Catherine C Kroeger speaking on domestic abuse in 2010

twbtc ♦ 15th October 2015 ♦ 1 Comment

We were recently given permission to upload a talk given by Catherine Clark Kroeger at the Bringing Hope Conference, UK, 2010, onto YouTube.  The talk is about one hour in length and a summary of what Kroeger discusses is below. In addition to the link provided in this post, there is also a link in the Audio  & Video section of our Resources.  Cathy Kroeger passed away in 2011. We want to extend our thanks to Natalie Collins for making this available to us. Natalie organised the Bringing Hope conference.

Catherine Clark Kroeger spoke about things she and colleagues had been doing for decades to get Christians to address domestic abuse, in the USA, Canada and Russia. Kroeger was the founding president of CBE (Christians for Biblical Equality) and at the time of this talk was the President of PASCH (Peace and Safety in the Christian Home). PASCH is no longer in existence; it was unable to be continued after Catherine passed away.

In the talk Kroeger covers:

• domestic abuse in the Bible: Ezekiel 34, Hagar, Judah and Tamar, Joseph and his brothers
• David’s adultery and Nathan’s faithfulness
• the dichotomy — many are in denial, some are trying to generate social change; in social change, the role of the prophet is unpopular
• how to get men involved
• pastoral counselling for domestic abuse takes up more time than any other kind of pastoral counseling
• pastors with the least training feel they can handle the problem by themselves
• pastors with more training in domestic abuse work in consort with secular agencies
• in the early 20th century, evangelicals thought Prohibition would stop domestic abuse
• how CBE got active on domestic abuse, lost motivation, then got back on board
• how the World Evangelical Fellowship got a taskforce started on violence against women
• why the RAVE website was set up
• how PASCH was helping practitioners who worked for the DULUTH program (a world-renowned domestic violence prevention program in Duluth Minessota) to write a faith-based program for men who want to stop being abusive to their wives, called Changing Men Changing Lives
• some professions have higher rates of abuse: military, police, doctors, lawyers, judges, clergy
• the attempted suicide rate in abused women is 35-40%
• responding well to domestic abuse demonstrates the love of Christ in every dimension of life
• practical ways to talk to and help victims of abuse
• the use of ‘shoe cards’
• toilet and washroom leaflets