Research, Somali, Sexual Abuse, Anti-Patriarchy Movement
APA PsycNet: The power of presence: Well-being and biopsychosocial effects of virtual versus in-person religious services.
"Although the benefits of in-person religious service attendance are well-documented, the well-being and biopsychosocial effects of virtual worship—more frequent since the COVID-19 pandemic—remain largely unexplored. This study examines the impact of attending virtual versus in-person worship. In a pre-registered experiment, 43 adult Christians attended both virtual and in-person church services in a randomized order. Participants wore Fitbits to measure heart rate and calories burned and completed post service surveys assessing social, affective, and well-being outcomes. Virtual services resulted in lower transcendent experiences and emotions, shared identity with the congregation, and closeness with God compared with in-person attendance. Physiologically, virtual worship led to lower heart rates and fewer calories burned, indicating reduced embodied engagement. However, well-being scores remained similar. Virtual worship may not fully replicate in-person experiences. Further research is needed to assess long-term well-being effects and implications for religious engagement."
"Defying a tradition of silence around sexual abuse and trauma, Somali women are beginning to speak out about long-hidden ordeals perpetrated by men they trusted — boyfriends, teachers and sometimes religious leaders."
"A retired vicar who was part of an extreme body modification ring run by a man who called himself the "eunuch maker" has been jailed for three years.
Reverend Geoffrey Baulcomb pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to causing grievous bodily harm. The former vicar, wearing a black suit and tie, showed no emotion as the sentence was handed down.
Baulcomb was found with a phone containing a nine-second video of him using nail scissors to perform a procedure on a man's penis in January 2020.
He also admitted to seven other charges, including possessing extreme pornography and making and distributing images of children on or before December 14, 2022."
"Days after challenging Pastor Doug Wilson to a public debate, Peter Bell, producer and host of the podcast "Sons of Patriarchy," made a social media confession that has forced a reckoning within the community he helped build around exposing abuse in patriarchal churches.
Bell, whose podcast investigates Wilson's Moscow, Idaho-based church movement, said in a since-deleted Aug. 23 Facebook post that he struggled with pornography addiction for nearly two decades, was fired from multiple jobs for lying and experienced marital separation during his podcast's first season last year.
The confession came shortly after Bell appeared at a Moscow community event Aug. 8 at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center, where he and others spoke about the impact of Wilson's teachings. The podcast producers scheduled their first Moscow visit to coincide with Grace Agenda, a weekend conference hosted by Wilson's Christ Church that serves as a major recruiting event for the church. After the Kenworthy event, Bell and "Sons of Patriarchy" staff approached Wilson at the conference, and Wilson agreed to a one-on-one conversation with the podcast host, who has spent months documenting abuse allegations within Wilson's Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.Bell acknowledged ... that the timing of his Facebook post was deliberate.
"With the recent airing of the CNN interview with Doug Wilson" — a profile that examined Wilson's Christian nationalist movement and connections to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — "our team began receiving far more media inquiries, survivor stories and 'interest' after Doug agreed to a one-on-one with me," Bell said in an interview."This compounded with the kinds of messages we were receiving, mostly coming from women, who were praising me. They wanted to let me know that they wished their husbands could be like me, their sons would grow up to be like me, and their pastors cared like me," Bell said. "I couldn't handle the praise, knowing that if those who were messaging us knew the truth about me, maybe they'd be less inclined. I had told parts of it before, but I needed everything out there."The confession sparked tension within the "Sons of Patriarchy" team. Bell's co-host and majority owner of the podcast, Sarah Bader, responded with a social media statement distancing the team from Bell's post."" ... The confession particularly stung trauma survivors who trusted Bell with their stories of abuse within patriarchal church systems, several alleged survivors wrote on social media. As Bell interviews women who have left these environments, his admission raises questions about his fitness for the role.
'I totally and completely understand if survivors no longer desire to be interviewed by me," Bell said. "My goal isn't to get someone behind a microphone — my goal is for them to be heard.'"
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families in making the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment