Religious Involvement and Domestic Violence Among U.S. Couples (original) (raw)
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Effect of Religion on Domestic Violence Perpetration Among American Adults
2019
After Hirschi and Stark's Hellfire and Delinquency (1969), researchers have been seeking to determine whether there is a correlational link between religion and crime. This paper seeks to add to the literature by correlating domestic violence with four elements of religion (use of belief to solve everyday problems, prayer frequency, religious importance, and attendance of worship) that correspond with the four elements of Hirschi's social control theory (attachment, commitment, belief, and involvement, respectively) (1969). It also includes male victims of domestic violence among female victims, unlike most previous literature. Using a series of logistic regression models, only attendance of worship, the variable that signified involvement, had statistical significance in any model, which may signify the need to focus more on the behavioral measures of social control theory rather than the attitudinal measures.
Race/ethnicity, religious involvement, and domestic violence
Violence against women, 2007
The authors explored the relationship between religious involvement and intimate partner violence by analyzing data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households. They found that: (a) religious involvement is correlated with reduced levels of domestic violence; (b) levels of domestic violence vary by race/ethnicity; (c) the effects of religious involvement on domestic violence vary by race/ethnicity; and (d) religious involvement, specifically church attendance, protects against domestic violence, and this protective effect is stronger for African American men and women and for Hispanic men, groups that, for a variety of reasons, experience elevated risk for this type of violence.
Religiosity, Christian Fundamentalism, and Intimate Partner Violence Among US College Students
Review of Religious Research
This paper explores the relationship between religious behavior, religious belief, and intimate partner violence. Survey data were gathered from a sample of undergraduates (N = 626). Our dependent variables were derived from conflict tactics scales and Strauss's Personal and Relationships Profile, measuring violence approval, psychological aggression, and intimate partner violence. Our two substantive independent variables were, first, religiosity as a scale containing questions from the General Social Survey, and second, Christian fundamentalism as a scale used in previously published research. General religiosity, measured as belief in God, strength of religious faith, church attendance, and frequency of prayer, was not associated with violence approval, psychological aggression, or intimate partner violence. However, Christian fundamentalism was positively associated with both violence approval and acts of intimate partner violence, but not psychological aggression.
Role of Religion Among Christian Women in Abusive Relationships
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000
The study examined Christian women's religious beliefs and practices in relationship to their intimate partner violence (IPV) relationships. The religious variables included religious affiliation status, religious attendance, religious teachings about gender roles in marriage, and religious problem-solving approaches. Of 1,476 religious Christian women in a southwest metropolitan region, 50.7% (n = 749) reported that they had experienced at least one or more types of abuse (physical violence, emotional abuse, sexual assault, stalking, or threats) by current or previous intimate partners. Women and their intimate partners who attended more regularly in church services were less likely to be involved in IPV relationships. There were no significant differences in rates of domestic violence reported between women from conservative affiliations and liberal/moderate affiliations, although women in congregations that did not support divorce in cases of IPV appeared to be more likely to be victims of abuse. In addition, more than 70% of Christian women who left an IPV relationship reported their faith provided them the strength to leave.
A Commentary on Religion and Domestic Violence
Al-Raida Journal, 1970
Religion is a fact of life in the United States for the vast majority of people. Whether in childhood or adulthood, most people have had some association with a faith tradition.For some it has been positive; for others, negative. But many retain and rely on values and doctrines that they received within a faith community. Because of the extraordinary diversity within the United States, many different traditions exist among us: Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Native Americans, and many varieties of Christians including Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, Pentecostals, and so on.One chapter cannot do justice to the richness of these many traditions. Rather, here we provide a discussion of the basic understanding of the place of religion in addressing domestic violence, illustrated through three western religious traditions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
2022
In recent decades, more studies have emerged that examine the relationship between religion / spirituality, marital functioning and mental health. The scholarship on domestic violence (DV) / intimate partner violence (IPV) and religion does not appear to have integrated this evidence sufficiently and also lacks a multi-sectoral perspective. Ultimately, evidence from psychology and counselling needs to be bridged with evidence from public health and international development programming and studies in anthropology and sociology. A better integration could help to increase understanding of the multidimensional effects of religious parameters in the experience of DV / IPV and to identify how these effects could be leveraged resourcefully in faith-based interventions at community level and in psychosocial counselling involving victims, survivors and perpetrators in religious contexts. The current synthesis is the result of a systematic review that was conducted to start to bridge this m...
Effects of religious and spiritual variables on outcomes in violent relationships
The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 2015
Objective Religious and spiritual factors in intimate partner violence have received increasing attention. But are such factors related to outcomes in violent relationships? The purpose of this study was to assess the relative impact of spiritual symptoms and religious coping on attitudinal/behavioral and clinical outcomes among women in violent relationships. Methods Adult women with a recent history of husband-to-wife physical abuse were recruited from six primary care clinics. Once enrolled, 200 subjects completed a baseline interview and daily assessment of level of violence, using the Interactive Verbal Response for 12 weeks. At the completion of the study, contact with each participant was attempted to determine whether she had either sought professional help or left the relationship. Three religious/spiritual variables were assessed at baseline—number of visits to a religious/spiritual counselor, religious coping, and severity of spiritual symptoms. Stepped multiple linear re...
Religious beliefs, human psychology and domestic violence: Some ethnographic insights
Partner Violence & Mental Health Network, 2020
How do religious beliefs, human psychology and domestic violence intersect? Numerous fields offer directions in thinking about this relationship, including the well-established field of spiritual psychotherapy in North America, studies in mental health and spirituality, research that links religious beliefs to attachment models, personality disorders and domestic violence, and studies that look at the role of religious values or Church attendance in marriage, primarily emanating from North America. And yet these three parameters are rarely addressed together in domestic violence interventions. More importantly, their study is disproportionately informed by the contexts and faith traditions of western societies and are not applied to or informed by ethnographic realities in non-western religious communities. There is a need to build the evidence around how religious beliefs combine with personal and interpersonal, psychological parameters to influence human behavior in intimate partnerships and responses to domestic violence in diverse religious communities. This webinar will focus on key insights from a year-long theology-informed ethnographic study of domestic violence with an Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahәdo community in the countryside of Northern Ethiopia which embedded the study of domestic violence realities and attitudes in the local religio-cultural worldview and participants’ lived realities and life stories. The study demonstrated clear associations between individual rationalisations and attitudes towards intimate partner abuse and the participants’ belief systems, as well as the potential of Orthodox theology to counter perceptions of abusiveness conducive to its tolerance by a majority of the population. A closer look at the influence of spiritual parameters on conjugal behaviour suggested that faith was influential in many men’s and women’s married lives, although it was experienced differently and with different implications for each. The study also pointed to interconnections with psychological parameters of violence, suggesting the need for an integrated alleviation approach. Watch the presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHJ32YqcMic&feature=youtu.be
Effects of intimate partner violence among Seventh-Day Adventist church attendees
Critical Social Work
This analysis examines the effects of spouse abuse among a group of conservative Christians, specifically Seventh-day Adventists. The results highlight four broad types of effects associated with abusive behaviors in this sample: emotional disturbance, parental abuse or neglect, suicidal ideation, and spiritual disengagement. The analysis investigates risk factors associated with these effects and finds two primary risk factors – experiencing recent intimate partner violence and having a difficult economic situation. By identifying spiritual disengagement and its related factors, this analysis adds a significant dimension to the literature on the effects of intimate partner violence among religiously affiliated people.