Clergy awakens to own need.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

It happens more than we know: a woman seeks out her minister or rabbi or imam to report that she's been the victim of domestic violence.

Too often, she is "sent back to `make up' with the abuser," says Sido Surkis of Eugene's Domestic Violence Clinic, a part of the Lane County Legal Aid & Advocacy Center. "Or, the clergy person doesn't know what to do. Victims, usually women, feel alone, unheard and not safe in their own faith communities."

Today at Eugene Faith Center, that concern and others will be addressed in a rare gathering of clergy and domestic violence experts, the third such training session held in Eugene in the last year.

Bravo for the event, called "A Faith-Based Response to Domestic Violence: A Training for Clergy and Community Leaders."

The workshop doesn't represent an indictment against religious communities. It's the filling of a need, a willingness - for some at least - to go where too few churches and other religious institutions have gone: outside their own four walls, and into the community, for help.

"I'd say maybe 10 to 15 percent of those in the faith-based community are equipped to deal with this problem at the most basic level," says Surkis, herself a victim of domestic violence 30 years ago.

An exaggeration? Not at all, says Ron Clark, a self-described "conservative evangelical" minister at Agape Church in Portland and the leader of today's workshop.

Clark, 46, was ostracized by fellow leaders of his church in Missouri for getting involved in the community's domestic violence program and bringing his zeal for the issue to the congregation.

"A lot of male clergy of all faiths have trouble listening to women and believing they are victims," he says.

In 1998, after moving to Portland, Clark helped start the Gresham-based Community Against Domestic Violence organization.

He got a warmer reception from his Portland congregation about the issue than he did in Missouri, but believes that's the exception, rather than the rule, in most churches.

Why, you wonder, should facing this problem be so difficult for institutions purportedly built on the idea that God created people and grieves to see them hurt?

"Violent people scare the heck out of us," says Clark, who leads about a dozen such workshops a year.

What's more, he says, to follow through means a commitment of time, expense and energy.

Some churches, he says, are so fixed on no-divorce stances that they enable the abuser and further victimize the victim. "Proverbs 21:13 says `He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be answered,'" Clark says.

What's more, for some church leaders, dealing with the problem might mean having to deal with their own abuses of power and control. "Anytime leadership threatens people, tries to use fear to motivate people or operates out of its own fear, that's abuse," Clark says.

Domestic violence plays out in a number of ways - verbal, physical, sexual - that can tarnish the image of a place of worship. "We like to think it's the other person, the other church, the other religion, the other socioeconomic group," Surkis says. "And sometimes it's not."

But, slowly, religious institutions are waking up. The first Eugene event, at First Congregational Church, drew 15 people; the second, at Temple Beth Israel, where Surkis is a member, drew 30; today's is expected to draw 60.

"We're starting to get tremendous acceptance in the academic community," says Clark, who teaches at Newberg-based George Fox Evangelical Seminary. "A number of seminaries are starting to require this as part of their training. But we still need to get to the people in the middle - the ministers and rabbis and imams."

And, slowly, that's happening.

When a workshop similar to today's was held in Tillamook, a reluctant Lutheran minister attended. "He was so inspired," Clark says, "that four days later he preached a sermon on the issue. The domestic violence worker who'd helped with that workshop said it was the most beautiful feeling of validation she'd ever experienced."

Let's hope that similar success stories start emerging here. And better yet, that leaders in the faith community not only hear the cries of the "poor," but find the courage to act on them.

More information on Welch's blog at www.registerguard.com/blogs. Welch is at [e-mail] and 338-2354.