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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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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 13 – Amanda Pilbrow

by Katie Edwards on

Tēnā koutou.

My name is Amanda Pilbrow. Like you, there are many parts to who I am. Creatively interwoven are strands of being an artist, a theologian, a speaker/presenter/guest lecturer, a mum, a wife, a tattooed pixie-cut introvert that loves gin and single malt whiskey. Open water gives me a sense of breadth, room to breathe, a sense there is more to life, a hope for the future. I can do small talk but prefer real connections, listening to peoples lived realities. I’m an x-pastor, who through her breakthroughs and breakdown, discovered a loving, inclusive, pursuing God. I have recently completed my master’s in applied theology: Navigating Faith, Sexuality, and Wholeness in Aotearoa New Zealand: Seven LGB-Christian Narratives. While this is finished, I sense it is just the beginning of my next chapter.

Breaking down stereotypes that form and contribute to a sense, or indeed a lived reality of second-class citizenship glues my soapbox firmly to the ground. I grew up believing, without any opportunity to question, that men ruled – they had the last say, the deciding vote, the position of privilege. Don’t get me wrong – I love men – one fine man in particular for over 30 years. He holds a mighty high standard for others to meet. In saying that, we have been on this journey together, discovering equality, mutual respect, honour, and believing the best of each other.

The journey was not without incident, without debate, without apology. How do you unlearn so much that has undergirded your upbringing? Moreover, how do you crawl out from under that second-class citizen rock, find the courage to climb up, and even more, stand in the place you were always meant to be – equal – wholehearted – authentic? How do you help the other crawl out? To lift some of the burden? To cheer them to climb further.

For me, I can only describe this painful process as a holy conviction, an invitation, an awakening that changes how I see – forever. As a woman who was meant to know her place, God, or the Divine, or the higher power – whatever fits well with you – called me to discover who I was. And here’s the catch. Once you discover or is it uncover, the dark shadow of imposed second-class citizenship it becomes impossible not to see it in other places; in other people; woman and children. It is also impossible to not recognise the structures and belief systems that enforce, intentionally or otherwise, power and cultural structures that secure and support inequality, that enable violence, that ensure subjugation, causing some to exercise power and control over others.

This ‘seeing’ became so uncomfortable for me; it formed into ‘righteous’ anger. A sense of disorder that continually left me feeling off-balance. An anger and disorder that became an unrelenting hunger to learn, to read, listen, interview, and write and ultimately change. A hunger to discover peoples lived realities as they found themselves in marginalised and un-equal situations, violent or simply overlooked.

From this place, my master of applied theology thesis was conceived, gestated, and delivered. My sense ofmarginalisation forced me, in the very best way possible, to see the marginalisation of others. And while the theme ‘orange’ is focused on violence on women, as we crawl out from this particular rock, find the courage to stand and be heard, may our voices reach and be heard far and wide and high to other areas of marginalisation and diversity. As we uncover and expose the culture and power structures that enable and even incite violence against women, may we too be caught into seeing violence towards otherness and be righteously angry, disordered and off-balance so that we have to act? So that we can peel and take a bite of the orange on behalf of others.

I’m not sure I ever considered myself an activist until now. Perhaps more a peacemaker – as opposed to a peacekeeper. A resistance fighter if you like, rather than a status quo bystander. But what if an activist is a better fit? What if acting on my righteous anger and discomfort means standing on that rock and claiming equality and equal citizenship for others, for all. What if, by exposing the culture and structures that divide people causing such destruction, wholeness and authenticity prevail making us all safe, valued, equal, seen, and known? These thoughts continue to invite and awaken me to act in 2020. I hope to extend the invitation into righteous anger, discomfort, and a sense of being off-balance. I hope my research will encourage and permit others to listen to the lived realities of others. I hope to promote the unlearning necessary to re-learn and re-discover equality and hope.

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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 10 – Helen Paynter

by Helen Paynter on

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

I am a Baptist minister and an Old Testament specialist. I teach Old Testament and Biblical languages, based at Bristol Baptist College. In particular, I am the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence.  The CSBV is a study centre dedicated to working in the area of the interpretation of biblical texts of violence. It exists to promote and conduct high-quality scholarship, and to serve the churches in the UK and internationally by offering accessible resources to equip them to read the scriptural texts of violence well, and the challenge the ways in which the Bible is sometimes weaponised for the promotion of violence. We hope thereby to enable the church to offer counter-violent counter-extremist narratives in situations of conflict or tension.

 

How does your research or your work connect to activism?

One of the areas that I am passionate about is the interpretation of biblical sexual violence, which has been interpreted – at various times in the history of the church – in some very disturbing ways. I have recently completed a book on the dreadful story of the Levite’s wife from Judges 19, called Telling Terror in Judges 19: Rape and Reparation for the Levite’s wife. This will be coming out soon in the Routledge Focus series. In this book, I offer what is known as a ‘reparative’ interpretation of the text; that is, while acknowledging the horrors it presents and the ideology that may lie behind it, seeking to read for some suprising positives that the narrative offers. As part of this work, I did quite a lot of research into modern situations of sexual violence with which this ancient text has contact, particularly the horrific Delhi Bus Rape. I draw these comparisons in the book.

Another project I have been involved in was the #SheToo podcast series, produced by Rosie Dawson for the Bible Society. I was a consultant and contributor for this series, wherein Rosie interviewed various female scholars from different faith perspectives on some of the narratives of sexual violence in the Bible.

The other arm of the CSBV, which looks at the weaponisation of the Bible, has led me to write a second book this year, to be published by BRF in 2020. The title is still under negotiation, but the current working version is ‘The Bible Doesn’t Tell Me So: Why submitting to abuse is not a Christian wife’s duty’. Tragically, domestic abuse is sometimes sustained by abusers through appeal to various biblical texts, and churches also sometimes contribute to this by the misapplication of biblical principles. As a Christian minister, I am not only deeply disturbed by this, but feel a sense of responsibility to attempt to address it, and this book is intended for that purpose. It is aimed at women who are trapped in abusive marriages where the Bible plays a part in their abuse, and also at those who seek to help them, and at church leaders. I am hoping that it will reach an international market as well as a domestic one, and that through it, women will find themselves empowered to find places of safety and resist manipulative attempts to keep them trapped in situations of abuse.

 

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

I think I’ve probably covered the first question above. Between now and the beginning of December next year, I hope that both of these books will have been published, and that I will be able to speak on the subject at various national and possibly international platforms. In particular, I am hoping to be in a position to attend and contribute to the Baptist World Alliance quinquennial meeting in Rio next year, where there will be a specialist subject stream on gender based violence.

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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 7 – Joachim Kuegler

by Joachim Kuegler on

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

Since 2008, I am Professor for New Testament Studies at the University of Bamberg in Germany. My work lies at the interface of the academy, education and religion. Since 1988 I am also an ordained priest of the Catholic Church (in the diocese of Bamberg). I am one of the many Catholic men who, while benefitting from the gender bias of this Church, is suffering in the face of the traditional gender injustice so powerful in both doctrine and practice. The big goal of my work as a professor and priest is to let people know that God is a power that helps to overwhelm gender bias, gender-based violence and misogyny. I really don’t know if it will be possible to transform the Catholic Church into a tool of gender-fairness but at least I don’t feel alone in my attempt to do so.

How does your research or your work connect to activism?

For me it is quite easy to connect my research with activism. First, because the main topics of my research are gender and developmental justice. With our Bible-in-Africa-research we aim at tearing down the walls that colonialism created by organising an exchange with African students and scholars based on the principle of pluriform equality. Using the opportunities offered by a rich country (Germany) we try to give academics from Africa a chance to display their talent in exploring the Bible in a contextual life-oriented way.

Secondly, my double existence as professor and priest allows me to spread my academic insights into the area of an old and established but still vivid faith-based community. I always try to structure my preaching and my pastoral work with people living at our local Asylbewerber-Heim (‘centre for asylum-seekers’) according to the principle of gender fairness and global justice. In the last years church structures allowed me to organise funds for African students and financial help for immigrants – not to mention the spiritual support that a congregation can give to new-comers. I think, the quota of racist, xenophobic and misogynic people is lower among  active Christians than in some other parts of German society. Thus it is easier to find help and feel supported by the consent of many.

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

Activism is no ‘add-on’ to my academic work. Because I take my research insights seriously, they urge me to act them out accordingly. I cannot read Galatians 3:28 – ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ – and then go and preach that it is okay when women aren’t ordained. I cannot analyse Jesus’ beatitudes of the poor and then ignore those in my village that are suffering from being marginalised and ill-treated. But also, I am also learning from activism for my academic work. Which questions in research are really relevant? Which ones can I leave to those whose prime or even only goal is a university career? Between now and the Days of Activism in 2020 I hope to support especially ‘Maria 2.0’ (an equal-rights-movement of Catholic women) with as many public lectures as possible. I feel that my interpretation of biblical texts is really welcome in this movement.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 5 – Al McFadyen

by Al McFadyen on

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

My name is Al McFadyen. I am a senior lecturer in systematic theology at the University of Leeds. In my academic work, I write (and teach) mainly around themes related to theological anthropology – which is to say, Christian understanding of humanity. I am especially drawn towards those often complex and ambiguous situations where humanity is threatened, vulnerable, at risk or somehow in question and so drawn therefore also to institutionalised practices that attempt to engage human beings in difficulty, often equally ambiguous and complex. I have always felt the need to ground my academic work and understanding by working also in non-academic contexts alongside the university (psychiatric nursing; suicide counselling; youth work; policing) in a kind of triangulation between academy, church and the diverse ways of living out humanity in the ‘real world’.  In this triangulation, I am hoping to find mutually enriched understanding and wisdom about what it means to be human in situations where humanity itself is at some risk. To put that theologically, I am trying to work out what it means (and why it might be worth trying) to speak of Christian faith, of sin and salvation, of good news, in situations such of human vulnerability.

 

How does your research or your work connect to activism?

I am hesitant to describe the sorts of things I do under the heading of activism. And I suspect others will be too, since what I do looks very different from the range of involvements that generally go under that heading. I spend on average over 60 hours a month working as a frontline police officer (unpaid), often working single crewed answering emergency calls; calls that take me to places where often someone is or has been made vulnerable, and sometimes where I will act in ways that also make someone vulnerable by using force against them or depriving them of their liberty in order to bring them to justice. I appreciate working in the police might be regarded as the opposite of what activism might mean. However, policing in the UK is one of the places where you will find institutionalised practices and nuanced understanding of some of the concerns that motivate many activists: gender-based violence; the cultures and processes that aid the creation, maintenance and exploitation of gendered vulnerabilities; hate crime, including those based on racism and homophobia; human trafficking; child sexual exploitation; community cohesion; the precarity of asylum seekers; radicalisation (including white right wing), violent extremism and terrorism (Leeds is where the 7/7 bombs were made, a short walk from the University).

I first wrote extensively on child sexual abuse almost 20 years ago (in my book, Bound to Sin), before I joined the police. Working in the police has both developed and further grounded my understanding of these and other situations where humanity is at risk. These have included work (not all of it published) on counter-terrorism; faith-based community engagement; street grooming for sexual exploitation; loving enemies & loving the neighbourhood. Most recently, I have written on the just introduced offence of coercive control, which is to appear in a book that has grown out of Shiloh-related work: namely, the ‘Feminism and Trauma Theology’ project. My contribution has the title, ‘”I Breathe him in with Every Breath I Take”: Framing Domestic Victimisation as Trauma and Coercive Control in Feminist Trauma Theologies’ and it will be published in February in Karen O’Donnell & Katie Cross (eds), Feminist Trauma Theologies.

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

Organisations like the police effect change for people in often incomplete, messy and ambiguous ways and sometimes can’t do much more than stave off the immediate risk and crisis or create a space where a victim and offender might make decisions that could have positive life-changing consequences. I suppose I am committed to the ideas that much valuable humanizing transformation happens like that and at that small, face-to-face human scale. It’s not a scale that is always taken with appropriate seriousness by academics or policy makers and maybe also not always by activists. (Nor are the fallible, all too human institutions that we have available to make change or to support the conditions that enable human flourishing become reality.) And I am afraid neither are the people – extraordinary in their ordinariness – that work in those institutions – nurses; bobbies; firefighters; paramedics; council staff – making neighbourhoods work as places that might be habitable spaces for flourishing human diversity. We need somehow to help students gain a sense of the importance of commitment to and working in and with such institutions, alongside the importance of more abstract ideas and values that can shape policy and more conventional notions of activism.

What I hope to achieve between now and the next 16 days of activism in 2020 is similarly scaled. I hope I can make a difference to some of the people I will deal with. I hope that I won’t mess up, especially by failing to identify and assess risk appropriately. Domestic incidents are the ones where the difference between an incident that seems superficially to be trivial and one that will prove fatal in absence of decisive intervention is not always clear. They are also amongst the most volatile and unpredictable. So, I also hope that I don’t get seriously injured. Since the last 16 days, I have been assaulted several times on duty, though without anything more than a very minor injury.

But I also hope to do some further work and thinking reflecting theologically on policing, including domestic violence.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 2 – Gordon Lynch

by Gordon Lynch on

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

I currently work as the Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology at the University of Kent. I’ve been an academic at different universities for nearly twenty-five years now (that time’s gone very quickly…!) and over that time my work has crossed over a number of disciplines including sociology, history and practical theology.

Although my research has been on quite an eclectic set of issues, a fundamental interest I’ve had through this work is on what values shape people’s lives and the role that moral meanings play in society. Over the past eight years, I’ve become increasingly interested in issues of historic abuse, particularly in how abuse took place in welfare initiatives that were ostensibly seen as morally defensible in the past. Part of what I’ve learned through that process is to recognise how welfare interventions like the industrial school system in Ireland or native residential boarding schools in Canada weren’t necessarily seen as morally unproblematic in the past, but that these systems carried on for a range of reasons despite knowledge of their failings. Recognising this is important. Sometimes organisations look at histories of institutional abuse in their work and argue that this took place in the context of well-intentioned initiatives that were simply less enlightened than today’s standards. The reality is often more complex and more uncomfortable than that.

Over the past seven years, I’ve become increasingly involved in researching the history of British child migration schemes that sent around 100,000 children to other parts of the British Empire and Commonwealth between 1869 and 1970. These schemes were often funded by British and overseas governments, but run by leading charities and major churches. I’m particularly interested in the schemes which operated in the post-war period which ran increasingly against the grain of progressive child-care thinking of that time, and in understanding the institutional and policy factors which made that possible.

How does your research or your work connect to activism?
I’m really interested in how we can take academic research on institutional abuse and make it accessible to different public audiences. I’ve been lucky enough to have been involved in a number of projects along these lines. In 2014, I worked with researchers in Ireland and the digital channel TrueTube to put together a film on women’s experiences of life in Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. I’ve co-curated a national exhibition about the history of British child migration at the V&A Museum of Childhood, and learned a lot through that about how objects and images can be presented in ways that make people more aware of complex and emotionally difficult histories. As a spin-off project from that exhibition, I was able to work with the production company 7digital to commission a number of leading British folk musicians who created a collection of songs, ‘The Ballads of Child Migration’ which has been released as an album and been performed at different venues around the country. I see part of this work – particularly in relation to the child migration schemes – as raising awareness of a history that’s not always well known. Another part of that is trying to think about what the factors are that give rise to institutional abuse, some of which might still be relevant today.

More recently I’ve become involved in supporting the work of two national child abuse Inquiries which have looked at the historic abuse of British child migrants as an expert witness. Working with another colleague, Stephen Constantine, we spent most of a year doing archival research that informed the report on British child migration by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. I learned more through that work about how historical research can go beyond just providing context for public investigations into historic abuse to develop more forensic analysis of archival sources which helps to show how and why systems of care failed. By looking at organisational correspondence and reports in Britain and Australia, for example, it was possible to piece together how the British Government had failed to put proper safeguards in place to ensure that standards of care for British child migrants were adequate.

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

I came from a non-traditional background as a student and am always conscious – despite the pressures of modern academic life – of the considerable resources we still have in our universities. I’ve always thought that our research should be put to the service of wider communities and that this work should feed back into how we think our academic disciplines should be cultivated and taught.

I’ve been working with the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry over the past year and the work I’ve done with them is going to come into the public domain next spring (so can’t talk about it much yet, unfortunately!) – but I hope that will take forward a bit further some of our understanding of the circumstances in which British child migrants were abused. I think there’s a growing critical mass of people doing very important work on religion and abuse across a range of settings and I want to continue to think about how I can best support that. I’m also going to start publishing work more specifically on historic abuse of child migrants sent overseas by the Catholic Church and (hopefully) the Church of England which will hopefully be available over the next year. More ideas are the pipeline as well…

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Finding Companionship with Josephine Butler and Forging out a New Theology in a Time of #ChurchToo

by Elizabeth Ludlow on

Today’s post is by Dr Elizabeth Ludlow, Senior Lecturer in English Literature and the Director of the Nineteenth Century Studies Unit at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK. Find her on Twitter @ludlow_e 

In an article in the Church Times last year, Linda Woodhead reflected on the urgent need to scope out a “new theology” in the wake of the problems exposed by the hearings of the IICSA (The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse). The damning IICSA report that details the hearings that Woodhead refers to – surrounding the Diocese of Chichester and Peter Ball (abishop in Chichester before becoming Bishop of Gloucester)– was released earlier this month. Its conclusion highlights the tragic consequences of shielding a perpetrator of child sexual abuse at the cost of victims. Through a series of case studies, the report gives “examples of perpetrators who were able to hide in plain sight for many years” and details the occasions “when the Church put its own reputation above the needs of victims and survivors.” In highlighting how compassion was extended to Ball but not to his victims it explains how, at the time of Ball’s caution and resignation, the only reference that Church officials made to Neil Todd (the original complainant against Ball who took his own life in 2012), came when adiocesan bishop “said he hoped that Mr Todd ‘will be able to forgive Bishop Peter’.” I’m sure that many abuse victims can identify with the frustration of having their anguish overlooked, the damage that has been done minimised, and of being told by those in authority that they are expected to forgive the perpetrator.

Woodhead explains how, in Chichester, a “faulty doctrine of forgiveness” was used by abusers, church officials, and parishioners. In contrast, the theology she calls for refutes any notion that the doctrine of easy forgiveness is “a possession of the church” and looks instead to the wider implications of a belief in “a God who is present in, with, and through creation, and affected by it.”⁠Over the past few months, I’ve been  researching the work of Victorian social reformer Josephine Butler.  I would suggest that the theological strategies she uses to interpret the Bible from the perspective of the oppressed offers useful tools to grapple with what it means to break institutional silences around abuse and reach beyond the platitudes of easy forgiveness.

In their book, In a Glass Darkly, The Bible, Reflection and Everyday Life, Zoë Bennett and Christopher Rowland comment on how “[p]art of any intellectual engagement that is critical is finding appropriate alternative perspectives that bring fresh understanding of a situation.” They then explain how William Blake and John Ruskin have become for them “companions on the road” who open up these perspectives and provide “a critical space for understanding the Bible, life, and crucially also the modes in which we might explore the connections between life and the Bible” (2016, 108). Following on from theologian Ann Loades who has noted the longevity of Butler’s work in addressing sexual abuse, I want to suggest how Butler might act as a “companion on the road” for us today and how, through an engagement with her work, some of the suggestions that Woodhead offers in terms of repudiating the doctrine of easy forgiveness might be worked out.

Josephine Butler (nee Grey) was born in 1828 into a large and well-connected family in Northumbria. In 1852, she married George Butler, an academic who had just been appointed to the role of Chief Examiner in Oxford. It wasn’t long after they returned from their honeymoon that she became dismayed at the prejudices of the male academics and clergy she found herself among. Having parents who encouraged a strong social conscience and a hatred of all forms of injustice, she was struck by the “great wall of prejudice” among the university community (192, 98). In her biography of her husband, she recalled several instances of being rebuffed after bringing to light cases of injustice and abuse. On one occasion, she approached an esteemed university fellow, hoping he could “suggest some means” of holding the abuser of a young girl to account; the fellow “sternly advocated silence and inaction” (1892, 96). She then commented that, for a long time:

there echoed in my heart the terrible prophetic words of the painter-poet Blake – rude and indelicate as he may have been judged then – whose prophecy has only been averted by a great and painful awakening –

                 “The harlots’ curse, from street to street,

                  Shall weave old England’s winding sheet.” (ibid)

Butler’s recollection of William Blake’s words from his poem “Auguries of Innocence,” and her identification with him as one who was judged “rude and indelicate,” signals a willingness to take an unpopular stand against the systematic institutional reluctance to address sexual abuse. Butler’s faith was, like Blake’s, revolutionary and practical and she recognised Jesus’s actions as those of a “dangerous leveller” (1869, lviii). Her engagement with “Auguries of Innocence” is indicative of her commitment to Blake’s perception that “God Appears & God is Light / To those poor Souls who dwell in Night” (lines 129-30) and to his understanding that God is present in “Human Form” (line 131). The inaccuracy in her memory of the lines she cites – changing the word “cry” (115) to “curse” (thus recalling the reference to the “harlot’s curse” in Blake’s poem “London”) – signals her concern with attending to the anguish of the outcast woman: an anguish that has such force it could destroy “old England.”

Along with her husband, Butler read the Bible eschatologically, reflecting on the person of Christ and praying “that a holy revolution might come about, and that the Kingdom of God might be established on the earth” (1892, 102). The account of prayer that she gives can be helpfully understood in terms of what biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann describes as an act of “breaking the silence” (2018, 3) Such an act is, he explains, always a “counterdiscourse,” because it “tends to arise from the margins of society, a counter to present power arrangements and to dominant modes of social imagination” (ibid.). Following a series of vignettes concerning oppressive silence, Brueggemann reflects on how “silence breaking is evoked by attention to the body in pain” (6-7). Butler’s attention to marginalised, hurting bodies, along with her prayers for a “holy revolution,” indicates her own refusal to accept oppressive silencing and signals her protest against the status quo of what Blake terms “old England.”

Courtesy of Granpic (Flickr), Josephine Butler on staircase window in Liverpool Anglican cathedral.

In the introduction to the volume of essays that she edited on Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture, Butler speaks out against a society content to stand by and watch “sinister social forces” drive “whole armies of little girls to madness and early graves” (1869, xix). Butler’s social activism in leading the repeal against the Contagious Diseases Acts, in rescuing girls and women from lives of prostitution, and in pushing for parliament to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16, was propelled by both her recognition of the worth of each individual and by a concern for partnering with Christ in breaking oppressive silences.

During the years in which she was involved in repealing the Contagious Diseases Acts, Butler wrote a biography of Catherine of Siena, in which she stressed Catherine’s Christ-likeness in both radical action and in prayer (1894 [1878]). Catherine’s ongoing and “passionate intercession” (182), which enabled her to see and respond to the corruption around her, stood in stark contrast to the “prominent representatives” of the Church who were concerned with “worldly, greedy, grasping power” (7).

Such juxtapositions between worldly power and the power of prayer among the marginalized can be seen through Butler’s own life. In her account of the 1883 parliamentary debates regarding the suspension of the Contagious Diseases Acts, Butler writes of a prayer meeting that exemplifies the “counterdiscourse” defined by Brueggemann, where “ragged and miserable women from the slums of Westminster” prayed side by side with “ladies of high rank” (Johnson, 181).

In the conclusion to her biography of Catherine of Siena, Butler describes how prayer opens up the “social and sympathetic” aspect of each individual as they stand in relationship with God, their community, and creation (338). She stresses that the act of interceding for the Other involves envisioning them as distinct and as loved by God. This loving attention is the very opposite of abuse and stands in stark opposition to a culture that promotes a doctrine of easy forgiveness and prioritises the perpetrator over their victims for the sake of convenience and reputation.

References

Bennett, Zoë and Rowland, Christopher. 2016. In a Glass Darkly: The Bible, Reflection and

         Everyday Life.London: SCM Press.

Brueggemann,Walter. 2018. Interrupting Silence: God’s Command to Speak Out. London:

Hodder & Stoughton.

Butler, Josephine (ed). 1869. Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture. London: Macmillan.

— 1892. Recollections of George Butler. Bristol: Arrowsmith

— 1894 [1878] Catherine of Siena: A Biography. London: Horace & Son.

Johnson, George W, Johnson, Lucy A, and Stuart, James (ed.). 1909. Josephine E. Butler: An

Autobiographical Memoir Bristol: Arrowsmith.

Loades, Ann. 2001. Feminist Theology: Voices from the Past. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Woodhead, Linda. 2018. “Forget culture. It’s a new theology we need” Church Times, 06

April.https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/6-april/comment/opinion/iicsa-forget-culture-new-theology-we-need.

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Autoethnography: The Voice of a Sexually Abused Body

by Sophie Witherstone on

Sophie Witherstone is a PhD student at the University of Chester. She is currently researching the utility of Ignatian Spirituality for female survivors of sexual abuse, focusing on embodied aspects, and the ways that this tradition reconnects sexually abused women with their own bodies and with God.

Autoethnography: The Voice of a Sexually Abused Body

Autoethnography, or self-narrative, is a qualitative research method that delves into the personal experiences and stories of the researcher themselves. The researcher’s personal and meaningful experiences are used as a source of a data, which can speak into academic research in ground-breaking ways. This method fosters the liberation of vulnerable and silenced voices, such as the voices of abused bodies (Olson, 2004; Fletcher, 2018; Crisp, 2004). Using the privileged platform of academia in order to present their own unique voice in such a creative way allows the researcher to reach out to those other abused bodies that remain silenced and hidden.

Autoethnography also gives the researcher license to portray their experiences in whatever way they choose, giving them authority and ownership over the effect their voice can have on others. It has been described as a “therapeutic” method for vulnerable voices, such as the voices of those who have experienced sexual abuse, offering a means of healing through writing (Ellis et al, 2011).

Thad Zajdowicz, Nude (on Flickr)

My own autoethnographic research is situated in feminist theology, where the silenced voices of sexually abused bodies are rarely heard (Morton, 1985). Abuse and trauma theologies (Rambo, 2010; Brock & Parker, 2001; Manlowe, 1998) have represented the sexually abused body, but there has been a lack of visibility in terms of the self-representation and self-expression of such bodies. In particular, the female sexually abused body has not been taken seriously enough. Certainly, some feminist theologians have tackled the issue of women’s silencing and abuse within the androcentric traditions of Christianity considering the ways that such silencing adds to women’s experiences of abuse. For example, abuse theologian Marie Fortune engages with women’s consequential experiences of God (and of religion as an institution) as survivors of sexual abuse, particularly where members of the clergy are the perpetrators (Fortune, 1983; 1998, 350-356; see also Sands, 2003). Building on the work of feminist theologians such as Fortune, methodologies such as autoethnography can further bring the voices and experiences of violated women to the surface.

In my research, I engage with the method of autoethnography because I am interested in the real, lived experiences of concrete bodies – of bodies that demand to be taken more seriously in academic reflection. My own body is no exception to this demand, and that is why autoethnography is particularly liberating for me – it does not discount my experiences from my research and does not perpetuate the silencing caused by my abuse.

Within autoethnography, the researcher delves into painful experiences, yet as Ellis (2004, 110-111) proposes, the pain need not take over. The ethnographic research process is purposeful and meaningful in evoking emotion, but this does not need to be negative emotion despite the depth of pain within experiences of abuse. The freeing of the vulnerable voice through autoethnography can begin to remove the hold that the abuse has had on survivors. According to Ettore, there is often a redemptive power in the use of self-narrative (2017, 357) – it has the potential to be emotionally transformative for the researcher themselves, and for their readers and academic peers. As a result, women may become reassured and encouraged that all women’s experiences can be heard, are valuable, and are unique – deserving to be expressed in their own ways. Indeed, authethnography can be a powerful platform for the voices of allabused and violated bodies, whatever their gender. The vulnerable self-exposure of revealing one’s own narrative of abuse opens a door to readers’ participation in one’s stories and thus, as Chang (2008, 145) puts it, a “mutual vulnerability” may unfold. For me, this “mutual vulnerability” represents a coming together of abusedvoices; uniting and forming a stronghold that encourages more silenced voices to speak out and be heard.

Frédéric Glorieux, BWR (black white red) naked #4

Sexual Storytelling: Engaging with the ‘Messy’ Bodies

Sexual storytelling is a lens that we can apply to autoethnographic research, as demonstrated by feminist liberation theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid (1997) and sociologist Ken Plummer (1995). Sexual storytelling involves the inclusion of any experience related to the sexual, such as stories of sexual abuse, sexual behaviour, and sexual desires(Plummer, 1995, 4). Althaus-Reid uses sexual storytelling within theological reflection, describing it as a method of writing authentically and honestly, without leaving God outside our bedroom doors (2000; 2003). For Althaus-Reid, this radical notion is an attempt to “queer” theological hermeneutics, contrasting with more “normative” Christian frameworks that have only restricted and suffocated the freedom to embrace who we are before God (2003).

Within my research, the use of “sexual storytelling” is particularly meaningful as it allows women (and allbodies) to extract fragments of meaning and hope from their narratives of sexual abuse. In the revelation of these vulnerable stories, women may finally feel a sense of control and authority over the narratives of oppression and violence imposed upon them by the restrictions of the Christian tradition that have consumed their lives. The freedom in writing one’s own experiences of sex, particularly of abusive sex, can provide a sense of literary agency and control, which may be liberating for the abused body who lost control during their abuse and in their lives after the abuse. Sexual storytelling allows the freeing of the self from the androcentric bonds of Christianity. And, while some abused bodies feel that their only option is to walk away from their faith community (a place where they feel misrepresented or marginalized), for me, autoethnography offers another alternative solution to tackle this experience.

Although the concept of sexual storytelling can be freeing and allows God to be included in the sexual experiences of sexually abused bodies, this image and way of doing theology may be too overwhelming and invasive for those who are vulnerable. I am aware of the dangers of suggesting that God is in our bedrooms. For a sexually abused body like myself, sex is a fearful space, and (despite it not being the case for me) sex can be a space that has no hope of healing potential. It is therefore important to acknowledge some of the issues that need to be taken seriously when engaging with this method of sexual storytelling.

Working with abuse theologies, Susan Shooter (2012, 14) considers how the shattered boundaries experienced by survivors can cause difficulty in their intimate relationships; picturing ourselves intimately before God may be an uncomfortable task. All sexually abused women ought to be taken seriously, and granted patience in our journey towards rediscovering and re-entering sexual spaces. It is not easy to let ourselves back into the sexual realm, let alone for us to allow God to walk with us once again into this traumatic space. However, the method of sexual storytelling within theology works to reassure other sexually abused women that the fearful thought of God existing in our bedrooms can be the meeting point that saves us – where we conquer and rebel against the abuse. Locating God where the abuse happened is an act of revolt that may put a stop to the suffocation of spirit, setting God’s presence free into all the spaces in our lives.

Gustave Klimt, Danae (1907-1908)

Therefore, as Althaus-Reid argues, sexual stories exist within indecent theological reflection in which there are no pages cut from the books of our sexual experiences (2000, 146). Althaus-Reid’s imagery here is significant for sexually abused bodies, as it reassures these bodies that they do not have to censor their trauma, restricting themselves to only the “appropriate” experiences that will not upset those who listen to them. Althaus-Reid wants to eliminate this censorship, especially within Christian theology, as she argues that theology has thus far limited its engagements with sexuality to neat, tidy, and unrealistic boundaries (2003, 61).

As researchers who engage with self-narrative approaches, we should not have to eliminate the sexual, dirty, dark, or messy experiences from our stories. In doing feminist theology, we ought not to begin with those bodies considered “normative,” but should dare to do theology from a sexually abused body, as Grovijahn demands in her theological reflection on embodiment (1998, 29). As my own narrative consists of stories of sexual abuse, it is important for me that all stories – including those considered “obscene” (Goss, 2003) – are  voiced and not silenced.

Althaus-Reid challenges the disembodied theological method of writing abuse, and asks, “why is the tortured male body of Christ less offensive than a woman’s tortured body?” (2000, 111). With this shocking image being laid before us, Althaus-Reid demands that abused women’s bodies be taken seriously and not ignored or brushed aside. For, such brushing aside only continues to distort and suppress the confidence and dignity of the abused female body. The work of theologians such as Althaus-Reid creates a revolt against the stigma surrounding “non-normative” bodies – it allows for an inclusion of all types of bodies that have not been taken as seriously as those defined as “ordinary” (Althaus-Reid, 2003). Althaus-Reid suggests that this can become a reality when we defamiliarize ourselves with the heteronormative God, and look instead to a stranger-God who may, like so many non-normative bodies, be left outside the gates of traditional theology (2003, 59).

id-iom, The Virtue of Venus (on Flickr)

Grovijahn (1998, 29) likewise argues that we ought to begin our theology from a place of authenticity, where we can be ourselves – daring to do theology from a sexually abused body. Similarly, Greenough (2018, 30) proposes that writing the sexually abused self into theological research can “enable individuals to move from sexual shame to embracing themselves.”  Using sexual storytelling within queer theology, Greenough offers an “undoing” methodology in which honesty and vulnerability liberate the researcher to be reflexive on a deeper level. Greenough looks to “undo” the “diluted” (9), “normative theology” or “vanilla theology” (13) that engages with sex and the body, and to work towards a theology that uses sexual stories as a central framework that will “disrupt sexual ideology in Christianity” (23). It is a theology that is firmly grounded in the messiness of life (32) – finding God in our everyday experiences of sex and the body.

When researching the sexually abused body, feminist theology begins with the locus of the female body. It asks: how and where do women experience God? This question has led feminist theologians to begin their theology in the bodies of women of all shapes and sizes (see e.g. Isherwood, 2007who engages with “fat” female bodies). For Carter Heyward, “God is immersed in our bodyselves – in all our particularities” (1989, 103). In these particularities, Heyward refers to sensuality and the erotic, arguing that if we use the Bible as our primary authority, and we live in “denial of our bodyselves” (94), we will be pulled apart from the embodied God, each other, and ourselves (95). Heyward proposes that Christianity has developed a fear of the erotic (“erotophobia”) and has thus separated God from the realm of the sexual (1989, 5). She suggests that this is why distorted relational acts, such as sexual abuse, occur. Fear creates a divide from self, others, and God. She laments, “We have been stripped of our capacities to delight in ourselves, one another, and [God]” (1989, 4). Until we take our bodies more seriously and treat our bodies as authoritative, she warns, we will remain “untouched and untouching” (Heyward 1982, xviii). “Our bodyselves know better,” she suggests, “They speak the truth” (1989, 106).

Our bodies tell us so much about God and our personal relationships with this embodied God. We will come to understand that the bodies of women – their sexual acts, their sensory experiences – are the real presence of the divine (Isherwood, 2010, 78). We can learn a great deal about God in all our experiences, even in the surprising places such as the journey of healing and recovery from sexual violence.

References

Althaus-Reid, M. (1997). Sexual Strategies in Practical Theology: Indecent Theology and the Plotting of Desire with some Degree of Success. Theology and Sexuality, 1997(7), 45-52.

Althaus-Reid, M. (2000).Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics.London: Routledge.

Althaus-Reid, M. (2003).The Queer God. London: Routledge.

Althaus-Reid, M. (2004). “Pussy, Queen of Pirates”: Acker, Isherwood and the Debate on the Body in Feminist Theology. Feminist Theology,12(2), 157-167.

Althaus-Reid, M., & Isherwood, L. (2008). Controversies in Body Theology. London: SCM Press.

Brock, R. N., & Parker, R. A. (2001). Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for what saves us. Boston, MA: Beacon Press

Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as Method.Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast.

Crisp, B. R. (2004). Spiritual Direction and Survivors of Sexual Abuse. The Way, 43/2, 7-17.

Ellis, C. (2004). The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.

Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Qualitative Social Research, 12/1.

Ettore, E. (2017). Autoethnography as Feminist Method: Sensitizing the Feminist ‘I’. Oxon: Routledge.

Fletcher, M. A. (2018). We to Me: An Autoethnographic Discovery of Self, in and out of Domestic Abuse. Women’s Studies in Communication, 41/1, 42-59.

Fortune, M. (1983). Sexual Violence: The Unmentionable Sin. New York, NY: The Pilgrim Press.

Fortune, M. (1998). Is Nothing Sacred? The Betrayal of the Ministerial or Teaching Relationship. In, C. J. Adams & M. Fortune (ed.). Violence against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook. New York, NY: Continuum, 351-360.

Goss R. (2003). Marcella Althaus-Reid’s ‘Obscenity No. 1: Bi/Christ’: Expanding Christ’s Wardrobe of Dresses. Feminist Theology,11/2, 157-166.

Greenough, C. (2018). Undoing Theology: Life Stories from Non-Normative Christians. London: SCM Press.

Grovijahn, J. M. (1998). Theology as an Irruption into Embodiment: Our Need for God. Theology and Sexuality, 1998/9, 29-35.

Heyward, I. C. (1982). The Redemption of God: A Theology of Mutual Relation.Maryland, MD: University Press of America.

Heyward, I. C. (1989). Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God.San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.

Isherwood, L. (2000). The Good News of the Body: Sexual Theology and Feminism. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Isherwood, L. (2004). The Embodiment of Feminist Liberation Theology: The Spiralling of Incarnation. Feminist Theology, 12/2, 140-156.

Isherwood, L. (2007). The Fat Jesus: Feminist Explorations in Boundaries and Transgressions. London: Darton Longman & Todd.

Manlowe, J. L. (1998). Seduced by Faith: Sexual Traumas and their Embodied Effects. In, C. J. Adams & M. Fortune (Ed.). Violence against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook. New York, NY: Continuum, 328-338.

Morton, N. (1985). The Journey is Home. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Olson, L. N. (2004). The Role of Voice in the (re)construction of a Battered Woman’s Identity: An Autoethnography of One Woman’s Experiences of Abuse. Women’s Studies in Communication,27/1, 1-33.

Plummer, K. (1995). Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds.London: Routledge.

Rambo, S. (2010). Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (1st Ed.). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox.

Sands, K. M. (2003). Speaking Out: Clergy Sexual Abuse: Where are the Women? Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 19/2, 79-83.

Shooter, S. (2012). How Survivors of Abuse Relate to God: The Authentic Spirituality of the Annihilated Soul.Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.

Feature image courtesy of Jon Nagl (Flickr, https://flic.kr/p/8Yvbs4)

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