An associate professor at the University of California, Riverside, will lead a team of researchers in a five-year study of sexual abuse across a variety of religious traditions and communities.
Amanda Lucia, who teaches in UC Riverside’s Department of Religious Studies, is the principal investigator of the Religion and Sexual Abuse Project, which is funded by a $550,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation through its Theology program.
Lucia and her five main co-researchers — all religious studies professors at universities across the country — each specialize in a particular religious tradition. Together, their expertise includes Catholicism, Buddhism, yoga, and contemporary guru movements situated primarily within Hindu traditions. Each will receive approximately $20,000 in funding to develop research projects on this topic.
Lucia noted a central aspect of the grant is the researchers’ partnership with four advocacy organizations: FaithTrust Institute, Bishop Accountability, Yoga Alliance, and INFORM. In collaborating with these groups, the researchers hope to create practical benefits for religious communities in which abuse has occurred, she said.
“I don’t have any desire to choose a particular guru and write an exposé,” she added. “I am more interested in thinking sociologically about what patterns we can find, and why it is that this is a commonality.”
Kent Brintnall of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte is part of the project’s main research team. He will analyze the Catholic church’s sexual abuse crisis, situating it within the contexts of sexuality, homosexuality, and LGBTQ politics.
Full story at UC Riverside.
I hope CCD reports on her findings when the study is completed. I suspect sex abuse and its causes are very similar across all religions.
Catholic, Buddhism, Yoga, Hindu — no Protestant? The study sounds weird already. Also sounds like its emphasis will be on the only large religion in this group — Catholicism.
Peggy, you raise a fair point, and I don’t know why she doesnt have an expert specifically studying protestants, which number about a billion adherants worldwide. But Hindus number 1.1 billion and Buddhists about a half billion, so I wouldn’t call Catholicism the only large religion in the group.
As we are learning, sex abuse, particularly child sex abuse, occurs across many organizations and professions in the USA: Catholic and Protestant churches, Boy Scouts, doctors, coaches, youth groups, sports, gymnastics, etc. The phenomenon of sex abuse is not unique to the Catholic Church! It is still horrible whatever the circumstances.
Our budget for this grant will also includes 6 external scholar awards, from which we will support research into religious traditions not covered by our key team members: Protestantism, Judaism, Mormonism, Islam, and so on.
Do we need a study on the commonality? Sin is the commonality. Selfishness. Pride that one can follow ones own desire instead of honoring God and following His laws. Not seeing the dignity of every person is the problem. Not learning discipline, and self-denial, Not living up to one’s vows. All fall under sin.
I hope this is not just another study that tells us what common sense already tells us.