Role of Christian Religion in Domestic Violence

There are many controversies in the domestic violence literature, including the degree to which women are offenders, the numbers of abused women, and the differing types of abuse that men and women are subjected to. There is also question in the literature about the role religion, generally Christianity, has played in the development of relationships characterized by domestic violence.

For example, in their study, Giesbrecht and Sevcik (2000) noted that abused women from conservative evangelical subcultures were affected by the male dominated nature of those subcultures in becoming involved in violent relationships, in staying with those relationships, and in having difficulty recovering from those relationships and building new, healthy identities. For these women, church participation and conservative beliefs had been an integral part of their identity which interfered with recovery from abuse. They had specific issues, such as automatic deference to male authority and belief in the inferiority of the female before God, which required therapeutic intervention.

In contrast, Clark (1997) explored a number of Canadian studies dealing with domestic violence in evangelical subcultures and came to the opposite conclusion. She indicated that there is no evidence that these subcultures, even with an emphasis on wifely submission and hierarchical gender relations, increase the incidence of wife abuse. She noted that pastors and other evangelical women o

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ption, however, is ambiguous and inconclusive. My purpose is to explore the accuracy of this perception, and to learn more about how different denominations and religions encourage or discourage domestic violence. Hypothesis To restate my hypothesis, it is my contention that there will be fewer perpetrators of domestic violence, as reported in one county, from denominations or religions that are identified as religiously "liberal" than from those denominations of religions that are identified as religiously "conservative". I intend to test this by looking at domestic violence perpetrators in one county and comparing the incidence of domestic violence incidents according to religious affiliation. Method Participants In terms of this study, I am looking for individuals who have been identified by the county as perpetrators of some form of domestic violence within the family for whom demographic data has been collected. Specifically, I am looking at those individuals who have been identified as perpetrators who also have been identified on the basis of religion or denominational affiliation. Materials The most important materials in this study is the information reported and counted by counties themselves. Although this

Category: Psychology - R