Churchgoers’ Spousal Abuse Patterns Studied : Research: Mistreatment of wives occurs about as often with fundamentalist men as others. Occasional, social churchgoers report the highest rate.
NEW YORK — Fundamentalist men are no less likely than other Christians to abuse their spouses, whereas individuals for whom going to church is merely a social function are among the most likely to be abusers, a new study has found.
In one of the first major studies of the relationship between religion and spousal violence, three researchers at the University of Calgary in Canada also discovered that people who attended services weekly reported the lowest rates of spousal abuse. Further, people who go to services one to three times a month are almost twice as likely as frequent churchgoers to abuse their spouses, and this group is even more likely to be violent abusers than those who never attend services, the study found.
“Those that attend a moderate amount are the most abusive,” said researcher Merlin B. Brinkerhoff, who conducted the study with Eugen Lupri and Elaine Grandin, also of the University of Calgary. “They’re there to be seen, and it’s really a social thing.”
The results, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, are based on a 1987 Canadian national survey to which 652 women and 471 married or cohabiting men responded. People were asked to state how often over the past year they had engaged in any of eight violent acts that ranged from throwing objects to using a knife or gun on the other person.
One question the study was designed to explore was whether fundamentalist men, because they are more likely to subscribe to biblical interpretations of men’s being the head of the household and to the belief that Eve was created from Adam’s rib to serve him, would be more likely to violently abuse their partners.
One surprising finding, the researchers said, is that conservative Protestant women are the most likely to be guilty of violent abuse. Thirty-seven percent of conservative Protestant women reported having committed a violent act against their partners in the past year, as opposed to 28% of mainline Protestant women and 24% of Roman Catholic women.
By contrast, 18.8% of conservative Protestant men reported having committed a violent act, as did 19.3% of mainline Protestant men and 17.2% of Catholic men.
The researchers said more work is needed to determine the reason for the high incidence of violence among women. Such violence cannot be equated with male violence, the researchers said, because it differs in the severity of injury and in the power of perpetrator and victim.
Brinkerhoff speculated that the relatively low rate among conservative Protestant men who attend church frequently indicates that biblically derived attitudes of male supremacy appear to be balanced by religious beliefs on the dominion of love.
“Perhaps they mitigate and balance each other out,” he said.
David Finkelhor, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire, said he is not surprised by the findings, although many had argued that patriarchal attitudes toward women among fundamentalists would make them more likely to abuse women.
But those religious groups also attract people who are looking for ways to inhibit violent impulses, he said, and people who “are inhibited from violence and abuse by the strong moral commitment to that religion.”
The study also found that those who attended services weekly, whom researchers called “the intrinsically religious,” are the least violent. Seventeen percent of those who attended services frequently reported committing a violent act against their partners. By contrast, 32% of those who attended services from one to three times a month reported being violently abusive, a greater proportion than the 27% with no religious affiliation who reported abusive behavior.
Among conservative Protestants, the gulf was even greater. Ten percent of conservative Protestants who attend church weekly reported committing violent acts, and 64% of those attending one to three times a month said they had committed violent acts.
Murray Straus, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire who co-wrote “Behind Closed Doors” and “Intimate Violence,” said age could be an important variable because young adults are most likely to be associated with high rates of violence against partners and with irregular church attendance.
Even if the age factor is controlled, he said, it is likely there is a correlation between low abuse rates and frequent church attendance because regular church attendance is “a socially integrating experience” that provides people with people they can talk to regularly about their problems and that offers social controls such as the desire to maintain one’s reputation.
Spouse Abuse and Religion Percentage of respondents of a 1987 national survey in Canada of 652 families and 471 males who reported physically abusing their spouses in the past year. By religious group Catholic Total: 21.2 Male: 17.2 Female: 23.9 Mainline Protestant Total: 24.1 Male: 19.3 Female: 28.1 Conservative Protestant Total: 28.4 Male: 18.8 Female: 37.2 None Total: 26.7 Male: 23.2 Female: 30.8 By attendance at worship services Percent Never: 26.6 Special Occasions: 23.1 Less than monthly: 24.9 1 to 3 times a month: 32.2 Weekly: 17.1 More than weekly: 18.7 Source: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
