is quite something…”

This quote shows up some of the brazenness of claims regularly made about the clarity of the Bible’s claims on ‘marriage’ – yet there is not even a word that captures ‘marriage’ in the whole of the Hebrew Bible!

“Often laws are characterised as ‘secular’, with religious law overriding secular law. Adherence to religious law over secular law is even seen as a proof of faithfulness to God. One woman I am working with acknowledged her husband’s abuse and abandonment. But he had made her swear on her sacred book that she would not report him to the police. She will not budge from this oath, and I know that if I suggested it I would lose her trust.”

This quote is a reflection by Saima on some of the hands-on work she does. It is a reminder of why we wrote this book.

The book is in the Routledge Focus series Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible, edited by Emily Colgan, Johanna Stiebert, and Barbara Thiede. Books in the series are concise (between 25,000 and 50,000 words – all inclusive) and explore some aspect of rape culture (e.g., sexualised microaggressions, sexual violence) alongside some aspect of religion and/or the Bible. We are very interested in proposals exploring religions other than those associated with the Bible. If you would like to find out more, discuss this, or propose a volume, please contact Johanna: [email protected].

If you are interested in the topic of marriage, Bible, and violence, you might also like Helen Paynter’s book, The Bible Doesn’t Tell Me So. It is reviewed on our blog, here.

Update on the Bible & Violence Project

by Johanna Stiebert on June 14, 2023

The Bible and Violence Project is up and running!

We now have over 120 contributors signed up. Many of them are busy forming and working together in writing groups; others are receiving or providing mentoring. If you are a contributor and find yourself in need of support or motivation, please be in touch if we can help.

The publication emerging from this project aims to be the most comprehensive and inclusive on the topic of the Bible and violence to date. Alongside chapters on every text of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Greek Bible, there will also be chapters on the Bible and…:

Its role and impact in diverse geographical settings

Incel cultures and the manosphere

The ethics of citing violent scholars

HIV/AIDS

Liberative readings in violent settings

Environmental violence

Colonialism

Trafficking

Intimate partner violence

Genocide

Gender-based violence

Rape and rape culture

Violence aimed at children, at animals, and at the deceased

Violence in the family

Divine violence

Supersessionism

Antisemitism, as well as Islamophobia

Martyrdom

War

Crime fiction

Abortion activism

Transphobia

Zionism

Fat shaming…

… and that is not all. Alongside yet more exciting topics, there will also be some chapters on select rabbinical texts and Dead Sea Scrolls, gnostic and deuterocanonical texts.

We have already received contributions ahead of the first deadline of 2 October 2023 by Katherine Southwood, Sébastien Doane, Alison Jack, Barbara Thiede and Alexiana Fry, with more in the pipeline.

Two of the editors – Chris and Johanna – recently visited Manchester to present at the United Reformed Church research conference on both The Shiloh Project and Bible and Violence Project. While there, we enjoyed hearing Megan Warner’s paper on her topic for the project.