Abusive relationships and coercive control in church
From Matters of Life and Death by Premier Unbelievable?
May 27, 2026 · 1h 4m
About this episode
The episode discusses abusive relationships and coercive control within the church, featuring an interview with expert Natalie Collins.
Tim is away this week, so here’s an episode from the MOLAD archive. Society has been on a long and slow journey in recent decades into a richer and more sympathetic understanding of how abuse and coercion work within relationships. We are much better at both identifying and prosecuting this kind of abuse, and at being more attuned to the needs of victims and understanding why they find it difficult to just walk away. But domestic violence and controlling behaviour are also prevalent, sadly, within the church context too. How are we doing at identifying and confronting these toxic relationships, and looking after those traumatised by them? This week we interview Natalie Collins, an author, activist and expert in gender violence and church to find out more. • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend…
People in this episode
Host: Tim
Guest: Natalie Collins
Topics covered
- abusive relationships
- coercive control
- domestic violence
- church context
- gender violence
- victim support
Keywords
- abuse
- coercion
- church
- domestic violence
- victims
- gender violence
- toxic relationships
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: MOLAD, Premier Unbelievable?, John Wyatt, The Critical Friend, Premier
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