DAVID ADAMS reports…
Amid the gathering of pornstars and exhibitions selling a plethora of sexual-related products at this weekend’s Sexpo exhibition in Melbourne is one stall that may initially seem a little incongruous.
The Salvation Army will be manning a stall at Melbourne’s Convention Centre where they aim to not only raise awareness about the issue of human trafficking but to connect with people to point them towards God.
“Understanding that people at that kind of exhibition are actually searching for something, we want to offer them Christ…”
– Captain Danielle Strickland
Among those manning the Salvation Army’s stall is Captain Danielle Strickland, the social justice director for the Salvation Army’s Southern Territory. Captain Strickland says the focus of the stall will be to provide those passing by with information on human trafficking drawn from the global Stop the Traffik campaign.
“The people who are involved with the sex industry are the ones that probably have the most exposure potentially to trafficking victims and traffickers,” she says, saying that the presence of the Salvos will be about raising awareness of that issue and also the consequences of sexual behaviour.
The Salvation Army team, which received free registration for the event, will also be looking to be connecting with people with regard to their faith.
“Understanding that people at that kind of exhibition are actually searching for something, we want to offer them Christ…” Captain Strickland says. “So we’ll some New Testaments and some tracts and stuff like that from the Australian Bible Society. Then I also have a couple of resources that really challenge the sex industry that I’m also going to have available.”
These include a book edited by Melinda Tankard-Reist called Getting Real: Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls and The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It, a book by Victor Malarek which critiques the demand side of the sex trade.
Among those in the Salvation Army group are people who are already involved in the Salvation Army’s chaplaincy program that runs in brothels in Melbourne with support staff drawn from among the clergy.
“What really got this happening in someways is that the same weekend we are having a huge celebration where we ordain all our officers and send them out…at the same venue, at the Convention Centre,” says Captain Strickland. “Somebody brought up how awkward it was that Sexpo was at the same venue and that’s when I was like, ‘Well, that’s silly, that we would ignore them, why don’t we try and do something?’”
Captain Strickland says she understands the tensions involved in Christians going into such an environment.
“You do recognise that the sex industry can be a very harmful thing…” she says. “There is that tension, so within us in terms of who we want to work the stall, there is a sense that I don’t want to expose many people to what’s happening at Sexpo if I can help it and I don’t want to promote it – which is the tension around the publicity surrounding this as well. But at the same time, our role, of course, is not to condemn the world but to try to save it, so there has to be some measure of engagement and I think particularly around trafficking because we’ve been so busy in that place.”
Captain Strickland says that with tens of thousands of men and women expected to attend over the weekend, there is a tremendous opportunity to expose a lot of people to the realities of sex trafficking.
The move is not without precedent – the Salvation Army also had a stall when Sexpo was in Brisbane in February this year, which was also run with a focus on human trafficking.
Also present in Brisbane were representatives of the US-based XXX Church – a US-based organisation which was founded initially around a website to help people struggling with pornography and now is also involved in not only helping churches around the world understand the issue but also mans booth at sex industry trade shows.
Speaking in an interview prior to that event, XXX Church founder Craig Gross said the organisation was never about boycotting or picketing the sex industry but was to tell them about the other side of the coin – “that this hurts people, that this destroys relationships, that this won’t satisfy you long term”.
“We don’t give out literature which is anti-porn, we actually give out Bibles…” he noted. “Probably been the most fun thing for me over the last four years is when we’ve changed our approach from talking about porn to really getting down to talking about the answer that we know we’ve found in Christ.”
Captain Strickland says that in the past Christians have been “terrible” at reaching out to people in the sex industry.
“The only thing we’ve done with the sex industry, I think, is compromised ourselves with them. Which is unfortunate because we actually have some answers for people who are in the sex industry on both sides – we have answers for guys who are trapped in sex addiction and we have answers for women who are stuck in poverty. And, of course the answer is Jesus, right, we know that, and social reform and those sorts of things.
“I find it really irritating that the only way we’ve forayed into that ground is through compromise because I think we have so much more to offer. So I think it’s time to enter into the world not being afraid of it but being confident that God can actually make a way and free people from the grip of sexual addiction.”
Captain Strickland says Christians and the sex industry have spent a lot of time “judging one another”.
“The sex industry as well is just shocked that the Salvos are coming and ‘Christians, they’re just going to come and preach to us’…so they’ve got us in a box and we’ve got them in a box as scary, horrible people that are bringing moral decay to our culture. And then we just never meet, do we? And so we never have opportunity to be salt or light because we never connect.”
– Captain Danielle Strickland
“The sex industry as well is just shocked that the Salvos are coming and ‘Christians, they’re just going to come and preach to us’…so they’ve got us in a box and we’ve got them in a box as scary, horrible people that are bringing moral decay to our culture. And then we just never meet, do we? And so we never have opportunity to be salt or light because we never connect.”
The Salvation Army currently run brothel chaplaincy programs in both Melbourne and Adelaide and are starting one in Perth.
Captain Strickland says her involvement in the Salvation Army’s chaplaincy to brothels in Melbourne has personally been a incredible eye-opener.
“It has borne a lot of fruit in terms of relationships, significant relationships that have offered hope,” she says. “Basically we just go and know their names instead of putting them in a box and treating them as a commodity…We just go and learn their names and try and to make friends and see if there’s anything we can do to help in their lives.”
Captain Strickland says visiting brothels goes back to the foundation of the Salvation Army and describes the initiative as ‘rediscovering’ the organisation’s roots.
“It was our first work, really,” she says. “And in many countries around the world, our work started in those countries with brothel visitations. It’s really bizarre that we’re doing it now after all these years when it’s what we started with – it’s quite ironic in some ways.”
~ www.salvationarmy.org.au
~ www.xxxchurch.com
~ www.stopthetraffik.org.au
