John Hall of the Baptist General Convention of Texas has a fascinating article over at Associated Baptist Press on the anti-human trafficking ministries of Texas Baptists especially the Traffick911 ministry of Southside City Church in Fort Worth.
Here is a snippet:
Joining a new abolitionist movement
Citing biblical passages, a growing number of Baptists are showing that light defeats darkness, exposes what is taking place and puts an end to it. Using a variety of methods, they are seeking to raise awareness about human trafficking as an issue, prevent it from taking place and aid victims of the atrocity.
Many of these “new abolitionists” will be taking part in the Freedom Sunday on Feb. 21, the first-ever day that churches worldwide have set aside to pray for human-trafficking victims.
Southside City Church has launched activities for at-risk children in its community, including a karate class, in hopes of stopping trafficking of children before it happens. The programs are held in an area where children are known to become involved in gangs, which increases the likelihood of a child being trafficked or forced into prostitution.
Kudos to John Hall for such a timely article which you can read in full here.
You can learn more about Freedom Sunday here.
Freedom Sunday will be held on February 21, 2010, the first Sunday of the season of Lent. The concept behind Freedom Sunday is to give faith communities encouragement and assistance so that the faithful can worship, intercede, and act with a clear focus on ending slavery in their communities and world. Resources, a webpage, and networks are being developed and readied throughout the month of December.
A few Baptist churches participating in Freedom Sunday include:
South Shore Baptist Church, Hingham, MA
Berean Baptist Church, Harrisville, RI
Lima Baptist Church, Lima, NY
Lower Burrell Baptist Church, Westmoreland, PA
First Baptist Church, Milan, MI
First Baptist Church, Keokuk, IA
Immanuel Baptist Church, Lexington, KY
First Baptist Church, Joelton, TN
Sherwood Baptist Church, Albany, GA
First Baptist Church, Mary Esther, FL
Lisbon Baptist Church, Fayetteville, GA
Parkway Baptist Church, Duluth, GA
First Baptist Church, Watkinsville, GA
First Baptist Church, Richmond, TX
Oakland Baptist Church, Oakland, CA
Calvary Baptist Church, Santa Barbara, CA
I appreciated this, Aaron. I wished I had read it soon enough to push for our worship committee to include our participation. Sadly, I suspect that we’ll have a chance to participate next year since the complete abolition of modern slavery by next Lent is unlikely.
I hope the movement grows quickly.
I think people often miss the point about what delineates what hate-crimes are. I have a concern about how sexual predators violate others without regard to how those violations have ruined their victims’ lives, have imposed destruction of the victim’s health, body tissues, spiritual peace with Christ, or the victim’s mental health. It seems that family members often protect their own when they know their relatives are violators. The world has come to accept sexual assault as some form of expression that needs to be allowed to be released lest the predator not be accepted by others because of sexuality preferences or sexual orientation. Unfortunately, the focus or trend is the “anything goes”. What’s worse is how pedophiles or homosexual rapists purport their physical imposition on their victims as something others have to accept as a form of their self-expression—or how the predators purport to feeling discriminated against under their guise as homosexuals if they can’t do what they do–which consists of degrading and depriving their victims of their human, civil and U.S. Constitutional rights. Maybe this scenario is more like hatred, vindictiveness, or psychotic on the part of predators. Yet, where are those who will stand up against human trafficking, pedophiles, homosexual pedophiles or rapists? Who is standing up for the victims? Pedophiles affect their victims as had Nazi’s affected their victims—blatant disregard for another human being’s human rights.
In our country and around the globe, there are so many child predators and their network of organizations that know to control—to some extent- the personal and financial business, lives, property ownership, and freedom of others. They are out there and look to ensure their own wealth, power, and prestige to be in a position to imprison and hold down those who would seek to stop them. If you research how many victims of rape, human trafficking, and molestation rates there have been, you would wonder how the offenders get by with it. When you aren’t to where you find work, where you can accumulate property and raise a bunch of your kin, when you can’t imprison them for their crimes because they make sure they’ve got you in a position where you aren’t credible—these offenders got you under their thumbs and they are the ones with the jobs and the power. Plus, they’re not sitting in jail, are they? They are out there—free to do what they please. If you don’t have high levels of education, enough money for lawsuits, enough money to take care of your health—you aren’t necessarily going to be able to have much control over community situations. If they are of groups with high educations, how can the non-educated compete with that? Many of the people who would get angry enough to do something about these crackpots are usually a poor group of people who have lived on the edge and may have prison records for non-sexually related offenses—and are those who may be assumed to not have a high enough mentality due to lack of education to be credible, outstanding citizens. Without powerful family members, wealth, or friends, you often get nowhere. How ironic is that? Could it be set up this way on purpose?
Offenders do things that cause a general population to become outraged; but, if you become hostile, defensive, proactive or overzealous in suppressing and accusing them of their molestation or exploitation of others, you find them in the position to turn the tables, and accuse such proactive people of discriminating against their sexual preferences or being violent. They make it very difficult for you and others to sentence them. Or, they play the mentally ill role, and get pampered at a mental facility for a little while and are later released. Then, in turn, there’s no one to challenge them in neighborhoods, on jobs, in government positions–and they win out. Their relatives and colleagues often protect these offenders so as to protect themselves from being exposed; for, they would lose their jobs, prestige and wealth for having known about the offenders without turning them in. This in turn, protects their jobs, their property and their control over communities. They don’t want mobs of righteous populations to interfere with their being the ones in control. What’s worse is how their families cover up for them—when they know who did the crimes.