"The Workforce is the Mission"

Becca Stevens spent a week on The Holy Hill in January as Episcopal’s Theologian-In-Residence for 2018.
Stevens is, among many things, an Episcopal priest, an author, and the founder and president of Thistle Farms, a non-profit company whose profits go directly to supporting and empowering the female victims of sex trafficking and prostitution. Women whose lives are often ravaged by drug use, incarceration, and abuse find a home, training, and employment in the Thistle Farms program. Over 70 percent of all employees at Thistle Farms are women who came through its residential program (Magdalene), including almost two-thirds of the managerial staff and all of those tasked with training the newest residents.

“I call Thistle Farms a ‘justice enterprise.’ For us, for a justice enterprise, the workforce is the mission,” Stevens said. “Our entire mission is employing these women. Everything we aim to do starts there and works through that.”

​Through this incredible mission, Thistle Farms currently supports 49 survivor-led communities in 26 states and offers sanctuary to an additional 152 survivor-leaders. Globally, they partner with 26 social enterprises in 19 countries that support the employment of over 1,700 survivors around the world.

In her week-long residence, Stevens spoke three times in Chapel, sat in on and participated in a number of classes, and offered a special informational session and discussion over dinner on the Wednesday of her visit, where almost 50 students and faculty attended in a crowded but cozy Bryan Library. Stevens’ husband, Grammy-winning songwriter and singer Marcus Hummon, also spent the week at Episcopal and performed several times, including a stirring rendition of his award-winning “Bless the Broken Road.”

“Episcopal is a really special place, with a positive energy on the campus that is infectious. There’s just a lot of deep school spirit here,” Stevens said, reflecting on her time on the Hill. “The students are aware of what’s going on. They get it. They’re dialed in. They want to learn more.”

When asked what she had hoped to accomplish with her visit, she said her aim was to expand the relationship between EHS and Thistle Farms, to provoke thought — “even if it’s difficult or frustrating thought” — in the students and the adults, and to “rekindle that burning desire that exists in all of us to act more justly and compassionately in this world.”

When discussing what, by any measure, has been an enormously successful endeavor, she repeated several times that it was never her plan or vision to be running an organization with as much breadth and complexity as Thistle Farms; the work began only with her desire to provide a home for five women whose lives were off course from addiction, abuse, imprisonment, and poverty.

“I never, ever intended to start a business. That was never my goal. I didn’t have some vision statement about where this was going. It started as my desire to help five women and give them a place to live. That was it,” she said. “But the women were dirt poor, and they had criminal records, and they couldn’t get jobs, so it couldn’t just stop at helping put a roof over their heads. Everything else sprouted from there.

“One of my favorite things is asking a group like those great kids on Wednesday night, ‘If you were stepping out of prison for the first time in months or years and had nothing but the clothes on your back, what wouldyou want?’ It’s not a hard question to answer, really. The answers are almost always spot on, because everyone wants the same things when the chips are down. A bed. Warmth. Clothes. A little privacy.”

At that gathering, a student asked Stevens what the biggest obstacles and setbacks were, and Stevens insisted she didn’t think about those things, that she couldn’t really recall the obstacles.

“If you follow a career path that involves your ideals of justice, you won’t often find yourself crying over things that go wrong or over injustices done to you,” she said. “You will most often find yourself weepy with gratitude for those who will support you and help you.”

The Theologian-in-Residence Program was established in 1993 by Reginald E. Rutledge, Jr. '51 in honor of his wife, the Reverend Fleming Rutledge, and his family members who have attended EHS. The program invites Christian preachers, teachers, and theologians to campus to speak to the School community and to work with students. It is designed to offer EHS students the chance to establish or reinforce a foundation of faith.
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