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The Perpetration of Abuse in Intimate Relationships: Does Religion Make a Difference?

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Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between religion and perpetration of intimate partner violence and abuse. The chapter opens with a brief overview of the problem, including several risk factors that have been examined extensively in empirical research. Very little research has examined how religion may affect likelihood of intimate partner violence and abuse perpetration; despite the fact that there are several reasons to hypothesize that religion could serve as either a protective or a risk factor. We focus largely on the religiosity construct and review the research literature on religiosity and intimate partner violence and abuse, noting the limitations of many of the studies, including narrow operationalizations of religiosity. We then turn to an examination of studies that use multidimensional measures of religiosity as well as research that indicates that religiosity per se is less important in predicting intimate partner violence and abuse perpetration than is style of religious self-regulation, that is, introjected versus identified religious self-regulation. We highlight some of the critical gaps in empirical research on the relationship between religion and intimate partner violence and abuse perpetration and identify directions for future research in this area.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Men were recruited to the study in the fall of 2011 by the national online sampling and survey administration service, Zoomerang (which has since been acquired by Survey Monkey). There is no way to determine, therefore, the representativeness of the sample. Nearly 81 % of the men were White, 6.1 % were Black, 5 % were Asian American/Pacific Islander, 1.1 % were American Indian/Alaskan Native, and 3.8 % were multi-racial; 3.2 % chose not to report their race. In addition, regardless of their racial identification, 7.3 % of the men identified as Hispanic. About 15 % of the men reported an annual income less than $25,000, while 17.6 % reported annual incomes between $25,001 and $40,000; 28.4 % between $40,001 and $70,000; 28.4 % between $70,001 and $90,000; and 20.7 % over $90,000. More than one third of the men (38.7 %) had been in their current intimate relationship from 5–7 years; 12.3 %, 7.1–10 years; 9.6 %, 10.1–13 years; 5.7 %, 13.1–15 years; 5.7 %, 15.1–20 years; and more than a quarter (25.7 %) for more than 20 years. About 3 % of the men, though, did not report the length of their current intimate relationship.

  2. 2.

    The Old-Fashioned Sexism Scale (Swim and Cohen 1997) is composed of five items such as “Women generally are not as smart as men,” and “I would be more comfortable having a man as a boss than a woman,” for which respondents use a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly agree, 5 = strongly disagree) to respond. See also Swim et al. 2005.

  3. 3.

    Many researchers, for instance, have documented high levels of religiosity in the southern United States compared with other regions of the country, although some have argued that religiosity in the South is likely to erode as greater interregional migration occurs. Interestingly, Smith et al. (1998) found that, at least in terms of church attendance and importance of faith, religiosity actually increases among those who move to a region where religious commitment is already high. Therefore, migration to the South increases religiosity among those who move there, but religiosity tends to decrease among those who migrate to regions with lower religious commitment. Smith et al.’s research also highlights the need to study not only migration – interregional as well as international – with regard to changes in religiosity, but also with respect to perpetration of intimate partner violence. There is a growing body of research exploring this relationship; see, for example, Raj and Silverman 2002; Morash et al. 2007; and Grzywacz et al. 2009. For a discussion of regional variations in IPV perpetration, see Websdale 1998; and DeKeseredy and Schwartz 2009. Many studies indicate that rates of all forms of violence are higher in the southern United States as well as in rural regions, and researchers generally theorize that this is due to cultural variations in acceptance of attitudes supporting violence as a way to solve conflicts, including conflicts between intimate partners. However, Brownridge (2002), who has conducted research on regional variations of violence against women in Canada, argues that one must specifically examine adherence to norms of patriarchal domination to understand such regional differences. As we noted previously, attention to such gender norms must also be included in studies of the effects of religiosity on IPV perpetration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40506, USA

    Claire M. Renzetti & Amy Messer

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40506, USA

    C. Nathan DeWall

  3. Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, NC, 28403, USA

    Richard S. Pond

Authors
  1. Claire M. Renzetti
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  2. Amy Messer
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  3. C. Nathan DeWall
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  4. Richard S. Pond
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Correspondence to Claire M. Renzetti .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

    Stanley D. Brunn

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Renzetti, C.M., Messer, A., DeWall, C.N., Pond, R.S. (2015). The Perpetration of Abuse in Intimate Relationships: Does Religion Make a Difference?. In: Brunn, S. (eds) The Changing World Religion Map. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_166

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