Integration of religious beliefs and faith-based resources in domestic violence services to migrant and ethnic minority communities: A scoping review

In the context of this review, religious beliefs were understood as being rooted in the religious affiliation, socialization and worldview of a DVA victim, survivor or perpetrator, and faith-based resources were defined as resources available in religious communities and religious spaces, such as spiritual advice, prayer or mediation by religious teachers, clergy or other religious personnel. Recognizing that within health and psychological studies the term ‘spirituality’ has often been used interchangeably or in close association with ‘religion’ (Hodge, 2004; Marterella and Brock, 2008), we also included evidence that referred to integrating spirituality or spiritual beliefs in domestic violence services to the extent that this encompassed religious beliefs.

Moreover, since the concept of religion or faith has often been subsumed into the concept of culture, we also searched for studies that referred to ‘cultural sensitivity’, ‘cultural awareness’ or ‘cultural competence’ in domestic violence services that made direct reference to religious beliefs, faith or spirituality. We were particularly interested in understanding to what extent the literature on ‘culturally competent’ services, primarily emerging in North America and the UK where this concept and paradigm has been increasingly streamlined and debated, had accounted for religious beliefs and resources and had sought to conceptualize this relationship more systematically, but also how this might compare to approaches and understandings from across the world. See Tables 1 and 2 for full overview of included studies and materials.

The protocol of the review was developed collaboratively among the authors of this paper, who combined different backgrounds and specializations, including health/public health (Gene Feder; Parveen Ali), religious studies, anthropology and international development (Romina Istratii), and experience working in DVA services in the UK (Linda Mshweshwe). The searches, data analysis and synthesis were completed by RI, with LM mapping organizational literature and supporting data extraction, and GF and PA advising throughout the process and contributing to the final report.

A scoping review methodology was selected as appropriate to determine the state of the evidence before undertaking more rigorous empirical research (Constand et al., 2014), which was our ultimate aim. The review broadly followed the principles outlined in Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005). This approach comprises of five stages involving defining the research question, identifying relevant studies, selection, charting the data and collating, summarizing, and reporting the results (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005). The rapid scoping review involved: (a) qualitative or quantitative studies, (b) literature reviews, including systematic reviews, (c) relevant studies or grey literature published by DVA or VAWG organizations, other relevant charities, government agencies working on DVA, or professionals who are offering services through organized DVA services led by the state or charity sectors. We also reviewed the bibliography lists of papers that we identified. Relevance was decided based on title; where this was ambiguous, we also read the abstract of the papers considered relevant. If the abstract addressed questions overlapping the aims of this review they were read in full.

As we were reviewing evidence, we excluded conceptual and planning papers, but included grey literature to capture the non-academic evidence produced and published by DVA service providers. All the resources reviewed had to be in English to be accessible to all the members of the team and to have been published in the 21^st century, although grey literature that was found to be relevant was included even when no date of publication was reported.

The review included all sources of evidence that referred to DVA support and services to victims, survivors and perpetrators from migrant and ethnic minority religious communities. We did not employ a rigid definition for the category ‘migrant’ or ‘ethnic minority’ and sought to include communities for whom religious beliefs were evidenced to be important in domestic violence experiences and help-seeking. Since we were interested in migrant communities and the cross-cultural context, we did not search for evidence on DVA organized responses or services in majority religious communities based in their home countries.

Study settings could be statutory domestic violence services, women’s or VAWG organizations or charities supporting survivors, including psychological support or social care integrated in frontline DVA services, as well as ‘by and for’ initiatives (led by or focused on specific cultural or religious communities) that were integrated into the organized sector. The review also captured service providers’ engagements with perpetrators, such as through perpetrator treatment programs. Conversely, the review excluded studies of programs that did not directly address their links to organized DVA services.

The review also excluded: (a) studies that referred to the effect of faith and religious beliefs on the help-seeking of DVA survivors and perpetrators, which had already been covered in a previous literature review (Istratii and Ali, 2023), unless they made direct recommendations and had implications for faith-sensitive DVA services; (b) studies that discussed faith-sensitive interventions in community settings without discussing the perspectives of DVA service providers, as this review was specifically interested in the approaches and experiences of service providers and their types of engagement with religious beliefs and faith-based resources, and (c) studies focussing on culturally competent services unless these made explicit reference to religious beliefs and faith or faith actors.

Searches were run by RI using Google, Google Scholar and EBSCO search engine for social sciences and humanities. Titles and abstracts were searched using keyword combinations as listed below: Religion/Faith AND Domestic Violence Services/Provision/Support; Religious sensitivity AND Domestic Violence Services/Provision/Support; Cultural sensitivity AND Domestic Violence Services/Provision/Support; Religious competence AND Domestic Violence Services/Provision/Support; Cultural competence AND Domestic Violence Services/Provision/Support; Religious Literacy AND Domestic Violence Services/Provision/Support; Cultural Literacy AND Domestic Violence Services/Provision/Support; Service Provider Perspectives AND Religion/Culture; Service Provider Perspectives AND Spirituality; Domestic Violence Providers AND Spirituality; Domestic Violence AND Cultural Competence; Domestic Violence Services AND Religious Competence; Domestic Violence Services AND Cultural Competence; Domestic Violence Services AND Religious Literacy; Domestic Violence Services AND Cultural Literacy; Domestic Violence Providers and Religion; and Domestic Violence Services AND Cultural Competence. The term ‘domestic violence’ was also replaced with the more specific term ‘Intimate Partner Violence’ as the most frequent form of domestic violence that has attracted extensive scholarly attention.

In our early stages of building the review protocol, we observed that the term ‘religious literacy’ was at times used by organizations promoting faith sensitivity in the sector, but the term was rarely clearly defined. In the current literature review, we were therefore interested to identify existing definitions and understandings of this term. We chose to use it as a search word precisely because it has been increasingly used in the DVA sector, albeit without rigorous theoretical context.

Additional searches were run that explored issues of racism, colonialism, decolonization, diversity and social justice in VAWG and DVA services provision as it was anticipated that these could overlap with questions of cultural sensitivity and religious diversity. Moreover, the review team conducted a systematic search of grey literature from DVA service providers and VAWG organizations in the UK. To capture as much possible of this grey literature, in addition to RI running searches on Google, LM mapped major relevant stakeholders and service providers in the UK and reviewed their websites for related content. The stakeholder list included 90 organizations with available website and online presence. The results of the review are presented in a PRISMA graph below Figure 1.

Many of the reviewed studies examined the influence of religious beliefs and mediators in the DVA experience of victims or survivors and their help-seeking, making direct recommendations to inform domestic violence services (Fowler et al., 2011; Ghafournia, 2017; Mulvihill et al., 2023; Pyles, 2007; Yick, 2008). Most of these studies were from the USA, one was from Australia and one from the UK.

A study from the USA that drew on data collected in Wyoming to assess community responses to DVA (Pyles, 2007), scrutinized the role of religion and found this to have served both as a resource and a barrier. While religious institutions could provide emotional comfort and practical assistance, the response of religious personnel could also perpetuate silence. The study found limited collaboration between religious institutions and social service providers and recommended that better links be developed between religious spaces and secular services.

Yick (2008) explored the role of spirituality and religiosity in domestic violence experiences of diverse women, placing central attention to the influence of their culture-specific worldviews in the intersection of spirituality and DVA. The study included survivors from primarily the African American community, with a few being Asian women, White women and other ethnic groups. In general, faith and invoking a higher power helped the women to cope, while the existence of religious institutions and resources was identified as a source of strength. At the same time, tensions existed between the women’s own abusive relationships and how their religious traditions perceived marriage and gender roles. Based on the findings, the author proposed that practitioners should explore how their clients’ religious beliefs and spiritual experiences might influence their ways of coping with the understanding that a woman’s religiosity or spirituality is influenced by the environment around her, her community and her family. Therefore, practitioners should collaborate with faith communities and religious institutions to provide culturally competent services, suggesting thus a conceptualization of cultural competence that integrated faith sensitivity

A study engaging the Muslim community in Australia reinforced these findings (Ghafournia, 2017). The study engaged 14 abused women to explore the role of religious values in Muslim migrant women’s experience of IPV and implications for faith-based prevention and intervention strategies. In contrast to stereotypes about Muslims, the study found that women in the study turned to their religious beliefs as one of their main strategies in dealing with the abuse, although the response of religious leaders was described mostly negatively. Important insights emerged also in relation to how women viewed the role of Islam and religious beliefs in their abuse, and how they interpreted negative attitudes in relation to cultural systems and socialization. Perpetrators used religious language to justify their abusive behaviour, suggesting that a patriarchal interpretation of Islam and certain cultural elements contributed to women’s oppression (Ghafournia, 2017: 159). The paper concluded that a faith-informed framework could be used to identify appropriate intervention strategies. To be able to do this, however, social workers should develop a basic understanding of Islamic tenets to navigate abused women’s invocations of Islam and to support them without bias.

In one of the few studies reviewed based in the UK, Mulvihill et al. (2023) explored the lived experiences of coercive control drawing on victim IPV accounts across Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and Buddhist faith contexts in the UK. The analysis was based on two multi-faith datasets: secondary data analysis of 27 semi-structured interviews conducted over 2016–2017 and primary data collected through an online anonymous survey in 2021 eliciting 24 qualitative responses, supplemented by limited interviews with victim-survivors. The authors discussed the concept of spiritual abuse as developed over two decades in the UK and drew attention to the use of distorted religious language by perpetrators to control their partners, which the authors called ‘religious coercive control’. The study proposed that survivors of religious coercive control may need specialist support to address and overcome spiritual trauma. One implication of the study was that religious spaces must ensure that training is provided to support and safeguard survivors and that they serve as a key component in the ‘social web of accountability’ to respond to IPV.

Relevant to this discussion is a study that investigated the effect of spirituality in services utilization for women residing in a domestic violence shelter in the USA (Fowler et al., 2011). The study defined spirituality as a way of being, meaning-seeking around the purpose of life and interaction with a higher power. The study found that women with higher levels of spirituality were less likely to have utilized shelters and more likely to have utilized faith-based resources. According to the findings, survivors with higher spirituality were more likely to utilize faith-based resources than shelters, but those survivors who experienced greater IPV reported dissatisfaction with faith-based resources. The results suggest that spirituality should be incorporated into shelter services to meet survivors’ spiritual needs, and that faith-based services should adequately address IPV by collaborating more effectively with DVA services.

The literature on culturally competent or responsive approaches is extensive, with the paradigm of ‘cultural competence’ appearing to be more established in North America and Canada (Congress, 2005; Danso, 2018; Hernandez et al., 2009; Jackson et al., 2015; Klingspohn, 2018; Messing et al., 2013; Pokharel et al., 2021; Powell Sears, 2012; Rana, 2012; Sumter, 2006; Whitaker et al., 2007; Wretman et al., 2022), but gaining critical attention in the UK too. The studies in this category included religious beliefs, faith or religious mediators in their definitions of culturally appropriate services, or in the implications of their findings and future directions (Bent-Goodley, 2013; Gillum, 2008a; Kulwicki et al., 2000; Latta and Goodman, 2005; Walizadeh, 2022).

Many papers highlighted the need to develop a proper understanding of community context, the role of family, religious leaders or other influential figures in shaping victims’ help-seeking attitudes, and standards, norms and expectations about family life, marriage and domestic violence. In a paper that reviewed knowledge about cultural competence for Black women abused by men in the USA, Tricia Bent-Goodley (2013) reported that the religious community was generally considered a resource for African American domestic violence victims, however, faith-based providers often gave unhelpful advice or inadequate help. Based on a story of Yolanda, a woman killed by her husband who had sought refuge in her faith, the author stressed the need for contextual analysis to understand views about domestic violence upheld in the community and structural barriers experienced by victims. The author also noted the potential role of churches, civil organizations, women’s ministries and other community-based organizations in support and prevention efforts.

Another study investigated how the cultural context of IPV affected accessibility to mainstream DVA services for Haitian women in the USA (Latta and Goodman, 2005). The authors found that immigrant women hesitated to seek support from mainstream services because they failed to understand their context-specific IPV experiences. The paper also found that Haitian women often resorted to pastors and faith leaders for advice, who generally were unsupportive. Based on these findings, they proposed that faith leaders should be trained to be able to direct victims and survivors to relevant services and to help raise awareness and change community norms in culturally appropriate ways.

A study by Kulwicki et al. (2000) that took place in an urban Midwestern area of the USA investigated the patterns of health care behaviour among Arab Americans and attitudes among service providers, stressing the need for cultural sensitivity. For example, one Arab service provider complained about stereotyping all Arabs as Muslim, speaking about the need to enhance religious literacy to avoid generalizations. The authors found that while providers placed emphasis on ‘same treatment for all’ in response to concerns of racism and discrimination, members of the community favoured the need for cultural sensitivity, raising the need for a closer engagement with client’s understandings.

Gillum (2008a) in turn, explored the experiences of African American survivors with various community entities. The study entailed focus groups and individual interviews with 13 African American female survivors of DVA and two African American female service providers. It reported that women were generally dissatisfied with services, especially when trying to leave or stay away from an abusive partner. The reasons were related to cultural incompetence and racism, such as services lacking African American staff and not providing a culturally safe environment. The study participants also believed that churches could play an important role in battling IPV in their congregations by condemning it more openly and offering support groups to assist survivors, in lieu of couple counselling that was believed to rather couch the issue of IPV in the community.

In the UK context, Walizadeh’s (2022) review of culturally responsive interventions for perpetrators of GBV directly addressed the integration of religious parameters in culturally competent responses, proposing that there is a need to overcome Eurocentric ideas about ‘religion’. While the review did not list specific studies on the integration of religious beliefs in cultural competency programs, it found that the influence of ‘culture’ or ‘religion’ was often ignored in DVA work even though ethnic minorities and migrants were disproportionately represented in refuges. The review also proposed the necessity to integrate a more intersectional lens on DVA to account for diverse needs, colonialism and intergenerational factors. Lastly, the review, recognizing that cultural competency could be appropriated by mainstream DVA service providers, stressed that it should not be used as excuse to minimize the work of services ‘by and for’ members of specific cultural communities.

Studies and resources under this theme could be divided into two types: studies that presented the particular characteristics of communities of faith with the aim of improving religious literacy among social workers and DVA providers (Hodge, 2004; Jayasundara et al., 2017), and studies that presented approaches integrating a spirituality component in culturally competent services catering to migrant, ethnic or religious minorities, or that compared the benefits of culturally specific versus more generalist services (Gillum, 2008b, 2009; Pan et al., 2006; SPR, 2018; Stennis et al., 2015). Overwhelmingly, this evidence comes from the USA, although it also included a study from Australia that explored religious literacy in protecting children from sexual assault in Australia’s Jewish community and in responding to Muslim women who experience DVA (Crisp et al., 2018).

In one of the earliest papers reviewed, Hodge (2004) presented central aspects of evangelical Christians’ cultural narratives around gender relations, marriage and DVA addressing service providers. Hodge proposed that service providers needed to build a better understanding of the religious worldview of this community, such as by reading family resources written by authoritative Evangelical Christian authors. Hodge recognized that believers could manifest their spirituality in harmful ways and advised that social workers should not attempt to problematize the veracity of their clients’ theological beliefs but could put them in touch with a pastor. Concerned about misrepresentations of evangelical Christians in the mainstream, Hodge stressed the importance for service providers to reflect on any personal biases or stereotypes and even argued that where the values of the social workers and the clients fundamentally differed, it would be ethically compelling to redirect them to providers who may be better placed to cater to their needs.

Another paper published in the USA (Jayasundara et al., 2017) discussed five major religions ― Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism ― and analysed how religious teachings could be misused to justify abusive behaviour. The authors explained their rationale for placing emphasis on religious tenets referring to how they shape gender roles, sometimes reinforcing gender inequality in the context of literal interpretations of sacred texts (Jayasundara et al., 2017: 41). Inter alia, the authors called for social workers to have basic knowledge of their clients’ religious traditions to be able to help them ‘explore alternatives that counter these misinterpretations’ (58). Crisp et al. (2018), in turn, explored what religious literacy might mean in the context of protecting children from sexual assault in Australia’s Jewish community and in supporting Muslim women who experience DVA. The aim of the paper was to show students and practitioners in social work and healthcare the importance of engaging carefully with their clients’ religious beliefs. While the authors acknowledged that in Muslim-majority countries there is often the perception that DVA is condoned within Islam, they stressed that the problem reflected the underlying issue of women’s unequal status to men. Moreover, opinions about DVA and Islam can be more diverse than it is often recognized and include Islamic feminist scholars’ activism and abused women’s own conditions and understandings. This stressed the importance of understanding the religio-cultural contexts and standards upheld in the communities of female survivors of DVA, avoiding generalizations.

The review included also a limited number of studies that described approaches that sought to be appropriate to religious and cultural context, such a paper presenting the Ahimsa for Safe Families Project set up to address DVA in immigrant and refugee communities in San Diego, USA (Pan et al., 2006). Ahimsa, which means nonviolence or non-harm in Sanskrit, was designed to increase awareness of DVA among Latino, Somali and Vietnamese communities relying first on a needs assessment of their respective attitudes and beliefs about DVA and then holding community dialogues to discuss the findings. The project developed and implemented culturally specific programs targeted at each of the three communities, which evidenced the importance of contextualizing DVA within the cultural socialization of the community, pointing also to important overlaps between religious tradition and identity.

Community-based needs assessment identified six core issues underlying DVA, which were: varying definitions of violence, family harmony, strict gender roles, conflict resolution strategies, cultural identity and spirituality (42) and numerous barriers that could hinder women from accessing services, such as a lack of trust, language barriers, transportation, beliefs about family/culture, and a lack of bilingual/bicultural staff. The authors concluded that implementing a culturally competent response would necessitate understanding the cultural values of the community and how these can influence the behaviour of DVA victims, survivors, perpetrators, their families and the community. They also stressed the need for service providers to approach diverse communities with respect and sensitivity.

Another spiritually informed, culturally competent program that was identified in the reviewed literature was the S.T.A.R.T.^© Education and Intervention Model in the USA (Stennis et al., 2015). The model was developed as a religiously sensitive and multidimensional IPV education and intervention model for the African American faith community in the USA. START, which stands for Shatter the Silence, Talk About It, Alert the Public, Refer, and Train self and others, has worked to empower individuals to assess beliefs around power, gender, types of abuse, individual and community responsibility and refer those affected to available resources. Since its inception, the model has been implemented in numerous communities, including African Americans, Hispanic religious leaders and Christian and Muslim Ethiopian women’s advocates, and has been assessed using a post-training focus group format. The overall feedback and evaluations received have been positive, with participants appreciating the religious diversity addressed in the model, the culturally sensitive content, and the ease of using it for discussing sensitive topics, including sexual exploitation. The authors also proposed some implications for Christians in competency-based social work practice, observing the need for practitioners to consider how their own values relate to the communities they cater to, and actively building on the religious, cultural and spiritual values of their clients without losing sight of the diversity that exists within faith communities of colour.

A third example is the Culturally Responsive Domestic Violence Network (CRDVN) set up in California, USA (Social Policy Research SPR, 2018) to better respond to DVA among immigrants and communities of colour. The evaluation of the network identified that three CRDVN partners had engaged faith-based leaders, through different strategies, which included: adopting a humble approach to partnership, training faith leaders as first responders to DVA, and developing alliances across different faith communities. The authors concluded that engaging clergy and churches was effectively used to promote culturally responsive approaches and to shift community norms around DVA.

In another study published in the USA, Tameka Gillum (2008b) investigated how helpful a culturally specific IPV program targeting the African American community had been to female survivors. The research site was a culturally specific DVA agency, located in a mid-sized Midwestern city, catering to African American community. The study involved interviews with the coordinator of Victim’s Services, two of the agency’s women’s advocates, and 14 service users. A spirituality-based approach was identified as a culture-specific element in the agency’s work, as well as an Afrocentric curriculum, an Afrocentric environment, a holistic and family-centred approach, and staff representation. The results indicated the success of culturally specific interventions with African American survivors and highlighted the need for more programs of this nature. Additionally, the survivors found the agency’s approach helpful because it did not force spirituality on those who were not interested and embraced spirituality in a non-denominational way.

In a follow-up paper, Gillum (2009) investigated African American survivors’ experiences with mainstream IPV services. While these were reported to have somehow helped, such as providing a safe environment and basic resources, the women described mostly problematic experiences with those providers, which contrasted with the more positive feedback on the culturally specific agency. Mainstream services were described as inadequate under the following themes: (a) the culture of the organization was not welcoming to African Americans, (b) insensitivity to the process of leaving an abusive relationship, (c) barriers to adequate assistance, and (d) a non-supportive environment. The culturally specific agency was found helpful especially because it understood the women’s complex and multiple needs, particularly when leaving an abusive relationship. A survivor also mentioned that they did not like that one mainstream service provider promoted Catholicism, a faith that they did not share. In recognition of the fact that not all services can become culturally specific, the authors suggested that mainstream services should aim to become more culturally specific in their recruitment strategies and intervention approaches.

A large evidence category comprised of organizational publications in the form of guidance sheets, toolkits and manuals targeted at religious stakeholders and DVA service providers. Some aimed to improve religious leaders’ responsiveness to victims, survivors and perpetrators in line with safeguarding standards and in collaboration with generalist and secular DVA services. Others focused on developing the ability of secular service providers to engage with the religious beliefs of their clients and collaboration with religious stakeholders. A third group of resources addressed both faith leaders or faith-based organizations and DVA service providers, with the aim of promoting mutual understanding and collaboration. Eleven such resources were retrieved in the search, but these are certainly not exhaustive.

Echoing the academic literature, the grey literature reviewed seemed to uphold that faith could become a resource in responding to DVA. Additionally, reiterating more academic propositions that religious beliefs should be integrated in culturally competent services, some resources employed the concept of cultural competence in tandem with spirituality as practice of faith, seeing it is an important aspect of ‘culture’.

One such example is a guidance sheet developed by the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence in association with the New York Theological Seminary (n.d.) in the USA titled Domestic Violence and Faith Communities: Guidelines for Leaders. This aims to assist faith leaders in responding to DVA within their communities. The relationship between the concepts of culture and religion is also discussed, suggesting that the problem often lies in ‘religion’ being used by ‘culture’ in negative ways. Another inter-faith manual with similar objectives was published by Faith Action (2015) in the UK titled Faith and Domestic Abuse: Recommendations for Faith Leaders. The guidance takes an inter-faith approach, listing specialized materials for Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh faiths, but does not consider in more depth theological differences within these communities.

Other organizations and initiatives have developed or offered course materials and toolkits to build clergy responsiveness, such as the training guidance published Anoka County Faith Community (2000) titled Creating a Safe Place: Encourage to Change Family Peacemaking Materials for Clergy, Lay Leaders, Staff & Laity. The course content and tools provided seek to raise awareness of DVA among faith leaders in Christian congregations and among lay community members. The course was designed to be co-taught by a representative of the faith community and a local advocacy services community educator.

The reviewed grey literature included also policy documents developed by religious institutions that identified how their personnel should respond to DVA within their congregations. An example is the Church of England’s policy on domestic abuse training and responses in parishes developed by the House of Bishops (The Church of England, 2017). Inter alia, the policy sees the clergy as responsible for facilitating a multiagency response to DVA and identifies measures that should be taken at diocese and parish-level. The policy includes instructions also for licensed lay ministers.

A characteristic example of such a resource is the manual Faith and Intimate Partner Violence Handbook for Advocates developed by the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence and FaithTrust Institute (2017) in the USA for advocates to engage with faith in their work. This is one of the few manuals that employ the concept of cultural competence in tandem with spirituality, which it defines as the practice of faith. This guidance encourages advocates to take an exploratory approach and discuss with the client the importance of faith and religious resources in their life. The manual centres on self-examination of service providers’ positionality and the possible biases this may engender. Moreover, the manual refers to spiritual abuse as a form of abuse that advocates should familiarize themselves with.

Along the same lines, the guidance Religion and Domestic Violence: Information and Resources produced by the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV) (2007) in the USA proposes that faith can become a resource in responding to DVA. By being sensitive to their clients’ religious beliefs, service providers can help them to identify relevant options and resources. The manual also discusses the limitations and biases that a secular provider might have about faith communities, encouraging more genuine collaborations with faith leaders.

Lastly, the guidance sheet titled Faith, Immigration and Domestic Violence: Concepts for Working with Faith Communities authored by Ranasinghe (2020) on behalf of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges in the USA provides an introduction on the intersection between faith, immigration and DVA for advocates and court professionals. This guidance explains and stresses the importance of ‘religion’, which it places within a community’s larger cultural identity, in DVA experiences. It recommends working with faith leaders as an important way of integrating a faith-sensitive perspective.

One example of such a resource is chapter 12 of the Toolkit to End Violence Against Women developed by the National Advisory Council on Violence Against Women (2004) in the USA titled Engaging Religious, Spiritual, and Faith-Based Groups and Organizations. The 5-page guidance emphasizes collaboration with religious leaders in DVA responses and outlines specific actions for religious organizations, community-based and secular victim services, advocacy programs and public and private funders.

Another example is the brief Keeping the Faith: What Survivors from Faith Communities Want Us to Know produced by Jawad and Moallin (2020) on behalf of the Faith and VAWG Coalition in the UK, which is focused on COVID-19 experiences among women from faith communities and advocates for a better integration of religious resources. This report addresses both faith leaders and state DVA services to help them understand the importance of engaging with faith reflectively. A Commentary on Religion and Domestic Violence authoredby Fortune et al. (2010) on behalf of the Faith Trust Institute in the USA similarly tries to improve religious literacy in the DVA sector, addressing both religious leaders and DVA service providers. The resource illustrates the importance and role of religious beliefs and faith-based resources in addressing DVA within Christianity, Judaism and Islam, with some components being faith-specific and others having cross-religious relevance.

The materials that were viewed included also a Domestic Violence Factsheet for Service Providers authored by Mokhtar (n.d.) on behalf of the Peaceful Families Project, in the form of a one-page guidance that instructs service providers how to respond to DVA. The guidance addresses Islamic faith leaders (imams, kahteebs, others working in mosques) and shares instructions on what they should do when they reference the Qur’an/hadith in their teachings.

The current review identified only one study that related spiritual factors to coping and healing for DVA survivors from ethnic minority communities in the context of DVA services specifically. The one study included in the current review (Arnette et al., 2007) seemed to reinforce evidence pointing to the importance of integrating religious coping strategies in culturally appropriate services to religious minorities (Istratii and Ali, 2023).

Arnette et al. (2007) investigated the ability of factors, such as level of hopelessness and the use of positive religious coping strategies, to predict spiritual well-being over time. The study took place at a trauma hospital in the USA and collected self-report questionnaires measuring hopelessness, use of religious coping strategies, and two domains of spiritual well-being from 74 survivors of IPV who had attempted suicide within the prior year. Spiritual well-being was defined to incorporate both existential meaning and relationship to God and was measured by the Spiritual Wellbeing Scale. The study found that lower levels of hopelessness predicted increases in existential well-being over time, while higher levels of positive religious coping predict increases in religious well-being over time. Since spiritual well-being is associated with better psychotherapy outcomes for African American women, and since hopelessness and religious coping predict spiritual well-being, an argument could be made for attending to these predictors when implementing culturally relevant interventions with abused, suicidal African American women.

One of the fewer papers published on the topic in the UK (Burman et al., 2004) drew from a previous study to explore how DVA services to women of African, African-Caribbean, South Asian, Jewish and Irish backgrounds were structured by assumptions about ‘culture’, which they argued could produce barriers for the delivery of DVA services. The unique value of this paper is that the authors focused on the intersections of mainstream (dominant culture) services and minoritized community responses to explore the cumulative effects on women from minority communities. They identified two mechanisms that led to the marginalization of minority women’s abuse, tendencies that resembled cultural relativism and the pathologizing of minority communities.

The paper also discussed how different providers, mainstream and culturally specific, engaged with cultural differences. These organizational accounts of support for minoritized women were classified according to four discursive strategies: ‘it’s all the same’; ‘softly, softly’; as mediated by ‘cultural privacy’ via a discourse of ‘cultural respect’; and via discourses of professional specialization. Within dominant culture services, emphasis was placed on gender roles and inequalities between men and women, and the nuclear heterosexual relationship, which did not always match the experiences of minoritized women and the structural, racial and community factors defining the experience of DVA. Other organizations, including the police, did not interfere out of ‘cultural respect’ or out of a fear or being perceived as racist, which could contribute to women’s abuse not being recognized. On the other hand, culturally specific organizations often worked ‘softly softly’ with the support and through community leaders. While this strategy was found less stigmatizing by women, survivors’ accounts suggested that such organizations did not offer an arena to speak openly about DVA.

The authors, ultimately, identified as problematic a segregation and compartmentalization of ‘specialisms’ within DVA statutory and charity services around the concept of ‘culture’, resulting in limited interventions due to providers lacking sufficient expertise. On the other hand, culturally specific organizations were reported to lack expertise in DVA interventions. Based on these findings, the authors called for a ‘both and’ approach to the delivery of DVA services that would involve both culturally specific services and mainstream services and suggested responding to minoritized women’s DVA needs with an understanding of how cultural, gender, racial and systemic factors combine to influence service providers’ reach and partnerships with others in supporting survivors.

Generalizations and stereotypes about certain communities, or tendencies to pathologize them as inherently violent were also consistently raised in the literature, as suggested in a study from Canada that examined frontline service providers’ perspectives on Muslim women’s experiences of IPV and women’s utilization of services (Milani et al., 2018). One implication was that service providers needed to be aware of the diverse nature of IPV in different societies to respond in culturally congruent ways without essentializing certain cultures and isolating cultural understandings of religious standards from wider sociological systems.