Download Chapter Ten: Religion and Family Violence Key

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Explore the antagonistic relationship between the
secular world and the religious world with special
attention on how this impedes an appropriate response
to family violence
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Examine the religious texts and ideologies for the three
primary world religions that are frequently cited by the
batterers to justify their behavior and cited by the
spiritual leasers when they inappropriately counsel
victims to stay in violent relationships
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Look at the ways in which systematic abuse by religious
institutions, such as the Catholic Church sex scandal,
reinforces male power and privilege and allows the
abuse if women and children to be perpetuated
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To provide the reader with an overview of the role that religion has played
in shaping family violence—especially child abuse and domestic violence
To acquaint the reader with the specific texts and passages that
institutionalized religions rely on for shaping appropriate gender roles and
parent-child roles
To explore the ways in which institutionalized religions have responded to
family violence vis-à-vis texts and passages
To examine the response individual spiritual leaders have to victims that
seek assistance
To provide recommendations for transforming religion from an institution
that directly and indirectly supports family violence to one that participates
effectively in its eradication and prevention
Religiosity
Theory of
Secularization
Tensions have always existed between religious
institutions and the secular world
An understanding of the relationship between religion and the secular world is an
important starting point for understanding one of the ways in which religion
shapes family violence and the religious response to it
Sociologists of religion have two main
interests:
Religiosity: a way of measuring
both the frequency with which
people attend church as well as
the level of their belief in certain
core religious principles
1. The rate to which people in
a given society are affiliated
with particular religions
2. The overall religiosity of
people in different societies
The prediction among
scholars that modernity
and religion are inversely
related
This inverse
relationship between
modernization and
religion is created in
large part by the rise
and acceptance of and
even prioritizing of
science
As a culture or society
or nation becomes
increasingly modern,
the people in that
culture or society or
nation will become
less religious
Torah
Qur’an
Bible
One of the most common misconceptions is that intimate partner
violence and child abuse do not occur in Jewish households
There is no statistical evidence to suggest that Jewish women and
children are any less likely to experience violence or that Jewish men
are any less likely to perpetrate it
Shalom Bayit being primarily the
responsibility of wives may prevent or
inhibit Jewish women from leaving
battering relationships
Shalom Bayit: Peace in the household
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For Muslim men and women, the Qur’an is the primary source of their
faith and practice
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Qur’anic verse 4:34 is often used to justify physical abuse against a wife if
she does not submit to her partner’s authority:
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“Men shall take full care of women with the bounties Allah has
bestowed upon them, and what they may spend out of their
possessions; as Allah has eschewed each with certain qualities in
relation to the other. And the righteous women are the truly devout
ones, who guard the intimacy, which Allah has ordained to be guarded.
As for those women whose ill-will you have reason to fear, admonish
them [first]; then distance yourself in bed, and then tap them; but if
they pay you heed, do no seek to harm them.”
Many scholars of the Qur’an have debated over the
appropriate translation of the word ‘tap’
In some texts, it is translated as ‘hit’ or ‘strike’
Many scholars believe that is an incorrect translation based on
the Prophet's lifelong abhorrence of hitting women
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Christianity is the dominant religion in the United States
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Traditionally, Christian teaching about the roles of husbands and wives
within a marriage rely heavily on Ephesians 5:21-33
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“Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the
husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the
church, his body, of which he is the savior. Now as the church
submits to Christ, so also the wives should submit to their
husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5:22-24)
When taken in isolation, these verses may be
interpreted to imply that the husband has absolute
authority over the family and this authority cannot be
questioned, and that wives, in turn, must demonstrate
absolute obedience and summarily submit to abuse
from their husbands
The issue of divorce is an important barrier for highly
religious women to leave abusive homes

In all three major religions, marriage is a lifelong, sacred commitment
among husband, wife, and God
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For many religious women, the congregation or temple to which they
belong may provide their primary community of friends and support

A battered woman considering the possibility of divorce may realize that
to separate from her husband will likely sever her relationship with
her entire faith community
There is a great deal of variability in the amount
of formal training that individual religious
“professionals”– ministers, priests, pastors,
rabbis, and imans– receive
Unfortunately, the majority of spiritual advisers
are not well trained to deal with family violence
and in some cases the religious leader is himself
the perpetrator
Some religious leaders express fear that secular
approaches to domestic violence will result in
divorce—which violates the lifelong contract that
marriage is believed to be by all organized
religions
The United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops developed
a website to provide advice to
parish priests who are
presented with victims of
domestic violence
(http://www.usccb.org/laity/help.shtml)
A group of African American
women founded the Black
Church and Domestic Violence
Institute to fill an important
niche in fighting domestic
violence in the African
American community
(http://www.bcdvi.org/index.html)
The troubling case of an intersection
of religion and family violence
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Thousands of victims on at least three continents
The institutionalized role of the church in covering up
the abuse and thus allowing it to continue
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The official response to allegations of sexual abuse was to remind
the victims that to make such an accusation publicly would lead to
their immediate excommunication
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The removal of accused clergymen to lower profile positions or
simply moving them to smaller, rural parishes
When it comes to the Catholic Church,
there is little that can be done to force
the type of systematic change that is
necessary other than what is already
taking place: protests and “boycotts”
by Catholics, negative publicity, and
expensive lawsuits
Clergy and religious leaders need to be trained on the
issues of domestic violence and child abuse so that they
can offer a response and the support that helps victims
rather than revictimizes them
 There is no religion that advocates violence
 Religious scholars recognize the translation problems
that lead to texts that seem to support violence but are in
fact misinterpretations of the original language
The typical religious leader may have little access to this
knowledge and thus he, like the members of his congregation is
likely to absorb and perpetuate the false belief that religion dictates
unequal gender roles that privilege men and require the absolute
submission of wives