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Mobilizing Faith for Womenthink there is no contemporary trafficking problemand that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was the endof large-scale human trafficking. Today, at any onetime, there are approximately 2.4 million victimsof human trafficking worldwide. According to theUnited Nations, this is a $32 billion criminal enterprise.Victims, 75 percent of whom are women andgirls, are treated as products and commodities. Many,unfortunately, have walked through their own doorof no return.” The dehumanization of women and theproblematic expressions of masculinity that facilitatethese issues were themes that ran throughout theforum. Participants emphasized that religious leadershave a responsibility to defend the most downtroddenamong us, and they engaged in a discussion of thefaith-based resources that each has used in their work.Creighton declared, “If there was ever an opportunityfor the faith community to come together and endmodern-day slavery, it is now.”“If there was ever an opportunityfor the faith community to cometogether and end moderndayslavery, it is now.”— Aaronde CreightonScripture As a Manual for Daily LifeMoyo, leader of the Women in Church and Societyprogram of the World Council of Churches, works ondeveloping understandings of scripture and theologythat will help member churches take part in raisingawareness against the dehumanization of women.She related the origins of her intimate relationshipwith the Bible, which started with her childhood inMalawi: “My mother did not have much education,but she had a Tumbuka translation of the Bible nextto her pillow. The first thing she did every day wasread the Bible. Seeing how it influenced her decisionsover and over again, I realized that to her the Biblewas contextually an African book. It was a manualfor daily life. It answered her questions.” Moyo, whohad never identified with Christianity because as achild of her father’s third wife she was not acceptedby the church, explained that when she becamecurious about the book, her mother told her to readit for herself. As a result, Moyo had to take herown meaning from the text, a lesson for which sheis grateful.This interaction of an individual with thetext — the reader relating the author’s experienceto his or her own life — is “contextual Bible study,”the brainchild of liberation theology. Moyo sharedan experience that helped her see the potential andthe need for working with the scripture. In Thailand,during a group visit to a center for women and girlswho have been rescued from trafficking, she met ayoung girl who was pregnant. She had been abusedby three successive men who had first promisedher transportation. The emptiness in the girl’s gazehaunted Moyo. Those ministering to her wereteaching the value of forgiveness that they understoodfrom scripture, without listening to what she feltor needed.Moyo was troubled by this, believing that the girlneeded compassion and support rather than insensitivereligious lessons. She believed that using themethodology of contextual Bible study, alternativescriptural understandings that resonate more stronglywith individuals’ experiences can be generated.During Bible study following this visit, the groupread the book of Ruth as a text on the trafficking ofwomen and girls, asking questions about the deprivationthat leads women to risk their lives to becomevictims of trafficking. A participant reflected thatRuth and Naomi were two women who sufferedfrom deprivation. They were so deprived that Naomiinstructed young Ruth to “lay at the feet of Boaz,”according to the scripture, which in Hebrew means tooffer oneself for sexual relations. Naomi could be seennot unlike the traffickers — especially the womenwho facilitate trafficking — because most of them arealso very desperate, and they feel that they have noThe Carter Center 33