Religious Beliefs and Domestic Violence Myths

Religiousness has a long-standing presence in the research literature on intolerance. However, religiousness is minimally represented in the interpersonal violence myth (IPVM) literature. IPVMs comprise an aspect of the broader construct of intolerance. We heeded the call to address research on tradition-specific religious beliefs and IPVMs. As such, we examined select Christian beliefs about Divine-human relating. hierarchical relational expectations, complementarian gender ideology, and existential defensiveness as predictors of Domestic violence myth acceptance (DVMA) using a sample of 238 students from a Protestant evangelical seminary (M-age = 34.06, SD = 9.33; range 22 - 62 years; 41.6% female; 80.7% White). We observed positive associations among Calvinist tradition-specific religious beliefs and the 3 indicators of the latent construct of hierarchical relationality (i.e., hierarchical relational expectations, gender complementarianism, and existential defensiveness). We also observed (a) a positive indirect association between Calvinist beliefs and DVMA through the latent construct of hierarchical relationality, and (b) a negative indirect association between Calvinist beliefs and social justice advocacy through hierarchical relationality. Last, we observed evidence of suppression as the significant positive bivariate association between Calvinist beliefs and DVMA became significant and negative. Findings supported the conceptualization of domestic violence myths as comprised by nonacceptance of out-group members, hierarchical relationships, and gender inequality, and that an aspect of Calvinist ideology is similarly defined. Implications included designing training programs for religious leaders and constructing prevention and intervention strategies that foster self-reflection on religious beliefs associated with DVMA.