S1E6 Engaging Faith and Spiritual Leaders

This podcast examines issues on violence driven by gender inequality, a profound and widespread global health problem that is likely to have personally touched the lives of our listeners. Listen with care and compassion and please talk to someone should anything come up for you while listening to this episode. For more resources email [email protected]. Gender-based violence is a patriarchal issue and therefore in a patriarchal system where there's religion, where there's legal practices, we are dealing with this issue where everything is from the patriarchal lens. You're listening to the sexual violence research podcast from the SVRI. I'm Elizabeth Dartnall and I am Angelica Pin. Our vision is to see a world free of violence against women and violence against children and in this podcast we'll learn how to make that vision a reality. In today's episode we're exploring the issue of engaging faith and spiritual leaders in addressing gender-based violence. Today we're going to hear from Shruti Majumda, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist at the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women. It's a grant-making mechanism. It's housed at UN Women and has over the last 25 years partnered with and supported primarily civil society organizations in pursuing the ending violence against women and girls agenda. We've supported organizations like women's rights organizations, youth groups, indigenous communities, faith-based and traditional leaders, human rights organizations, the media. To date we've supported over 600 initiatives in 140 countries and territories across the globe. We will also meet Elisabeth LaRue, Research Director at the Unit for Religion and Development Research at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. We kind of see ourselves or the way I think of the unit is as a bridge on the one hand between academia and praxis but then also between practitioners and policymakers but then also between academia and policymakers around this space of religion and development or within this space of religion and development. We're bridges but maybe also interpreters you know able to speak the languages of the different spaces and that's really I think what we strive to be to to contribute to better understanding between the different spaces. And we'll introduce you to Prabhu Deepen, Gender Equality Practitioner and Advocate at Tier Fund. Tier Fund is a Christian charity that partners with you know churches and local communities across 50 countries really focusing on tackling poverty through sustainable development and responding to disasters and challenging injustice. And within that we also focus on various thematic issues like sexual and gender-based violence where in over 15 countries we have programs that is really looking at addressing sexual and gender-based violence either by focusing on preventing violence through our work called Transgender Mass Communities which is a gender transformative approach also accompanying survivors of sexual violence through a process called journey to healing which is really working with and accompanying female survivors of sexual violence across these countries that we're working in. Faith and spiritual leaders are powerful and influential often deeply trusted by communities as Ruti explains that trust means they hold an enormous sway on community attitudes on violence against women and violence against girls. Whether as custodians of customary laws, whether as keepers of culture, as influencers of social norms, we know now that not engaging with them can risk reversing the gains on prevention and response strategies. So it's really it's really really critical that we work with them and that we work with and fund interventions that engage them and their underlying belief systems and we engage and fund a diversity of organizations that are doing this, right? Religious leaders, they really are a critical dimension of working with religion and working with a religious community. So if you want to do this then you you kind of have to work with religious leaders because they are gatekeepers and in many religious groups especially ones with it like a really strict hierarchical structure it really it's impossible to engage with with a religious community with the people in the community without going through their leaders without that permission and opening other gates. The need to engage faith in spiritual leaders goes beyond their role as gatekeepers. Faith, spirituality and culture form extremely complex belief systems that shape values underpinning violence against women so it's important to have their buy-in to address deep rooted issues as certain religious beliefs can contribute directly to violence against women. Where a religion you know promotes beliefs that see men as better than women or that subjugate women in the roles that they are allowed to play, where a religion justifies violence, this is where religious beliefs really contribute to violence against women and girls. So I think it really is about what a religion and what religions what they teach about the relative value of men and women and about how relationships should be because religions can teach and support social norms that drive violence so definitely yes I think they can contribute violence against women but of course they can also do the opposite but this is not just happening in the global south I think there's very often this implicit assumption that yeah religion's a problem in the global south and we see this happening in the global north as well if we see the battles around sexual and reproductive health and rights in the US for example this is religion contributing religious beliefs contributing to violence against women so I think you know this conversation it's important to take it out of only the global south and realize that it is a global conversation. Religion is often seen as inherently patriarchal with most religious leaders being men but we know just how critical is that the voices of women are represented when addressing issues around violence against women so how do we make sure this happens? We've really seen that you need to be quite intentional and strategic and creative to also work with women leaders because they're there they're just not you know the people who open the door when you knock but they're there for example in many communities this may mean engaging with informal religious leadership so the leaders or the music groups or the bible study teachers or the women's groups leaders then I we know that and what evidence really shows us is that where you're working with a religion that has a central sacred text a scriptural approach can work very well and this is an important approach for a number of reasons first sacred scriptures are often inaccurately read and interpreted to justify gender equality and violence and this might be intentional it's sometimes intentional but it's really it's happening so rereading and reinterpreting these scriptures can be a very important way of addressing a religion's role in facilitating and driving violence against women. We also find that engaging with sacred scripture is a really effective way of working with religious leaders because they comfortable with it they see themselves as experts on it they trust it so it's an authoritative text that allows for a conversation in a space that they're comfortable with and then we also find that many religious leaders they have very little theological education so they're benefiting from this theological engagement that really increases their ability to read and and interpret the sacred text the flip side of this is that not anyone can do such scriptural engagement so you have to have the right and the authority you know the knowledge and understanding that that these leaders and will listen to you so we see for example if it's a non-faith organization that's facilitating such theological engagement or even a faith-based organization but they're not seen by community members as really religious or truly religious then it could actually have the opposite effect that they are distrusting these alternative theological interpretations that are offered they may be just a final thought that I think is really important is that you have to take time you can't just walk in you know and you're telling people your religion is wrong and you're not supposed to be treating women this way it's a process and this is true not only of of engaging religious actors and religious communities around violence against women and girls this is true of any type of violence intervention where we're trying to get people to change and examine their beliefs and norms and behaviors that that drive violence against women and girls it takes time and and relationship and and respect so that we really see as crucial in in this kind of engagement with religious communities as well. So I think for us what we've done is we've found ways to build into the intervention components whether it's activities or the trainings or the dialogues to create space for women to lead in these spaces like you know women gender champions in the faith leader trainings where we invite be invite uh not only the you know religious leader or the you know the top pastor or the Imam but also the head of the women's department and you know so to bring them into the wider leadership conversation that we are having and facilitating with these leaders so that we are creating some sort of a structure that you know kind of encourages them to think about who are the women that we can bring into this space are responsible then it has been really creating that's making sure that that space is meaningful not just participation but the women in that are really hurt and they can bring their experiences and their expertise and the wisdom in a way that shapes you know the conversation in that space I think that's one thing and on this journey with religious leaders then as we journey alongside them to really highlight the lack of space for women the limited space for women I think then we intentionally focus on you know like I said it's not just about highlighting what's wrong right it's about then what is the alternative what is the new norm what we really forget to do is that creating a space where we can actually together imagine an alternative and I think well this is where we think about what could it look like if we created space if women were leading in this space and then thinking about what could leadership look like in the church creating more spaces for women to testify and you know preach and you know and to lead conversations etc in in our intervention setting but also looking at beyond that in our day-to-day lives you know because we frame gender inequality as the root cause of you know gender-based violence we also say gender inequality is you know lack of autonomy opportunities access leadership rights power etc for women and women or the unequal power and you know access and all that I mentioned so what we really want to then look at is that if we are talking about gender equality what we are saying is that it has to be equal access equal opportunity to lead equal space mobility you know all of that thing but I think what is really important is for us to be very intentional in agreeing and creating that space where we are naming things that need to be there or missing and then the work with the religious leaders themselves they are mostly men we realize that just because you know men are now saying all religious let's say they really want to be engaged and be on this process for themselves primarily and then you know for the community right like it's not just like saying we need to mobilize religious leaders we are saying we need to work with you as men who need to be on this transformative journey for yourself because if you believe in equality you will preach and practice and model equality so I think that's the kind of work that we take forward and then really you know then working along with them to talk about accountable practices because you know just because I as a male you know even in this conversation say like I'm pro-equality doesn't mean the culture of privilege and power and all that I've learned just goes away by me professing about it no it is an active thing that I need to focus on I have to practice I have to be intentional about it I have to hold myself accountable and allow other people to hold me accountable. Shruti says it's important to fund interventions that engage faith and spiritual leaders but to also fund a diverse portfolio of organizations and potentially even partnerships between them and this is exactly what the UN trust fund has been doing. We funded faith-based organizations of course like the Episcopal Relief and Development in Liberia like Troker and Kenya who are very well equipped to draw on inside the credibility with local faith-based and traditional actors and engage them very deeply through their religious texts through their sermons but we've also funded youth-led organizations right such as Restless Development in Nepal that works on harmful menstruation practice of chopperty. We funded the Synth Community Foundation in Pakistan that works on early enforced child marriage and these organizations too are very well equipped to work with these actors as well to question to hold them accountable for harmful beliefs and values being passed on intergenerationally alongside that of course it's also important to fund local women's rights organizations. For example we have funded Alaphia in Togo, we funded the Psychosocial Counseling Center for Women in the State of Palestine and these women's rights organizations have played a key role in awareness raising in capacity building among faith-based and traditional actors and really sort of centering women and girls voices within this kind of programming. So with such a rich history and diversity of regions and projects what can Trudy share with us in terms of challenges and lessons learned? Since 2020 we've been engaged in a very intentional process of drawing out practice-based knowledge from the UN Trust Fund's archives of monitoring and evaluation reports and we call this our learning from practice series and we're really excited about it because we've published now a series of knowledge briefs on a wide range of topics but I want to tell you one of the first topics that emerged inductively from our archives is having a lot of practice-based knowledge as worthy of a deep dive was this topic of how to engage faith and traditional leaders in the prevention of violence against women and girls. So I'll talk about a few lessons as I said that Trudy stood out for us as a donor is of course this is not a homogenous group and there is no one size fits all way of engaging them so we really do need that diversity of approaches. Another lesson that's clearly coming out is there's much more documented work and research on the faith side rather than in the spiritual leaders side and here we really have to look at practices from from across the globe on what's working and what isn't working much more on spiritual leaders and their engagement with violence against women. A third thing that's coming out is important as discourse one of the challenges that seems consistent across contexts is that when it comes to implementing programs with faith and traditional actors if the discourse is perceived to condemn specific practices outright or if the discourse is seen as being driven from outside the community it can really lead to resistance in backlash. It can have risks for women and girls for practitioners in the front lines and really it can push harmful practices underground rather than eradicating them and hear the role of grassroots and local civil society organizations cannot be stressed enough. This is something we're seeing come out as a very clear lesson that they have a unique role to play in this space in being able to convene multiple stakeholders multiple kinds of faith and spiritual leaders and develop a tailored flexible and coordinated response which is so necessary as we're seeing in the current pandemic context right. So overall supporting grant making that is adaptive that is long-term that is flexible is very important in this space especially if we want to be intentional in our engagement with with faith and traditional leaders. So the civil society and women's rights organizations you partner with are generating valuable lessons from their project implementation why is practice-based knowledge essential in violence against women prevention programming and in this case in engaging with religious and spiritual leaders to prevent violence against women. It is absolutely essential to complement the what works with the hows and the whys how did programs start their engagement with these actors how did they decide which specific actors to work with in what capacity were they engaged were they engaged as gatekeepers as connectors as influencers as partners how do different faiths and cultures within the same communities different rituals and practices how do they intersect with each other to shape social norms how do projects build and sustain the impact that they can have with these actors what kind of discourse is really needed what are some risks of doing this kind of work these are all questions on which practice-based knowledge can really offer process data and context specific data which is so valuable and when that is paired with input and conversation with the evidence base I think we can really move the needle on prevention of violence against women. Let's go back to Lisa we wanted to get her take on whether it's true to say that the role of faith spiritual and traditional leaders in violence against women prevention is contentious has she found this to be the case? It depends on the space so for example if I'm working in a community in any of the many countries in Africa that I've done research in then it's not contentious at all so people and including leaders and and governmental leaders as well you know they realize and they recognize that religion and culture play a very decided role in people's lives and and their decision-making and their priorities so if there's a research project or an intervention you know that dives into this intersection between religion and violence against women and girls it won't be controversial at all on the contrary it would actually be perfectly logical but I don't only work in those spaces and and I would say that there are many spaces and especially in the global north and within intergovernmental agencies government ministries and some big donors that there is a resistance to acknowledging or engaging that role of religion and culture and these leaders thinking specifically about religion generally I would say that within these spaces there's an acknowledgement that you know the secularization pieces wasn't accurate and religion is still playing a role in the lives of the majority of people on earth and there's an acknowledgement that you know religion is relevant to development and they might be engagement around certain development issues you know like a wash but around violence against women and girls you know gender equality then there's a resistance and and people often see religion and gender equality as irreconcilable so especially if an institution lords itself on being secular there's often resistance to working with religion and religious leaders and then it becomes contentious so most research on faith spiritualities and gender-based violence has been conducted by researchers from the north within a Eurocentric paradigm and focusing mostly on traditional religions there is a growing interest and imperative to change the focus of research and decolonize knowledge in this field what does this mean and how can it be done decolonizing knowledge is about challenging this idea of the hegemony of the western knowledge system and you know really striving to understand and legitimize other knowledge systems and we do it by you know exploring these alternative methodologies and epistemologies so with that understanding if we're talking about decolonizing knowledge on faith and spiritualities and violence against women I think a crucial first step is decolonizing research and maybe around that I have two key ideas that I think is is important first and this is so obvious but by having more global south researchers involved in the research process we have brilliant minds here in the south and we should start using them and where the expertise isn't there yet to build research partnerships you know that is built on this global south located in this knowledge but also upskills the global south researchers so that next time they do have expertise and can do it on their own but you know even as I'm saying that honestly I think the expertise is here we need research grants to be available for these researchers any of the challenges again most of the funding is in the global north so we need to rethink how we're identifying and supporting and funding global south researchers and kind of bringing them into the into the mainstream like quotation marks mainstream and then maybe secondly I think it is at the same time more than just choosing global south researchers we have to think about the research agenda and who's setting it and unfortunately again this tends to still be set by the global north for that that's where the money is and this is of course true for development in general so the development agenda is driven by the global north even though it's understood as primarily benefiting the global south that's why I think we need to start thinking carefully about who is setting the research agenda and that's part of decolonizing knowledge in this field and I think a key step in this regard would be to start taking indigenous religion seriously in our research and not just dismiss these religions as a form of culture our existing evidence around religion and vines against women girls it's so focused on christianity and islam and we really do need to start looking further and let's hear from Prabhugan a steer fan is a christian charity he has seen firsthand the positive impact of engaging faith leaders in this conversation I like most people started as a cynic because I used to work for a non-faith based organization back in 2013 and I remember my first kind of three kind of formative studies that I did in Burundi and Rwanda and DR Congo just really with faith groups that we're already working with and really understanding how do we you know work with men and boys in that context where faith and culture really collude in a way that reinforces some toxic masculine traits and it was really mind blowing in the in the way that you know obviously it's so obvious I've seen it but also to hear and see it in a in a context where you actually in a conversation about gender based violence and people you know feeling like they can justify that that is really really you know really something at that moment I know it was really disheartening and I remember like before I went to you know close these focus group discussions or these conversations with pastors and other you know leaders I felt like okay you know what if I never come back here and so I remember like you know kind of concluding whatever I was supposed to do and then just really talking through what I understood and how I these scriptures related to me and my experiences as a man and really about the life of Jesus at that time and really looking at tangible ways that we can look at his characteristics etc and there were a couple of things that really kind of stood out for me one is that this man you know telling me probably you know how can I be something I have never seen that I've never seen a man be like this or another man in my community or my father like this so how can I even even dream of a spy to be a man who's not this man who exemplifies believes in equality etc etc the second thing is I remember going back after six months and I remember this pastor in front of his congregation saying you know after Prabhu's seminar again this is not a seminar as I've said I you know had the 30 minutes of like heart to heart talk he said I realized I've been raping my wife for the last 20 years because I've never asked her consent in my life and I think for me that was the first realization of how powerful it is creating spaces for conversations and using and really looking at texts together with religious leaders and religious communities and how powerful that it could be so since then this is 2013 14 and since then I've seen like you know this built into wider interventions and community dialogues and processes that not only work with faith leaders but faith communities congregants etc and you know it has been really great to see the evidence of impact and I know Lisa has been involved in our study in Eastern DRC with What Works program in the first iteration of the What Works program consortium where we've seen over 60% reduction of intimate partner violence over 80% reduction on non-partner sexual violence this earlier last year we've seen evidence from our work funded through John Templeton Foundation in you know with in partnership with Georgetown in the states Institute for reproductive health called Masculities Families and Peace with mixed communities both Christian and Muslim religious leaders and communities where we've seen significant reduction of intimate partner violence across both communities but also improved social cohesion so I think it's really really exciting to see not that it is possible obviously we are talking about reduction and not elimination of violence and we need to kind of continue to work towards that what that looks like but I think what has been really encouraging to say is that yes this work is is meaningful it is impactful to people and it is real in a way you are a founding member of the joint learning initiative and the SRI hub on faith spirituality religion and gender based violence could you tell us a little bit about the hub and why do you think it is important to have such a space in this field such spaces are really important to have the space where people like you researchers people like me who are practitioners who are also you know affiliated with faith you know way working for faith based organizations can create you know kind of have a dialogue and you know bring evidence talk about evidence talk about challenges discuss how we can improve practice in a meaningful way because we have common objectives in terms of like really working towards a world a future that is equitable and you know and free of violence right so I think that itself is really important for us and obviously around advancing research on faith responses because I think there's a lot of good work you know when we started this conversation unless you know 2013 I remember back then there were pockets of kind of interventions and there was work that was going on it was not visible and you know there was no dialogue and it seemed to be a bigger dichotomy than it you know it is now because it felt clearly divided on this faith is bad you know therefore we do not engage on the other side we you know faith based actors and faith based communities are like very distrusting of the wider sector that was working on gender based violence for us then this space is where it overlaps faith and gender based violence and research overlap so that we can really advance research on prevention and response to gender based violence in the places that we work in and then really think about how we create a space to encourage highlight good practice and bring other people and you know kind of join people up in the way that that's you know happening most of the research as we started in the beginning was really focusing on you know high profile funded you know like interventions I think what has happened over time is a more devolved hub where there's not only the main faith we are talking about spiritual language has shifted you know we are talking about more geographic spread we are talking about diverse voices not only around faith but also around sexual orientation and gender identities etc in the leadership itself which is really exciting I think for us as a new direction so yes for just this fact that we could come together as practitioners as researchers and have this conversation talk about evidence talk about the challenges talk about best practices and and have a dialogue I think that's why this hub is really important so that we can advance knowledge advance research so are our guests optimistic can effective engagement of faith and spiritual leaders make positive changes in the lives of women yeah I'm optimistic because I've seen those changes I've been in communities where religious leaders had been mobilized to understand gender equality and the importance of ending minds against women and girls also you know I've seen how the international community has changed into being more open to the reality that religion and religious leaders and religious communities play a role in in preventing and responding clearly it's not it should be but there really is much more receptiveness to this dimension of holistic intervention so yes I would say I'm positive and it's exciting to be part of the journey I have enough of kind of you know experiences positively and seeing the evidence heard the stories and I think that makes me really optimistic obviously there's a lot of work ahead and I think that's where conversations like this are really helpful that we can continue to have dialogue continue to challenge call each other you know out hold each other accountable but also just know that we are journeying together and have shared goals I'm very optimistic from from where I sit at the trust fund but also from over a decade of having seen and witnessed this work firsthand having done research on it from one of the grantee organizations that I recall when I last visited the work of Episcopal Relief and Development in Liberia gives me so much hope just to give an example right I remember being so moved by their ability to work in such a hard a fragile and conflict affected context bringing together different faith leaders imams pastors engaging them deeply through an experiential learning model bringing them together in dialogue with women's groups with youth led groups and really filling a huge gap when it comes to to creating community-based structures that can support survivors of violence and hold public officials accountable and this is one of many examples of practitioners we've supported that are doing wonderful work but they have to be supported long term and we have to take an adaptive approach to supporting them because again we know that for an intentional engagement with faith and spiritual leaders it's important that we take the time that we invest long term for this to be successful thanks to our guests shruti majumda elizabeth laru and prabu dpan for joining us on this podcast I'm elizabeth dathnell and I am a helicopter you have been listening to the sexual violence research podcast by the svri to find out more about our vision visit svri.org to free the world of violence against women and violence against children we need everyone to hear our message so please subscribe like and review us on apple podcasts and share this episode far and wide thanks for listening and we will see you for episode seven which explores the topic of decolonizing knowledge and finding on violence against women this podcast is produced by og podcasts find out more at ogpodcasts.co.uk