Abuse in Religious Contexts : Experiences and Responses

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Over the past forty years, there has been significant growth in public attention and academic research on issues of abuse in religious contexts.

Whilst much of this work has focused initially on Christian churches and organisations, this has more recently broadened to discussion of abuse in a wider range of faith communities. Abuse in Religious Contexts: Experiences and Responses contributes to this still-expanding field by presenting findings from a major study based in the United Kingdom that is one of the first to explore personal, organisational, and policy dimensions of abuse across a range of faith traditions and settings. Drawing together a project team with long experience in this work, including victim-survivors, the book explores a range of issues including the role and practice of sensitive, ethical, and inclusive research with victim-survivors; victim-survivors' experiences and reflections on disclosing abuse in religious contexts; victim-survivors' insights on what helps in processing the longer-term effects of abuse in faith settings; social and cultural factors associated with higher risks of abuse in religious contexts; constructive and harmful uses of sacred texts in relation to issues and experiences of abuse; and current policy and legal approaches to addressing abuse in religious contexts around the world, with particular reference to mandatory reporting.

In addition to findings from its individual studies, the book provides an integrated analysis of how personal, organisational, and policy issues of abuse in religious contexts are intertwined and discusses how abuse can be bound up more generally with unhealthy organisational cultures and structures. Written for a range of different readers, Abuse in Religious Contexts presents material that may be helpful to those reflecting on their own experiences of abuse in a faith setting, raises questions for faith communities and policy-makers, and provides insights to inform future research in this field.