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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

5. Who’s to Bless and Who’s to Blame

Author : Jennifer K. Lobasz

Published in: Constructing Human Trafficking

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter examines the construction of human trafficking as a problem by asking how subjects are made intelligible and practices made possible through the predominantly evangelical Christian religious abolitionist discourse. This chapter discusses the core tenets of the religious movement, considers its recent connections to US political life, and assesses evangelical influences on anti-trafficking advocacy. The chapter then argues that religious abolitionism is deeply shaped by (1) evangelical Christian styles of rhetoric and justification, (2) evangelicals’ emphasis on the struggle between good and evil, (3) the principle of imago Dei, and (4) evangelical beliefs regarding sexuality. This chapter compares the approach of abolitionists who see trafficking as a problem revolving around the international prostitution of women and children with those who ground a comparatively broader understanding in anti-slavery campaigns. The chapter concludes that the articulation of human trafficking to slavery creates space within abolitionist discourse for reconceptualizing human trafficking.

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previous chapter “Especially Women and Children”

next chapter Victims, Villains, and the Virtuous

Allen D. Hertzke, Freeing God’s Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), 3.

The scriptures are shared but not identical. The seven “deuterocanonical” books of the Catholic Old Testament are included in neither the Protestant Old Testament nor the Hebrew Bible, while the order of books in the Hebrew Bible differs significantly from both Christian versions. See William Safire, “The New Old Testament,” The New York Times Magazine, May 25, 1997.

In this book, I capitalize “evangelical” only when used as a proper noun. I use “evangelicalism” to refer to a religious movement, and “evangelism” to refer to the practice of spreading the message of Christianity in the pursuit of religious conversion.

Joel A. Nichols, “Evangelicals and Human Rights: The Continuing Ambivalence of Evangelical Christians’ Support for Human Rights,” Journal of Law and Religion 7 (2009): 106. For a similar, widely-accepted definition of evangelicalism, see David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 2–19.

Monique El-Faizy, God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America’s New Mainstream (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2006), 10. See also Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE), “Defining Evangelicalism,” Wheaton College, accessed September 29, 2009, http://isae.wheaton.edu/defining-evangelicalism/.

El-Faizy, 9–10.

“A devout Catholic, Smith traces his political convictions to his upbringing in the faith. As former director of New Jersey Right-to-Life, Smith entered Congress as a fierce opponent of abortion, which led some in the press to lump him into the new Christian Right movement. But throughout his career Smith has been supportive of labor unions, spending on poor children, international relief programs, and human rights, with a notably liberal voting record on a number of issues. In a sense he represents the distinct Roman Catholic political witness that combines more progressive economic ideas with traditional moral teachings.” Hertzke, 137.

Martin J. Medhurst, “Forging a Civil-Religious Construct for the Twenty-First Century,” in The Political Pulpit Revisited, ed. Roderick P. Hart and John L. Pauley (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2005), 157. See also Nicholas D. Kristof, “Learning from the Sin of Sodom,” The New York Times, February 28, 2010.

El-Faizy, 62. The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals specifies: “Most self-described fundamentalist churches today are conservative, separatist Baptist (though often calling themselves “Bible Baptist” or simply “Bible” churches) congregations such as the churches of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC), or the Independent Fundamental Churches of America (IFCA). Institutions associated with this movement would include Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and Tennessee Temple (Chattanooga, TN); representative publications would be The Sword of the Lord and The Biblical Evangelist.” Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE), “Defining Evangelicalism: Fundamentalism,” Wheaton College, accessed September 29, 2009, http://isae.wheaton.edu/defining-evangelicalism/fundamentalism/.

D. Michael Lindsay, “Evangelicals in the Power Elite: Elite Cohesion Advancing a Movement,” American Sociological Review 73 (2008); Hertzke, 116.

El-Faizy, 10.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2006), 46.

Evangelical Covenant Church, “2008 Resolution on Global Slavery and Human Trafficking,” Evangelical Covenant Church, accessed September 29, 2009, http://www.covchurch.org/2008-slavery-human-trafficking/.

The term “proof texting” can be used as both a neutral reference to the skillful use of individual Bible verses for the purpose of establishing the scriptural validity of one’s argument (i.e., a form of Biblical exegesis), and as a pejorative reference to the opportunistic selection of verses taken out of their historical and literary context for the purpose of supporting a position that is either absent from or actually contradicts scripture.

See National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), “Statement of Faith,” accessed September 29, 2009, http://www.nae.net/about-us/statement-of-faith.

Billy Graham, The Journey: How to Live by Faith in an Uncertain World (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2006), 98.

Hertzke, 164.

Hertzke, 98. On the significance off evil in U.S. evangelical politics, see Ronald R. Krebs and Jennifer K. Lobasz, “Fixing the Meaning of 9/11: Hegemony, Coercion, and the Road to War in Iraq,” Security Studies 16, no. 3 (2007): 425–29.

Graham, 36.

Ibid.

Ibid., 35.

Gary A. Haugen, Good News About Injustice (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 46.

Ibid., 47. I thank Janel Kragt Bakker for drawing my attention to an additional dynamic at work in Haugen’s argument—“the more recent efforts on behalf of socially conscious evangelicals to convince the rest of the evangelical fold that sin is not just individual but systemic—and that as God’s good though fallen creation, the world is valuable and therefore worth redeeming. Haugen is part of a segment of evangelicals countering a purely otherworldly spirituality.” Janel Kragt Bakker, Personal Communication, E-Mail, April 26, 2011.

Haugen, Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World, 54–60.

Ibid., 83.

Graham, 50.

Christians strongly disagree among themselves regarding the imminence of this event and the specific chronology of episodes said to be foretold such as Christ’s expected 1000 year reign over the earth, the rapture, and the final battle between the armies of Christ and of Satan. See ibid., 306; Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE), “Evangelicals and the End Times,” Wheaton College, accessed September 29, 2009, http://www.wheaton.edu/ISAE/Defining-Evangelicalism/End-Times.

Haugen, in contrast, refers more frequently to the Christian obligation to care for the oppressed and less fortunate as established in Isaiah 1:17. He explains, “Isaiah 1:17 says, ‘Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow’ [IJM exists] as an organization to help Christians understand that deeply but also act upon it with obedience.” Quoted in Francis Helguero, “Recovering God’s Justice: Interview with International Justice Mission President Gary Haugen,” The Christian Post, March 7, 2005; See also Haugen, Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World, 17, 22, 27, 46, 76, 178, 212, 16, 41; and Samantha Power, “The Enforcer: A Christian Lawyer’s Global Crusade,” The New Yorker, January 19, 2009.

, 137.

Smith quoted in ibid. See also Shirley Love Rayburn and Danielle Paxton, “Set the Captives Free: A Bible Study Accompaniment to Not for Sale,” (Montara, CA: Not for Sale Campaign, 2009), Week 2, Encounter 3.

Nichols, 121.

Graham, 26.

“How to Win Friends and Influence Culture,” Christianity Today, September 2005, 75.

Anne Morse, “The Abolitionist,” World Magazine, March 1, 2003.

Charles F. Irons, The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 25; See also Peter J. Thuesen, “The Logic of Mainline Churchliness: Historical Background since the Reformation,” in The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism, ed. Robert Wuthnow and John Hyde Evans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 36–37; and Ronald C. Potter, “Good Question: Was Slavery God’s Will?,” Christianity Today, May 22, 2000.

Free the Slaves, “Faith in Action: Christianity,” Free the Slaves, accessed September 29, 2009, http://www.freetheslaves.net/take-action/faith-in-action-ending-slavery/.

Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking, “What Is the Initiative against Sexual Trafficking,” The Salvation Army, accessed September 29, 2009, http://www.iast.net.

Nina Shapiro, “The New Abolitionists,” Seattle Weekly, August 25, 2004.

Amy DeRogatis, “‘Born Again Is a Sexual Term’: Demons, STDs, and God’s Healing Sperm,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2009): 281.

Ronald J. Sider, “Justice, Human Rights, and Government,” in Toward an Evangelical Public Policy, ed. Ronald J. Sider and Diane Knippers (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2005), 185. See also Tom Minnery and Glenn T. Stanton, “Family Integrity,” ibid.

George W. Bush, “Remarks at the National Training Conference on Human Trafficking in Tampa, Fl,” in Presidential Documents Online (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2004) .

Krebs and Lobasz; Roderick P. Hart and John L. Pauley, The Political Pulpit Revisited (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2005); and Garry Wills, Head and Heart: American Christianities (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), 498.

Krebs and Lobasz.

Hertzke, 42; See also Mark R Amstutz, “Faith-Based NGOs and U.S. Foreign Policy,” in The Influence of Faith: Religious Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy, ed. Elliott Abrams (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefied Publishers, Inc., 2001). Horowitz, a neoconservative now at the Hudson Institute, had formerly been President Ronald Reagan’s general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Hertzke, 76. Marshall J. Breger elaborates: “Horowitz is a unique person in this story. While not connected with the organized Jewish community, he comes from a strong Jewish background […] He threw himself into the cause of persecuted Christians with zeal and was both a moral catalyst and a political advisor to the effort. He alternatively bullied and shamed the evangelicals into greater efforts, while seeking coalitions with unlikely suspects and particularly with the Jewish community.” “Evangelicals and Jews in Common Cause,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 44, no. 1 (2009).

Horowitz, 75.

E. Benjamin Skinner, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery (New York: Free Press, 2009), 50. Morse implies that the Baptists had not realized Horowitz was Jewish. Anne Morse, “Screaming People Awake,” World Magazine, February 3, 2001.

Michael Specter, “Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naïve Slavic Women,” The New York Times, January 11, 1998.

Hertzke, 150, 321; Ori Nir, “US Official Does ‘God’s Work’: Eradicating Slavery,” Forward: The Jewish Daily, May 7, 2004; and Skinner, 51.

At the time, Smith described herself as an active member of an Assemblies of God Church. Linda Smith, From Congress to the Brothel: A Journey of Hope, Healing, and Restoration (Vancouver, WA: Shared Hope International, 2007), 13–14. According to Shapiro, Smith now attends a nondenominational Christian church.

Shapiro; Smith, 13–14.

Ibid., 16–17. She has since founded Shared Hope International, a network of safe houses and rehabilitation programs for victims of sexual exploitation, and the War Against Trafficking Alliance.

International Justice Mission, “Speaker—Gary Haugen, President and CEO,” accessed September 29, 2009, http://www.ijm.org/resources/garyhaugen. For a discussion of Haugen’s political influence, see Power.

Power.

Hertzke, 324.

The politically liberal Saperstein became associated with the cause after having already been successfully courted by Horowitz to support the cause of international religious freedom. Hertzke quotes Horowitz as describing Saperstein “as a man whom I love and with whom I agree on almost nothing.” Ibid., 153.

Ibid., 325.

Ibid., 116.

Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations, Hearing on Trafficking of Women and Children in the International Sex Trade, 106th Cong. 1st session, September 14, 1999, 4.

Ibid., 43.

J. Scott Orr, “House Panel Moves to Stem Sex-Slave Trade and Aid Victims,” The Star-Ledger, August 5, 1999.

Hearing on Trafficking of Women and Children in the International Sex Trade, 41.

Skinner, 53.

Notably, when Linda Smith compares the biblical story of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) to the experience of a trafficking survivor named Charity, Smith singles out Judah and Charity’s abusive stepfather for condemnation. Smith, 75–80.

Tim Alan Gardner, Sacred Sex: A Spiritual Celebration of Oneness in Marriage (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press, 2002), 1.

David B. Batstone, Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade—And How We Can Fight It (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007).

Rayburn and Paxton, Week 5, Encounter 1.

The Salvation Army, “National Anti-trafficking Council,” accessed September 29, 2009, http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf/vw-dynamic-index/FBC65EB916B7547F852574400063B682?Opendocument.

Ibid.

Mary Ellen Dougherty, “The Role of Faith-Based Organizations in the Fight against Trafficking in Persons” (paper presented at the A Call to Action: Joining the Fight Against Trafficking in Persons, The Pontifical Gregorian University, June 17, 2004), 27.

The IAST, a coalition of Christian churches and parachurch organizations launched by the NAE in 1999, moved its home base to the Salvation Army in 2001. See Mark R. Elliott, “Faith-Based Responses to Trafficking in Women from Eastern Europe,” in Lilly Fellows Program National Research Conference on Christianity and Human Rights (Birmingham, AL: Samford University, 2004), 9.

The Salvation Army, “What Is Human Trafficking?” The Salvation Army, accessed September 29, 2009, http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/combating-human-trafficking.

Evangelical Covenant Church.

John R. Miller, “Call It Slavery,” Wilson Quarterly 32, no. 3 (2008).

Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking; See also Thompson quoted in Kathryn Jean Lopez, “Sexual Gulags: Facing and Fighting Sex Trafficking,” National Review Online. One might also note the mingling here of prostitution, the enslavement of black Africans, and “white slavery .”

Thompson quoted in Barry recognizes Butler’s religious motivation, but notes that Butler’s feminist leanings led her to different conclusions than those made by the Salvation Army and other “religious moralists.” Kathleen Barry, Female Sexual Slavery (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 29.