Abstract
Literature on intimate partner violence constructs the domestic violence shelter as a place of resocialization, sometimes including a rejection of patriarchal religion. I explore this alleged process of alternation by examining the lives of four shelter residents, discovering that the shelter stay was either too short or the affective bonds there too loose to facilitate sustainable or significant resocialization. Although the shelter situation did not provide a sustained or significant change in the worldview or lived religious practices of victim-survivors, the study provides insights about the utilization of faith and religious resources in these women’s lives. I found that the ability to utilize religious resources in this time of need was significantly linked to early and ongoing socialization prior to entering the shelter.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Many scholars, including myself, have been surprised at this portion of the IPV literature which clearly juxtaposes religion and feminism, rather than seeing the possibility of synthesizing both. The problems I see with this juxtaposition are outlined in the upcoming paragraphs of the text, but I include here a few examples to demonstrate that this line of thinking is clearly present in some IPV literature:
(R)eligious victims were told that their religion, in fact, caused the abuse. (Horton 1988, 90)
Conservative religion has been implicated in spousal abuse because its patriarchal structure may promote negative attitudes toward women and thereby implicitly sanction violence against them (Dobash and Dobash 1979; Fortune 1993; Hull and Burke 1991). (Giesbrecht and Sevcik 2000, 230)
(F)eminist theorists cite the religious teachings of male authority and female submission as a contributing factor to the domestic violence problem…, believing that the assignation of greater power to one partner can lead to the abuse of that power. (Levitt and Ware 2006, 1170)
Sometimes, secular shelter workers and others believe that it is in fact the religious ideology that gives rise to the violence and undergirds victims’ reluctance to seek refuge or assistance in its aftermath. Consequently, they encourage the victim to leave behind both the abuse and their community of faith. (Nason-Clark 2004, 303–304)
Indeed, it is a common assumption among many mental health professionals that devotion to religion can perpetuate abuse of women by men in intimate relationships. This presumed link has been explained both in terms of religion’s patriarchal structure and the resulting exacerbation of sexist beliefs and practices… and in terms of the value placed on maintaining the traditional family in many religions and the resulting unease with dissolution of the family… (Burris and Jackson 1999, 160)
- 2.
Berger insisted that the concept of alternation only applied when discussing two closed systems. Thus, his point was not whether the worldviews were religious or not, but whether they were competing worldviews. Therein lay the crux of the problem for this study, since many people do not find religion and feminism to be incompatible.
References
Ammerman, N. T. (1997). Organized religion in a voluntaristic society. Sociology of Religion, 58(3), 203–215.
Arokach, A. (2006). Alienation and domestic abuse: How abused women cope with loneliness. Social Indicators Research, 78(2), 327–340.
Battaglia, L. J. (2001). Conservative protestant ideology and wife abuse. Journal of Religion and Abuse, 2(4), 31–45.
Beckford, J. A. (2003). Social theory and religion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Berger, P. L. (1963). Invitation to sociology: A humanistic perspective. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise on the sociology of knowledge. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
Burris, C. T., & Jackson, L. M. (1999). Hate the sin/love the sinner, or love the hater? Intrinsic religion and responses to partner abuse. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 38(1), 160–174.
Butler, S. (2000). A covenant of salt: Violence against women in Jewish life. Journal of Religion and Abuse, 2(2), 49–65.
Cooper-White, P. (1995). The cry of Tamar: Violence against women and the church’s response. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Cunion, A. L. (2006). The effect of intimate partner violence on God-image and attachment. Virginia Beach, VA: Regent University.
De Voe, E. R., Borges, G., & Conroy, K. (2001). Domestic violence and Jewish women: An exploratory study. Journal of Religion and Abuse, 3(1–2), 21–46.
Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco.
Giesbrecht, N., & Sevcik, I. (2000). The process of recovery and rebuilding among abused women in the conservative Evangelical subculture. Journal of Family Violence, 15(3), 229–248.
Gillum, T. L., Sullivan, C. M., & Bybee, D. I. (2006). The importance of spirituality in the lives of domestic violence survivors. Violence Against Women, 12(3), 240–250.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of the self in everyday life. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Goodman, L. A., & Epstein, D. (2008). Listening to battered women: A survivor-centered approach to advocacy, mental health, and justice. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Gooren, H. (2007). Reassessing conventional approaches to conversion: A new synthesis. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46(3), 337–353.
Haaken, J. (1999). Heretical texts: The courage to heal and the incest survivor movement. In S. Lamb (Ed.), New versions of victims: Feminists struggle with the concept (pp. 13–41). New York, NY: New York University Press.
Heller, D. (1986). The children’s God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Herman, J. (1992/1997). Trauma and recovery. The aftermath of violence—From domestic abuse to political terror. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Horton, A. L. (1988). Practical guidelines for working with religious spouse abuse victims. In A. L. Horton & J. A. Williamson (Eds.), Abuse and religion: When praying isn’t enough (pp. 89–99). Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Horton, A. L., Wilkins, M. M., & Wright, W. (1988). Women who ended abuse: What religious leaders and religion did for these victims. In A. L. Horton & J. A. Williamson (Eds.), Abuse and religion: When praying isn’t enough (pp. 235–246). Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Johnson, M. P. (2008). A typology of domestic violence: Intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
Kilbourne, B., & Richardson, J. T. (1988). Paradigm conflict, types of conversion, and conversion theories. Sociological Analysis, 50(1), 1–21.
Levitt, H. M., & Ware, K. (2006). Anything with two heads is a monster. Religious leaders’ perspectives on marital equality and domestic violence. Violence Against Women, 12(12), 1169–1190.
Loseke, D. R. (1992). The battered woman and shelters: The social construction of wife abuse. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Lyon, E., Lane, S., & Menard, A. (2008). Meeting survivors’ needs: A multi-state study of domestic violence shelter experiences, final report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
Maduro, O. (2002). On the theoretical politics of defining ‘religion’. Social Compass, 49(4), 601–605.
McGuire, M. B. (2003). Contested meanings and definitional boundaries: Historicizing the sociology of religion. In A. L. Greil & D. G. Bromley (Eds.), Defining religion: Investigating the boundaries between sacred and secular. Religion and the social order (pp. 127–138). Oxford: JAI/ Elsevier.
McGuire, M. B. (2008). Lived religion: Faith and practice in everyday life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
McGuire, M. B., & Maduro, O. (2005). Introduction: Rethinking religious hybridity. Social Compass, 52(4), 411–415.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Meissner, W. W. (1984). Psychoanalysis and religious experience. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Miles, A. (2002). Violence in families: What every Christian needs to know. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Books.
Nash, S. T. (2006). The changing of the Gods: Abused Christian wives and their hermeneutic revision of gender, power, and spousal conduct. Qualitative Sociology, 29(2), 195–209.
Nash, S. T., & Hesterberg, L. (2009). Biblical framings of and responses to spousal violence in the narratives of abused Christian women. Violence Against Women, 15(3), 340–361.
Nason-Clark, N. (1997). The battered wife: How Christians confront family violence. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Nason-Clark, N. (2004). When terror strikes at home: The interface between religion and domestic violence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43(3), 303–310.
Potter, H. (2007). Battered black women’s use of religious services and spirituality for assistance in leaving abusive relationships. Violence Against Women, 13(3), 262–284.
Rizzuto, A.-M. (1979). The birth of the living God: A psychoanalytical study. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Rose, S. D. (2002). Telling lives: Trauma-recovery and Christian-conversion narratives. Journal of Religion and Abuse, 4(2), 33–68.
Senter, K. E., & Caldwell, K. (2002). Spirituality and the maintenance of change: A phenomenological study of women who leave abusive relationships. Contemporary Family Therapy, 24(4), 543–564.
Snow, D. A., & Machalek, R. (1984). The sociology of conversion. Annual Review of Sociology, 10, 167–190.
Sremac, S. (2014). Faith, hope, and love: A narrative theological analysis of recovering drug addicts’ conversion testimonies. Practical Theology, 7(1), 34–49.
Straus, R. A. (1979). Religious conversion as a personal and collective accomplishment. Sociological Analysis, 40(2), 158–165.
Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review, 51(2), 273–286.
Walker, L. E. (1979). The battered woman. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.
Watlington, C. G., & Murphy, C. M. (2006). The roles of religion and spirituality among African American survivors of domestic violence. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 62(7), 837–857.
West, T. (1999). Wounds of the spirit: Black women, violence, and resistance ethics. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Winkelmann, C. L. (2004). The language of battered women: A rhetorical analysis of personal theologies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Winnicott, D. W. (1958). Collected papers: Through paediatrics to psycho-analysis. London, UK: Tavistock Publications.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971/2005). Playing and reality. New York, NY: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rhoades, V.J. (2020). The Domestic Violence Shelter and Alternation: The Importance of Socialization on the Victim-Survivor’s Religion. In: Sremac, S., Jindra, I. (eds) Lived Religion, Conversion and Recovery . Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40682-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40682-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-40681-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-40682-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)