Overcoming Conflicting Loyalties

Intimate Partner Violence, Community Resources, and Faith

Irene Sevcik, Michael Rothery, Nancy Nason-Clark, Robert Pynn

• Publisher: University of Alberta Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781772120509
• eBook ISBN: 9781772120639
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

To date, little has been published about the place of spirituality in working with survivors of intimate partner violence. Overcoming Conflicting Loyalties examines the intersection of faith and culture in the lives of religious and ethno-cultural women in the context of the work of FaithLink, a unique community initiative that encourages religious leaders and secular service providers to work together. The authors present the benefits of such cooperation by reporting the findings of three qualitative research studies. Individuals in secular and sacral services who work with victims of domestic violence, as well as academics in the fields of social work, psychology, and religious studies, will benefit from the insights, depth of experience, and range of voices represented in this valuable book. Irene Sevcik, Michael Rothery, Nancy Nason-Clark, and The Very Rev. Robert Pynn have brought their professional expertise and experiences to benefit FaithLink at different times and in different capacities. All of the authors live in Calgary except Nason-Clark, who lives in Fredericton. Sponsored by The Calgary Foundation.

1 Secular–Religious Conversations about Violence

This chapter explores reasons why religious and secular helpers responding to intimate partner violence (IPV) tend not to trust one another, which results in women finding their already complex, painful circumstances made worse. Religious helpers may see themselves as defending the sanctity of marriage and the family by recommending that a woman forgive an abusive partner. Secular helpers may see that same woman’s safety as paramount, and may accuse their religious counterparts of putting her (and her children) at risk by encouraging an ongoing commitment to a dangerous relationship. Thus, a woman who desperately needs effective support may find herself balancing conflicting loyalties. While seeking aid from secular helpers (and their programs) may be the only effective escape from ongoing physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse, it can also be seen as a betrayal of her religious community. Such binds can be extremely demoralizing, compounding the stress she faces at a time when the pressures on her are already daunting (Nason-Clark, 2004).

What makes this tension between paradigms especially unfortunate is that both parties, religious and secular helpers, have much to offer. Religious women using the services of a shelter or community agency do not set their spiritual beliefs and practices aside at the door; for many, the same religious community that may be making their problem solving more difficult is also their spiritual home, a source of strength and values that guides them. On the other hand, shelters and community agencies provide resources and a specialized expertise that religious communities normally cannot offer. Discouraging women from accessing those services may be counterproductive at best, or, at worst, dangerous.

Our particular focus is IPV, but the tensions we will discuss are prominent phenomena in our culture at large—they are a feature of modernity that can be seen wherever one looks (Taylor, 2007). Thus, the context for FaithLink’s work (and for this book) is in part larger questions about religion and its legitimate role and relationship to the rest of society.

Of course, these larger questions have a history, being part of the story of how Western cultures have evolved since the Enlightenment—and one aspect of that history is a battle we still fight, between different beliefs about how to help others when our help is required.

Religious and Secular Helping: Tensions with a History

In 1775 two men found themselves in competition with one another. Johann Gassner was an unassuming Roman Catholic priest and a renowned exorcist. Franz Mesmer, by Ellenberger’s (1970) account, had a monumental ego and a revolutionary healing method to promote, a method that could replace Gassner’s with something more scientific. Initially, Mesmer’s method was simply called magnetism, then animal magnetism, then mesmerism and, finally, hypnosis. The question of the relative merits of each man’s approach was remarkably interesting to the public of the day, and formal investigations (process and outcome evaluations) were conducted (Benjamin Franklin served on one expert panel). Mesmer recognized Gassner’s success as a healer but thought his positive practical results were rooted in faulty theory. The hypothesis that people in distress were possessed by demons logically supported an approach to healing utilizing rituals in which the demons were expelled and cast aside—but Mesmer was certain that this way of thinking was outmoded superstition. He claimed the same results could be obtained within a more scientific, secular explanatory frame, a very attractive suggestion at a time when the Enlightenment was a new, powerful social and intellectual force.

In the two centuries that followed Mesmer’s life and work, agnostic or atheistic secular humanism came to prevail over faith-based understandings like Gassner’s (McGrath, 2004; Taylor, 2007). Today, in any modern Western country, it is easier to find a professionally certified clinical hypnotist than an exorcist,[1] and the influence of Mesmer’s work on other current schools of counselling and psychotherapy has been considerable. Ellenberger (1970) sees a direct path from mesmerism to Freudian and other psychodynamic methods, while through the hugely influential efforts of Jay Haley (1977) and others, the work of the hypnotherapist Milton Erickson was incorporated into systemic family therapies. There are many other examples, including EMDR[2] (Shapiro, 2001, 2002, 2003), an influential therapy with similarities to hypnosis that is often offered to clients recovering from the effects of trauma, including IPV.

In an increasingly secular, scientific age, human services programs in universities and their graduates have become ever more strongly committed to the belief that counselling and psychotherapy should pursue secular, modernist priorities. One such priority that has been insistently stressed is that our work should be evidence-based (McLaughlin, Rothery, Babins-Wagner, & Schlieffer, 2010); it is argued that with advances in research methods and accumulating objective knowledge, our interventions in the lives of our clients can and should be guided by evidence about what works from the social sciences rather than taking guidance from less empirical disciplines like religion.

A strong, sometimes strident, version of the secularist humanist’s position holds that religion is not merely an unreliable, inferior source of knowledge and values but a dangerous and morally corrupt one. Religious traditions stand accused of causing many of the problems that we are heir to, including violence in its various forms. For some, this train of thought leads quite logically to an ethical stand (Clifford, 1947), holding that the set of ideas we allow to guide our actions is a moral issue beyond simple efficacy (see Charles Taylor, 2002, for his discussion of W.K. Clifford’s argument). Militant modern atheists (e.g., Dawkins, 2006; Hitchens, 2009) sometimes write as if an attraction to religious frames of reference is a kind of sin, an alliance with dark forces.

Yet, after more than 200 years of apparently inexorable progress, it seems a secular–humanist victory and the demise of religious helping are not at all assured. Indeed, it now seems there is real interest in taking a fresh look at the legitimate role religion can play in the helping enterprises. This openness to what religious traditions have to say has emerged unexpectedly, and it is grounds for optimism.

This reorientation is part of a much broader cultural shift toward a renewed respect for religion as a cultural force, which has taken many observers by surprise. Theologian Catherine Pickstock (as cited in Kennedy, 2007) reflects on the rapidity of this change:

Ten years ago when I was studying, nobody really thought theology was an important subject. It seemed to be something one did if one was a rather marginal person. But now theology is a subject [that is] increasingly popular. You can scarcely open a newspaper without some reference to it. And it does seem to me that, quite suddenly, theology is becoming important in a way that it wasn’t before.

Mesmer and Gassner were seen as adversaries, and a competitive, win-lose narrative has framed discussions of the relationship of science and religion to this day. This, too, is changing, as books recommending a different view appear more and more frequently in publishers’ catalogues. Dozens of recent volumes on religion and science—especially physics, neurological and cognitive science, and evolutionary biology—argue that they can and should relate as complementary efforts to understand our world, rather than as antagonists.[3]

Theologians and scientists are now talking about a transdisciplinary agenda, aiming to find that common ground where useful conversations can occur when people committed to different disciplines want to discover what they have to learn from one another (Clayton, 2008; Van Huyssteen, 2006). FaithLink’s work has been carried out in precisely that spirit, seeking to facilitate a transdisciplinary dialogue between secular human services workers and members of faith communities, hoping that the resulting conversations will generate more effective responses to religious women seeking help because of intimate partner violence.

We think the adversarial, competitive spirit that has shaped the discussion between religious and secular helpers to date will not move us forward in ways that benefit our clients. Therefore, we anticipate increased interest in discussions between our two traditions as we recognize that the needs of our clients require us to collaborate better. If, as this implies, our future will require a broader, deeper discourse between traditions that remain wary of one another, what might we talk about?

Indeed, there is much to discuss and real gains will result if we approach the task in good faith. The rest of this chapter is devoted to anticipating what we may find ourselves addressing as the conversations proceed. As we should expect, some tensions may prove relatively easy to resolve, while others look intractable—this is par for the course when transdisciplinary work is undertaken.

Are Religions to Blame for Violence?

Sixteen centuries ago St. Augustine (1961) related in his Confessions that his father was unfaithful and had “a hot temper” (p. 195) but his (Augustine’s) profoundly Christian mother Monica practiced unwavering patience in relation to her husband. As a consequence, she was not beaten and this surprised her women friends (who were)—in their discussions about how best to deal with violent husbands, she counselled forbearance and friends who followed her rule benefitted from it: “Those who accepted it found it a good one: the others continued to suffer humiliation and cruelty” (Augustine, 1961, p. 195). Despite the passage of considerable time, present-day IPV researchers and projects like FaithLink continue to confront this powerful theme: Peace in the family is the woman’s responsibility, and patient forbearance in the face of violence is one of the virtues women should exercise in their efforts to maintain that peace (Grodner & Sweifach, 2004; Nason-Clark, 1997). We can applaud the fact that Augustine saw the IPV that was common in his mother’s circle as a problem, but his solution to that problem is concerning. It is still a powerful narrative in religious communities today.

In any forthright discussion of religion in the lives of their clients, reasonable secular helpers from the IPV community may well cite cases where religious traditions and doctrines regarding women, marriage, and the family have been used by religious men to support and justify abuse. Certainly, the women FaithLink talked to indicated that seeking help around IPV can be in part a struggle with questions of religious doctrine and traditions regarding the family. They identified many ways in which their search for a safer life was impeded, as well as supported, by the beliefs that have come to them through their churches, synagogues, and temples.

Thus, as secular and religious helpers discuss their roles respecting IPV, they will address questions about faith and violence that are at once current and centuries old—there is a long record of observers being troubled when ideologies that idealize peace and compassion seem easily bent to violent causes. Religion has been implicated in causing or failing to prevent everyday localized (therefore less visible) violence like IPV, but also often large-scale violence: crusades, wars, cultural imperialism, and genocides. No religion is innocent respecting the difficulties we are discussing (Armstrong, 2006; Jerryson & Jurgensmeyer, 2010; Strozier, Terman, Jones, & Boyd, 2010; Marty & Appleby, 1991b, 1993).

People on the secular side of the discourse may press and expand the point that not only has religion frequently supported violence, it has more often at least failed to prevent it. If religions exist in part to make us compassionate, they have arguably failed.

With this record on the table, secularists (especially those who have been attracted to the work of the “new atheists”) might propose that despite ostensibly peaceful goals, it seems it may simply be natural for religions to set peopl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Dissolving Solitudes
• 1 | Secular–Religious Conversations about Violence
• Reflections
• 2 | Intimate Partner Violence
• Collaboration
• 3 | FaithLink
• The Good Wife
• 4 | Finding Their Voices
• Mutations of the Heart
• 5 | Incorporating Spirituality into Practice
• Meditation
• 6 | Contemplative Meditation
• Faith and Belief
• 7 | Reflections on the Book
• The Road
• 8 | Reflections on the Book
• The Hours
• 9 | Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Authors
• Also from The University of Alberta Press