Religious involvement and domestic violence among US couples

A small but growing literature focuses on the link between religion and fam ily violence. Several recent studies report that regular religious is adver sely related to abuse among both men and women. After outlining a series of theoretical arguments possible direct and indirect links between religious involvement and domestic violence we analyze these relationships using dat a from wave 1 of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH-1). A mong the key findings: (1) regular religious attendance is inversely associ ated with the perpetration of domestic violence: (2) among men, this protec tive effect is evident only among weekly attenders, whereas among women the protective effect also effects among monthly attenders; (3) although the e stimated net effects of religious attendance are generally somewhat larger in models of self-reports of domestic violence, this link also remains stro ng and statistically significant in models of partner reports of violence; and (4) moreover, the inverse association between religious attendance and abuse persists even with statistical controls for measures of (a) social in tegration and social support, (b) alcohol and substance abuse, and (c) low self-esteem and depression. We conclude by discussing a number of implicati ons of these findings, and by identifying several promising directions for future research.