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The Relationship Between Religious and Spiritual Factors and the Perpetration of Intimate Personal Violence

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Abstract

Despite some understanding of general correlates and possible antecedents to intimate partner violence (IPV) within the Christian community, the impact of religious and spiritual factors tends to be confounded by other factors and is often misjudged. Archival data from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) were used to examine the impact of nine religious and spiritual factors on the probability of IPV perpetration by males, aged 18 to 26, who nominally classified themselves as Catholic, Protestant, or Christian. Logistic regression results indicated that IPV perpetration could not be adequately predicted from the religious and spiritual factors. Given the geographic breadth and the size of the Add Health sample, no finding of a predictive model for Christian male-perpetrated IPV challenges the paradigm that religious and spiritual factors should be overtly addressed in faith-based batterers’ programs targeting young adult males.

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Acknowledgements

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 (addhealth@unc.edu). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

The authors acknowledge the support and guidance provided by the following individuals during this study: Drs. Barry Trunk and David Kriska, Department of Psychology, Walden University, Minneapolis, MN.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Walden University, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    John Deaton

  2. Bristol, CT, USA

    Robbin G. Todhunter

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  1. Robbin G. Todhunter
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  2. John Deaton
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Correspondence to Robbin G. Todhunter.

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Todhunter, R.G., Deaton, J. The Relationship Between Religious and Spiritual Factors and the Perpetration of Intimate Personal Violence. J Fam Viol 25, 745–753 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-010-9332-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-010-9332-6

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