Dignity and worth for all: identifying shared values between social work and Christian faith-based groups’ anti-sex trafficking discourse

ABSTRACT

Faith-based organizations are important partners in anti-trafficking efforts due to their familiarity with local threats and commitment to safeguarding their communities. However, differences in values and beliefs can create challenges for collaborations between faith-based organizations, social work, and other sectors. This study used a culturally sensitive qualitative inquiry of Christian anti-sex-trafficking discourse through dialogue with faith leaders, in order to uncover shared values between Christian anti-sex trafficking and social work as a foundation for ethical collaboration, and to identify areas of differences where further dialogue is necessary to promote respect for diverse viewpoints and to advocate for sex trafficking survivors.

KEYWORDS:

• Human trafficking
• Christianity
• faith-based organizations
• social work values
• partnerships

Introduction

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 defines trafficking as the use of force, fraud, or coercion to induce an individual over the age of 18 into commercial sex (sex trafficking) or involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery (labor trafficking). The Act also defines all engagement in commercial sex by individuals under the age of 18 as sex trafficking. It clarifies that trafficking is not only a human rights and migration issue, but also a crime (Shelley, 2013). The concern for human rights and freedom from victimization enshrined in the TVPA underlies anti-trafficking efforts across different sectors.

Social work, with its primary mission to enhance human well-being and promote social justice, has responded to trafficking with micro-, mezzo and macro-level research and practice. Social workers seek to promote equity and belonging for all at risk of or harmed by trafficking, particularly for individuals who face discrimination, such as undocumented individuals and individuals who identify as LGBTQ (e.g., Gerassi & Skinkis, 2020). Social workers have directed their energies toward many practical questions to address the systemic issues that perpetuate trafficking and to serve and empower the vulnerable and oppressed. For instance, social work researchers are working on the definitional questions that need to be resolved with cultural and contextual sensitivity for better policy practice (Sen & Baba, 2017). Other critical projects include the identification and measurement of trafficking (e.g., Fedina & DeForge, 2017), and deconstructing the complex nature of trafficking antecedents (e.g., Marcus & Curtis, 2014). Social work researchers have also addressed aftercare challenges (e.g., Casassa et al., 2021), and worked to prevent the harms of poorly executed or poorly designed anti-trafficking programs and policies (e.g., Ahmed & Seshu, 2012).

Religious and spiritual groups have also directed attention and resources to addressing trafficking. Social justice is an integral part of the moral code of many spiritual and religious traditions (Hodge, 2012). In 2014 for instance, the top global leaders from the Christian Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox religions, as well as Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim faiths, met in Vatican City to sign the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders Against Modern Slavery (Global Freedom Network, 2014). The joint declaration provided a unified proclamation that human trafficking is unacceptable, indeed, to God and human beings, that had the potential to influence 90% of the world’s population (Global Freedom Network, 2014).

Religious and spiritual groups can issue calls to action that cut across borders, cultures, ethnicities, and economic classes (US Department of State, 2020). As the joint declaration demonstrates, faith-based communities, organizations, and congregations are powerful and necessary forces in the fight against human trafficking (US Department of State, 2020). The 2020 Trafficking in Person Report summarizes their unique reach, flexibility, and power to influence and protect:

Unlike governments, faith-based organizations are not limited by jurisdiction, election cycles, or political will. Nor are faith communities hemmed in by borders. By contrast, faith-based organizations serve in many different cities, provinces, and countries. They reach across international borders, spanning continents with a powerful network of followers with tremendous reach – from remote villages to capital cities and the seats of power. They have familiarity with local threats, a stake in keeping their communities safe, and ability to develop context, build trust, establish relationships, and provide protection before a trafficker ever acts.

We focus on Christianity as the faith-based group for this study due to the historic and current prominence of Christian participation in anti-trafficking work. Indeed, Christianity has a historically prominent role in anti-trafficking efforts. Christian missionary societies and feminist reformists initiated the anti-trafficking movement of the 1900s (George et al., 2010). The resurgence of the anti-trafficking discourse in the 1970s was also strongly influenced by Christian conservatism and the radical feminist perspective (Kempadoo, 2012). The efforts of abolitionist feminists, the political right, and evangelical Christian groups were instrumental to the creation of the main piece of contemporary anti-trafficking legislation in the United States, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 (Jackson et al., 2017). Christian faith-based organizations and congregations continue to mobilize significant resources for intervention. In many places, Christian faith-based agencies are the primary trafficking-related service providers (Barrows, 2017; Bernstein, 2018).

Ideological tensions and values in the field of anti-trafficking

Considering that collaborative work between diverse sectors including social services, healthcare, education, housing, criminal justice, faith-based organizations, and other public and private organizations is an essential strategy in anti-trafficking (Kaye et al., 2014; Mattar & Van Slyke, 2010), it is vital that potentially divisive matters such as religious or ideological differences be addressed with the goal of improving collaborations. However, while various religions, communities, governmental and nongovernmental organizations involved in addressing human trafficking typically share the basic goal of improving human wellbeing, their motivating values and how these are interpreted and practiced can differ in ways that create tension and conflict (Harr & Yancey, 2014; Stewart, 2009). Differences in values and purposes related to religion and other systems of beliefs (e.g., competing ideologies of ‘sex work’ versus ‘sex trafficking’) have been noted as a significant challenge to anti-trafficking collaborations (Gerassi et al., 2017; Oselin & Weitzer, 2013), putting coalitions and other forms of collaborative work at risk of group fragmentation (Gerassi & Nichols, 2018).

Notably, several ideological tensions characterize the issue of trafficking (Schwarz, 2019), including the concern that sex trafficking is a primarily a moral panic or myth produced by politics of sex and gender, with evangelical Christians, radical feminists, and the political right having a central role in its promulgation (Bernstein, 2018). The anti-trafficking movement has been criticized as being a repressive effort to curb women’s autonomy, migration, and labor rights while mobilizing a universalizing concept of human rights and claiming a moral high ground (Bernstein, 2018; Kempadoo, 2012). Evangelical Christians in particular have been described as abolitionists who misclassify all forms of sexual labor as slavery (Bernstein, 2018; Doezema, 2013), and who promote a dubious and disempowering narrative of essentialized victimization (Kempadoo, 2012; Zimmerman, 2010). While social work researchers have acknowledged these tensions as being part of the current scholarly and political landscape (e.g., Gerassi & Nichols, 2018), little social work scholarship have examined the major narratives or assumptions underlying these narratives through dialogue with representatives of the Christian community.

A social work response to Christian anti-Trafficking discourses

Given that social workers have a duty to promote the responsiveness of various social institutions to individuals’ needs and social problems (NASW Code of Ethics, 2016), we should be taking the lead to facilitate such dialogues. As a profession committed to challenging social injustice, we should be leading these conversations. This is particularly true as debates evoking religious values, feminist values, or other systems of thought typically are organized around the basic questions of human rights, dignity, and agency in the complex matrices of race, class, sex, and gender, as well as the questions of power and prestige regarding who gets to define and gate keep these matters. Social workers need to have an unbiased and strengths-based understanding (Saleeby, 1996) of faith-based worldviews in anti-trafficking, and the implications of these worldviews (both positive and negative) for the people served by faith-based anti-trafficking work. Most importantly, social workers have an ethical responsibility to address any religious discrimination because faith can be an important resource for survivors (Braam & Koenig, 2019; Hodge, 2020). A review of resilience in human trafficking survivors showed that faith practices such as prayer and positive relationships through membership in a faith-based community were important resilience promoting factors (Knight et al., 2021).

Examining the motivations of Christian anti-trafficking with the dual goal of promoting social justice for those who may be marginalized and oppressed by Christian anti-trafficking practices and ameliorating any religious discrimination against Christian communities has the potential to draw the different stakeholders together through an increased understanding of one another’s motivations, experiences, and realities. Examining these discourses also prepares social workers to collaborate with Christian congregations and faith-based organizations without compromising social work values.

Research aim

The overarching research question driving the study is “What are the values that underlie Christian participation in anti-sex-trafficking work?” The primary aim of the study is to use culturally-sensitive qualitative inquiry of Christian anti-sex-trafficking discourse to produce knowledge about Christian anti-sex-trafficking efforts through dialogue with leaders of the faith community. The study focuses on the values motivating Christian anti-sex trafficking and explores the compatibility and tensions between Christian values and social work values, in hope of laying a foundation for ethical and effective collaboration and promoting respect and understanding between the different groups involved in anti-trafficking.

Methods

Advisory committee

In keeping with a lens of cultural responsiveness and to ensure that this study remained sensitive to any bias or discrimination regarding participants’ religious views or misrepresentations of Christianity, an advisory committee of four pastors of different genders, races, and professional and denominational backgrounds was formed. One pastor had a specific anti-trafficking ministry in his church, and the other members of the committee respectively were founders and leaders of nonprofit organizations serving youth in foster care, sexual abuse victims, and human trafficking victims. These pastors were consulted regarding the study goals, recruitment, interview guide, and results.

Recruitment

Purposeful sampling was used to recruit church leaders in a Midwestern city from September 2020 to February 2021. To recruit a diverse sample of churches from the city, a recruitment e-mail was sent to both mainstream denominations, non-denominational, and independent churches. Mainstream denominations contacted were those that have issued official statements on human trafficking, namely: Roman Catholic; United Methodist; Evangelical Lutheran; Lutheran Missouri Synod; Southern Baptist Convention; American Baptist, Presbyterian; United Church of Christ; Disciples of Christ; African Methodist; Anglican; Episcopal; Assemblies of God; and Church of the Nazarene. Independent churches contacted were ones that have shown interest in anti-trafficking work, i.e., run or support a ministry or organization that helps survivors or have invited anti-trafficking organizations to come and speak to their congregants.

A Google search was used to compile a database of mainstream, non-denominational, and independent congregations. In addition, independent churches were also identified via information provided by local anti-trafficking organizations, the study advisory committee, and human trafficking scholars. An introduction and recruitment email were then sent to the senior leadership of the first three congregations under each denomination. Sixty-five recruitment e-mails were sent, resulting in seven participants enrolled in the study. Eight additional participants were recruited through snowball sampling through the initial seven participants. Finally, two participants were referred by human trafficking scholars, for a total of 16 participants from twelve churches.

Demographic details

Ten participants identified as female and six identified as male. Four were Asian, one was Hispanic, and the remaining participants identified as White. Participants’ ages ranged from 23 to 70, with an average of 47.4 years. One participant was single and the remaining participants were in heterosexual marriages.

Congregation details

Four mainstream denominations were represented by six participants from five churches. Ten participants were from seven independent churches. Participants’ churches ranged in size from ten to 5000, with an average of 605 members. Five congregations have a specific anti-trafficking ministry, and three others support an anti-trafficking nonprofit on a regular basis.

Professional experience

Eight participants were the head pastors of their churches, and seven were pastors over specific ministries such as children, youth, worship, and community service. Participants’ length of time in leadership in current congregations ranged from one to 27 years, with an average of 8.79 years. Participants’ length of time in Christian leadership, including time in other churches, ranged from three to 50 years, with an average of 19 years. Seven participants had formal degrees from an accredited religious tertiary institution. Other participants received their religious training from church classes or religious organizations. All participants had a degree from a non-religious four-year university. Participants’ degrees came from a variety of fields including civil engineering, education, and social work.

Experience with human trafficking

All participants have volunteered with an anti-trafficking agency and/or hosted anti-trafficking events in their congregations. Three participants have worked with survivors in professional contexts (counselor, social worker, advocate) for between two to 20 years. Two participants started their own respective anti-trafficking nonprofits, and four were involved in the anti-trafficking ministries in their churches.

Data collection

Interview questions were written by the first author who is both a member of the Christian community (non-denominational) and was involved in both secular and faith-based anti-trafficking work. Questions were also discussed with two scholars at the PI’s institution whose research foci include human trafficking and qualitative social work research. The advisory committee gave initial feedback on the questions, responded to all the questions as a pilot trial for the guide, and helped to finalize the interview questions. The interview guide was used as a starting point for in-depth, open-ended exploration of participants’ discourses of Christian anti-trafficking work. To minimize the interviewer preconceiving the content or influencing the direction of the interview (Charmaz, 2014), the interviewer relied on “ … the use of reflection, clarification, request for examples and description, and the conveyance of interest through listening techniques (Jasper, 1994, p. 311)” to elicit participants’ anti-trafficking discourses.

A total of 27 virtual in-depth and two e-mail interviews were conducted over a six-month period with 15 initial in-depth interviews and 12 follow-up virtual interviews, and one initial and follow-up e-mail interview. Initial interviews ranged from 39 to 87 minutes, with an average of 57 minutes. Follow-up interviews ranged from 21 to 64 minutes, with an average of 42 minutes. Virtual interviews were conducted over the PI’s organization’s Zoom platform to adhere to COVID-19 health and safety regulations.

Data analysis

Interviews were transcribed verbatim and transcripts coded line-by-line using Nvivo12 (QSR International Pty Ltd, 2020) software with Author #1 as the primary coder and Author #2 as secondary coder. Participant and congregation names were replaced with pseudonyms to protect privacy of participants. To identify shared values with social work, deductive coding with the six core values of social work (service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, competence) was applied. Inductive coding using elemental and affective methods (Saldaña, 2016), namely in vivo coding, emotion coding, values coding, and evaluation coding, was also applied in order to comprehensively distill the attitudes and values informing church leaders’ anti-trafficking discourses and practices. As values are standards that guide thought and action (Feather, 2002; Rokeach, 1973), during inductive coding, values were retained as codes if the value motivated a durable belief, attitude, or behavior. A minimal codable segment was any individual clause separated by a period, comma, “but,” “and,” or any other conjunctions. Codes were applied to segments that could retain meaning when removed from context. To ensure coding precision, no more than two codes were assigned to a single codable segment. For increased rigor, each transcript was coded twice, with coding consistency being compared within and between interviews.

After initial coding of transcripts, further analysis of participants’ responses followed the first and second cycle coding method described by Saldaña (2016): initial codes were classified into categories, then axial coding was done to clarify relationships between the codes in a category, after which the categories were developed into themes.

Analytical memos, critical reflexive journals, member checking, and peer review contributed to the transparency and rigor of qualitative analysis (Lofland & Lofland, 1995). Throughout the analysis process, Author #1 kept analytic memos. Memos enable a record of analytical dilemmas and decisions made, and make visible standpoints and assumptions about the data (Charmaz, 2014). Author #1’s reflective journals were also used to bring clarity to value stances, emotions, assumptions, prior experiences and positions of the analyst during the coding process. At the second interview, participants were given the opportunity to discuss and validate findings that were emerging from their first interviews. The research advisory committee and two scholars at the PI’s institution were consulted throughout the research process including during study design, data collection, analysis, and reporting.

Results

The six core values of social work were prominent in participants’ responses. As the data was coded using the definitions of the six core social values in the NASW Code of Ethics, the prevalence of these values indicate that social work and Christian faith-motivated approaches to anti-trafficking are largely driven by the same set of core values defined the same way. Additionally, coding for values identified fourteen more values: reflexivity, compassion, faith, humility, authenticity, diversity, knowledge, perseverance, hope, forgiveness, identity, courage, freedom, and willingness to be uncomfortable. These twenty values motivated, justified, and empowered participants’ viewpoints and approaches toward intervening in sex trafficking. Three major themes emerged from participants’ value base: (a) Dignity and worth of the individual is paramount, (b) The church needs to change for the better, and (c) Authentic faith is expressed through social justice and service. Several values are essential to more than one theme, suggesting that these values are intricately related in Christian anti-trafficking discourse.

Theme 1: dignity and worth of the individual is paramount

Interviewees strongly affirmed that survivors were individuals with dignity and worth. Participants’ faith discourses brought an added dimension to their valuation of individual dignity and worth, namely that all human beings are unchangeably valuable because they were loved by God, and that God himself models this value. Matthew exemplifies this dimension as he described why the church should care about trafficking:

How will Jesus look at it, versus just being blind to whatever it is that makes me uncomfortable? You know, he turned aside to those that were marginalized. He made an effort to really call people out by name and give value to people.

Echoing the Code of Ethics 1.02 Self Determination, all interviewees shared that acknowledging survivors’ dignity and worth entailed respecting survivors’ agency, where no one other than the survivor has the right to define life goals or choices for them, including religion-related choices, or to judge/label these goals or choices. Additionally, while survivors need support, they have the power, agency, and responsibility to transform their lives and the right to define that transformation. For instance, Deborah disengages her own “dreams for women” that reflect conventional white Protestant middle class values from what a survivor prefers for herself:

I really think respecting the autonomy of these women is very important and so you know, do I sometimes have my own dreams for women … (having an education) might be my dream for this person and that’s right and good like I can hold both things like I have this dream for you and I completely respect your autonomy and if you want to work at Wendy’s work at Wendy’s, unto the glory of God. Like that’s completely fine.

Craig, on a similar note, provides a poignant assertion that this autonomy extends to even to the choice to die:

I know through my friend who worked in the Red Cross/Red Crescent of women who chose suicide over years or decades or even weeks, or whatever, of forced prostitution. And, I feel like that’s brave … I feel like any kind of resistance is brave and strong, and if the resistance leads to life, fantastic. And if resistance doesn’t, it’s still resistance.

Notably, all interviewees emphasized the centrality of survivors’ dignity and worth by discursively managing any negative implications that could be caused by their mention of survivors’ vulnerabilities or struggles. For example, Thomas, in stating that they could see the brokenness of survivors, articulated that no aspersion was intended and called on kinship with God as proof of survivors’ irrefutable worth:

I think that they are broken. But, you know, not in a judgmental way. They were hurt. They’re victims – though broken but also precious. I see them as daughters. I think that’s one picture that really comes out is that they’re all someone’s daughter. And even if they are an orphan, or even if they were abandoned, they’re God’s, they’re God’s daughter. So because of that, they have incredible worth and the fact that they’re broken is, you know, that’s just something that needs to be restored.”

Theme 2: the church needs to change for the better

Without being prompted, interviewees spontaneously identified problematic practices or norms in the church that conflicted with their own faith values and affected their ability to be effective in providing a transformative response to sex trafficking and other social justice issues. Problematic practices or norms described included patriarchy, lack of diversity, insularism, busyness, lack of caring, ignorance, simplistic views of social problems, fear of discomfort or inconvenience, theological or political stances that hindered effective social justice responses, and inability to collaborate with other churches and sectors. The need for change was described in three major domains, namely beliefs and attitudes, behavior, and community life. For instance, Karl noted:

American evangelicals have a lot of trouble understanding or accepting systemic issues, whether it’s advantage or disadvantage, privilege or oppression. I grew up with this idea of Jesus is my personal savior for my personal sins so when I die, I get to go to my personal mansion, you know?

Craig similarly implicates doctrinal traditions in the oversimplification of sex trafficking:

I really think it comes back to soteriology. And if the only thing that matters is, Jesus’s death and then 3 days later, a resurrection, then, we’re looking for simple and short solutions to problems that we don’t want to have be too complex. … And I feel like, at least in my denomination, if I can be perfectly honest, we’re not comfortable with a complex God, or a complex Jesus. And so, we don’t look for complex solutions.

While interviewees stated that churches’ unique strengths in service to survivors included a supportive community to belong to, they also openly acknowledged that churches could also be places where survivors may face stigma, gender bias, and hurtful ignorance. For instance, Harriet shared: “I think there are plenty of churches where a survivor might go in and be hurt all over again. Because of, you know, ignorance or you know preconceived notions and just a bad view of it [sex trafficking].” Mark noted that church tradition itself could hinder survivors from being fully integrated without bias into the community: “If you had someone coming out of the (denominational) tradition like a victim from sex trafficking coming into our tradition, a lot of pastors wouldn’t know what to do with them because they don’t fit into [name of denomination redacted].”

Christian church leaders were reflexive regarding their own communal and cultural practices, indicating that the interviewees’ faith-oriented responses to sex trafficking emphasizes the values of ‘integrity’ i.e. the churches’ actions needs to be congruent with healthy faith values and discourses that are in touch with current realities and needs of the communities the church is embedded in. Also emphasized were the value of ‘service’ i.e. the church has a responsibility to address the needs of trafficking survivors, and ‘competence’ i.e. the church has a responsibility to be skilled and knowledgeable in how they think about and help in human trafficking.

Theme 3: authentic faith is expressed through social justice and service

Interviewees described their faith as informing their views of social justice and service regarding sex trafficking. For instance, several participants emphasized that social justice was God’s norm for society. Tina illustrates succinctly in her statement, “As it is in heaven, I want it to be on earth. Right. And there is no sex trafficking in heaven.” Participants noted too that it was God’s will that the church meets human needs, that they had a duty or obligation to give to others the good things they had received (such as love and respect from God), and to do what Jesus did. For instance, Erica said:

We forgive others because God forgave us. We feed the poor because God fed us when we were starving spiritually. We adopt because God adopted us and so we adopt others. And so we just take this logic and apply it to, apply it to slavery, you know, we were slaves. We were in bondage to sin and to death and God freed us, therefore, we do the same for others.

Similar to social work, interviewees had an ethical responsibility to pursue social change on behalf of all who are vulnerable and oppressed that is rooted in God’s love for people. While the interviews focused on the particular issue of sex trafficking, participants spontaneously brought up other intersecting issues, such as gender oppression, racism, homelessness, domestic violence, addictions, labor trafficking, and unjust economic systems. For example, Deborah said:

I think it’s really easy to get super focused on human trafficking or even sex trafficking, specifically, and frankly miss that this, sex trafficking doesn’t just happen, right? It happens at the intersection of so many other issues: racism, poverty, homelessness, mental health and addictions, trauma … Even to consider things like the daily decisions that you make as a consumer of goods in the country that is America, right? Like those actually have great implications on labor trafficking, which we don’t often like to talk about as much.

Notably, integrity, diversity, and competence featured as important values in interviewees’ description of service. Contrary to popular stereotypes of charitable deeds being a vehicle for proselytization, interviewees showed that that being trustworthy and having integrity meant that service took priority over missional activities. As one example, Harriet explained:

The phrase I use a lot with faith leaders is a phrase that I received from one of the first anti trafficking organizations I ever worked, “Jesus is a gentleman, he doesn’t force himself on anyone”. And I feel that strongly that it relates to the church and the church’s work with anti-trafficking when it comes to direct service. If we are creating spaces for survivors, where we’re like, “Hey, come to our Bible study and then we’ll feed you”, I think we’re doing a bad job, you know? That inherently feels transactional and coercive in a way that’s very familiar with this population.

Several interviewees also emphasized the importance of honoring diversity. For example, Jonathan stated:

As a white Christian man I’m continually needing to figure out how do I use my all of the advantages that I have the systemic advantages and privileges that I have? What can I do to leverage that not as the platform where I can be lifted up as a problem solver, but I can make access to other people, including people who themselves are victims, you know, or immediate stakeholders in this?

Pearl, in discussing the need for sound training on sex trafficking, stated, “I knew we had to cover LGBTQ and I knew we had to talk about the boys. There are a lot of boys trafficked, nobody knows them,” and Karl said:

I believe that people from different backgrounds with different experiences experience God in different ways and that the more we can come together as different people, the more we can experience the fullness of who God is and how he loves his people, right? And I think about it a lot in terms of ethnic backgrounds and cultural backgrounds. But I think that it’s equally or more important in terms of economic backgrounds or important and traumatic like life experiences that we would say “I don’t pity you because you’ve been trafficked. I value you, first off, because you’re a beloved child of God. But secondly, you know something about the world and about God that I’m never going to know and only by being in fellowship with you can I know God more.” And I think that if we can truly value diversity as a first order thing, not just pay lip service to it but understand and believe that people who have gone through different things bring something to the table, I think that that could really transform the church, which is an alarmingly homogenous place.

Interviewees also emphasized that competence meant partnering with other churches and sectors to meet the needs of survivors, such as housing and mental health issues. For instance, while respondents strongly emphasized spiritual practices such as prayer and Bible study as essential healing modalities and life skills, they stated too that survivors needed professional services. Jonathan illustrated the importance of professional services with an example of his own pastor’s gratitude for such support when shared:

Our lead pastor at our church takes a variety of psychiatric medicines and he’s very open to everybody who comes in the door about that. He’s stated, “Without the psychiatrists and the counselor, there’s no church for me”. So it’s been a transforming place to be. He is a very humble man who as very much benefited from stuff outside of the church and that sets a pattern for us.”

Discussion

Results suggest that shared values and compatible exertions of these values exist between the Christian faith-based community and social work. Several participants shared expressions of the values that were shaped by their particular Christian worldviews. None of these cultural expressions seemed to be in opposition to social work’s understanding of these values. Rather, the faith contexts appended or refined the participants’ practice of these values while retaining the same core definitions and purposes as social work of promoting the wellbeing of others while respecting their dignity and agency. The lack of apparent tension between the values described by interviewees and social work may be related to trafficking being acknowledged by both as an area of victimization requiring intervention (Kempadoo, 2015). Also, given the historic relationship between social work and Christianity where social work evolved in large degree from charitable efforts motivated by Christianity (Barker, 2007), participants opting not to evoke controversial topics involving conservative values such as voluntary sex work (Burack, 2013) may also have contributed to the compatibility of values discourses between the two.

Overall, participants’ responses focused more on economically-oriented social remedies associated with leftward-leaning evangelicals (Zimmerman, 2010) than emphasizing the moral and physical protection of women through traditional marriage and family roles. The interviews reveal that the concerns that Christian anti-trafficking discourse is motivated by a disrespectful, distorted, and disempowering victim narrative that mobilizes white, Protestant middle class norms as universal grounds for defining gender, freedom, and exploitation (Kempadoo, 2012; Zimmerman, 2010) does not necessarily hold true across all individuals or congregations.

Similar to the key understandings underpinning social work practice with survivors described by Gerassi and Nichols (2018) in their book Sex Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation, interviewees understood sex trafficking as: (a) occurring in the context of larger social, economic, and political injustices where cultural and structural changes within mainstream society are required for its redress, (b) survivors come from diverse backgrounds and experiences and people of color are disproportionately victimized, (c) agency and victimization are not dichotomies but occur on a fluid continuum and can manifest simultaneously, (d) cultural competency and humility are critical to service and integration of survivors into their communities, (e) a trauma-informed lens is critical; services should be individualized, empowering, and survivor-centered, and (f) critical analyses of current church approaches to anti-trafficking work and other social justice issues was important to improve service.

The large degree of overlap between the social work understandings of human trafficking and the interviewees’ responses may an expression of historic similarities of values between social work and Christianity regarding social justice issues (Barker, 2007). Nonetheless, there were several significant areas in the social work understanding of sex trafficking described by Gerassi and Nichols (2018) that were absent in interviewees’ responses. Interviewees did not mention that: (a) survivors of different backgrounds and experiences may face different challenges in accessing and benefitting from services; (b) that identity-based oppression increases barriers to obtaining services and legal justice; (c) that the intersectionality of an individual’s multiple identities should be considered when providing services; (d) that survivor expertise, leadership, and activism should be supported (with the exception of Pearl); and (e) that services and interventions should be evidence-based. In addition to the areas of improvement that participants had identified, these gaps may represent areas of knowledge, understanding, or skill that social work could assist the church with.

The findings highlight the importance of providing a platform for religious minority viewpoints to be self-articulated rather than represented through the dominant secular worldview as a means of fostering points of congruence among diverse populations (Hodge, 2006). This is critical as the ideological (and even the practical) questions regarding trafficking are essentially questions of morality (the definitions of right, good, safe, harm, empowering, oppression, choice, just, victim, perpetrator, and so on) and power (who gets to define and gate keep morality and the prestige associated with morality, as well as access to other forms of social and economic capital).

Implications

Interviews indicate that churches are open to collaborations with social work and other sectors for anti-trafficking work based on common social justice goals, shared values, and complementary practices. The study shows that concerns about the Christian community limiting survivors to ‘victim’ stereotypes may not apply to all members. Identifying and partnering with Christian leaders whose anti-trafficking agendas are informed by survivors’ agency and self-determination may be a way to promote multi-sector collaborations that uphold survivors’ rights and dignity. Such collaborations would enable social work to promote the responsiveness of Christian congregations to the issue of human trafficking. In particular, social work could focus on helping churches with the cultural practices inimical to their own true values that they have already reflexively identified, and also with the gaps in knowledge, understanding, or skills regarding trafficking. A study of faith-based organizations found that if a service provider was “willing to work toward the same broad service goals, the local faith-based organization or congregation was willing to enter into a relationship with the entity” (Thomas, 2009, p. 46).

The potential of the Christian community as an effective resource for anti-trafficking may be especially true if effective social work collaborations becomes means for the Christian community to learn and grow in important ways. Specifically, social workers can assist Christian communities to: (a) gain an understanding of trafficking that is grounded in empirical evidence and other rigorous methods of knowledge production, (b) gain an understanding of trafficking that is cognizant of how political/cultural discourses around gender, migration, sexuality, family, and so on shape definitions of victimhood, freedom, and other key constructs, (c) be reflexive of their perspectives and practices regarding anti-trafficking, (d) be equipped to provide survivor-centered (rather than doctrinally or ideologically-motivated) services, and (e) promote and partner with survivor leadership and survivor-led advocacy. For instance, social workers could assist churches and Christian organizations to partner with survivors to promote the formation of services, resources, and relationships more informed by survivors’ expressed needs, wants, and worldviews, then by the ideologies or doctrines of the providers (Gerassi & Nichols, 2018). Social-work-survivor-church collaborations may be a key strategy for preventing salvation discourses in specific congregations running into extremes where survivors are indeed only permitted victim roles while leveraging the strengths and resources of the faith community.

In addition, social work education should train social workers to apply the lens of cultural humility or responsiveness to religious or spiritual communities’ norms, goals, and values, in order to disperse stereotypes and enable collaboration that leverages strengths of both parties without compromising social work values. Hodge (2002) suggests that such training could include these major domains or topics: 1) ethics and values, 2) review of empirical research on spirituality, 3) theoretical explanations for strengths conferred by spirituality, 4) spiritual diversity and demographics of the population, 5) overview of the spiritual traditions or religions in a population, 6) value conflicts and ethical dilemmas, 7) spiritually-based interventions, 8) assessment and operationalization, and 9) rights of spiritual believers (p. 87). Training for religious or spiritual competence is important as social work discourse continues to have little spiritual diversity (Hodge, 2019) and social workers tend to have disproportionately lower levels of traditional theistic beliefs than the general population (Newport, 2012; Oxhandler et al., 2015; Shafranske & Cummings, 2013).

Notably, the potential alignment between social work and the Christian-faith-based values demonstrated by these findings do not provide suggestions as to why faith-related issues contribute to difficulties social work or other secular agencies face in working together with faith-based congregations or agencies (Gerassi et al., 2017), or suggest a path through these difficulties. As this study indicates there is little apparent tension between social work and faith values, more study is needed for insight into how faith-related issues, including different expression or sources of values, may affect interagency coalitions and community-based responses. Further study based on designs that incorporate ethnographic work alongside interviews of both Christian and non-Christian partners in the anti-trafficking work may render a more nuanced, contextualized, and comprehensive view of the values that motivate Christian anti-trafficking, and provide insight into how these values affect service and collaboration with other service providers or community groups. Of particular interest might be how values and other faith-related issues interact with other factors that affect collaboration; for instance, differing goals among partners, competition for funding, availability of time for building relationships, communicative practices, and organizational structure.

Several other directions for future research are implicated in the findings of this study. Given the relatively narrow scope of denominational and cultural backgrounds represented in this sample, further research is needed to explore whether these findings hold true across diverse samples. We must not assume there is only one monolithic perspective toward human trafficking within Christianity, and it is important to determine if the values and ethics seen here are similar or different to those among other Christian leaders, and if different, how so. These differences could alter recommendations. In line with the need to promote effective partnerships between faith-based organizations and other organizations, future research studies should focus on evaluating existing partnerships and collaborations between Christian organizations or congregations and social workers or secular social service agencies. Research studies that detail what has been successful or effective in these collaborations, and what has been damaging, will provide important guidance for future collaborative endeavors. Additionally, to understand the implementation challenges related to a faith-based service context, further research is needed on the congregations/denominations that have previously had ministries or offered services to address sex trafficking. These studies could help illuminate the barriers and facilitators inherent in cross-system sex trafficking interventions.

Strengths and limitations

This study has many strengths. The development of an advisory committee and their input on the study goals, recruitment process, interview guide, and emerging results was invaluable and helped ensure that the authors remained sensitive to any bias or discrimination regarding participants’ views or misrepresentations of Christians. They also helped pilot test the interview guide and shared feedback. Additionally, the use of follow up interviews, often all too rare in qualitative work, ensured that the data was as rich and comprehensive as possible, and participants had the opportunity to elaborate or clarify their thinking. Furthermore, rigorous qualitative practices were employed to reduce researcher bias and reactivity and increase reflexivity, including the use of a team of coders and peer debriefing throughout data collection and analysis. Despite these strengths, the study also has some limitations. Despite efforts in recruitment to capture perspectives from all major denominations, only a few denominations were represented in this sample. This lack of theological diversity means that although this study identifies features of churches that may be good partners for social work professionals, it is not generalizable. Moreover, in addition to denominational diversity, this sample lacked in other forms of diversity as well. For instance, there was little racial, gender, or sexual diversity in the sample. This also limits the generalizability of the findings.

Conclusion

Understanding how Christian communities express values will clarify the constructions of justice, human dignity, competent service, moral obligations, and so on that characterize Christian anti-trafficking. This in turn provides a means for a nondiscriminatory understanding of the Christian community’s involvement in anti-trafficking, highlighting both areas of compatibility where productive collaboration is already possible, and areas of tension or gaps where further dialogue is necessary to promote authentic respect for diverse viewpoints and advocate for any marginalized or oppressed parties. The very human purpose of creating a better world for self and others, whether as a sex positivist, abolitionist, sex worker, trafficked individual, evangelical or liberal Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, social worker, or any other social category, should not divide and drive us into separate moral and ideological conclaves where effective collaboration is no longer possible. Returning to social work’s practical focus, we appreciate how the Christian community and other faith communities represent a powerful potential resource to address trafficking, due to social justice, service, and collective action being part of their spiritual traditions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).