Keep The Faith magazine - Britain's leading publication about Black faith

It’s agreed that children are being sexualised at too young an age. Rev Wale Hudson-Roberts looks at the reasons for this, and what churches can do to turn back the tide. 

Children are being forced to become sexually aware at too early an age, partly due to a combination of aggressive marketing, explicit lyrics and music videos, together with a generally more liberal society and culture. Young girls are cajoled into wearing high heels and T-shirts with Playboy motifs, before ‘progressing’ into a grim future dominated by an internet-based culture that pressurises them to dress and behave as sexual objects.

Society is changing. For me this was reinforced when a friend and I strolled into a takeaway to order some Soul Food. Whilst waiting, we read a flyer advertising a dance: ‘The Return of the Breast Affair.’  We were not only puzzled and surprised by the provocative title, but also by the images of half-dressed young girls exposing their breasts. The bottom of the flyer read, ‘It is good to praise the Lord and make music to Your Name, O Most High, to proclaim Your love in the morning and Your faithfulness at night to the music of the ten stringed lyre and melody of the harp’ (Psalm 92). I expressed my concern to the owner of the takeaway, who retorted, “Why don’t you come with me to the dance? You might get some good sermon illustrations for your church!” 

This is just one of the reasons why I welcome the new report on ‘The Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood’, published by Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of the Mothers’ Union, a Christian charity. Bailey’s report is a timely recognition of the need to carefully monitor what our children watch and listen to.  There has been growing concern about the way sexual imagery has become, what Bailey calls, ‘the wallpaper of children’s lives’.

Last year, after the website, Mumsnet, launched a campaign called ‘Let Girls be Girls’, Primark agreed to stop selling padded bikini bras for girls as young as seven. Even David Cameron, who prohibits his seven-year-old daughter from listening to Lily Allen’s music - due to inappropriate sexual references - described Primark as ‘disgraceful’.

But the biggest furore came during last year’s X Factor finals. Millions of people witnessed the lewd crotch-rubbing by Rihanna as she strutted her stuff across the stage.  It is perhaps indicative of our present culture that the regulator, Ofcom, ruled her dance routine ‘OK’. 

It was after witnessing Rihanna’s inappropriate dance routine on the X Factor that David Cameron commissioned the Bailey Report, whose recommendations include: reducing the number of sexual images in adverts; lads’ mags in newsagents to be put in brown covers; TV programmes broadcast before the 9pm watershed to be more responsive to parental concerns, and for music videos to be age–rated.

So what can our churches do to stem this rising tide? First and second generation Africans and Caribbeans often repeat stories of not only being rebuked at home for a misdemeanour, but also in the entire village as well, including friend, acquaintance, teacher and even foe. Anonymous acts - good, bad and indifferent - were exposed; you were the ‘property’ and product of the entire village, and privacy was not an option.  Accountability was the acceptable way of life, clearly irritating for an independent child, but reassuring for the immediate family.

Today, the converse is true.  The need for some political correctness and obvious Child Protection Policies encourage us to turn a blind eye to a wayward or potentially-errant child. It is not our business, we say; don’t get involved, we protest. Yet the Bible holds a different view.

The world of the New Testament was intrinsically social; strong bonds in and out of the Synagogue were formed by Jews, young and old. This was true of the early church as well. Independence was discouraged and independence encouraged.  Belonging to the total community, not just a part of it, was a core value that nourished community cohesion. In essence, this meant that my business was your business, my child your child, your responsibility my responsibility. Commencing with cradle, concluding with grave, the child was the responsibility of all. Today’s church can still learn lessons from the early church.

But perhaps too, the contemporary church also needs to be increasingly adversarial when addressing this worrying trend. A journalist from the Daily Telegraph wrote, ‘All this fuss about the sexual impact of contemporary pop music on small children, I used to think it overblown. Then I saw a music video my 11-year-old nephew had ‘art directed’ on my iPhone, starring his eight-year-old cousins in swimsuits, gyrating to Katy Perry’s ‘California Girls’ and yelping, “Kiss her, touch her, and squeeze her bums.”’

Imagine the impact it would have if a number of Black Majority Churches protested outside certain retailers in the West End, as a protest against the sexualisation of our children.  Threatened by the possible loss of profits, retailers might feel compelled to consider revising their marketing strategies. What a resounding victory for our children this would be.

Though comparatively new to Britain, the Black Majority Church has grown inexorably, particularly in terms of resources and congregants. We are up there with the best of them. Now is the time for our churches to use our power to safeguard the innocence of our children, by challenging the institutions that put profits before their souls. A voiceless Church will leave an indelible scar not just on our children and on their children, but also on history as we know it, and for our silence, the Church might be judged. It is time to speak up on behalf of those who have no voice, whose agonising whispers for protection, boundaries and safety too often go unheard.

Rev Wale Hudson-Roberts is the Racial Justice Coordinator for the Baptist Union of Great Britain