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Trends of Pastoral Care
and Pastoral Counseling in the World in the Last 50 Years
CB Conference, Monday, 11/10/03, 4:30pm
Prague
,
Czech Republic
Psalm 104:24 (NIV)
How many are your works, O LORD!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your
creatures.
Psalm 139:13 - 14 (NIV)
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my
mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
John Calvin (1559/1960) a human being is a microcosm of the universe, “
a rare example of God’s power, goodness, and wisdom, and contains
within…enough miracles to occupy our minds”
“Man never achieves a clear
knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then
descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.”
John Calvin
To understand the trends in pastoral care, must understand the cultural
context. I will be reviewing, briefly, the cultural history of what has been
called “The Christian World” and explore how pastoral care has interacted
with Cultural. Too often, the church has not led by manifesting God’s love to
people but rather has followed the culture.
We are to be in the world but not of the world. This review will highlight
that maintaining this balance has been very difficult for the church – a
challenge that continues today.
Questions for both talks – As
Christians…
- How
do we understand God’s Revelation to us?
- Natural
Revelation – General Revelation
- Revealed,
Propositional
i.
Authority of scripture
ii.
Interpretation of scripture
- Tradition
- Human
Reason
i.
Inductive Reasoning
ii.
Deductive Reasoning
- Work
of the Holy Spirit
- How
do we understand Human Beings?
- A
Biblical Anthropology
i.
SUPREME VALUE
1.
Special Creation: Genesis 1:26; 2:7; 1:31
2.
Special Relation: humanity as image-bearer
Genesis 1:26-27
ii.
LIVING UNITIES
1.
Reductionism: "more Greek than Hebrew, more pagan than
Christian"
2.
Whole person: Soul (personal stress or deep desire), Spirit
(denoting supernatural influence), Flesh (earth=bound), Heart (occurring both
where thinking, intention or resolve are alluded and where the individual's
totality is stressed)
3.
bodily resurrection: entire being
4.
"plurality-in-unity"
iii.
BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS
1.
With God
2.
With Others
3.
With Created Order
4.
Within
Ourselves
iv.
RESTORABLE
- How
do we relate or connect our cherished Christian beliefs about persons to
what this secular version of psychology tells us about them?
- For
centuries Christians have had this challenge
- For
centuries Christians have differed about understanding being human
i.
Nature of human free will
ii.
God’s involvement in Human actions:
1.
Reformed
2.
Wesleyan
Historical Roots
of Pastoral Care
- Greek
Influences
- Greek
Philosophy also Psychology – commented on the content of modern
psychology
- Plato,
Aristotle, Epicures
- Methods:
personal experience & rigorous reflection
- Old
Testament
- Ministry
of Jesus
- Early
Church
- Paul
– working of self and spiritual life
- Development
of Body
- focus
was on supported care and the endurance of persecution in view of the
imminent end of the age
- period
of Roman persecution (ca. 180-324) reconciliation of those who broke down
under pressure, and disciplining those who erred was central.
- Constantine
Christianity (after 324) the central motif was guidance and unification of
values
- Church
in the Middle Ages
- Convinced
that philosophical reflection grounded in Scripture provided surest route
to knowledge
- Little
awareness of methods of inquiry –
- Thus,
interpreted world through lens of their interpretation of scripture
- Desert
Fathers:
- Tertullian,
Sassian, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the great –
- penetrating
insight into the nature of the soul and soul healing
- Augustine
–
- psychological
reflection
- Greek
philosophy of Plato
- Writings
on love, sin, grace, memory, mental illumination, wisdom, volition,
experience of time
- Thomas
Aquinas –
- More
systematic (and thus more helpful for scientific inquiry)
- Unified
the best of Augustinian and Aristotelian tradition
- Writings
on appetites, will, habits, virtues and vices, emotions, memory,
intellect
- “It
is worth underlining that the two greatest intellectual lights of the
church’s first fifteen hundred years, Augustine and Aquinas, drew
heavily in their theological and psychological work on the philosophical
traditions of the two greatest (and non-Christian) Greek philosophers –
Plato and Aristotle” (Eric
L. Johnson & Stanton L. Jones, 2000, Psychology & Christianity,
p. 17)
- these
two great Christian thinkers represent an “integration” of Christian
and non-Christian thought
- Aquinas
– intentionally working out the differences between Christian
thought and pagan thought, between “the city of
God
” and “the city of humanity”
- Pastoral
Care, Counseling, Spiritual Direction were of primary concern
- Bonaventure,
Bernard of Clairvaux, Symeon the New Theologian, Anselm, Duns Scotus,
William of Ockham
- Renaissance,
Reformation, and Counter-Reformation – new interest in natural things
- Teresa
of
Avila
, John of the Cross
- Reformers:
Calving, Luther – reflections on sin, grace, knowledge, faith,
nature of the Christian life developed a Protestant folk psychology
– Augustinian themes
- Cure
and up building of the of soul
- Shaping
of moral character
- Enhancement
or deepening of a believer’s relationship with God
- Christian
Philosophers
- Rene
Descartes, Giovanni Vico, John Locke, Bishop Geroge Berkeley, Thomas
Reid, Bishop Joseph Butler, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal
- In
America
– Jonathan Edwards – systematic
- Medieval
Christendom stressed healing through sacramental rituals as means of
grace.
- Protestant
Reformation individual reconciliation, particularly of men and women to
God, received most attention
- Enlightenment
- Challenges
to belief that Christianity provided only legitimate view of reality
- God
created world
- Human
beings were specially created in God’s image
- Human
reason could apprehend ultimate truth because God had made them capable
of knowing truth
- Biblical
morality was universally true and invariant
- Biblical
view defined what it meant to be fully and perfectly human
- We
had a sin nature and needed salvation
- Reconciliation
with God was possible
- Optimism
in Goodness of Man
- Belief
in role of Education can produce the Enlightened Society – Goodness
- Tremendous
faith in human ability to Reason
- 18th-century
Enlightenment supportive care which sustained people with moralistic
guiding, experiential rigor, and conversionist change was prominent
- Soren
Kierkegaard (1844, 1848) – some of the most profound work on psychology
and openly Christian
- Nature
of personhood, sin, anxiety , the unconscious (before Freud was born),
subjectivity, human development, spiritual development
- All
from a Christian perspective
- Sometimes
disturbing
- Christian
Existential Psychology
- NOTE:
psychology (a disciplined, focused inquiry into human nature) and counseling
(attempt to heal the soul and advance its well-being) have bee practiced by
Christians for centuries
- Development
of Modernism
- Separated
theology from philosophy and psychology
- Revisionist
history
- Thinking
became “Religion has always stood for dogmatic certainty and
superstition in the service of authoritarian control, while science has
been on a noble quest for truth. The two forces – superstitious
religion and scientific rationality – have always been locked in a
conflict since the emergence of modern science.
- Thomas
H. Huxley (
Darwin
’s Bulldog) – worked to secularize
England
’s Universities and remove the Church of England’s influence
- John
W. Draper, chemist and physiologist, wrote History of the Conflict
Between Religion and Science (1874), a diatribe against Roman
Catholicism, claiming since earliest years,
- Roman
Church had “a bitter and mortal animosity” (p. 335) toward science
and brutal treatment of scientist
- “Religion
must relinquish that imperious, that domineering position which she
has so long maintained against Science. There must be absolute freedom
for thought. The ecclesiastic must learn to keep himself within the
domain he has chosen, and cease to tyrannize over the philosopher
(i.e., scientist), who, conscious of his own strength and purity of
his motives, will bear such interference no longer” (p. 367)
- Tragic
Distortions of the Truth
- Religion
has played dominant positive role in the development of science
- Provided
beliefs essential to the development of science that were not
present or important in other religions
- Expect
uniformity in nature since one God created and sustained entire
Cosmos – God decreed cosmos would operate by laws
- World
has an independent existence from the divine
- Humanity
created with capability of knowledge and exercising dominion over
the world
- “Common
Sense Realism – a movement in 1800s
- confidence
in abilities of normal humans to know truths regarding the
natural order
- universally
bestowed by the Creator on all normal person
- saw
science as an ally to theology by providing evidence of God’s
design
- did
not think critically regarding the influence of non-Christian
contributions – did not recognize differing world views,
assumed all would see what God had created
- Provide
motivation for science –
- Improving
the world to bring Glory to God
- Relieve
suffering
- Be
able to more fervently praise God by the activities of the mind
(Kepler spoke of the scientist “thinking God’s thoughts
after Him”)
- Science
serving the cause of natural theology and apologetics
- Relationship
between science and religion not one of “eternal warfare” but
one of “gradual differentiation and divergence”
- Tremendous
interest being shown in last 10 years on relationship between
science and religion
Pastoral Care
1900 – 1950
- Culture
trends
- Rise
of modernism
- Secular
humanism -
- rejects
claims about supernatural
- excludes
religious discourse from public discussion
- Repudiation
of tradition, dogma, and revelation – deemed impediments to the
attainment of true knowledge
- Ethic
rooted in individualism in which the highest value is the pursuit of
one’s own happiness
- Optimistic
belief in the impovability of humankind
- Goal
of universal understanding of things that all intelligent parties can
agree to
- Tendency
to analyze, categorize, specialize, resulting in the distinguishing and
separation of each discipline from all other disciplines
- Theology
and philosophy removed from historical place of permier, overarching
disciplines and placing along side other disciplines
- Psychology
replaced theology as modern method of defining human existence
- Darwinism
- Materialism
- Faith
in technology
- Empiricism
– Positivism
- Decreasing
influence of the church on culture
- Secularism
- Empty
culture of its religious significance, discourse, and symbols
- Cultural
Influence not from Christians or Clergy
- Marx,
Nietzsche, Freud, H. G. Well, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Samuel
Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty
- Universities
moved from Judeo-Christian to secular world-views
- Unwritten
rules developed that excluded religious views from expression in
media, education, and science
- Religious
speech relegated to private life and to religious institutions and
media – churches, religious colleges, religious broadcasting
- Application
of Natural Science methods to areas of world that had previously not been
focus of such study
- Quantification
and controlled observation that had been successful in study of
astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology
- Applied
to study of
- Society
- Human
consciousness
- Behavior
- Economics
& business
- Education
- Naturalistic
study limited to empirical data – excluded supernatural
- Winning
two world wars not fought on our soil and resolving the great economic
depression shaped cultural outlook
- New
found strength and influence
- Sense
of goodness in our cause
- Recognition
of strength of economic power
- Increased
belief in materialism
- Response
of the church
- American
Psychology began in late 1800’s
- Empiricism
- Rationalism
- Founders
tended to be religious, not necessarily Christian – separated faith
from work to isolate variables – reductionistic
- Christian
colleges began offering psychology courses in 1920s
- Edward
Pace, Catholic, founding member of APA, taught psychology at Catholic
University of America in 1891
- Catholics
were first American Christians who sought to provide texts that
supplemented the literature of empirically based psychology with
religiously grounded discussions on the person or soul
- Revival
of work of Thomas Aquinas's corpus
- Protestant
movement – depth psychology of Freud, Jung and others
- Boisen
(1876-1966) (1936),
- Founding
father of a pastoral theology
- Assimilate
- 1st
theologian to contribute to American psychiatric, psychological
journals
- Father
– left
Germany
in 1869 for postgraduate study, faculty position at
Indiana
University
, married – father died when he was 7
- Presbyterian
–
- saw
God as father – great teacher
- Union
Theological Seminary
- Had
severe psychological problems
- Harvard
–
- studied
Freud and Jung
- Studied
mental health and religion – took personal work into profession
-
Chicago
Theological Seminary -
faculty position
- Writings
on schizophrenia, conscientious objection, rise of Pentecostalism in
the
U.S.
- Collaborated
with Henry Stack Sullivan
- Criticized
both Liberal and Conservative
- Liberal
– denying their heritage and turning over the “sick of the soul”
to doctors
- Conservative
– concentrating only on “saving souls”
- He
argued “that fundamentalists gave their limited treatment without
diagnosis and the liberals offered neither treatment nor diagnosis
- Frustrated
by lack of dialogue between theologians and scientists
- Leslie
Weatherhead (1893-1976)
- English
- Strongly
influenced by strong mother – “great forbidder”
- Methodists
– strict methods…
- On
mission field and then in
pastorate, implemented anaytic techniques – repression and distortion
of sexual desires as cardinal sources on anxiety
- Clinebell
Hiltner, Oates, Thorton
- Challenged
the pervasive naturalism in modern psychology
- Saw
modern psychology as aiding in a reconstruction of the faith consistent
with modern values
- Greater
individualism, softened personal morality, reason/science more
authoritative than biblical revelation)
- Clinical
Pastoral Education (CPE) movement
- Conservative
Christian/Fundamentalist were not interested in cultural issues, higher
learning, or scholarship
- Saw
culture as spiritually blind and rejected whatever culture offered
- Practice
oriented – “more interested in soul winning and missions than in
claiming culture for Christ”
- Separationists
- Turned
away from colleges that had been Christian and founded Bible Colleges
- Focus
on belief – cognition – little on the soul, on the person’s
experience
Pastoral Care
1950’s
- Culture
trends
- Optimism
regarding economic power
- Cold
War – fear of communism and world domination
- Great
growth of materialism
- Psychology
- Moved
from analytic to client-centered perspectives
- Response
of the Church
- Liberal
Protestants
- David
E. Roberts's Psychotherapy and a Christian View of Man in
1950
- Albert
Outler's 1954 contribution, Psychotherapy and the Christian Message
- Leslie
Weatherhead (1950) – Psychology, Religion, and Healing
- Influenced
by Freudian theory
- Proposed
“Christian Psychosynthesis
- Building
up through Christ’s enabling afte the dismantling process of
analysis
- Minimized
concept of sin, replacing sin with psychological explanations of
human frailiy
- Goal
– “Personal Integration” – individuation
- Love
– observed and recommended obtaining needed love through the
Church, a loving community – identified God show’s love via his
Church
- Confession
– valued in the analysis
- Techniques
both directive and non-directive
- Norman
Vincent Peale
- The
Power of Positive Thinking (1953)
- Adlerian
self-determinism – optimism in human condition
- In
Europe
– recovering from WWII, less optimistic than American Theologians –
still, some examples
- Harry
Guntrip: Psychology for Ministers and social workers (1949)
- Leslie
Weatherheard: Psychology, religion, and healing
- Gote
Bergsten: Pastoral Psychology: a study in the care of souls (1951)
- Beginning
of the Evangelical movement
- Recognized
Christian is in a culture
- Began
to explore how faith relates to arts and sciences
- First
Evangelical psychology textbook: An Introduction to Psychology: An
Evangelical Approach (1952) by Hildreth Cross,
Taylor
University
- Combined
modern psychology with Christian interpretation and evaluation
- Concluded
with a study of the “dynamic Christian personality”
- Described
with explicit dependence on theology and scripture
- Christian
Association for Psychology Studies (CAPS) - 1954
- Reformed
theology background
- Explore
how faith relates to psychology
- Clyde
Narramore (1954) – radio program “Psychology for Living” over
- 200
radio stations
- Christianized
form of person-centered therapy of Carl Rogers
- Growing
interest in Roger’s Client Centered Therapy
- In the 1950s, as
books from Carl Rogers came on the scene, serious-minded pastors and
theological students devoured his Client-Centered Therapy and
learned from it some crucial lessons. They learned to stop preaching and
to do more listening in the pastoral encounter. They learned, going
beneath the parishioner's words, to "follow the affect," as we
say now, and to reflect feelings back to the parishioner. I recall even
yet a most vivid diagram from my own pastoral counseling instructor in
1950. Placing an arrow exactly parallel to a line he had already drawn
to represent the story the parishioner was telling, he said: "This
is to be your listening comment, your expression of understanding. You
are not to introduce a detour, a side road."
Pastoral Care
1960’s
- Culture
trends
- Generation
gap
- Youth
generation
- Distrust
of anyone over 30 – John Lennon
- Distrust
of authority and institutions
- Church
– state separation
- Now
interpreted as religion should be removed from state functioning
- Government
assumed many roles the church had historically held
- Tremendous
rise in social welfare programs
- Response
of the church
- Narramore
published The Psychology of Counseling: Professional techniques for
pastors, teachers, youth leaders and all who are engaged in the
incomparable are of counseling
- Tweedie
(1961) published Logotherapy and the Christian faith: An evaluation of
Frankl’s existential approach to psychotherapy from a Christian
viewpoint.
- Paul
Tournier (1963, 1965) – works translated into English –
Switzerland
- Studied
Freud & Jung
- Converted
to Christianity mid-life
- Addressed
the deep soul experiences from a Christian perspective
- Bill
Kyle –
England
- Began
in the London Marriage Guidance Council and questioned why Christians
could not offer counseling through the church
- Observed
that the church had become unresponsive to the needs of people and
people were turning to secular resources
- :I
feel strongly that this fact should drive the Church to repentance and
renewal, not to a ministry outside the church”
- Ordained
Methodist minister
- 1960
– established the
Christian
Counseling
Center
at
Highgate
Methodist
Church
in
North London
- recognized
both salvation and the change that occurs across time
- strong
association with American schools
- developed
strong educational track
- 1
year pastoral counseling training for pastors
- continuing
education
- personal
therapy for students
- NOTE:
over the years, a shift has occurred with the liberal theological focus
- Greater
focus on counseling
- Recognizes
that God’s grace occurs in counseling but no attempts to educate or
direct counselees to God
- Christian
focus largely gone today
- Fuller
Theological Seminary – first evangelical school to develop a doctoral
program in Clinical Psychology (1964)
-
Rosemead
School
of Psychology – Clyde Narramore and nephew, Bruce Narramore actually
opened in 1970
- Association
for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE) in 1967
- 81
seminaries applied for affiliation with the association, 27 more than
had participated in the predecessor bodies at the time of merger. That
rapid growth has continued, from 256 certified supervisors and 153
accredited centers for training in 1967 to the more than 750 active
supervisors and 298 centers at present
Pastoral Care
1970’s
- Culture
trends
- Individualism
- hedonism
- Oil
crisis in 1973 & 1979 highlighted cultural vulnerability
- Further
erosion of faith in authority and institutions
- Watergate
-
Viet Nam
War
- U.S.
Embassy in
Iran
occupied
- Response
of the church – “Golden Era of Development”
-
Rosemead
opened in 1970
- Publication
of Journal of Psychology and Theology (1973) first academic forum
for evangelicals in psychology –
Rosemead
- Tremendous
increase in number of practical, or self-help books by Christians
- Collins
- Dobson
- LaHaye
- Narramore
- Schuller
- Wagner
- Wright
- Biblical
Counseling Model
- Jay
Adams, professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological
Seminary,
Philadelphia
- Educated
under O. Herbert Mower,
University
of
Illinois
- a behaviorist
- Published
Competent to Counsel (1970)
-
Adams
criticized psychiatry and psychotherapy – radical secular and
fundamentally opposed to Christianity
- Urged
Christians to repudiate such humanistic methods
- Nouthetic
Counseling, from Greek word noutheteo, meaning “to
admonish”
- Counseling
should be based solely on Bible
- Focused
on sin (understood to be the cause of most problems
- Pastors
should be the primary counselors in the Christian community
- Christian
Counseling and Educational Foundation (1968)
- Journal
of Pastoral Practice (1977)
- Claimed
his writing devoid of influence of secular thought
- Note
– similar to O. Herbert Mower’s behaviorism
- Mower
–
University
of
Illinois
– Liberal Protestant Theology
- Attacked
Freud’s ideas of “impulse theory”
- Focused
on concepts of sin, guilt, responsibility
- “we
are unhappy because we yield sinfully to our lower natures while
ignoring the voice of conscience
- he
criticized doctrine of substitutionary atonement
through Christ’s sacrificial death as fostering a
response of “cheap grace”
- attacked
justification by faith as causing demoralization in people’s
lives by its apparent arbitrariness
- denied
God as personal but rather a principle
- suggested,
along with Richard Niebuhr, and Empirical Christianity –
validated by its accomplishments instead of being reduced to a set
of dogmatic asseverations which are to be taken purely on faith”
- Criticized
Christian counselors who they though were synthesizing Christianity
with secular thought
- Bobgan
& Bobgan (1979, 1987)
- Ganz
(1993)
- MacArthur
(1991)
- MacArthur
& Mack (1994)
- Supportive
organizations developed
- National
Association of Nouthetic Counselors
- International
Association of Biblical Counselors
- Training
programs
- Master’s
College and Seminary
- Movement
changed its name to “Biblical” Counseling, changed name of journal
to Journal of Biblical Counseling
- Responses
to Biblical Counseling Model
- Aggressiveness
against other Christians of adherents unlike any other approach in
pastoral care
- Recognized
the Biblical Counseling model’s critique of secular influence
important to evaluate
- Model
is not void of cultural influences as claims – a behavioral model in
the Mower model
- Many
Christians working with people outside the church and with
non-Christians for whom Scripture does not have authority in their life
- Working
with problems that receive little or no mention in scripture
- Bible
alone mandate unhelpful
- recognized
this dichotomous thinking not helpful – exposure to psychology had
seen benefit in the field of study
- observation
that Bible-believing churches have not always cared well for the souls
of its people (also recognized by some within the Biblical Counseling
model)
- Levels-of-Explanation
Models
- Academic
focus, popular with Christian academics
- Focuses
on the distinction between the domains, or levels, of psychology and
theology
- Evans
(1977) referred to model as “Perspectivalism”
- Malcolm
Jeeves (1976)
- Mackay
(1979)
- Meyers
(1978)
- All
levels of reality are important
- Physical
- Chemical
- Biological
- Psychological
- Social
- Theological
- Each
dimension or level of reality is uniquely accessible to study by the
unique methods used in each discipline
- The
boundaries of each should not be blurred
- To
confuse these levels of reality results in a misunderstanding of reality
and a confusion of things quite different
- Understanding
of each of the different levels is assumed to offer a distinct
perspective that is essentially independent of the understandings of
other levels
- Psychology
and theology…
- use
different methods of investigation
- have
different objects of study
- Answer
different questions
- Confusing
them would distort both
- Less
concerned about effects of secular psychology
- Believe
good methodology will eliminate bias
- To
bring theological matters into science of psychology would only
undermine the objectivity and integrity of scientific method and vice
versa
- Integration
Models (to be defined much further by Pavel Raus)
- Define
the domains that psychology and theology hold in common
- Nature
of human beings
- How
humans develop
- What
has gone wrong with humans
- How
humans can overcome what has gone wrong
- Both
recognize value of psychology and criticize psychology in current form
– are findings genuinely compatible with Scripture
- Narramore
(1973, p. 17) “to combine the special revelation of God’s word with
the general revelation studied by the psychological sciences and
professions”
- Collins
(1973, p. 26) place psychology on a different foundation, one that is
“consistent with the built upon the Bible: in order to develop a
“biblically based psychology”
- Integration
model encouraged the study of psychology by Christians –
- huge
increase in Christians entering graduate programs
- Evangelical
Christian schools began graduate programs
- Trinity
Evangelical Divinity School/Trinity Graduate School
- Psychological
Studies Institute
-
Wheaton
College
-
George
Fox
College
-
Geneva
College
- Others
- In
1980’s
- Books
– largest selling topic for Christian publishers
- Radio
- James
Dobson
- Frank
Minirth and Paul Meier
- Christian
Counseling Centers Developed
- Moved
counseling further away from the church
- Specialization
– treated like other health care specialization by church
- Growth
of Professional Organizations
- CAPS
- 1980
– 1,000 members, 1990 – 2,000 members
- CAPS
introduced a second integrative journal, Journal of
Psychology and Christianity
- Topics
addressed in CAPS became controversial, e.g., male references to
God, homosexuality – divisions
- American
Association of Christian Counselors (AACC)
- More
conservative
- Counseling
oriented, not academic but practice
- Currently,
approximately 30,000 members in
U.S.
Pastoral Care
1980’s
- Culture
trends
- Decline
of modernism
- Challenger
explosion –
- Exposed
the myth of infallible technology
- Exposed
our vulnerability
- Cultural
diversity replacing inclusion,
- Decrease
of the “melting pot”
- Rise
of postmodernism
- Recognizing
the narratives
- Continuation
of civil rights movement
- Further
eroding of confidence in institutions
- Response
of the church
- Defined
above – growth and transition
- Further
Anti-Psychology Movements
- Kirk
Kilpatrik: Psychological
Seduction: the failure of modern psychology (1983)
- Combines
Mowrer’s concern about the neglect of sin & Vitz’s critique of
selfism in analysis of tension between psychology and Christianity
- Views
psychology as a “competing faith”
- E.g.,
contrasts humanistic psychology’s self-love with Christian
perspective:
- Psychology
– arrogant
- Christian
– based on our worth as God’s handiwork; a simple wish for our
own happiness; a pleasure in serving a purpose in life
- Secularism
interferes with a sense of the sacred through three main habits of the
mind
- Subjectivism:
all ideas given equal weight,
- Reductionism:
everything reduced to simplest form, lowest common denominator
- Naturalism:
an individualism that values spontaneity and treats social
commitment as suspect
- In
addition, “the American Spirit”: democratic, independent,
optimistic, values positive thinking and enterprise, inpatient for
results
- Contends
has produced
- Christian
Subjectivism: belief nobody but Holy Spirit can tell an individual
what to believe
- Christian
Reductionism: attempts to reduce mystery of God into a few concepts
- Christian
Naturalism: devalues social roles and is over familiar towards the
sacred
- Proposes
a return to humility before Jesus Christ
- “We
shall be most ourselves when we become the self God intends us to
be. And that, truly, will be a self to marvel at”
- MY
OBSERVATIONS
- Not
a critique of Psychology but of modernism
- Not
inherent – he responded to the philosophy of the field, not the
science
-
- Movement
away from modernism towards post-modernism thinking
- Development
of Christian Psychology Models
- Attempts
to develop comprehensive model that is Christian and academically
psychologically solid
- Mary
Stewart Van Leeuwen (1985)
- Academic
social psychologist
- Argued
for a psychology of human nature derived from a Christian view of
person
- Paul
Vitz (1987) – Catholic psychologist, NY
- Study
of letters and essays of Sigmund Freud, radically reinterpret
Freud’s story in light of Christian assumptions
- Criticized
psychology’s humanistic and optimistic thinking of the person
- Attacked
works of Rogers, Maslow, May, Fromm
- Humanistic
selfism is antithetical to Christianity
- Idolatrous
narcissism
- Excludes
God
- Recognized
the objectification of humans an outcome of the focus on the self
- Existential
Narcissism
- Individuals
either exploit one another or withdraw from contact into a
machine-like emotion-free competence
- Leads
to psychological death
- Called
for an updated orthodox theology
- Submission,
humility, obedience & dependence on God
- Accept
being sheep to the shephred
-
- C.
Stephen Evans (1989)
- Development
of psychology substantively reshaped according to Christian character,
beliefs, and goals
- Referred
to growing revival of Christian philosophy in academic world and model
for transformation of psychology
- Larry
Crabb – moved away for integration model in early work following death
of only sibling in early 1990’s
- Themes
of Christian Theology of sanctification
- Move
towards Spiritual Formation
- Focus
on Body in Church
- Move
away from classical psychological problems to focus on the soul
- Dan
Allender (former colleague of Crabb) and OT theologian Tremper Longman
III (1990, 1994, 1998) – explored therapy issues of recovery and
trauma from strong theological perspective
Pastoral Care
1990’s
- Culture
trends
- Decline
of modernism
- Decreased
faith in technology
- Decreased
faith in materialism
- Rise
of interest in Religion
- Psychology
of Religion gaining in interest after 80 year lack
- Formerly
religious topics focus of psychological study – published in most
prestigious journals
- Forgiveness
–
Worthington
, Enright – both Evangelical Christians working in state
universities
- Prayer
- Religious
values in counseling
- Publication
of books by American Psychological Association on topic of religious
issues in therapy
- Response
of the Church
Pastoral
Care Today
- Culture
trends
- Postmodern
- Post-Christian
- Many
not recognizing this in
U.S.
- 15
– 20% regularly practice historical orthodox Christianity in
U.S.
- 5
– 10% regularly practice historical orthodox Christianity in
Europe
- Christianity
a larger influence in
U.S.
culture than in current
Europe
culture but the trend is clearly towards minimization and containment of
Christian influence
- Response
of the church
- Soul
Care
- Equipping
the entire body
- Freeing
the body to exercise its gifts
- Pastoral
Care Across Cultures. Pastoral
care and counseling takes varied forms across cultures.
- The modern Western culture's fascination with
introspection is less attractive in much of the Two-Thirds World because
- (1) there is a preference in non-Western cultures
for action-oriented therapies which result in more immediate behavioral
change;
- (2) the deference given to the pastor places more
emphasis on guiding, directing, supporting rather than interpretation
and inner exploration;
- (3) the reliance on the joint family (
India
), the three-tiered family (
China
,
Japan
,
Indonesia
), and on tribal-communal-familial relations (Africa,
Latin America
) results in resolving more difficulties within the group.
- The focus is much more on pastoral care than
counseling, more on the relational than the intrapersonal, more on the
familial than the individual.
- Since the resolution of conflict in traditional
cultures is preferably done by third-party negotiation rather than direct
confrontation, the pastor frequently functions as mediator-facilitator in
healing strained relationships.
- Return
to pastoral care with less emphasis on adopting specific counseling
techniques - Movement away from simple application of psychotherapy models
to pastoral care
- Increase
in integration of theology and psychology
- Increase
in spiritual formation
- Decrease
in animosity between theology and psychology
- More
Christians entering psychology
- Psychology
becoming less theory driven and more humble in its claims
- Recognition
of whole person
- Recognition
of role of community – decrease in individualism
For the
Church
of
Jesus Christ
to be the shinning light on a hill, to be a beacon of hope and love in a sinful
world, we must lead, not follow. We must respond to people as Jesus did –
- Respond
to the whole person
- Respond
to their current needs
- Respond
with eternity always in mind
- Respond
in love and truth
On Wednesday, I plan to further outline some ways that we
may be able to do this.
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