We are currently building this page of theological reflections and sermons which have been delivered in a variety of settings, and some of them published in printed media. We are grateful to the generosity of those who have indicated their presence and replicate them here for your interest and the encouragement of all advocacy against trafficking. If you have a sermon or theological reflection which you would like to offer to these pages please be in touch with us.
Contextual theological thoughts on Trafficking in the Scriptures.
Revd Dr Carrie Pemberton
CEO CHASTE
Being invited to think about trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation in contextual theological mode, is a particularly arresting challenge. There is first of all a considerable cultural and political rift between our world of Nation State boundaries and United Nations adopted human rights protocols and that presented to us through the Christian and Jewish scriptures. Secondly there is a paucity of material which explicitly refers to women and children and their sexual exploitation or the labour exploitation of people in general. However we address the scriptures, economic analysis is not the central concern or purpose of these texts. The lot of women, their vulnerability to sexual violation, loss of personal power and subjection to geographical transfer through marriage, trade, or their economic exigencies are not highly visible. Attention is rather paid to the development of empires, the behaviour of kings, the faithfulness or otherwise of male prophets, the internal organisation of sacred spaces and their servicing by an exclusively male priesthood. Yet there are moments when we have shafts of contemporary verisimilitude stream across the different concerns and contexts which divide us. It is these shafts of light which we shall explore to see what insight they bring us to the concerns of our day and the energy which might be tapped into from contemplative engagement with religious texts from another age.
We need always to respect the gulf which separates us. Biblical instances of disempowerment, migration, and women’s self understanding are set in very different worlds. However there are intimations, hints and whispered moments behind the veil which divides us. There are women, young men and children with narratives to rehearse which reflect something of the contemporary narrative of trafficking and sexual abuse. Stereophonic imagination and sympathetic listening is demanded from both the texts and our contemporary world. Both worlds are somewhat hidden. Good listeners have the power to bring out the story, to listen people to speech. As Paul Ricouer reminds us, listeners are part of the dance of narrative. As listeners and readers we create a new reality for the story that is transmitted. In our interrogation of ancient texts with the vaguest hints of themes of trafficking, kidnap, violence against women or child abuse, we are concerned to raise the voice of those rendered without a voice in so many of our liturgies, organisational practices, interdenominational activities and doctrinal statements. We go back to these covert locations to think again what sort of responses a God who is revealed in care for humanity and radical equality in the incarnate ministry of Christ, might have for these silenced voices of history.
There are really some dreadful stories rehearsed in the books of the Old Testament. There are worlds revealed where trade in bodies, slavery, terror, deception, beatings, trauma, imprisonment, loss of family, systemic destruction of support structures, war, identity theft; gendered, racial and inter-regional inequalities; poverty, and suicidal desperation emerge to be heard and pondered on. So often we miss the horror of it all. The underside of the spiritual journey which Israel undertakes on her way through to the events of first century Palestine. There are story lines here which those who work countering contemporary trafficking of human beings for sexual exploitation and work in slave like conditions have sharpened antennae to receive. There are also new questions to raise of the text which can bring new understanding of what it means to be religious people, to be those who claim to listen to God and to honour the sanctity of what it means to be human. We do not have any charter of human rights in these ancient scriptures, to assert the common respect and dignity critical for our flourishing in today’s world. God as creator and author of the people’s destiny, is brought to bear as judge, provider and redeemer rather than any human court of European or International Justice. The language of abuse and the dereliction of the abused however are similar in both contemporary and ancient scripts. They are words that disclose dehumanisation, crimes against the person, violation of the divine image inscribed in our relationships. There are cries of isolation, of lament, and of unremitting despair.
One such story line commences in the very first book of the bible. Genesis in its record of famine - induced migration, leads us through a dismal economic enslavement of a whole people. Their identity, economic and political capacity are squeezed remorselessly by the monopolising power of Egyptian society. Their males exhausted through virtual slave labour, their sons culled in a process of regenerational ethnic cleansing. Their women fearful throughout pregnancy and child-birth, enduring forced labour, depriving themselves of food, subject to rape and sexual abuse from their Egyptian masters. A whole people’s social integrity and religious particularity virtually destroyed.
Enslavement can take many forms. It is an extreme sign of people’s refusal to recognise the image and opportunity of God in the other. It is a rejection of the divine paradigm expressed in the narrative of Genesis 1-3. ‘You’ says Adam to his second self ‘are bone like my bone, flesh like my flesh, mind like my mind, spirit like my spirit. In you I find what it is to be human – I find my meaning in being alive with you’. Human beings are not only made from the same chemical stuff of the earth and breathed on by the breath of God to make us ethic bearing, value carrying creatures; the potential of life is only possible where two are present, and recognise each other as life bearers, make love, nurture that vulnerable dependent new life in the wider ecology of a world, sustained by the breath of God. This profound mutuality, equal-valence and similarity, grounded on the continuity of a shared material world, has historically been a core inspiration of the movement towards Human rights and the denouncement of any form of enslavement. It informs the research, writing and political protest of Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce against slavery two hundred years ago . ‘Am I not a slave and a brother?’ appealed the kneeling slave in Wedgwood’s pottery equivalent of Make Poverty History’s white band.
To undermine this profound undercurrent of our reality, we have to pretend that the ‘other’ is not quite the same as us, does not carry the same values, does not bleed in the same way if pricked; as Shylock’s powerful speech in the Merchant of Venice reminds us; quite simply is not as human as we are. This fiction of radical difference erected by various schools of ethnography during the height of formalised colonialism, has generated grades of humanity based on the supposed measurables of brain size and jaw development. The dominant narrative was of a civilised world meeting primitive cultures populated by mal-formed or partly evolved humans. The ‘natives’ at best were children requiring the parental direction of the colonial powers. To Abrahamic religion’s chagrin this attitude inhabited the worlds of commerce, governance and numerous mission strategies. Thus slavers of both East and West found continued permission for their trade. The myths of difference, which have justified enslavement for millennia – from the teachings of Plato through Q’uranic statements of the 6th Century to the worst outpourings of Mein Kampf has accompanied the growth of empires, commercial ventures and subjugation of people in a myriad of forms across our beautiful planet’s populated continents.
Today we see an explicit capture of people into the sex trade on a global scale, tied into an intricate international criminal network franchised across families, clans and partnerships. The syndicated movement of drugs, laundering of money, undermining of democratic governance accompanied by a ubiquitous and frequently unchecked violence against women. Across West Africa, reaching into Central and North Africa, East towards Taiwan, China, Korea, Vietnam, incorporating in the web of activity the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and Russia, returning to Asia, with Pakistan, India and Bangladesh embroiled in the breach of humanity trading to their internal market as well as the countries of demand – the countries of the European Union and our own Island, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. The trade – like that of west African bodies and the harvesting of sugar two hundred years ago, or the Israelite sweat which built the pyramids, or the Sudanese enslaved sold for concubinage, goat herding, and domestic servitude today from the markets of Khartoum – is worth millions to those who buy, sell and exploit.
There are those who argue that what sustains this illicit movement of bodies for sexual access, is not that of enslavement but choice. In this account young women and men ‘choose’ their life style, so that those who purchase can continue with their consciences intact. But this story is as flawed as that of ethnic/biological inferiority. In their domestic as well as their international reality the young women and men who are traded, have been pushed to the margins of their societies, reduced, demeaned, rendered less than equal to those who make decisions, distribute the social and emotional goods of the household, organise the national and international economies, and finally exchange money for access to their bodies. As one of CHASTE’s clients put it ‘I worked for 12 – 14 hours a day often 6 days a week, sometimes 7, and all I got was the food I ate, and some clothes for work. He (the pimp/trafficker) took everything else. Everything.’
When we look at the scriptures from the standpoint of one who has been deceived, divested of autonomy, and put at the mercy of others – the central narrative of trafficking – are there common themes which emerge? If there are then we might be able to ask theologically informed questions which give us insight into the enduring values of what it is to be human, and the Divine imperatives of care, mutual responsibility and justice. This Divine imperative woven through the stories and thoughts of the scripture needs to be captured and expressed afresh, with as much passion as those whose histories are contained in these accounts experienced. Our insights might bring with them fresh supplies of energy for those organisations and communities that count the scriptures as texts for life. They could provide important spiritual sustenance to engage and resource work in this messy, compromised, sordid, dream-shattering, hope-testing, exhausting, life sputtering arena.
Potential texts for change
The Palermo protocol, passed by the United Nations in 2000, and the Counter Trafficking protocols promulgated by the Council of Europe in May 2005 express the concerns of those who think deeply about the implications of Human Rights and the principles of civilised society. Migration has always been an enormously risky business. Contrary to what the popular press have told modern Britons, migration is one of the last options a person undertakes. In ancient times as in modern, migration leaves people open to abuse during their attempt to access the store-houses of surplus wealth. People hunt out places to work and access the resources of food, shelter, personal safety and finance. Long hours of work in conditions where health and safety or protected labour legislation is flouted is frequently their lot. Dreams of return to a better life, with sufficient cash to purchase the family home, set up a business, secure health services for a relative, obtain educational opportunities for their children, fuel the hunt for work and opportunity which moves people across regional, national and continental boundaries. For those in fear of their lives, those seeking asylum under the protocols of the Geneva convention, the pressures and risks encountered during the process of flight and appeal even more intense.
The biblical stories of Joseph, Rahab, Tamar and Esther open up a catalogue of texts which reveal histories of terror as well as of hope. They are texts which the church has failed to engage her people. They are texts in which much is hidden and requires disclosure. They are texts which hold disturbing themes which speak across time to us into our contemporary circumstances and have the power to move us from our complacency.
Joseph and the dream which turned into a nightmare.
Many of those whom CHASTE has worked with have harboured a dream of a better life flowing their direction. Their dreams facilitate rapid agreement to a boyfriend’s suggestion to leave their town and set-up with them in a new country, a girl-friend’s invitation to accompany her to the United Kingdom for a job opportunity which has been advertised in the local press in Riga, or an Aunty’s organisation in Lagos of domestic work for a ‘relative’ in Naples. Joseph was a dreamer as well. In sharing his dreams with his brothers he put himself into danger. Dreams need a reality check, and it is important that those with whom we share our aspirations and hopes are not in the business of exploiting us. One of the initiatives funded by the World Bank and the Office for International Migration in countries of supply has been to engage young women and men in the potential dangers of responding to job opportunities emerging from the West.
The amazing coloured dream coat masks a family with some serious areas of dysfunctionality. Like many of the young women that CHASTE has made contact with over the last 18 months there are family jealousies, rivalries and disputes which can critically endanger young people and put them at risk to smugglers and people traffickers. For one young woman CHASTE worked with, an early pregnancy resulted in ostracisation from her mother and loss of her ‘illegitimate’ child drove her into a misplaced trust in her boyfriend who subsequently pimped her. Subsequently concerns for the welfare of her baby and a natural desire to be reunited with her child informed her search for freedom from the sex work in which she had become embroiled on the streets of Milan.
Family jealousies saw Joseph sold into slavery to the commercial hub of Egypt. The active slave market serviced by the camel train continued to be the supply line of a range of goods, spices, textiles, people and armaments. Today young camel riders are supplied from Bangladesh into the tourist and racing markets of the United Arab Emirates. One such youngster Amarei sold into this trade at the tender age of 5 reported that
" If I made a mistake I was beaten with a stick. When I said I wanted to go home I was told I never would. I didn't enjoy camel racing, I was really afraid. I fell off many times. When I won prizes several times, such as money and a car, the camel owner took everything. I never got anything, no money, nothing; my family also got nothing."
Meanwhile our TV screens have seen the marauding incursions of the Baggara tribe in western Sudan, attacking primarily villages of the Dinka tribe whilst the The Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) fighting the Sudanese government frequently takes villagers to be porters and labourers of the rebel army. It is estimated that over the last forty years more people in the Sudan have lost their lives than the total of those involved in the conflicts of Kosovo, Ruanda and Bosnia combined.
Joseph will have suffered the indignity not only of an arduous journey where he would have endured the range of dangers encountered today. Dehydration, sleepless nights, sun-stroke, blistered skin, countless fears, rape, beatings, terror, fear of life itself was a part of that journey passed over in half a verse in the Genesis account. Finally the journey end, sold on through a slave market from his initial captors. Here he would likely have been stripped, prodded, leered over, laughed at, tested for his strength, his virility, even his desirability, his bidability. Although the majority of those sold into Sex trafficking in Europe are women, there are a substantial number of young men who service the demand for sex for cash, at clear risk to their health and their long term welfare if they return to their country of origin where homosexuality is met with the death-dealing hostility of state and religious authorities alike.
The slave market which Joseph experienced is still a part of today’s trade in flesh. In the Natashas an exceptional piece of investigative writing by Canadian Journalist Victor Malarek reports the following chilling testimony from a traded young woman in the markets scattered across the Balkans.
They have to stand naked for hours a day while men come and look them over. They look at their breasts, the colour of their skin and check to see if they have rashes or pimples. The girls have to dress up to look like prostitutes and put on make up. Those who resist are isolated, beaten and terrorised. It’s even more humiliating for them if they are considered ugly. They are treated worse than animals with what they are forced to do. You have a full range of traffickers from cruel to vicious.
Women and young men treated worse than animals, and traded without regard to their integrity as human beings, equal to those who buy, sell and purchase pieces of their disintegrating lives. For most of us the level of abuse is unimaginable. To be so vulnerable, with no control on where we can call home, subject to unprovoked attack, rendered homeless if we fall pregnant, left to sleep out rough in bus shelters in a country where we don’t speak the language. No control over our hours of work, our bodies accessed by others to do with them what they wish. Beaten, raped, flesh burnt with cigarettes, cut with knives, pierced with needles, our hearts pumping blood around a body which is no longer ours but ‘owned’ by somebody else. 24 hours a day – 7 days a week – isolated, away from former friends, families, colleagues, in a country whose culture, geography and language are all strange. This is what happened to Joseph, and is still occurring today.
Before we leave the subject of the abuse of young males, we also need to remember the sex holiday market through which men and women from the wealthy North purchase the bodies of poor men and women of the southern continents. Abuse is across gender – but is clearly related to financial and cultural power. The dominance of the economies of the United States, European Union and Japan clearly mark these countries as those of demand – into which both sexes – from countries all over the world are drawn, and from whom purchasers in the guise of tourists, pour out in number facilitated by increasing air routes and the pre-selection services of the internet.
Esther – women caught in collusion.
The account of Queen Esther and her strategic opportunism in co-operation with a key Jewish politician in the court of King Haseurus, is frequently cited as an example of women’s empowerment. However this account like that of Joseph is ambiguous. There are new dimensions which emerge when set in the context of human trafficking. Esther’s arrival in the court of King Haseurus was a result of systematic violence undertaken by the state in its relentless quest for increased access to territory. Behind this expansion lay the violent suppression of competing kingdoms through siege, pillage and the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. Haseurus’ war machine needed manpower to refresh its ranks, and women to service the court’s leisure requirements. The sophisticated harems of ancient empires, managed by castrated males – a massive intrusive surgery of whose morbidity rate we have no statistics – have no direct equivalence today. Word of the concubinage which is practiced in certain countries of the Middle East, may bear some resemblance. However the sex industry of Britain now ‘employs’ seventy percent of its workforce from areas outside the United Kingdom. In Italy we know that there is a premium on exotica with black women being particularly valued. In Britain the youthful stature of Taiwanese women is much prized. As in King Haseurus’ court, women and young men from all nations, sourced by the power of contemporary globalisation, pour into the ‘harems’ of the countries of the G8. King Haseurus had the power to source whatever voluptuous beauty he desired from the known and conquered world. Today the power and disabling nature of global commercialisation is terrifying. In countries like Ukraine and Romania, towns and villages have been emptied of their youth, both male and female in a flight to the economies of the west. The relentless march of urbanisation and monetarisation – has virtually enslaved weaker economies to the power of the most robust, assertive, imperialist and resourced. In the Ukraine alone it was estimated by their ministry of home affairs, that in the decade of 1985-1995 400,000 women left the country, many of whom were thought to have become embroiled in sex trafficked networks supplying the markets of Russia, the Middle East, the European Union and the United States of America.
Like other people’s stories, Esther’s story cannot be read in isolation. Her story of capture and exile, needs to be read alongside that of Queen Vashti’s fall from grace. Patriarchy is powerful. None of the harem, not even the queen had any independent rights apart from the approval of the King. Esther is a replacement. She is the substitute for a woman who dared assert her independence. Vashti protested, she refused to break up her private dinner party to attend the King and his guests. The call went to her private apartments for her to attend the King’s pleasure to display the beauty of her nakedness. That beauty would manifest his power. His ability to select, keep, call as required, beautiful women to enhance his reputation. The thrill of his party, the celebration of his successful year of campaigning, his rising status as the man of the hour, would be rendered without doubt through the demonstration of female beauty which he owned.
The flow of women from the Commonwealth of Independent States, many African Nations, and much of Asia into Europe, follows this flow out of poverty and disruption, into the land of porphyry and gold. The women are called to display for the pleasure and ego needs of the King – not as a celebration of their own loveliness, their personal freedom, or their desires. Vashti was happy with her women within the harem – but was wrested to dance and display. Her refusal was followed by banishment. Her punishment was abrupt and terminal. It was designed to send a clear warning to all women to obey their husbands, otherwise their lot would be similar. This use of violence, of aggressive power frequently wielded by men, is redolent in the testimonies of those who are caught in trafficking. Alongside women colluding in the structures which wreak terror, submission and subservience, sex trafficking has much around it which is submerged in popular accounts of Esther; concerned as they are with her fortitude chutzpah in addressing the King directly to protect the Jewish population from yet another pogrom.
Tamar – abuse within the family
Shocking stories – unacceptable parts of our human history are recorded in the scriptures – often inadequately reflected on but there nevertheless to be worked on. Tamar, a young princess is raped by her own brother. The double taboo of rape and incest speaks very powerfully into many submerged and hidden areas of abuse which young women and men have to bear. In a recent survey of those recovering in the Poppy project, the Home Office supported safe housing scheme which provides 25 beds for those escaping trafficking, up to half of the survivors, had been attacked within their own homes from a male known to them. A further substantial number had experienced the humiliation and the long term domesticated abuse of incest. This silent abuse which children bear within their own households, is something which at last UK society is beginning to respond to with appropriate levels of protection. However there are many places in the world where child-protection schemes are not in place, and where the authorities have neither will nor resources to see change occur. Tamar could have been as young as 14. She could have been pubescent and not into her age of maturity. She was unprotected and when raped took the brunt of the shame of her family. In many source countries for the contemporary sex market of the North, women’s rights are not protected, nor is the vulnerability of young people to sexual assault within their own families taken into account in the blame which is ascribed to those who fall pregnant, or become sick with HIV due to their abuse. Maturity and consensuality are fundamental tenets of sexual relationship which are acceptable within civilised society that we frequently fail to stop and look around what is happening within the sex trade in our country. The recent government white paper on prostitution and sex work, ‘Paying the Price’ alerted the government to findings that a large number of young women currently involved in the sex industry – either in on street prostitution or in massage parlours and brothels had dysfunctional family backgrounds – or had been introduced to sex at an early age. These statistics display an abusive history which counters the myth that sex in payment for money is truly consensual. It is not only the abuse of sex trafficking to which we should be paying attention but also that of the sex trade in general. Tamar reminds us that violence against women carried out in the home is an enduring feature of abuse in society which needs a fundamental rethink in most countries if the woman is not be blamed and carry the brunt of the opprobrium of society.
Rahab – ‘a foreign woman ’
Whilst we are on the subject of long histories of abuse, we would do well to remember that which is mistakenly called the oldest profession. Rahab is the generous but treacherous woman who is recorded in the Genesis account as a prostitute who helps Joshua’s spies escape from the city – let down in a basket from her quarters. A thin red cord is the sign from her apartments which save her and her household from destruction when the Israelite armies attack the city. Rahab brings about the down-fall of an entire city. Extraordinarily, but significantly she is remembered in the book of Hebrews as an illustration of faith, but in other histories she could have been remembered very differently. Commentators scarcely skip a beat in their writing, to consider why Rahab betrays the welfare of her city and its many inhabitants. Her actions must lead us to the conclusion that the welfare of the city is not on her heart. More than likely the city was not her birth place, and the people it served not her people. She could well have been a migrant sex worker, brought to the city by famine, war, kidnap, marriage or household breakdown In any event the interest of the city was not hers, and she happily surrendered the safety of her neighbours into the hands of Joshua and his people.
Her story raises some interesting questions around those who are trafficked into our cities today to work in the brothels, massage parlours and private apartments today, to provide sex for those with money to purchase. What are their concerns – their thoughts – their loyalties. Exploited by indigenous and migrant population males alike, what view do they have of our country, our communities, our welfare as they experience the devaluation of their lives and bodies, day after day and night after night. Christians might ask what view of God they are left with as their lives disappear into an unremitting experience of what is to all extents and purposes multiple rape. For those snatched moments of 20 minutes of their bodies for someone else’s lust, fantasy, physical relief is violation. It is not consensual, it isn’t entered into with informed and protected consent. What view are they left with of themselves? After weeks and months of threats, enforced sexual work, deceit, beatings, separation from friends and family, foresworn all outside contact apart from pimps, clients and other young women working in massage parlours, secured houses, and parties.
Rahab was happy to see the city destroyed around her, and was protected from annihilation. Today with the cities of our world hubs of widespread sexual exploitation there are many Rahab’s wondering where rescue is going to come from. The churches though not engaged in the destruction of the city, need to keep their eyes and ears open to hear the cry of the trafficked sex worker longing for release – a way out from the oppression in which they are immersed, and the national sex worker whose options have become so limited that this world of sexual exploitation has become her only perceived means of fulfilling her ambitions or paying off her pimp.
We have in this article raised stories exclusively from the Old Testament. There are of course other sources from which we could draw in the New Testament – the woman who comes to Jesus and anoints him with precious nard, her hair and her tears – or the woman at the well to whom Jesus reveals the meaning of his mission and becomes the first Apostle. We have been asking, who is it that has the interpretative right to speak the Bible to us, or make our liturgy or speak for our organisation - from whose location and from whose perspective is this work undertaken? What happens when we start to move the interpretation from that of the conquerors, from the power centres and the winners, and look at the experience from the underside, from the unclothed, naked, vulnerable, exposed, desperate places – from those whose lives are being used up in the making of others history?
Dependent on who interprets, whose perspective is dominant, and who the intended audience is thought to be, will affect the way that we undertake our liturgy, engage our spirituality and understand what it means to be Church. We come to realise what it means to be disciples of the one who accompanies people into areas of rejection, violation, and failure, and against all odds turns the life story round – but as we have seen with the story of Tamar not inevitably.
Esther, Vashti, Tamar, Rahab, and Joseph are all stories of violence, of patriarchy, of jealousy, of sharp contrasts in wealth and poverty, power and weakness, of deceit, of exploitation, of greed which resonate with the contemporary world of trafficking in human bodies. This is our world the world in which we are called to be God’s people and within it God is still at work. There is still that invitation extended to us to step with him on the underside, into the world of the massage parlour, the slave markets, the erotic bars, the parties fuelled by drugs and women and young men on demand.
I have to say the Church is not very marked by its presence in this area. Indeed it was only 2 spies who found Rahab, and then failed to do a great deal for her personal safety or guarantee her liberation when the City fell. This should not surprise us. Organisations, whether religious or not, find this area extremely problematic – if not somewhat distasteful. Better to stay away from it – as you stay away from the pit with Joseph in it – or leave him in the prison with the rest of those who have upset the might of Pharaoh. It takes imagination, courage and resilience to stay in this area of alienation, of brutalisation, of traded flesh and lost dreams. The brutalisation of everything glorious in the Genesis moment of wonder where flesh was recognised as common flesh and bone of similarly breakable bone. Mutuality is denied and those with power brutalise the weak. And this theme works out between nations as well as individuals. Social Justice programmes such as Make Poverty history is part of the critical engagement in this area . We must tear down the divisions in wealth and political power which separate us from one another and enable alienated patterns of behaviour. But Sex Trafficking in the end will bring us sharply up against the age-old abuse of older people on the bodies of younger, and male exploitation of women through the misuse of sexual accessibility. The stories of Esther, Tamar, Rahab as well as that of Joseph show us how deep this motivations and behaviours are in the weft of the Scriptures, and provide for us another dimension for us to reflect and consider how we could respond and resource ourselves from the mine of God’s Holy Word with the tools to help us resist and effect change.
Our engagement with trafficking can be undertaken at a huge variety of levels. We can look at it from the perspective of halting the powerful imperial forces of the corporations in their search for profits without responsibility or accountability. We can work towards richer political accountability on nations which do not respond to the abuse of women. We can struggle for increased autonomy and respect for women and seek to build equality between men and women as a realisable goal in every corner of the earth. This implies equality, respect, consensuality and safety in every home, work place, church, mosque, bed-room, school, business, factory floor and board room. This in itself would do a fantastic job in reducing the numbers flowing across the camel trains of the enslaved, deceived, sold, ousted, women children and young men being moved across borders as part of the alternative wealth creation of those excluded from the technical and knowledge revolution of the West. Once listened to the voice of these excluded men, women and children, can never be silenced. The voices of Vashti and Tamar shall once again be heard in the halls of worship and the city gate.
- http://www.antislavery.org/homepage/antislavery/childlabour.htm#where
- http://www.religioustolerance.org/sla_sud.htm;
All sermons & related content © C. Pemberton