And the truth Nason Clark has revealed
is complex. While women of faith aren’t
any more vulnerable to abuse than those
in secular society, when they are abused,
they are more vulnerable.
Nason Clark sees two reasons for that
increased vulnerability. “They’re even more
likely to think they’ve promised ‘forever.’
And if they go to their faith community for
help and that help is not forthcoming, they
are more likely to blame themselves.”
weB-BaseD PROJeCT
One of Nason Clark’s current projects,
called RAVE (Religion and Violence e-Learning), includes a website that’s breaking
new ground in connecting families of faith
impacted by abuse with the help and resources they need to make the abuse stop.
Visit www.theraveproject.com and
you’ll immediately be welcomed by Nason
Clark or, rather, by a full-body, miniature
audiovisual recording of her. Dressed in
a grey, two-piece suit, she stands screen
right. “Welcome to the Rave website,”
begins the recording. “My name is Nancy
Nason Clark and I’m delighted that you’ve
chosen to come and visit us.”
The image is attractive, the voice warm
and sincere. It is appropriate that Nason
Clark should be the spokesperson here
because such “bringing together” is not
only what Nason Clark does, it is also how
she defines herself.
“We’re constantly building bridges,”
she explains. “We’re building bridges be-
tween the social worker and the police officer, between the Church and the shelter,
between remote or rural areas and urban
areas, and between the survivor and those
who would attempt to help her.
“So I’m a bridge-builder. Sometimes
that’s a very comfortable role, and sometimes less so.”
DIsaPPOINTmeNTs
Nason Clark is not a woman who shares
intimate thoughts readily. Ask her personal
questions and she responds with professional answers, diverting the conversation
away from herself and onto her work, a
subject she’s clearly passionate about.
But ask her to explain why it has
been “less than comfortable” to act as a
bridge-builder and you catch a glimpse
of what must have been a somewhat dis-
illusioning realization. “For me, one of
the disappointments is that our faith com-
munities have been very slow to come
to the collaborative table,” she says. “We
don’t really want to recognize that domes-
tic violence is in our own backyard.”
She made the decision to become
a follower of Jesus when she was very
small and has never seriously wavered
from that early choice. “My own spiritual
journey has been pretty consistent,” she
explains, quickly adding the qualifier that
she would like to be “stronger and more
faithful” to all the things she is called to
do. Still, she cannot identify a single rocky
period in her personal walk with God.
www.faithtoday.ca/digital Now there are two ways to enjoy Faith Today!
Her relationship with the Church has
been another matter. “There have been
times when I’ve been very saddened by the
contemporary evangelical church,” she ad-
mits, “and I have asked myself and others
hard questions. But in terms of my relation-
ship with God, that hasn’t been the case.”
At 52, such consistency adds up to
decades of unwavering belief, a founda-
tion that has allowed God to use Nason
Clark as a sort of “prophet” for our time,
according to Kroeger.
“The role of a prophet is to see a social
evil, bring the Word of God to bear upon
it and demand appropriate action,” says
Kroeger. “She is able to definitively and
conclusively show that abuse exists in the
Church and that we need to do something
about it. “You don’t do something about it
if you don’t believe there’s a problem.”
eqUIPPINg The ChURCh
A member of First Wesleyan Church in
Fredericton, Nason Clark speaks warmly
of her own “very supportive, vibrant faith
community,” but she is interdenominational in her work. She has made it her
goal to educate and equip the broader
Christian community to respond in appropriate ways.
This goal is shaped partly by the needs
uncovered in her research. Churches of all
stripes have shown reluctance to engage
on the issue of domestic violence. Nason
Clark’s research (particularly one study of
300 Atlantic Baptist and holiness pastors)
suggests only eight per cent of religious leaders feel equipped to respond to the issue.
There is also some good news from
her research. Although critics suggest
women are afraid to seek help from religious leaders, in fact almost all pastors
report they have experience responding
to domestic violence. Pastors who have
received training about domestic violence do respond helpfully to such situations and are well poised to work collaboratively in their communities to reduce
domestic violence. And research shows
that men who act abusively can be enhanced on their journey towards justice,
