Episcopal Priest Helps Former Prostitutes Pen First Book

by Jana Riess, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 8/27/2008

Becca Stevens may well be the fastest-talking woman in Tennessee. Although the Episcopal priest speaks with a gentle Southern accent, the velocity is rapid-fire New York, so it's no surprise to learn her parents hail from there. Tragically, her father—also a pastor—was killed by a drunk driver when Stevens was just five years old. That experience, she says, changed her life and made her more aware of the pain that women can feel. "We went from being this hopeful young family to looking for the Social Security check," she says. To add to her suffering, the senior warden of the church began sexually abusing her.

Today, however, Stevens has channeled that pain into a compassionate and unique ministry to women from the streets. In 1997, she founded Magdalene, a Nashville-based program for women with a history of prostitution and substance abuse. Most of those women, Stevens says, were physically and sexually abused as children. "Because women don't get to the streets by themselves—it takes all kinds of failed systems to get them there—they're not going to get off the streets by themselves. It takes a community to bring them back." Magdalene is that community, a two-year residential program that gives women job training, drug rehabilitation and a house of their own to live in. It has been so successful that there are now five houses in Nashville, two in Charleston, one in Chattanooga, and even one in Rwanda. Another is planned for Ecuador.

Once these women find healing, Stevens says, there's no holding them back. Magdalene has made a splash recently with its all-natural line of beauty products, Thistle Farms. All the women of Magdalene contribute time and talents to the business, and the proceeds are donated back to the organization. And now the women have something else to be proud of: the community's first book, Find our Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart, which comes out in September from Abingdon. Stevens says the book was four years in the making and is filled with personal stories of grace, healing and mercy. "The message is simple, but it's a hard message to let sink in," she says. 

One of the book's contributors is Lisa Sanders, who graduated from Magdalene's program in October 2006 after being homeless, in and out of prostitution, and addicted to crack cocaine. Now sober, she is the product manager for Thistle Farms and has her own apartment and car. That's a far cry from the night she came in, when she had sat behind a liquor store ready to cut her wrists. "Magdalene gave me a new life," she says with tears in her eyes. "They need more programs like Magdalene for women like me who think there's no way out. All it takes is just a little bit of love from somebody, you know?"