Social and cultural risk factors for abuse in religious contexts

Join us for the latest webinar, in a series of webinars, that will be sharing the project findings of the AHRC-funded research project, “Abuse in Religious Contexts”. In this webinar, we will be hearing from Dr Sarah Harvey and Prof Gordon Lynch, about Sarah’s research into abuse in the context of new and minority religious movements.

Sarah has been a researcher with the educational charity Inform since 2001, Senior Research Officer since 2017. Inform, based in Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London, provides information about minority religions and sects that is as accurate, up to date and evidence-based as possible. Sarah responds to many of the enquiries that Inform receives, manages the database of religious movements, and works on Inform commissioned projects.

Sarah’s interest is in new religious movements broadly, with particular interests in themes of gender, abuse, health and healing, and millennialism. Her PhD research, completed at the University of Kent, explored the lived ethical meanings of women’s engagement with the natural birth movement. She has published on the topics of paganism, prophecy, gender and millennialism, counselling in new religions, ‘cult rhetoric’ and more, with forthcoming publications on health and healing in new religions, abuse in new religions and spiritualism.

In this webinar, Sarah will report on her work for the Abuse in Religious Contexts work stream which focused on new and minority religious movements. She will discuss her development of a theoretical model of structural and cultural factors which can contribute to abuse. After discussing some of the empirical and theoretical sources which she drew on, she will discuss 6 structural and 6 cultural factors of religious movements which can contribute to the perpetration of abuse, to the legitimisation of abuse, to barriers to reporting abuse, and to the propensity not to investigate abuse or not to involve external agencies.

Sarah will be joined by Prof Gordon Lynch, Gordon is Professor of Religion, Society and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, he previously worked at the University of Kent where he held the Michael Ramsey Chair in Modern Theology. Over the past ten years, he has also undertaken a range of work on historic institutional abuse, with his work on UK child migration schemes including a national museum exhibition and substantial expert witness work for both the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry.

Alongside hearing from our speakers, there will also be an opportunity for discussion and dialogue. Critically, there will be very sensitive topics discussed during the webinar in relation to abuse, it is also important to note that we intend this webinar to be a safe space for speakers as well as for all delegates. There will therefore be a zero tolerance approach to any conflict, aggressive criticism, or any unsolicited opinions that may harm others' wellbeing.

We are very much look forward to you joining us for this event.