In a survey of Protestant pastors, Lifeway Research found that pastors drastically underestimate the number of sexual abuse victims in their congregations; a majority of them guessed in the survey that 10 percent or less might be victims.1 But in 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 1 in 4 women (women make up approximately 55 percent of evangelicals) and 1 in 9 men have been sexually abused. There is no evidence suggesting those numbers are lower inside the church.
“While my church leadership team was working on dividing congregants into small groups, multiple female church leaders expressed concern about having mixed small groups that included men with a known history of abuse toward women. An extended conversation occurred. Male church leaders pushed back, treating the women’s concerns as overblown. Finally, one of the male leaders spoke up, agreeing with the women. Only then did the other male leaders concede.”
—anonymous congregant
In 1995, economists discovered that 100 million females had vanished. Today, that number may be as high as 200 million according to Amartya Sen, a retired professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard. Sen received a Nobel Prize for his work, which prompted humanitarians and researchers to employ a gender-lens
Every week, members of our small group Bible study share their “highs,” their “lows,” and how they’ve seen God this week. A couple of weeks ago, I co-led the group in a discussion on what it means to be both a Christian and a feminist. To begin, women in the
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men have been sexually abused.
Domestic Violence: What Every Pastor Needs to Know, Second Edition
Al Miles
According to the American Medical Association, one quarter of American women will be abused by an intimate partner at some point in their lives. Often, however, pastoral caregivers possess the same misconceptions about domestic violence as does the uninformed public.
Pastors drastically underestimate the number of sexual abuse victims in their congregations; a majority of them guessed in the survey that 10 percent or less might be victims
1 “Domestic and Gender-Based Violence: Pastors’ Attitudes and Actions,” LifeWay Research, 2018, http://lifewayresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Domestic-Violence-Research-Report.pdf, accessed May 4, 2023.
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