Religious Wednesday (sort of)

I never, ever do day-of-the-week themed posts. So don't expect Religious Wednesday to be a regular occurrence - it just so happens that I was saving up a few links to post.

- Check out Restored, an organisation set up to provide a faith-based response, working with churches, to violence against women. With links to Tearfund, Restored was set up because its founders saw what they believed to be a 'gap' in tackling VAW - that is, a need for an organisation which could help respond to the issue by emphasising a faith-based model of 'restored relationships' and also encourage men to take responsibility and play their part in standing up to attitudes about VAW. The website states:

"We are therefore establishing Restored; a global Christian alliance to transform relationships and end violence against women. We believe that Christian churches have huge potential to help prevent violence, but also need to change their own attitudes and practice. Our specific focus will be the prevention of domestic violence and sexual violence against women and girls. This will include a Christian men's initiative on preventing violence against women, which will come under the main alliance. Restored’s priority in its first year will be to develop a pack to help churches address violence against women in their communities."

Something Restored is keen to point out is the fact that domestic abuse can be a difficult area for Christians to discuss and a difficult problem for churches to address within their congregations. Nevertheless it is clearly an issue which affects women from all backgrounds and no matter what the church and the Bible might teach about relationships, it's a harrowing reality for plenty of Christian families.

The site contains a lot of really good resources, including the church pack mentioned above, which I emailed to my church as part of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence last year. You can also follow @rest0red on Twitter.

- After having attended and been incredibly impacted by Jo Saxton's workshops on women in leadership as a delegate at Soul Survivor Momentum I'm so excited to have found out that they're putting on a one-day conference called Equal later this year. The day will explore the theology and practice of women in church leadership and will be held at Soul Survivor Watford on June 18th. Soul Survivor as an organisation has shown such a positive attitude to empowering women in the last few years and I'm really pleased that they're tackling the issue. As it stands I plan to book a place and am hoping that nothing else will come up that day!

- Really interesting responses to this old but popular post on Anne Jackson's blog. Anne asks: 'What is something you feel you can’t say in church, or around other Christians?' I'm sure most of us have a long list.

- I have written about faith and feminism as a guest post for C Jane's blog. You can't read it just yet but I can tell you it'll be up fairly soon as part of her Sunday Guest Post series.

And finally, for some non-relgious links:

- You must read Juliet Shaw's guest post entitled A True Story of Daily Mail Lies over at Jonathan's blog, No Sleep 'Til Brooklands. Juliet tells the story of how she agreed to be interviewed by the Mail for what she thought was a feature on the benefits of moving from the city to the country. Instead, the newspaper fabricated quotes, details and in fact the majority of her 'story', making her life a misery when it was published. This blog posts tells the tale of what happened when Juliet fought back.

- Keep an eye on We Are Equals in the coming weeks. The site, which has recently launched, is part of a camapign centred on International Women's Day, organised by a coalition comprised of charities such as The Fawcett Society, Oxfam and Women's Aid. The Equals coaliition hopes to prompt a 'big debate' surrounding inequality this year, which marks the 100th anniversary of IWD.