Interview with Anna Townsend, author of Our Sisters

If you’re a carefree teenager, the last thing you expect is to be forced to marry a stranger and change your religion. But if you are a Christian girl living in Pakistan, this could happen to you.

In her new book Our Sisters, Anna Townsend shares both the stories of activists who are trying to help and the women and their families who are affected. Anna also highlights the plight of western women at risk of being sent to Pakistan for marriage and encourages the church to be more alert to the issue in their local community.

Anna, can you tell us a little about yourself?

I am very fortunate to have lived on three continents over the past 26 years as a British military wife. This has brought me into contact with all kinds of fascinating Christians, which in turn led me to establish a charity that helps vulnerable women in Nepal. I have run this organisation for 20 years, simultaneously raising my two children, who are now at university. More recently, I believe God has called me to raise awareness of the difficulties Asian women face by writing books that tell their stories and highlighting the incredible people who fight on their behalf.

Your new book is Our Sisters. Can you tell us a little about the book, and why and who you have written this for?

When I discovered that a woman in Nepal had been forced to marry her rapist, I was shocked. I wanted to know if there were other societies where this happened, and I soon discovered that in Pakistan, Christian teenage girls are too often abducted, forcibly married and raped. I wanted to tell their stories so that readers could pray and help, and I also wanted to provide inspiration. In Our Sisters, I tell the stories of the activists who are doing brave work standing up for Christian communities. These men and women are journalists, lobbyists, pastors and charity workers, and I hope many Christians will be motivated by their stories. In particular, I would love younger Christians, who are at the start of their professional lives, to discover that Christians can have high-flying careers on the world stage by getting involved in standing up for Freedom of Religion. When I interviewed Marcela for the chapter about her role with a multi-million-dollar aid organisation, in every sentence, she seemed to name-drop a president!

Why did you choose this title for the book? What is the significance of this phrase?

The women who are being persecuted in Pakistan are part of the family of God, and as such, they are our sisters. Although they are many miles away, we all have the same loving Father, and I know he calls us to love and defend them.

You include many stories of women affected by forced marriage. How did you go about finding these stories and why was it important to include them? Is there a particular story that really impacted you?

In 2022, I moved to Belgium, which was an unexpected move for my family. However, God had a plan, and I was able to connect with several activists in Brussels who were involved in the fight for Freedom of Religion and Belief. Through them, I contacted girls in Pakistan who wanted to share their stories. They give firsthand accounts of what it is like to be targeted, and their stories are shocking and powerful. It’s crucial they are read, because the girls want their voices to be heard. Sometimes, they had no words to describe what had happened to them, but their silence still speaks.

Two of the girls were actually on the run when I spoke with them via Zoom. One had escaped to a brick-built compound in a rural area and was hiding out with a kindly Christian family. The other had relocated several months after her ordeal, but her abductor had recently turned up at her new school. These girls were terrified, and in terms of my book, their stories weren’t yet finished. I was able to organise immediate prayer for them through my author newsletter, but it was very hard to stop thinking about them in the days and weeks that followed our conversations. Thankfully, I know that both girls are safe now, though they still face difficulties rebuilding their lives.

You focus on Christian women in Pakistan, but you also talk about this being a real issue for some women in the UK from your personal experience. Can you tell us a little more about that?

When I took my GCSE English Oral exam in the 1990s, my school assigned us to random groups to discuss topics that we could choose ourselves. In my group was a British Asian girl who revealed that immediately after her exams, she would be sent to Pakistan to marry a relative. She told us that if she refused to do this, her family might kill her. At the time, I didn’t know anything about honour killings, but that’s what she was describing. When I came to write Our Sisters, I wanted to include her story and find out what was being done today to help girls like her, since, sadly, honour-based abuse still occurs.

Do you have any advice on how we can be praying for our sisters who are forced into marriage?

As well as praying for the girls to be rescued and for their physical and emotional healing, we also need to pray for the circumstances that allow these abductions to take place to change. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws make Christians there extremely vulnerable, and the laws are widely popular. Even the threat of a blasphemy allegation is enough to exploit a Christian. If God can soften the hearts of the average Pakistani so that they no longer think it acceptable to punish someone for blasphemy, then Christians will be far safer. Only God can change hearts.

What was the most challenging element of writing this book?

I think most authors can get lonely at times; writing is, by definition, a solo pursuit. However, in my case, this feeling was even more pronounced because I wrote about such distressing situations. I remember one day in particular when I went from a jolly military wives coffee morning immediately into an interview with a girl who had been gang raped. The juxtaposition between the two was extreme, leaving me reeling.

And what was the most rewarding element of writing this book?

God has worked miracles, and I got to experience them! I don’t want to spoil all the surprises, but the way God orchestrated events so that I would meet the right people at the right time and hear stories at the right moments was incredible. During one period of writing, I spent two days wrestling with an Old Testament passage that described how God sent his Spirit to save the Israelites from being maimed. I then received news of a rescue in Pakistan where a girl had been brutally disfigured, and thankfully, my contact had been able to save her. There were so many parallels between the two stories that I was physically shaking as I realised how God had prepared me to hear her story by prompting me to read that particular Bible story.

Another rewarding experience was visiting Pakistan. Earlier this year, I was finally able to go (if I had visited earlier, I would have exposed the identities of the girls I wrote about), and that was amazing. Pakistan was a stunning surprise, and I hope to return.

Have you been reminded afresh about your own personal journey with God while writing this book?

I have been reminded again that the most fascinating and fearless people are Christians. So often, believers are stereotyped as being a bit woolly or prejudiced, but those on the frontline are modern-day heroes. Just as in the book of Acts, God continues to work through Christians to achieve miracles, and meeting those who take great risks for eternal rewards was a privilege; I feel inspired to join in with what God is doing around the world.

What do you hope readers will most get out of reading this book?

I hope that they, too, will be inspired to pray with boldness, take action, and even venture into difficult places. I know that God will go with them, and I hope they, too, experience miracles.

In one sentence, how would you describe Our Sisters?

The opportunity to meet and be inspired by Christians who know what it is like to face persecution and have experienced God’s miraculous rescue.