This piece is part of an ongoing series focused on the themes of “healing” and “repair.” Follow the blog or check our Facebook page to see the other posts in the series as they’re published bimonthly.
For the past 12 years I have been a pastor who offers support and presence to women who have been sex-trafficked. It started when Presbyterian Women from a church I was serving took me to Human Trafficking Awareness Day at our statehouse. I have built relationships with women who have lived a particular kind of hell, advocating for them and learning about addiction and trauma and so much more. Walking alongside these survivors as they come back to life has changed me and opened up my theology.
These women are my heroes. Being with them as they come alive again has brought healing to my deep places.
Rev. Katie Kinnison leads a Blue Christmas service for survivors of sex trafficking. (Contributed photo)
These women are my heroes. Being with them as they come alive again has brought healing to my deep places. I have recognized our mutual brokenness and healing as the heart of community that is beloved and that glorifies our Creator.
In 2009 the Franklin County Municipal Court, led by the enlightenment of Judge Paul Herbert, began the first special docket court, which recognized that women arrested for prostitution were in reality victims of sex-trafficking.
The Church has a history of celebrating repentant prostitutes – lifting up stained women made pure. That image does not work for me – for lots of reasons. For one, I understand now that most women we name hookers are actually sex slaves, women whose will and agency have been stolen from them, women who are abused as objects rather than honored as dwelling places of the Living God. Childhood sexual abuse, substance-abuse disorder, lies told by someone who said they loved them, violent force – these things and more rob women and girls of their power to choose. They are enslaved.
The Church has a history of celebrating repentant prostitutes – lifting up stained women made pure. That image does not work for me – for lots of reasons.
In CATCH Court (Creating Autonomy Through Collaborative Healing), these women tell the truth of their lives, hold one accountable, and love with boundless power.
Amazing people visit the jail and offer help. New laws offer possibilities beyond jail and prison. The survivors I know both claim their agency and surrender into healing. It is, in part, through surrender that they are able to reclaim their power. This paradox, this dance, is created as it goes. It must be lived to make any sense.
Staff who led a Blue Christmas service for survivors of sex trafficking.
Their healing takes a village: therapists, medical doctors, trauma specialists, substance-abuse counselors, social workers, employers who get it, enlightened legal systems, housing support, mentors, AA and NA meetings, clergy – and other women who just show up and honor them, love them, support and encourage them.
The survivors’ own power and agency and beauty are at the center of their healing. They come to accept that they are made in the image of God (though many would use different language to express this), and slowly begin to learn that they are worthy of love. To be restored to their true selves, the women choose to give over some of their power. They submit to the court system, to their therapists, to their sponsors – to their Higher Power. Sometimes they have to stop and say no, regroup and listen to that inner wisdom before knowing what to do next. When do you surrender, and when do you stand your own ground? This is a theological complexity for me, a very particular kind of question when posed within a feminine consciousness and before a Sovereign God who took flesh to set us free.
I have come to believe that our wounds cannot heal if we cannot begin to believe that we are beloved. I find myself walking a road much like the one the survivors walk. My power too has been stolen sometimes. I too need to reclaim who I am – a dwelling place of the Holy One. We reclaim our personal power and agency through surrender to God and through coming to learn that we are made in God’s image and a dwelling place of the Holy One – a gospel path to healing.
Inspired by these survivors, we are beginning a 1001 New Worshipping Community centered on issues of gender and sexuality. As women Gathering, our aim is to have one another’s backs as we learn how to live lives of justice and radical love. Our ministry is with the survivors of sex-trafficking and with community partners like Freedom a la Cart and Sanctuary Night. We are relearning how to be church. We are doing book studies, workshops, and special worship services – now we are in the process of building regular worship grounded in God’s unbreakable love for us and our beautiful interdependence with one another. We are learning what it means that Christ has set us free, that we are gifts to the world.
Rev. Katie Kinnison
(Contributed photo)
Rev. Katie Kinnison is the pastor of Hilliard (Ohio) Presbyterian Church, serves Old First Presbyterian, and is founding pastor of Gathering. Mother of three women, Katie delights in contemplative phone photography, incarnating words, rocks, fungi and beauty