Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion
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Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion

Powers and Pieties

Abby Day

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eBook - ePub

Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion

Powers and Pieties

Abby Day

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About This Book

Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion offers unique perspectives on an organisation undergoing significant and rapid change with important religious and wider sociological consequences. The book explores what the academic research community, Anglican clergy and laypeople are suggesting are critical issues facing the Anglican communion as power and authority relations shift, including: gender roles, changing families, challenges of an aging population, demands and opportunities generated by young people, mobility and mutations of worship communities; contested conformities to policies surrounding sexual orientation, impact of social class and income differences, variable patterns of congregational growth and decline, and global power and growth shifts from north to south.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781134802081
Subtopic
Theology
Edition
1

SECTION II
Gender, Sex and Contestations

Chapter 5
Naming the Abuse, Establishing Networks and Forging Negotiations: Contemporary Christian Women and the Ugly Subject of Domestic Violence

Nancy Nason-Clark
Catherine Holtmann
Religious women often look to their pastors, priests or ‘sisters in the faith’ when violence strikes in the family. What happens next gives pause for thought: few religious leaders know what to do, some are dismissive of the severity or the longer-term consequences of the acts of violence or suggest that the victim needs to change her ways. Others are overly optimistic that a violent man can and will alter his abusive thoughts and actions. Few priests or pastors are willing to refer to secular personnel or agencies - those that are experts in domestic violence - the women who seek their assistance and guidance in the aftermath of abuse at home. But the story does not end there : other women in congregational life step up to the plate. They offer practical assistance and they journey along with the abused woman as she seeks help in the community for herself and her children. The support they offer is of a practical nature but it is also infused with religious meanings. In this chapter we explore the contested territory of domestic violence and communities of faith. Based upon 20 years of fieldwork, but focusing specifically on six recent projects, we discuss: (1) how the problem is named in the family, in the church and in the broader community; (2) how networks offer a way to bridge the chasm between faith and abuse; and (3) the process by which the secular and sacred terrain is negotiated - with victims, clergy, secular domestic advocates, various religious practices and theologies.

Towards an Understanding of Domestic Violence

Around the world, and within our congregations, the prevalence and severity of abuse cannot be denied. The alarming rates of violence against women have been documented by large organizations like the World Health Organization and the United Nations (WHO 2013; UN 2013). Many governments, too, collect data on intimate partner violence and disseminate the findings through reports and public policy discussions. In our book, No Place for Abuse (2010), theologian Catherine Clark Kroeger and I offer the reader an overview of statistics from around the globe, statistics that lead to one overwhelming conclusion: between one in three and one in four women worldwide has, at some point in their lives, been a victim of intimate partner violence. Such abuse cannot be explained by socio-economic status, ethnic background or religious persuasion, though one or more of these factors are sometimes co-mingled with the presence of abuse. Children raised in homes where abuse has been present carry greater possibility of future perpetration of violence, or of victimization.
Defining abuse seems like it should be easy, but, to be honest, it is not. To be sure, it includes behaviours that shatter dreams and cause pain. Sometimes it involves physical violence, like hitting or kicking. Sometimes it involves verbal abuse and name-calling, actions that are meant to crush the spirit. Sometimes abuse involves limiting access to food or money. Sometimes abuse includes demands for sexual activities. Sometimes it involves threats that are meant to instil fear. But, always, abusive behaviour has as its goal to control, shame, punish or humiliate. Women are the most common victims of domestic violence - at least in heterosexual relationships. But both men and women can be victims as well as aggressors.
A critical aspect of understanding domestic violence is the politicization ofthe issue, at least in Canada and the United States. Using very narrow definitions of violence (physical and sexual assault) and limiting its prevalence to official crime statistics, conservatives such as fathers’ rights groups, politicians, academics and others argue that feminists and researchers have used too broad a definition of violence and thus have over-estimated its prevalence (DeKeseredy 2011). They might, for example, point to the 2009 Canadian General Social Survey (GSS) that showed that approximately 6 per cent of women and men reported being physically or sexually victimized by their spouse or common law partner in the past five years (Statistics Canada 2011). Such claims have been used to argue that women are as violent as men and thus undermine policies that support women in leaving violent marriages as well as funding for research and public services. However, what conservatives fail to acknowledge is that the same survey showed that females are more likely than males to experience multiple victimizations and that females report more serious violence than males such as sexual assault, choking or being threatened with a gun or knife. Critics of the GSS findings point out that in utilizing a version of the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) in data collection it fails to take into account that physical and sexual violence are often part of a much broader continuum of abuse that places women in perpetual fear and insecurity due to the constant threat that violence may occur (Jiwani 2002).
Many contemporary feminist researchers and domestic violence advocates employ an intersectional framework in order to conceptualize the lives of women who experience violence in their intimate relationships (Crenshaw 1994). This means that they focus on the intersection of the multiple structures of gender, class, ethnicity/race, religion, ability and sexual orientation that create both inequalities and valued differences among women in society (Johnson 2005; Walby 2009). Intersectional frameworks do not initially privilege one difference or inequality, such as gender, over another (Sokoloff and Pratt 2005) but allow for the investigation of the particular structural intersection that is the most important to address for ensuring an abused woman’s safety depending on her societal context. For some victims in a particular context, their ethnic/racial background may be a more crucial aspect of their day-to-day lives to consider than gender in terms of appropriate interventions following domestic violence. The economic differences between and within ethnic/racial groups are sources of inequality and vulnerability for minority women (Siltanen and Doucet 2008), indicating that structures of ethnicity/race and class often interlock and reinforce one another. Ethnicity and race are not the sources of domestic violence, but rather mediate and shape it (Liao 2006). Some social practices within minority ethnic/racial groups may actually be more empowering for women than practices within the dominant groups of a local context. It is also possible that dominant and minority groups collude in practices that make minority women more vulnerable when domestic violence occurs (Jiwani 2005). As more and more countries in the West experience increasing cultural diversification due to contemporary global flows of immigrants (Meyer and Geschiere 2003), the more important an intersectional framework becomes in order to understand the complexity of abuse. More research is needed on women who suffer from violence and who belong to marginalized groups such as those living in public housing, unemployed, homeless, poor, aboriginal and immigrant women (Brownridge 2009; Johnson and Dawson 2010).
Talking about violence in families of faith can be contested territory, from both the point of view of secular community-based agencies and from within religious organizations. In the early days of the shelter movement, any perspective imbued with religious language or passion was considered suspect (Brown and Bohn 1989). Religion and communities of faith were considered part of the problem of domestic violence. There was scant hope that they might ever be part of the solution. Yet, there was an undeniable reality: for many abused women their faith, or spiritual journey, helped to shape not only the disclosure of abuse, but also the quest for wholeness and security in its aftermath (Clarke 1986; Fortune 1991; SchĂŒssler Fiorenza and Copeland 1994; Nason-Clark 1997). This posed a problem for many who worked in community-based agencies: they were finding it very challenging to respond to the needs of highly religious women (Whipple 1997). While clergy were being confronted regularly with the problem of violence in families of deep religious commitment (Horton and Williamson 1998; Weaver 1993; Nason-Clark 1997), few in the mainstream anti-violence movement noticed, or cared.
The stormy relationship between feminism and many religious traditions has augmented the gulf between transition houses and local congregations that serve in the neighbourhoods where they exist. While a holy hush permeates churches and their leadership on issues of abuse, shelters are rarely faith-friendly places (Nason-Clark 2005). This results in a stand-off between faith and safety in the life of a battered woman. The one place a woman and her children can seek safety and respite from an abusive husband and father denies or minimizes the importance of her religious traditions and practices. Sometime a worker goes as far as to suggest that it was her faith that caused the abuse, drawing attention away from the controlling behaviour of her intimate partner. Moreover, the place where a woman’s religious vitality is celebrated may also be the same place where her suffering is ignored or silenced. As a result, the need to build bridges between secular and sacred sources of support on issues of violence cannot be overstated.

The Program of Research

For over 25 years our research team has been attempting to tell the story of what happens when a religious woman looks to her faith community for help in the aftermath of domestic violence. Using a variety of methodologies (questionnaires, focus group interviews, personal interviews, case file analysis, court observations, observation), and focusing our research work on various groups connected with the story (clergy, church women, congregations, shelter workers, criminal justice staff, therapists, abused women, abusive men, seminary students, church youth and their leaders), we have been unravelling the various layers to the puzzle of violence in families of faith. Over the years, our research work has included many different denominations (including Anglicans) within the Christian tradition. The issues faced, the challenges ahead and the roadblocks encountered are very similar for all clergy and laypeople within congregational life (within and between denominations) as it relates to the web of connections between violence and faith. In this chapter, we draw on some of the broad findings to emerge from our research program, but focus more closely on six projects outlined below:
  1. Church Women Project - funded by several small grants, this project explored the unique and specific needs of churchwomen who suffer abuse and the responses of women within congregations to those needs (Kroeger and Nason-Clark 2004; Nason-Clark, 2000). Focus group interviews occurred in 30 congregations, representing rural, urban and small-town contexts. A total of 247 women participated in the focus groups.
  2. Batterer Project - funded by the Louisville Institute for the Study of Protestantism and American Culture, this project sought to understand how men who were mandated (or volunteered) to attend a state- certified faith-based batterer intervention group conceptualized their involvement in the group and its impact on their lives after having been processed through the criminal justice system as a result of their violence. A total of 55 men were interviewed individually (every six months for several years) and other men participated in focus groups or were present at group meetings that we attended. This data was supplemented by case file analysis, and interviews with criminal justice, advocacy and therapeutic workers. In Men Who Batter (Nason-Clark and Fisher- Townsend, 2015) we tell the story of men who have acted abusively, a journey that often begins in childhood, ripens in their teenage years and takes them down paths they were hoping to never travel. We look at the downward vortex of living dangerously and explore how their reckless behaviour created chaos for others and the toll it took on the men themselves. We explore notions of hope and despair as these men, most of which are connected to various church or faith traditions, journey towards justice, accountability and change. And we consider the role of clergy, congregations and other secular workers who walk alongside them.
  3. Clergy Project - data was collected from over 750 clergy, representing a variety of faith traditions within contemporary Christianity. The quantitative component examined clergy experience with woman and child abuse, as well as those who act abusively, knowledge of family violence issues and referral practices related to violence and abuse (Nason- Clark 2000). Personal interviews were conducted with 125 pastors in eastern Canada concerning the advice they offer and the support they give to families in crises.
  4. Seminary Project - data was collected at four seminaries from over 300 students to identify their training experiences and learning needs as it relates to domestic violence. There is a noted gap between their classroom experiences and ministry demands on issues of abuse. We have learned that seminarians report a lack of preparedness to deal with families impacted by domestic violence and some anxiety about their perceived inability to respond to abusers and the abused who seek their help (McMullin and Nason-Clark 2013).
  5. Catholic Project - with funding from the Association for the Sociology of Religion, qualitative data was collected from 31 Catholics in three dioceses across Canada, as well as 11 Catholics in two dioceses in Germany. The research sought to identify unique strengths in Catholic approaches to domestic violence as well as weaknesses that needed to be addressed. The research participants included clergy (deacon, priests and a bishop), women religious (nuns) and laity who worked in a variety of contexts such as Catholic parishes, diocesan offices, schools, agencies, and shelters (faith-based and secular). The results identified four modes of Catholic resources for domestic violence: mandatory marriage preparation courses; networking between Catholic agencies and secular service providers; marriage tribunals and the annulment process; and the presence of large numbers of immigrants in ...

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