Holy Words, Harmful Acts: investigating abuse in religious contexts

The Shiloh Project investigates the complex relationships between religious organisations, sacred texts, and sexual harm.

Named after a story in the Book of Judges – the seventh book of the Jewish Bible and Christian Old Testament – which features brutal descriptions of rape (e.g. Judges 19–21), the project is aimed at addressing the prevalence of rape culture phenomena, sexualised microaggressions, harassment, rape, assault and other forms of gender-based violence.

These issues resonate throughout history and remain significant today, so the project seeks to call out, prevent and find ways to respond to and heal from sexual and sexualised harm. This focuses especially on harm in religious settings or harm brought about through weaponising religious authority or religious texts.

Through collaborations and community-focused approaches, the Shiloh Project aims not only to foster awareness but also to create meaningful change by connecting insights about religious phenomena and sacred texts with lived experiences and direct engagement. The project's impact lies in its potential to shape conversations around sexual harm within religious contexts and to empower communities to address these critical issues effectively.

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Impact

• Community collaboration: creating awareness and shaping conversations about sexual harm through the insights and needs of people with lived experience
• Policy impact: as part of the AHRC-funded project Abuse in Religious Settings, urged for the implementation of recommendations by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), including not giving special exemption to religious organisations. These are being adopted.

Key Information

• Major funders: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)
• Partners and collaborators: University of Botswana, Ujamaa Centre (South Africa), Emang Basadi (Botswana), Legabibo (Botswana), University of Auckland and University of Otago (both Aotearoa New Zealand)
• Disciplines: theology and religious studies, biblical studies
• Investigators: Professor Johanna Stiebert, Dr Katie Edwards
• Project partners: Mmapula Kebaneilwe, Chris Greenough, Emily Colgan, Richard Newton, Caroline Blyth, Miryam Clough, Rocío Figueroa, Lisa Spriggens, David Tombs and George Zachariah. Several are contributing authors to the toolkit, with Caroline Blyth and Emily Colgan as editors of the toolkit.

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Stereotypical attitudes towards rape in society

According to the charity Rape Crisis, one in four women and one in 18 men in England and Wales have been raped or sexually assaulted since the age of 16.

The actual figures could perhaps be even higher, given that most survivors don't report incidents to the police.

Stereotypical attitudes towards rape – such as those involving dark alleyways or violent strangers – prevail. Yet one in three adults who is raped is raped in their own home.

For Johanna Stiebert, Professor of Hebrew Bible in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds, these shocking statistics reflect the prevalence of rape culture within society.

It’s why she co-founded the Shiloh Project, an international and collaborative investigation into the intersections of rape culture with religion and the Bible.

“Sadly, rape, sexual assault and gender-based violence are nothing new, although awareness of these topics has grown in recent years with movements like #MeToo,” Professor Stiebert said.

“But precisely because such violence is relatively commonplace, or normalised, and often happens behind closed doors, between perpetrators and victims who know one another, many people still have something of a blind spot when it comes to what we call rape culture.”

As part of the Shiloh Project, Johanna applies her experience as a biblical scholar to explore the historical and contemporary relationships between sexualised violence and religion – an at times contentious, controversial subject.

 

A new perspective on tackling gender-based violence

But why this focus?

With the most recent Census of 2021 showing a 13 per cent drop in the number of people calling themselves Christian and a 12 per cent rise in those claiming no religion, do matters like sexual assault need to be examined through such a lens? Is it not becoming passé and irrelevant?

“I think Christian religion and the Bible have a much bigger influence on our society today than some might appreciate,” Johanna said.

“As the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby perhaps showed, many people see the church and religious leaders as sources of moral guidance; there are expectations – and outrage when they fall short – even among those with no faith.”

This view has arguably gained traction recently, with popular historians like Tom Holland contending that values commonly shared by most people today, such as valuing every human life equally or that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering, have been shaped by the centuries-long influence of Christianity.

“Words like ‘forgiveness’, ‘sacrifice’ and ‘atonement’ that we all use regularly without a second thought all come from a religious space,” Johanna said.

“You might not regard yourself as a believer, but because so many of our legal and social frameworks were built on religious foundations, it’s only natural that these have influenced our perspectives on the world around us - whether we realise it or not.”

From a personal perspective, Johanna’s time as a lecturer at the University of Botswana impacted her thinking.

“I was there for three years at the turn of the millennium,” she said.

“At first, I suppose, I was a fairly traditional Bible scholar who was drawn to the field through the biblical languages, literatures and history.”

“But it was the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic; if the statistics were right, half my students were HIV positive, and people were dying all around me, including a colleague who was hired along with me.”

While gradually and necessarily becoming more inured to some of these grim aspects of her surroundings, much as rape culture becomes normalised to those who live in it— Johanna nevertheless experienced something of a transformation that would shape her career over the decades to come.

“People in Botswana, my students, were less interested in the historical context of Jesus or of the scriptures; there was far more interest in the way the Bible spoke to their environment and related to their present-day circumstances,” Johanna said.

“It made me realise that I could approach my subject in ways that could be transformative, meaningful and relevant; teaching the Bible could also teach about making a positive difference. And gender-based violence that affects so many lives is a great example of a pressing need to which biblical texts could direct urgent attention.”

“Indeed, such work was already happening around me, notably at the Ujamaa Centre in Pietermaritzburg (South Africa), which pioneered a method called Contextual Bible Study - of reading the Bible for social change and social justice,” Johanna explained.

Reaching communities on the ground

A one-week visit to Botswana and South Africa in 2017, enabled by support from a University of Leeds research fund and the Higher Education Funding Council Newton Fund, saw the team meet representatives from local NGOs and discuss the teaching of gender-based violence awareness with the country’s Minister for Basic Education.

“It was really positive and exciting, but just the start of things to come,” Johanna said.

In fact, further grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) allowed the researchers to develop the Shiloh Project further.

"That was in 2019 when Botswana decriminalised homosexuality," Johanna, whose own book Rape Myths, the Bible, and #MeToo was published in the same year, said.

“Suddenly, we were able to safely, legally, extend the public conversations we wanted to have into spaces that we would previously have had a harder time entering.”

Through educational workshops, collaborations with Botswana’s LGBTQ+ rights group Legabibo and South Africa’s Ujamaa Centre, the dissemination of resources, as well as through public discussion and performance art, the Shiloh Project team learned about and contributed to more inclusive public debate in Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa.

After securing grants from the AHRC and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), Johanna, co-investigator Katie Edwards, and University of Botswana-based partner Mmapula Kebaneilwe embarked on a new project with a focus on key areas of southern Africa.

"That early work was designed to use biblical texts to open up conversations - because you can't just show up somewhere and say ‘let’s talk about rape’,” Johanna said.

“Biblical texts facilitate focus because of the respect they’re accorded, so they enabled us to have discussions with local citizens and officials about things like how rape culture relates to the Bible, or how biblical imagery in popular culture promotes sexist and racist stereotyping as well as gender-based violence.”

A global challenge

Meanwhile, some 7,000 miles away from Botswana, the Shiloh Project was also exploring issues of gender-based and sexual harm in religious contexts of Aotearoa New Zealand. Both Shiloh Project co-founder Caroline Blyth and current co-director Emily Colgan are based here, and there was a ferment of creative ideas.

"We were going to put on plays and burlesque shows to get the Bible out there into public spaces for discussion," Johanna said.

It wasn’t to be.

It’s important for churches and organisations to realise that the trends we see in general society are reflected in their communities as well

“COVID-19 hit, and it was devastating to our plans," Johanna said.

“We had to rise to it and make the situation work for us, so we got into podcasting and held regular Zoom calls while locked down in various corners of the Earth.”

Undeterred, the team knew that the focus of their work in Aotearoa New Zealand would remain relevant throughout and in the wake of the pandemic; a Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in state care there was announced in 2018 and soon expanded to include the abuse of people in the care of religious institutions.

“It’s important for churches and organisations to realise that the trends we see in general society are reflected in their communities as well," Johanna, who is a dual German-New Zealand citizen, said.

“Religious institutions must also acknowledge that sexual harm is perpetrated within those communities, sometimes by those in positions of power, and that in all such cases, they have a duty to respond decisively and with care."

To that end, the project’s researchers canvassed stakeholders from Anglican, Methodist and Roman Catholic communities to gather information and understand what churches need to identify, prevent, confront and heal from sexual harm.

A toolkit for change

Based on insights from this investigation, a team of contributors and editors developed  ‘Accompanying Survivors of Sexual Harm: A Toolkit for Churches’.

The toolkit has been used in other settings – including in the UK, India, Kenya,  Ghana, and the Philippines – and indications are that it is applicable in other settings also

The document explores how churches can create safe spaces for survivors, as well as explains some of the theological foundations that might enable or ‘legitimise’ sexual harm while silencing survivors’ voices.

“It’s being rolled out widely across New Zealand for ordination training and is helping to put spiritual abuse, religious trauma, sexual abuse and the exploitation of power in religious spaces on the radar,” Johanna said.

“Also, although it was written in and for the specific Aotearoa New Zealand context, it can be adapted for use elsewhere.

“The toolkit has been used in other settings – including in the UK, India, Kenya,  Ghana, and the Philippines – and indications are that it is applicable in other settings also. Still, we are looking at researching, trialling, and creating bespoke versions in, with and for other communities also.”

Remembering the survivors

Professor Stiebert is not personally attached to any religious tradition or community.

This isn’t a theoretical theological exercise; there are real survivors out there with real stories

But she passionately believes that by working with biblical texts and with religious communities, she and her colleagues in the Shiloh Project can raise awareness and change mindsets.

“This isn’t a theoretical theological exercise; there are real survivors out there with real stories,” she said.

One story in particular resonated loudly with Johanna.

“In the biblical rape account, King David sees a woman named Bathsheba bathing, calls for her to be brought to him and gets her pregnant despite knowing she is married to one of his army’s soldiers.

“Well, in a recent survivor testimony, a woman explained how a now-convicted religious leader used to voyeuristically observe her bathing – a parallel that has meant I won’t ever read the account of David and Bathsheba in the same way again.”

“It’s a reminder that the work we do, as raw and emotional as it can be, truly matters.”

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Professor Johanna Stiebert

Johanna Stiebert is Professor of the Hebrew Bible in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds.

Researching issues such as biblical terminology of rape culture phenomena and contemporary African-centred readings of Biblical texts, Johanna has co-authored two recent books, Marriage, Bible, Violence: Intersections and Impacts and Sacred Queer Stories: Ugandan LGBTQ+ Refugee Lives and the Bible.

Professor Stiebert joined Leeds in 2009 after teaching courses at St Martin’s College in Lancaster, the University of Botswana and the University of Tennessee.