Steven Sandage And Domestic Violence

Steven Sandage And Domestic Violence October 15, 2018

I’ll clear the air first: as Sandage knows and has said, correlation and causation are not the same, but correlation remains correlation. Correlation requires thoughtful consideration not knee-jerk condemnation. I know Scott Sandage, and he’s a reliable reporter and an exceptional scholar. He has published theological studies as well as sociological research.

From Boston University Today (BU Today):

In June, Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided that domestic violence is inadequate grounds for granting asylum.

Sessions’ announcement followed President Trump’s defense of aide Rob Porter, accused of abuse by two ex-wives (subsequently amended with a presidential condemnation of domestic violence).

Citing these news stories, psychologist Steven Sandage asks, “How can some people take positions that seem to minimize the problem of domestic violence?” The Albert and Jessie Danielsen Professor of Psychology of Religion and Theology and research director at BU’s Danielsen Institute, Sandage thinks he’s found one answer outside of politics: religion sometimes justifies or rationalizes violence against women.

In particular, he says, that attitude is a danger in Calvinism, a word that may conjure notions of a God who preordains every human for salvation or hell, unalterably, before time began. But Calvinism—“a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy,” according to one writer—is enjoying a resurgence.

… Sandage says many of his Calvinist clients derive “a very clear social and moral structure” from their worldview.

In several recent research projects with colleagues at BU and elsewhere, he has explored aspects of Calvinism, including “domestic violence myth acceptance.” Domestic violence myths are beliefs “that function to rationalize, justify, and/or perpetuate men’s violence against women,” in the words of one study, published in the Journal of Psychology and Spirituality.

For that study, the researchers had 238 seminary students complete an online survey, probing for correlations between their theological beliefs and ideologies about gender, hierarchical relationships, and belief in God’s control and protection of them. The students were from Minnesota’s Bethel Seminary, an evangelical Protestant school where Sandage once taught.

Sandage summarizes the upshot of his research: “Many Christian theologies emphasize the possibility of finding meaning in suffering, but the New Calvinism seems to promote a rather stoic and un-empathic attitude that valorizes suffering, particularly among women.… Calvinist beliefs were related to higher levels of domestic violence myth acceptance and lower levels of social justice commitment.”

In the Calvinist view, “God causes all things, including hierarchical social structures and all suffering,” he says. “Domination by the powerful,” be it God or men, “is just and appropriate, and submission to suffering by the less powerful is virtuous and redemptive.”

He doesn’t contend that all people embracing Calvinism endorse domestic violence myths: “There are many contemporary Calvinists who hold progressive views of gender and other social issues. But our research does offer some data suggesting the ‘New Calvinism’ that combines Calvinistic beliefs and very conservative, binary views of gender may be a kind of theological risk factor for the acceptance of domestic violence myths and other socially regressive attitudes.”

Indeed, evangelical seminary students who believe that humans have some free will “do not show this pattern,” he says.


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