Transcript of the video

I’m going to relate to you a story about working with churches, and challenging some of those abusive practices that happen.

In PNG we observe Father’s day, Mother’s day. On this particular Sunday it was Father’s day that the women had organized to do something special for the men. And in the program they asked me to do the closing remarks, and thank the men. My first reaction to the lady that was organizing that was “No, I find it hard to thank men, because in the line of work that I do, I see a lot of women being abused, raped, beaten up, neglected by men.” Then whilst I was talking I realized that this was also an opportunity to challenge those abusive attitudes, particularly amongst church people, towards our women. So I accepted the offer.

When I was given the opportunity, I went to the front. There were more than 500 people in the congregation. I started by saying that I found it really hard to thank the men in that congregation as men, because they represented the majority of PNG men out there who: abuse women; rape women; beat them up; neglect them; they go for other women, practicing their polygamous, adulterous behaviour, and they inflict a lot of pain, and hurt for women. So I said, as a woman who was supporting a lot of women, and also in my own life as a single mother, I had experienced a lot of pain being single, raising children without a father. And the congregation knew about my own personal life as well.

When I said that, there wasn’t a lot of positive response. But I was really empowered that in a big congregation, in a church, I had the strength to be able to even challenge those kind of abusive practices that were happening- even amongst church men. When I came down at the end of the service, the Pastor found it really hard to talk to me. Then he said “You do not respect me”, because one of the things I also said was, I saw the pastor sitting- in a lot of Pacific Islands nations where missionary influence has been great, in our churches, the men sit on one side and the women and children sit on the other side. So to me that’s a reflection of what’s happening out there and the value that men have particularly towards women. So I also challenged the Pastor, and said “As long as you’re sitting on one side of the room, and your wife is sitting somewhere else, then we don’t have a future, a positive future, for feminists in PNG.”

So when I finished and came down from the pulpit at the end of the service, he said “You don’t have any respect for me as a pastor, and also you will never speak from that pulpit”. I said “That’s ok. I’m going to have lots of pulpits out there in the community, in the streets, in the markets, in the villages. I don’t need a special pulpit to preach.”

That also opened a lot of doors for me to go to other denominations. Like a lot of Pacific Islands, we have a lot of Christian denominations. So that opened up a lot of opportunities for me to preach at other churches as well, and also challenge men. So when we’re in the line of work that we do, it’s also about using every opportunity: turning it around so that we are challenging people, giving information, raising awareness, so that people can change their attitudes and behaviours that have been so normalized in a lot of our communities.

So I found that it was a really empowering process for me as a woman, because we are not allowed to speak out against men, and also against our religious inheritance. As a Christian, I found that it also changed my own values, my own thinking: that I don’t have to accept everything that comes out of the pulpit. I need to asses what the pastor is saying- is it consistent to the Bible? Is that how God wants us to interpret it for our lives?
Naomi Yupae