When BMS World Mission was looking for the best way to highlight its work in Thailand, it turned to a musician. Ben Rochelle talks to Pete James about his experiences on a recent BMS visit there.
Sex for sale, film, mission and music. Worship leader and singer/songwriter Pete James recently got an insight into the ways in which these apparently unrelated elements are being drawn together on the streets of Bangkok.
Pete, who’s worship leader of Sheffield’s Baptist/Anglican St Thomas’ Church, Philadelphia, was part of a BMS World Mission filming team that recently travelled to Bangkok.
The capital of Thailand is often considered the capital of the world’s sex-tourism industry. The team were there to highlight the plight of trafficked women and how their dignity is being restored. Pete’s reflections, and the music the environment inspired, will form the focus of a forthcoming BMS video resource.
Prostitution was made illegal in Thailand in the 1960’s, yet there have been few efforts to enforce the law. The trade is now entrenched in the culture. Estimates from 2007 put the number of sex workers in Thailand at more the 2.8 million. A staggering 10 per cent of tourist dollars are, according to some figures, spent on Thailand’s sex trade.
In this dark and seemingly hopeless environment, Christians are making a difference. Some of them work at BMS partner NightLight, a business that provides employment and a route out of prostitution for trafficked and at-risk women in and around the sex industry. The filming team aimed to capture the ways in which BMS funding and volunteer support helps organisations like this to bring healing to the lives of thousands of women affected by the sex trade.
This was Pete’s first visit to Thailand. His initial impressions of Bangkok were of a city marked by contrasts, like Buddhist monks in saffron robes standing outside mass corporate buildings. The chasm between rich and poor is also noticeable even from first inspection, ‘You look up at the sky-train [the elevated passenger railway in Bangkok] and then look at the masses of people on the street. In certain parts, Bangkok is massively developed. But other parts are heaped in poverty and hardship.’
After walking the streets of the red-light district on the opening day Pete commented on how overwhelmed he was by the sheer number of foreign men looking for sex – Americans, Australians, Europeans, many of whom had moved to Thailand permanently in order to immerse themselves in this permissive sex environment. The music video for the first song Pete wrote, God Are You There? was filmed in the heart of the red-light zone.
Thought many of the women working as prostitutes in Thailand are not being coerced and have not been trafficked physically, personal poverty and a trade centred on denying women their basic rights has resulted, according to Pete, in very real bondage.
This bondage is not merely physical, but spiritual as well. Pete sees this spiritual struggle as central to the work of BMS partners in Thailand, making reference to Ephesians 6, and the fact that our fight is not against flesh and blood, but ‘against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’.
‘There is certainly a spiritual dimension to what is going on’, explains Pete. ‘Many of the bars from which the women work are “blessed” before the evening begins in the hope of drawing in lots of men. Sex trafficking goes beyond the physical problems.’
He speaks of the veneer of cheerfulness exhibited by many of those most intimately affected. ‘You speak to the women involved in prostitution and many of them smile and giggle. This happiness is false’.
But Christian work is truly transforming lives. ‘Through the work of organisations such as NightLight, demonic thoughts and activity are chipped away. Lives previously riddled with abuse are transformed. Women previously so lost are filled with an inner peace and a real joy’.
In Situ is the provisional title for the BMS resource Pete helped to make. It will feature a short film about the work of BMS partners in Thailand, and the music videos for two songs Pete wrote about his time in Thailand, God Are You There? And Free Man.
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Text by Ben Rochelle. Pictures by Alistair Clunie
As featured in The Baptist Times, Thursday, June 18, 2009. www.baptisttimes.co.uk
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Read more about the songs Pete worte during his time in Thailand, God Are You There? and Mr Free Man in The Stories Behind The Songs…
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