The Religion & Sexual Abuse Project (R&SAP): an introduction
This thematic issue marks the culmination of the Religion & Sexual Abuse Project (R&SAP) (2019-2025), which fosters the understanding and redress of sexual abuse across multiple religious traditions. Some R&SAP sponsored projects are critical of how religious organizations collude with a...
| Subtitles: | The Religion & Sexual Abuse Project |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Religion
Year: 2025, Volume: 55, Issue: 4, Pages: 761-782 |
| Further subjects: | B
New Religious Movements
B clergy abuse B Buddhism B Islam B spiritual abuse B Survivors B Sexual Abuse B Religion B Yoga B Catholicism B Christianity B Gurus |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This thematic issue marks the culmination of the Religion & Sexual Abuse Project (R&SAP) (2019-2025), which fosters the understanding and redress of sexual abuse across multiple religious traditions. Some R&SAP sponsored projects are critical of how religious organizations collude with abusers; others show how religious organizations can provide forums for empowerment, liberation, and healing in the wake of abuse. For some R&SAP scholars, religious theologies and institutional structures are a part of the problem, while for others they are part of the solution. Still, themes emerge in this thematic issue, such as the denial of the possibility of consent across power differentials between religious professionals and laity. R&SAP scholars also reveal how religious institutional structures enable ‘grooming’ and silencing, and institute firewalls against accountability, such as mandatory NDAs, counter-lawsuits, and bankruptcy; these tactics enable abuse to persist. R&SAP scholars argue that sexual abuse in religious contexts is religious, meaning that perpetrators use religious spaces to abuse, enact, interpret, and defend their actions through religious doctrine. This thematic issue places sexual abuse at the center (and not at the periphery) of scholarship on religion, and endeavors so that survivors’ voices will resonate in the hallowed corridors of the academy. |
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| ISSN: | 1096-1151 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2025.2538952 |
