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The Dinah Project: A Handbook for Congregational Response to Sexual Violence
Sexual violence is rarely discussed in church, despite the rising incidents of rape, sexual assault, molestation and incest. The Dinah Project, which gets its name from Genesis 34 - the rape of Dinah, Jacob's daughter - was borne out of the author's decision to start healing through the church after being raped. The result is this book and an entire ministry program to assist churches in responding to sexual violence. The Dinah Project describes programmatic ways in which a local church can respond to the crisis of sexual violence in the community. By sharing the lessons of one church, this book proposes detailed methods for instituting a church program. The Dinah Project provides church activities ranging from providing resources for members to ways to organize a full-time church ministry, and many stages in between. Topics include planning worship services, conducting community education workshops, working with local agencies, establishing a board of directors and holding therapy groups at the church. With checklists, forms and detailed explanations, this user-friendly book guides any interested individual from basic information about sexual violence to tips on budgeting for programs.
- GenresReference
192 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2004
51 people want to read
About the author
Monica A. Coleman
6 books68 followersDr. Monica A. Coleman is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware. She spent over ten years in graduate theological education at Claremont School of Theology, the Center for Process Studies and Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Coleman has earned degrees from Harvard University, Vanderbilt University and Claremont Graduate University. She has received funding from leading foundations in the United States, including the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation), among others.
Answering her call to ministry at 19 years of age, Coleman is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and an initiate in traditional Yoruba religion.
Dr. Coleman brings her experiences in evangelical Christianity, black church traditions, global ecumenical work, and indigenous spirituality to her discussions of theology and religion.
Dr. Coleman is the author or editor of six books, and several articles and book chapters that focus on the role of faith in addressing critical social and philosophical issues. Her memoir "Bipolar Faith" shares her life-long dance with trauma and depression, and how she discovers a new and liberating vision of God.
Her book "Making a Way Out of No Way" is required reading at leading theological schools around the country, and listed on the popular #BlackWomenSyllabus and #LemonadeSyllabus recommended reading projects.
Dr. Coleman is the co-host (along with writer Tananarive Due) of the popular webinar series "Octavia Tried to Tell Us: Parable for Today’s Pandemic," addressing today’s most pressing issues with insights from Afrofuturist literature, process theology and community values
Dr. Coleman’s strength comes from the depth of her knowledge base and from her experiences as a community organizer, survivor of sexual violence and as an individual who lives with a mental health challenges.
Coleman speaks widely on mental wellness, navigating change, religious diversity, and religious responses to intimate partner violence. Coleman is based in Wilmington, Delaware, and lives in an intergenerational household where she is an avid vegan cook and cyclist.
Answering her call to ministry at 19 years of age, Coleman is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and an initiate in traditional Yoruba religion.
Dr. Coleman brings her experiences in evangelical Christianity, black church traditions, global ecumenical work, and indigenous spirituality to her discussions of theology and religion.
Dr. Coleman is the author or editor of six books, and several articles and book chapters that focus on the role of faith in addressing critical social and philosophical issues. Her memoir "Bipolar Faith" shares her life-long dance with trauma and depression, and how she discovers a new and liberating vision of God.
Her book "Making a Way Out of No Way" is required reading at leading theological schools around the country, and listed on the popular #BlackWomenSyllabus and #LemonadeSyllabus recommended reading projects.
Dr. Coleman is the co-host (along with writer Tananarive Due) of the popular webinar series "Octavia Tried to Tell Us: Parable for Today’s Pandemic," addressing today’s most pressing issues with insights from Afrofuturist literature, process theology and community values
Dr. Coleman’s strength comes from the depth of her knowledge base and from her experiences as a community organizer, survivor of sexual violence and as an individual who lives with a mental health challenges.
Coleman speaks widely on mental wellness, navigating change, religious diversity, and religious responses to intimate partner violence. Coleman is based in Wilmington, Delaware, and lives in an intergenerational household where she is an avid vegan cook and cyclist.
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August 30, 2018This is an okay introduction for churches interested in engaging more around issues of sexual violence.
She opens with a brief overview of her own story, why it's important for the church to engage meaningfully with the issue of sexual violence, and some basic education (both around facts about sexual violence and also about effective vs. ineffective responses in terms of e.g. what not to say to victim-survivors ... oh and also terminology: "victim" vs. "survivor" vs. other alternatives).
The level of programming she thinks a church can support is nigh unfathomable to me (maybe Black churches in the US Southeast were/are weathering the decline of the Protestant mainline better than all the churches I know?), so I think a lot of readers could skip over the section on developing a group counseling program, but some of the other sections are relevant to churches of any size -- e.g., getting to know the local service providers in your area, developing a list of referral contacts and also posting crisis phone numbers in private places like bathrooms, educating your pastoral staff and lay leaders. (The first 2 pages of the "Master Checklist" in Appendix F are a really good summary staring point.)
I'm also intrigued by the idea of doing a special worship service (possibly not at your usual worship time, so as to collaborate with ecumenical partners, etc.) on the theme of Community Awareness, Forgiveness, or Healing.
In the book she also digs into theology around forgiveness, provides some guiding questions for Bible studies on scriptural passages about sexual violence (I really liked her questions for reflection -- "Biblical Exploration about Sexual Violence" in Appendix D), etc.
+
This book was first published in 2004, and I wonder if Coleman's queer (especially) trans cultural competency has improved since then.
In talking about creating a group counseling program (Chapter 9) she says, "Separating individuals based on gender is key to the success of group counseling. There tends to be a greater comfort level and ease to talk about the gender-specific issues that will arise during the sessions. The leaders of the group should also be of the same gender as the participants." (p. 54)
But what are those gender-specific issues? Do you need separate groups for cis and trans women? Straight and queer women? Does the gender of the violator matter?
There is literally no mention of queer folks in the main text. One of the testimonies in the back is from a man who was sexually abused by a man when he was a child, and one of the statistics in the appendix is, "In one study, 98 percent of males who raped boys reported that they were heterosexual ('Sexual Abuse of Boys,' Journal of the American Medical Association, December 2, 1998)." And that's it.
There's nothing about how people who are victims of "same-sex" violence (whether within a pre-existing romantic and/or sexual relationship, or acquaintance or stranger rape) might have specific concerns about a church's response -- over and above the usual concerns about victim-blaming, a rush to forgiveness, etc. -- given the Church's historic hostility toward non-heterosexual sexuality. Women who have been violated by other women need to know that a church isn't going to tell them that isn't "really" rape (since it isn't "really" sex). Queer people of all identities need to know that church people aren't going to take this opportunity to tell them that being queer or having queer sex is a sin. Et cetera. (And there's definitely no mention of how trans folks often already have fraught relationships with their own bodies and sexuality, and how sexual violence can exacerbate that.)
There isn't even any mention of the idea that men can't "really" be raped by women (except maybe if she anally penetrates him). I get that the book isn't attempting to be a comprehensive text about everything you should know to be culturally competent around sexual violence, but I was a little surprised that some of the specific issues male victims face didn't at least get mentioned.
Returning to the issues of gender essentialism, in an overall good section on "God's Gift of Sexuality," Coleman says, "We must feel free to know about the ways in which our bodies work. There is nothing shameful about how women wear bras and men sometimes wear jock straps; that women have menstrual cycles and men have genital erections. These are all biological functions of the human body. There should be no fear in understanding or exploring the body. " (p.71)
Say it with me now: "Not all women menstruate, and not all people who menstruate are women." (The first half of this sentence doesn't even have to be about trans inclusion, but about not erasing the womanhood of amenorrheic or post-menopausal cis women, not to mention women with androgen insensitivity syndrome, etc.)
(Also, do other cis women's clits work differently than mine do that we don't think vulva-havers also have genital erections? Also, clothing isn't a biological function. There are just so many things wrong with that paragraph.)
She opens with a brief overview of her own story, why it's important for the church to engage meaningfully with the issue of sexual violence, and some basic education (both around facts about sexual violence and also about effective vs. ineffective responses in terms of e.g. what not to say to victim-survivors ... oh and also terminology: "victim" vs. "survivor" vs. other alternatives).
The level of programming she thinks a church can support is nigh unfathomable to me (maybe Black churches in the US Southeast were/are weathering the decline of the Protestant mainline better than all the churches I know?), so I think a lot of readers could skip over the section on developing a group counseling program, but some of the other sections are relevant to churches of any size -- e.g., getting to know the local service providers in your area, developing a list of referral contacts and also posting crisis phone numbers in private places like bathrooms, educating your pastoral staff and lay leaders. (The first 2 pages of the "Master Checklist" in Appendix F are a really good summary staring point.)
I'm also intrigued by the idea of doing a special worship service (possibly not at your usual worship time, so as to collaborate with ecumenical partners, etc.) on the theme of Community Awareness, Forgiveness, or Healing.
In the book she also digs into theology around forgiveness, provides some guiding questions for Bible studies on scriptural passages about sexual violence (I really liked her questions for reflection -- "Biblical Exploration about Sexual Violence" in Appendix D), etc.
+
This book was first published in 2004, and I wonder if Coleman's queer (especially) trans cultural competency has improved since then.
In talking about creating a group counseling program (Chapter 9) she says, "Separating individuals based on gender is key to the success of group counseling. There tends to be a greater comfort level and ease to talk about the gender-specific issues that will arise during the sessions. The leaders of the group should also be of the same gender as the participants." (p. 54)
But what are those gender-specific issues? Do you need separate groups for cis and trans women? Straight and queer women? Does the gender of the violator matter?
There is literally no mention of queer folks in the main text. One of the testimonies in the back is from a man who was sexually abused by a man when he was a child, and one of the statistics in the appendix is, "In one study, 98 percent of males who raped boys reported that they were heterosexual ('Sexual Abuse of Boys,' Journal of the American Medical Association, December 2, 1998)." And that's it.
There's nothing about how people who are victims of "same-sex" violence (whether within a pre-existing romantic and/or sexual relationship, or acquaintance or stranger rape) might have specific concerns about a church's response -- over and above the usual concerns about victim-blaming, a rush to forgiveness, etc. -- given the Church's historic hostility toward non-heterosexual sexuality. Women who have been violated by other women need to know that a church isn't going to tell them that isn't "really" rape (since it isn't "really" sex). Queer people of all identities need to know that church people aren't going to take this opportunity to tell them that being queer or having queer sex is a sin. Et cetera. (And there's definitely no mention of how trans folks often already have fraught relationships with their own bodies and sexuality, and how sexual violence can exacerbate that.)
There isn't even any mention of the idea that men can't "really" be raped by women (except maybe if she anally penetrates him). I get that the book isn't attempting to be a comprehensive text about everything you should know to be culturally competent around sexual violence, but I was a little surprised that some of the specific issues male victims face didn't at least get mentioned.
Returning to the issues of gender essentialism, in an overall good section on "God's Gift of Sexuality," Coleman says, "We must feel free to know about the ways in which our bodies work. There is nothing shameful about how women wear bras and men sometimes wear jock straps; that women have menstrual cycles and men have genital erections. These are all biological functions of the human body. There should be no fear in understanding or exploring the body. " (p.71)
Say it with me now: "Not all women menstruate, and not all people who menstruate are women." (The first half of this sentence doesn't even have to be about trans inclusion, but about not erasing the womanhood of amenorrheic or post-menopausal cis women, not to mention women with androgen insensitivity syndrome, etc.)
(Also, do other cis women's clits work differently than mine do that we don't think vulva-havers also have genital erections? Also, clothing isn't a biological function. There are just so many things wrong with that paragraph.)
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