Interfaith summit on domestic violence explores how clergy can work to support victims, end violence    [12-3-09]

by Sue Boardman
Special to Presbyterian News Service

ATLANTA - December 2, 2009 – Faith leaders gathered here Nov. 17 for a Summit on Domestic Violence.

Greg Loughlin and Taylor Tabb, co-coordinators of the Georgia Commission on Family Violence (GCFV) Fatality Review Project, along with the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, planned the Summit to equip religious leaders with skills necessary to respond effectively to issues of domestic violence.

The summit came after GCFV's research showed strong connections between faith communities and victims in fatal and near-fatal incidents of domestic violence.

Domestic violence has taken the lives of almost 500 Georgians in the last four years and is the leading cause of injury among Georgia girls and women between the ages of 15 and 44.

More than 50 church leaders came to the summit. They were male and female; black, white and Asian; young and older; Roman Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Baha'i. Experts from Seattle's FaithTrust Institute provided leadership.

"More women go to their clergy person than to law enforcement officers to make first reports of domestic violence," said Rabbi Mark Dratch. "People define their lives in terms of their faith community. We have the opportunity and a biblical mandate to give help, or we are perpetuating abuse."

The Rev. Sharon Ellis Davis, a United Church of Christ pastor who teaches at McCormick Theological Seminary, spoke about the pressure many victims perceive from religious leaders to remain in an abusive marriage. She explained that, on average, women leave abusive partners seven times before they finally leave or are killed by their abuser.

"The most danger a victim faces is at the time of leaving," she said. "In 75 percent of all domestic violence fatalities, the woman was actively leaving the relationship."

Broken Vows, a video developed by the institute, presented the stories of six battered women - Jewish, Roman Catholic and Protestant - discussing how religious teachings were misused in their own lives to perpetuate abuse and how religious communities can work to end domestic violence.

"If there is arguing, fighting and hitting in the family," said a Jesuit priest in the video, "we can expect it in the streets. If we want to stop it in the streets, we have to stop it at home."

Summit participants joined in an exercise in which Jewish, Muslim, and Christian scriptures were examined for the ways in which they could either be used as roadblocks to confronting violence in the family or as resources for victims of violence. Jessica Davenport, a young domestic violence victims' advocate and active member of a faith community, raised the question of the extent to which religious leaders have a responsibility to critique oppressive teachings that seem to permit domestic violence.

Yolanda Davis, a recently ordained pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal church, said, "It might not be that we're so afraid to challenge the reading of scripture as it is that were afraid to challenge power in church leaders who may be abusers themselves."

"Our job," said Davis, "is the deconstruction of roadblocks and the reconstruction of resources."

Quoting from Battered Women: From a Theology of Suffering to an Ethic of Empowerment (Joy Bussert, 1986) she went on, "We need ... to begin articulating a faith that will provide women with resources for strength rather than resources for endurance. We must articulate a theology of empowerment rather than a theology of passive endurance."

FaithTrust's Rabbi Julie Schwartz advocated speaking about domestic violence from pulpits and in the prayers of the people as a crucial first step for faith communities.

"We need theological clarity that domestic violence has nothing to do with religion," she said. "It's all about power and control. You can't use your religion to say violence is OK."

Schwartz went on to offer three other goals for intervention in family violence by religious leaders. First, provide safety for victims and children. Go with them to court. Honor protective orders. Know how to refer victims to domestic violence programs and trained community advocates, rather than to traditional couples' counseling.

Secondly, insist on accountability for the batterer. Support fulfillment of legal consequences of violence. Have clear guidelines for perpetrators who wish to remain in the faith community. Support the abuser in seeking specialized batterers' intervention programs to help change violent behavior and offer safety for the batterer as well as the victim, through the establishment of appropriate boundaries.

And finally, assist in the restoration of the relationship, if appropriate, or provide for the mourning of the loss through prayers, rituals and pastoral care.

Toward the end of the day, Fatality Review co-coordinator Greg Loughlin said that when they'd begun planning the summit, they wondered where the faith community had gone with regard to domestic violence.

"We thought stuff wasn't going on. Instead, there's wonderful stuff. People are doing the work. You are doing the work," he said. "What we need are connections between those people and momentum for the future."

"Georgia has the unfortunate distinction of being ranked 14th in the nation for the rate at which men kill women in single-victim homicides, most of which are domestic violence murders. And too often, when these murders are committed, children are either injured, killed, or witness to the violent death of their beloved parent or caregiver" (Georgia Domestic Violence Fatality Review, 2008).

According to FaithTrust founder the Rev. Dr. Marie M. Fortune, "There can be no healing without justice and justice requires courage."

To view and consider signing the National Declaration by Religious and Spiritual Leaders to Address Violence Against Women, click here.

The report on "Living Faithfully with Families in Transition," coming to the 215^th General Assembly, is being attacked by many on the Right who view it as an attack on what they perceive as the single form of family life ordained by God.

But if folks are really anxious to "defend the family," perhaps the greatest threat today comes not from the changing forms of family life, but from the pressures of our market economy, directed at our children through advertising. A long article by Jonathan Rowe and Gary Ruskin, published in Mothering Magazine (Jan/Feb 2003) explains in detail the reasoning behind the "Parents' Bill of Rights."

This quote seems to sum up their argument:

Business Week, no enemy of corporate America, perhaps put it best: "Instead of transmitting a sense of who we are and what we hold important, today's marketing-driven culture is instilling in [children] a sense that little exists without a sales pitch attached and that self-worth is something you buy at a shopping mall."

Here is the full text of the ...

Parents' Bill of Rights

To send a letter to your members of Congress in support of the Parents' Bill of Rights, visit Commercial Alert's website.

WHEREAS, the nurturing of character and strong values in children is one of the most important functions of any society;

WHEREAS, the primary responsibility for the upbringing of children resides in their parents;

WHEREAS, an aggressive commercial culture has invaded the relationship between parents and children, and has impeded the ability of parents to guide the upbringing of their own children;

WHEREAS, corporate marketers have sought increasingly to bypass parents, and speak directly to children in order to tempt them with the most sophisticated tools that advertising executives, market researchers and psychologists can devise;

WHEREAS, these marketers tend to glorify materialism, addiction, hedonism, violence, and anti-social behavior, all of which are abhorrent to most parents;

WHEREAS, parents find themselves locked in constant battle with this pervasive influence, and are hard pressed to keep the commercial culture and its degraded values out of their children's lives;

WHEREAS, the aim of this corporate marketing is to turn children into agents of corporations in the home, so that they will nag their parents for the things they see advertised, thus sowing strife, stress and misery in the family;

WHEREAS, the products advertised generally are ones parents themselves would not choose for their children: violent and sexually suggestive entertainment, video games, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and junk food;

WHEREAS, this aggressive commercial influence has contributed to an epidemic of marketing-related diseases in children, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, alcoholism, anorexia, and bulimia, while millions will eventually die from the marketing of tobacco;

WHEREAS, corporations have latched onto the schools and compulsory school laws as a way to bypass parents and market their products and values to a captive audience of impressionable and trusting children;

WHEREAS, these corporations ultimately are creatures of state law, and it is intolerable that they should use the rights and powers so granted for the purpose of undermining the authority of parents in these ways;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the U.S. Congress and the 50 state legislatures should right the balance between parents and corporations and restore to parents some measure of control over the commercial influences on their children, by enacting this Parents' Bill of Rights, including the following legislation:

Leave Children Alone Act: Bans television advertising aimed at children under 12 years of age.

Child Privacy Act: Restores to parents the ability to safeguard the privacy of their children. It gives parents the right to control any commercial use of personal information concerning their children, and the right to know precisely how such information is used.

Children's Advertising Subsidy Revocation Act: It is intolerable that the federal government rewards corporations with tax write-offs for the money they spend on psychologists, market researchers, ad agencies, and media in their campaigns to instill their values in our children. This act eliminates all federal subsidies, deductions, and preferences for advertising aimed at children under 12 years of age.

Advertising to Children Accountability Act: This act helps parents affix individual responsibility for attempts to subject their children to commercial influence. It requires corporations to disclose who created each of their advertisements and who did the market research for each ad directed at children under 12 years of age.

Commercial-Free Schools Act: Corporations have turned the public schools into advertising free-fire zones. This act prohibits corporations from using the schools and compulsory school laws to bypass parents and pitch their products to impressionable schoolchildren.

Product Placement Disclosure Act: This law gives parents more information with which to monitor the influences that prey upon their children through the media. Specifically, it requires corporations to disclose, on packaging and at the outset, any and all product placements on television and videos, and in movies, video games, and books. This prevents advertisers from sneaking ads into media that parents assume to be ad-free.

Child Harm Disclosure Act: Parents have a right to know of any significant health effects of products they might purchase for their children. This act creates a legal duty for corporations to publicly disclose all information suggesting that their product(s) could substantially harm the health of children.

Fairness Doctrine for Parents: This act provides parents with the opportunity to talk back to the media and the advertisers. It makes the Fairness Doctrine apply to all advertising to children under 12 years of age, providing parents and community with response time on broadcast TV and radio for advertising to children.

Children's Food Labeling Act: Parents have a right to information about the food that corporations push upon their children. This act requires fast-food restaurant chains to label contents of food and provide basic nutritional information about it.