Nancy Nason-Clark – författare

Intimate partner violence is a complex, ugly, fear-inducing reality for large numbers of women around the world. When violence exists in a relationship, safety is compromised, shame abounds, and peace evaporates. Violence is learned behavior and it flourishes most when it is ignored, minimized, or misunderstood. When it strikes the homes of deeply religious women, they are: more vulnerable; more likely to believe that their abusive partners can, and will, change; less likely to leave a violent home, temporarily or forever; often reluctant to seek outside sources of assistance; and frequently disappointed by the response of the religious leader to their call for help. These women often believe they are called by God to endure the suffering, to forgive (and to keep on forgiving) their abuser, and to fulfill their marital vows until death do us part. Concurrently, many batterers employ explicitly religious language to justify the violence towards their partners, and sometime they manipulate spiritual leaders who try to offer them help.Religion and Intimate Partner Violence seeks to navigate the relatively unchartered waters of intimate partner violence in families of deep faith. The program of research on which it is based spans over twenty-five years, and includes a wide variety of specific studies involving religious leaders, congregations, battered women, men in batterer intervention programs, and the army of workers who assist families impacted by abuse, including criminal justice workers, therapeutic staff, advocacy workers, and religious leaders. The authors provide a rich and colorful portrayal of the intersection of intimate partner violence and religious beliefs and practices that inform and interweave throughout daily life. Such a focus on lived religion enables readers to isolate, examine, and evaluate ways in which religion both augments and thwarts the journey towards justice, accountability, healing and wholeness for women and men caught in the web of intimate partner violence.

Men who act abusively have their own story to tell, a journey that often begins in childhood, ripens in their teenage years, and takes them down paths they were hoping to never travel. Men Who Batter recounts the journey from the point of view of the men themselves. The men's accounts of their lives are told within a broader framework of the agency where they have attended groups, and the regional coordinated community response to domestic violence, which includes the criminal justice workers (e.g., probation, parole, judges), and those who staff shelters and work in advocacy. Based on interview data with this wide array of professionals, we are able to examine how one community, in one western state, responds to men who batter.Interwoven with this rich and colorful portrayal of the journey of abusive men, we bring twenty years of fieldwork with survivors and those who walk alongside them as they seek safety, healing and wholeness for themselves and their children. Women who have been victimized by the men they love often hold out hope that, if only their abusers could be held accountable and receive intervention, the violence will stop and their own lives will improve dramatically as a result. While the main purpose of Men Who Batter is to highlight the stories of men, told from their personal point of view, it is countered by reality checks from their own case files and those professionals who have worked with them. And finally, interspersed within its pages is another theme: finding religious faith or spiritual activity in unlikely places.

Family life is often a place of violence, especially violence against women--in Christian homes as well as in secular ones. Nancy Nason-Clark's sociological investigations allow her to analyze this problem and to reveal how Christian communities respond to family violence in positive ways. She also to suggests how church and secular agencies can cooperate for even more effective action.

The more we learn about family violence, the more it becomes apparent that it is a complex and multifaceted issue. Family violence is more than woman abuse. It is also more than child abuse, sibling abuse, parent abuse, or elder abuse. It is all of these violations and more. Nevertheless, family violence is gendered; most abused victims are female and most perpetrators are male. Family violence is not merely personal. It is also a consequence of social inequality, and in that sense is socially constructed.Based on research projects conducted over ten years, Understanding Abuse profiles the work done by researchers of issues related to woman abuse and family violence. The contributors demonstrate the strength of community-based, action-oriented collaborations by carefully identifying the multiplicity of causes, clearly articulating the issues raised by abused women, and seeking to identify realistic solutions. Not only does this work provide invaluable information for policy makers on successful versus unsuccessful programs to prevent violence, it also provides academic and community researchers with detailed data on the intricacies of academic-community action research partnerships.

The chapters of Religion, Gender, and Family Violence: When Prayers Are Not Enough have been written from multiple disciplinary perspectives (sociology, religious studies, law) and based on research within diverse religious traditions including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, as well as new religious movements. Similarities and differences between traditions are highlighted based on empirical research which shows how people actually deal with family violence in different contexts. This book also addresses some of the larger historical and political backgrounds that impact the experiences of family violence amongst ethno-religious minorities. The lives of religious victims and perpetrators of family violence are considered, as well as the responsibilities of religious leaders, congregations and secular professionals in addressing this widespread social problem.Contributors are: Barbara Fisher-Townsend, Pascale Fournier, Catherine Holtmann, Eve Laoun, Yael Machtinger, Farah Malek-Bakouche, Steve McMullin, Nancy Nason-Clark, Susan Nunn, Susan Palmer, Emma Robinson, Jolyne Roy, and Victoria Snyers.