Christianity and Abuse

“… awareness penetrated church culture as well? Every congregation should be a safe place to disclose abuse: we want to evaluate whether that is true. ”

Team Members/Contributors

Nancy N. Nason-Clark University of New Brunswick Contact Me

About this project grant for researchers

Religious leaders and congregations can be part of the solution to domestic violence in families of faith, not just part of the problem. Churches and their pastors have been widely criticized for failing to respond appropriately to families impacted by abuse—abuser and abused alike. We wish to understand the challenges and opportunities of pastors as they minister to victims and abusers and to develop resources that would target the gaps in their current knowledge and experience. Through quantitative and qualitative data to be collected amongst pastors and seminarians, this project will enable us to compare the attitudes, knowledge and experience of religious leaders with data we collected 25 years ago (also funded by a grant from the Louisville Institute). Over the last twenty-five years, the issue of intimate partner violence has become widely acknowledged within our secular culture and impacted the criminal justice system and various community based services. We are interested to learn whether that increased awareness has penetrated church culture as well and whether it has impacted what happens when a religious woman or man looks to their congregation and its leader after abuse occurs. We plan to use the data collected from this project to design new resources and update existing ones on a website platform that at its height of usage had 1,500 IP addresses per week accessing its offerings, from locations around the world.

Image Title Year Type Contributor(s) Other Info
Religion and Intimate Partner Violence: Understanding the Challenges and Proposing Solutions 2017 Book Nancy N. Nason-Clark
Barbara A. Fisher-Townsend
Catherine Ruth Holtmann
Stephen D McMullin
Religion, Gender, and Family Violence 2018 Book Nancy N. Nason-Clark
Catherine Ruth Holtmann