Christians Strive to Bring Attention to Modern-Day Slave Trade

15 January 2011

January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month

By Raymond Billy
ResonateNews.com

Amid the backdrop of National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month in January, members of the Christian community are working to make the issue a top public policy priority and a focus of community activism. Christian advocates for trafficked people, who spoke to ResonateNews.com this week, said the American church is not as proactive in combating this practice as it could be.

Human trafficking entails the commercial exploitation of people for prostitution or labor.

Kenny Rigsby, cofounder of For the Silent — a Tyler, Texas-based organization dedicated to fighting child trafficking — said consciousness among believers about the slave trade is uneven.

Rigsby said representatives from For the Silent recently spoke to a church congregation in Oklahoma where “most people had no idea how big trafficking is in the states. On the other hand, we spoke at a church in Kansas City, Mo., and they seemed pretty well-informed,” he said. “It's rapidly becoming a priority among Christians, but it's not a top priority.”

Rigsby said trafficking has not been a major focus of Christian outreach because many believers feel powerless to tackle such an incendiary problem — especially when they learn of its magnitude. According to statistics compiled by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, nearly 300,000 juveniles in the U.S. lived in socioeconomic circumstances that left them vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation.

Ruth Hill, executive director of women ministries for the Evangelical Covenant Church denomination, which balances its emphasis on personal morality and social justice, said she understands why many Christians perceive the fight against trafficking as daunting. She said she was overwhelmed when learning about the prevalence of trafficking in the U.S. during a gathering of women in ministry five years ago.

“I couldn't imagine what the faith community could do to help so many people in such dire circumstances,” Hill said. “I was so bewildered by the idea of human trafficking that I didn't want to hear another word about it.”

But Hill said she found the issue difficult to escape. She felt “convicted,” she said, by the news reports regarding trafficking featured increasingly on television, in newspapers and in magazines. She soon stopped avoiding the issue and began educating herself about trafficking. A major source of encouragement helping Christians fight trafficking, she learned, was the 1999 Gary Haugen book “Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World.” Haugen argues that the Body of Christ should be at the forefront in fighting crimes against humanity.

Caspar Green, pastor of First Baptist Glens Falls, New York, is trying to equip his congregation to do just that. In October the church conducted a four-week seminar on “Doing Something About Human Trafficking in Upstate NY.” Green said American Christians have no excuse to ignore domestic trafficking

“It's not something where we can say 'That's happening so far away. What can we do about it?'” he said.

Green said the faith community was part of a lobbying campaign helping lead New York to adopt the 2008 Safe Harbor for Exploited Youth Act. The act shields exploited children from charges in prostitution cases and provides funding for their rehabilitation. Green said Christians in the Empire State are now pushing to strengthen restoration programs for formerly trafficked children.

Such programs nationwide generally are focused on girls. That's because recent statistics suggest young females are more commonly trafficked for sexual exploitation than their male counterparts. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's 2006 estimate — the most recent data available — shows that three out of every four children detained in prostitution cases are girls.

For the Silent is helping to establish a safe house for girls in East Texas to be called Refuge of Light. No date is set for its opening. The Evangelical Covenant community is financially supporting a safe house for girls in California called New Day for Children.

While many groups focus on child trafficking, others are seeking to assist women who have been ensnared by the sex trade. Lynn Burgard leads Hidden Treasures Ministry, an outreach program of Rock Church in San Diego, Calif., whose mission is getting women out of prostitution. She said there is an unmet need for services geared toward women who grew up being treated as commodities.

“These women need a lot of help getting stabilized after coming out of the lifestyle. They need to get adjusted to civil society,” she said.

Burgard said Hidden Treasures helps women seeking escape from the sex trade to learn the basics of life, such as time management, or simply how to dress in a manner that commands respect. She said many trafficked women find it difficult to abandon behavior that, for them, had become normative.

“Many of them return to ‘the life’ because it's all they know,” Burgard said. “They have a difficult time leaving the bondage of tracking even though they realize their lives are at risk.”

But, she said, Jesus can make a difference in the lives of trafficked women.

“We let them know we're motivated to help them because of our love for Christ,” she said. “Sometimes we'll even offer to pray with women shortly after meeting them, and they're usually grateful.

Although awareness of human trafficking has improved, Hill, the Evangelical Covenant ministry director, said Christians should be even more bold in confronting this issue.

“I think people need to get beyond the feeling that they can't make a difference,” Hill said. “We are empowered by Jesus to be difference-makers in this world.”