The Biblical Counseling Movement

} HISTORY AND CONTEXT AND HISTORY { David Powlison The Biblical Counseling Movement

The Biblical Counseling Movement POWLISON

9 5399 and 4 3-13-4 27 3-13-2 3-13-2 7313 27 1-935 8- 52 3: 97 0: 1-935 , many booklets, 8193 ISBN-1 ISBN-1

97 Sacred Friendships

TORY S I H , and H C R U H C N A I T S I R H C

S. $39.99 R E L I G I O N N O I G I L E R U. Foundations for Soul Care An Introduction to the New Testament The Counsel of Heaven on Earth Speaking Truth in Love and Beyond the Suffering , and The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context is a faculty member and counselor at the Christian Coun- Christian the at counselor and member faculty a is Spiritual Friends , Christ and Culture Revisited, and numerous articles on counseling. , Seeing with New Eyes Soul Physicians Director, Society for Christian Psychology; Lawrence and Charlotte Hoover Professor of Pastoral Society for Christian Director, Care, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; author of

Author of

Facing Death with Hope; Healing after Abortion; Recovering from Child Abuse; Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; author of Trinity Research Professor of New Testament, The Gagging of God Director, Baptist Marriage and Family Counseling Center; Professor of Psychology and Counseling, Baptist Director, of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; author

DAVID POWLISON, M.DIV., PH.D., M.DIV., POWLISON, DAVID Renewing Marital Intimacy, including seling & Educational Foundation (CCEF) with over thirty years of experience. He has written several books, including ~IAN F. JONES, PH.D., JONES, ~IAN F. ~BOB KELLEMEN, PH.D., ~D.A. CARSON, PH.D., ~ERIC L. JOHNSON, PH.D.,

continues and 1960s the in arose that movement counseling biblical a of account nitive defi the written has Powlison David eld of Christian counseling uence This today. the book fi is a to must-read infl for anyone interested in understanding the faith-based counseling in the latter part of the twentieth century. rapid and turbulent growth occurring in book. well-written and well-researched this read to needs movement counseling biblical modern the in interested Everyone be will Readers church. evangelical the in movements important most the of one of presentation balanced and fair a is This to speak the truth in love. with wisdom for how but, more importantly, equipped not only with historical insight, It is diffi cult to overestimate the importance of this book. The “counseling wars” of the past half-century have ignited pas- It is diffi of history comprehensive broadly rst fi the is This thought. analytic careful by than rather labels by characterized often sions the that argues faithfully Powlison source, their whatever insight and truth to open be to trying While developments. these role in building a robust model of Christian counseling. Amen and Amen. Christian faith must play a constitutive Beginning Beginning in the late 1960s, a biblical counseling movement sought to reclaim counseling for the church and provide a psychotherapy. and psychiatry mainstream to alternative Christian

This defi nitive and refl ective examination of biblical nitive origins counseling’s and in refl the story and This work defi of its Jay founder, Adams, provides the necessary context to appreciate its important contributions to the Christian counseling world from a second generation leader in the movement. is an informative and thought-provoking account of historical that account movement. combines David careful Powlison’s insight. with a unique, eyewitness scholarship chapters core The movement. counseling biblical the understand to want who those for resource invaluable an is book This were originally a Ph.D. dissertation in history of science and medicine (University of Pennsylvania). This new edition adds counseling biblical the within developments of analysis an give that Powlison Dr. by articles containing appendix, lengthy a relationship to evangelical psychotherapists. movement and in its What Is Biblical Counseling? Biblical Is What “I have watched with much interest the develop- “It is difficult to overestimate the importance of ments in Christian counseling over the past forty this book. The ‘counseling wars’ of the past half years. The issues discussed here are still very century have ignited passions often characterized important, and this book is a good introduction by labels rather than by careful analytic thought. to them. Even readers already familiar with this This is the first broadly comprehensive history of movement will learn new things. David’s book these developments. Although Powlison is one is entirely judicious, careful, and balanced in its of the important players, he takes extraordinary treatment of Adams, his opponents, and the events pains not to misrepresent those with whom he affecting the biblical counseling movement. I hope disagrees. Above all, while trying to be open to the book attracts a large readership.” truth and insight whatever their source (after all, John M. Frame, D.D. the reaches of common grace are vast), Powlison Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed faithfully argues that the Christian faith must play Theological Seminary; author of The Doctrine a constitutive role in building a robust model of of the Christian Life Christian counseling. Amen and Amen.” D. A. Carson, Ph.D. “Powlison is provocative and delightful: provoca- Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity tive because he addresses fault lines within pasto- Evangelical Divinity School; author of The ral care; delightful because he does it with honesty Gagging of God, Christ and Culture Revisited, and kindness. Thank you, David, for showing us and An Introduction to the New Testament where we need to be heading!” D. Clair Davis, Dr.Théol. “David Powlison has written the definitive account Professor of Church History and Chaplain, of a biblical counseling movement that arose in Redeemer Seminary the 1960s and continues to influence the field of Christian counseling today. The reader is taken on “David Powlison and I share a deep commitment a journey through the historical development of to biblical counseling and to church history. Dr. nouthetic counseling, its origins, influences, theo- Powlison unites these twin themes in his excel- logical content, organizational fault lines, and key lent work, The Biblical Counseling Movement: figures. Powlison is not a dispassionate outsider. History and Context. Everyone interested in the He is clear in what he believes, but he approaches modern biblical counseling movement over the his subject with such a thoroughness and fairness past generation needs to read this well-researched in his research and assessment that he will leave and well-written book. This is a fair and balanced readers from all sides of the Christian counseling presentation of one of the most important move- field with a new comprehension of the theological, ments in the evangelical church over the past forty philosophical, personal, social, and cultural com- years. Readers will be equipped not only with his- ponents of the movement. This book is a must-read torical insight but, more importantly, with wisdom for anyone interested in understanding the rapid and for how to speak the truth in love.” turbulent growth occurring in faith-based counsel- Bob Kellemen, Ph.D. ing in the latter part of the twentieth century.” Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Ian F. Jones, Ph.D. Beyond the Suffering, and Sacred Friendships Director, Baptist Marriage and Family Counsel- ing Center; Professor of Psychology and Coun- seling, Southwestern Baptist Theological Semi- nary; author of The Counsel of Heaven on Earth “Understanding history enables us to make bet- “David Powlison has well served the church of ter sense of people’s ideas and practices. Biblical Jesus Christ with this historical survey of the counseling has been around now for over forty biblical counseling movement. His writing style years, and it has developed. This definitive and is informative, engaging, and full of grace. You reflective examination of its origins in the story feel like an old friend is telling you a story by the and work of its founder, Jay Adams, provides the fireside. At Faith, we consider this book to be so necessary context to appreciate its important con- important that it will be a required textbook for tributions to the Christian counseling world from several of our biblical counseling training pro- a second-generation leader in the movement.” grams.” Eric L. Johnson, Ph.D. Steve Viars, D.Min. Director, Society for Christian Psychology; Law- Senior Pastor, Faith Baptist Church, rence and Charlotte Hoover Professor of Pastoral Lafayette, IN Care, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; author of Foundations for Soul Care The Biblical Counseling Movement

The Biblical Counseling Movement History and Context

David Powlison

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover Design: The DesignWorks Group, Nate Salciccioli and Jeff Miller, www.designworksgroup.com

Typesetting: Lisa Parnell

ISBN-13: 978-1-935273-13-4 ISBN-10: 1-935273-13-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Powlison, David, 1949– The biblical counseling movement : history and context / David A. Powlison. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-935273-13-4 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-935273-13-2 (alk. paper) 1. Counseling—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Bible—Psychology. 3. Bible—Use. 4. Christianity—Psychology. 5. Christian life—Biblical teaching. I. Title. BR110.P725 2010 253.509'045—dc22 2009036560

17 16 15 14 13 12 11 2 3 4 5 This book is dedicated to the memory of Peter Andrews Powlison (1922–1987). He would have found great pleasure in this day.

Contents

List of Tables �� x Preface ��xi Acknowledgments �� xv Abstract ��xvii

Chapter 1: Introduction �� 1 Chapter 2: The Making of a Conservative Protestant Counselor �� 21 Chapter 3: “Your Place in the Counseling Revolution”: The Emergence of a Biblical Counseling Movement �� 51 Chapter 4: Ground Taken: Adams’s Clientele �� 75 Chapter 5: God, Sin, and Misery: Adams’s Positive System �� 95 Chapter 6: Good News and the Pastoral Task: Adams’s Positive System �� 123 Chapter 7: Adams’s Interaction with the Modern Psychologies �� 143 Chapter 8: Counterinsurgency: The Response of the Environing Professions �� 167 Chapter 9: The Fortunes of War: The 1980s and Beyond �� 201 Postscript �� 229

Appendix 1: An Annotated Case Study of Adams’s Model �� 231 Appendix 2: Crucial Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling �� 241 Appendix 3: Biological Psychiatry �� 261 Appendix 4: Cure of Souls (and the Modern Psychotherapies) �� 269

Note on Sources �� 303 Bibliography �� 307 Index �� 321

ix List of Tables

Table 1: Referral Sources for CCEF Counselees �� 78 Table 2: Postal Codes �� 79 Table 3: Religious Affiliation �� 81 Table 4: Age �� 83 Table 5: Proportions of Females and Males �� 84 Table 6: Educational Levels �� 84 Table 7: Occupations �� 85 Table 8: Constellation of CCEF Cases �� 86 Table 9: Previous Counseling Experience �� 89 Table 10: Counselor Responses to Counselee Remarks �� 105 Table 11: Number of Sessions of Counseling �� 214

x Preface

t delights me that this book has been read by so psychiatry movement” describes a well-known many readers and has been so well received. It genre. Under that label come studies of various Iis, after all, a “dissertation.” That genre does proposed alternatives to the reigning psychiatric not usually promise a stimulating read—more an orthodoxy. These have included feminist, Marxist, Esther 6:1 soporific for sleepless nights than a Szaszian, and liberal Protestant alternatives to the spine-tingling page turner! ideas and professional assumptions of the mental This new edition makes two changes from the health establishment. Historically, biblical coun- original dissertation. The first is minor but signifi- seling is one of many proposals to reconfigure psy- cant. The second is more substantial. We have also chiatric thought and practice (and it is one of the corrected many small errors of spelling, punctua- few that generated a significant social movement). tion, fact, and format. As an historian, I was able to justify and to locate The minor alteration is a title change from the my topic by portraying the biblical counseling original. It is now, as you have seen, The Bibli- movement as one more alternative to mainstream cal Counseling Movement: History and Context. psychiatry and psychotherapy. So “conservative This accurately describes both the topic: biblical Protestant” parallels “feminist” or “Marxist” as an counseling; and the intellectual task: to trace the adjective, and “anti-psychiatry movement” is the history and to set that history in its sociocultural genre that each adjective describes. context, both ecclesiastical and professional. What communicated well to professional his- Why the change? It is a matter of intended torians too easily miscommunicates to counsel- audience, in order to clear up a common misun- ing practitioners trying to sort out the history of a derstanding. The original title was Competent to movement in which they are actively involved or Counsel?: The History of a Conservative Prot- about which they are curious. “Anti-psychiatry” estant Anti-Psychiatry Movement. This PhD dis- tends to be read as a defining characteristic of sertation completed my studies in the history of the biblical counseling movement, as if a nega- science and medicine at the University of Pennsyl- tive rhetoric of attack is the leading edge. But, as vania in 1996. Like all dissertations, it was written both the dissertation and a reading of relevant lit- primarily for practitioners in its particular field. erature make clear, the biblical counseling move- To an audience of historians of medicine, “anti- ment has never been “anti-psychiatry” in the way

xi The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

that adjective tends to be heard by nonhistorians. on many of the issues that will be described. . . . Negative rhetoric appears on occasion (see chap. I have written some of mine down.” What 7), but the movement essentially voiced a posi- was true in 1996 is even truer by 2009. I think tive and practical intention: to enrich the practi- readers have appreciated that this book is written cal theology and ministry of the church of Jesus from the standpoint of a professional historian, Christ (for example, see chaps. 4–6). Regarding seeking above all else to be accurate, comprehen- psychiatry, it has tried to redefine how a prop- sive, and fair minded. But for this new edition I’ve erly reconfigured psychiatric profession would added three articles that show explicitly where go about useful medical business, while not tres- I stand. “Cure of Souls (and the Modern Psycho- passing into the work and theology of the church. therapies)” (2007) updates the history but in a way Chapters 1 and 6 of this dissertation (and the cita- that openly reveals my commitments and hopes. tions therein) orient the reader to this question. “Crucial Issues in Contemporary Biblical Coun- You will find a discussion of the technical defi- seling” (1988) outlines my assessment of balances nition of “anti-psychiatry” on pages 9–10. Chap- and imbalances in Jay Adams’s model. “Biologi- ter 7 (p. 143) will discuss what Jay Adams said cal Psychiatry” (1999) updates the discussion of about psychiatry in 1975, answering questions what constitute “truly organic difficulties” in the often posed by his critics: light of developments in psychiatry decades after Are you saying that psychology and Adams wrote his views. psychiatry are illegitimate disciplines? Do Given these additions, you may want to con- you think that they have no place at all? sider your reading strategy as you begin. My No, you misunderstand me. It is exactly not preference is for readers to plunge into the his- that. . . . My problem with them is that they tory first, later going on to the appendices where refuse to stay on their own property. . . . I give my point of view. I suspect that this prefer- If [the psychiatrist] were to use his medi- ence expresses my instincts as a counselor—listen cal training to find medical solutions to the carefully to people and to all that’s going on, then truly organic difficulties that affect attitudes seek to make sense of it all! But some readers may and behavior, the pastor would be excited want to start with the appendices, then double back about his work. to ponder the historical flow. Either way, I trust Given this fundamentally positive vision, it is no you will gain a vivid sense for the challenge of accident that many Christians with mental health embodying two things simultaneously. A scholar credentials—psychiatrists, neurologists, psychi- and historian aims to be self-critical, observant, atric nurses, social workers, psychotherapists— and evenhanded in describing persons, ideas, and embraced biblical counseling, believing that it events. An advocate and counselor should embody offered a truer understanding of people and a bet- those same strengths but also care deeply about ter cure for troubled souls. what happens, applauding or lamenting at every The second change is more substantive. I have turn, always hoping to influence what happens added several appendices not included in the orig- next. By instinct, I’m an advocate and counselor. inal dissertation. In a personal note on page 15, I care deeply about the outcome of this story. But I commented on the challenge of writing dis- the discipline of learning to be a fair-minded his- passionate history when one is a passionate par- torian brought incalculable benefits. I hope that ticipant in the events described: “I hold views you, too, benefit from the combination.

xii Preface

Wise ministry is always “occasional” and par- in our time and in our varied places is one great ticular, rather than timeless and general. It takes challenge that currently faces each of us and all of place with reference to the particulars of person, us together. place, time, and current challenges. Locating ourselves in history is extremely valuable. I hope Now may the God of peace who brought again from the that you find The Biblical Counseling Movement: dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with History and Context both informative and help- everything good that you may do his will, working in ful. I hope that one fruit of your reading will be us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus to further the development of counseling minis- Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. tries that worthily glorify Jesus Christ. After all, — Hebrews 13:20–21 ESV Christian faith and practice is the original “cure of the soul”—the pastoral phrase which supplied the David Powlison Greek etymology for both “psychiatry” and “psy- February, 2009 chotherapy.” The reinvigoration of cure of souls Glenside, Pennsylvania

xiii

Acknowledgments

would like to thank the people who helped in contributed in many other tangible and intangible various ways to bring this project to comple- ways. Paul Tripp, Ed Welch, and my other col- I tion. Charles Rosenberg, my advisor, modeled leagues managed to know when and when not to for me what it means to be an historian. My read- ask how the dissertation was going. Barb Bradley ers, Ronald Numbers, Riki Kuklick, and Clair provided invaluable help on CCEF’s client data- Davis offered not only their comments but also base. Brad Beavers and Bill Smith helped to find their encouragement. Charles Bosk told me to sources. Librarians at the University of Pennsyl- prepare to be changed by participant research. He vania, Westminster Theological Seminary, Fuller was right in more ways than I could have imag- Theological Seminary, and Biola University ined; in fact, the history itself was changed in patiently assisted and guided me. some small way by becoming subject to partici- Others provided moral and material support pant research. along the way. Without Bob Kramer’s steady and Jay Adams, my prime subject, and Betty Jane practical encouragement, this project could not Adams generously gave their time and hospitality, have happened. The encouragement of many other for which I am very thankful. I owe thanks also friends—the Blakemans, Covingtons, DeHarts, to many others who appear in these pages, with Groves, Millers, Yenchkos, and others—carried me whom I conversed or corresponded over the years, along. Maryanne Soper tidied up countless details in particular Donald Capps, John Carter, John Coe, at the proofreading stage. Jane Burns’s hospitality Gary Collins, Larry Crabb, Howard Eyrich, Bill at St. Clare’s and St. Julian’s came at a crucial point Goode, Vernon Grounds, Lloyd Jonas, Stan Jones, in the writing process. My mother, Dora Powlison, Wayne Mack, Bruce Narramore, Robert Roberts, quietly but persistently encouraged me, as did my George Scipione, Bob Smith, and Richard Winter, parents-in-law, Frank and Eloise Gardner. I would along with numerous attenders at AACC, CAPS, like to thank Peter, Gwenyth, and Hannah, who and NANC. Of those listed, George Scipione’s grew up with “Dad’s dissertation” as a somewhat diligence and insight were particularly helpful. mysterious backdrop throughout their lives. Finally, Edmund Clowney first suggested I study his- I would like to thank my wife, Nan: it is not with- tory. John Bettler suggested the specific topic and out reason that “love is patient” heads the list.

Abstract

n 1970 Jay Adams, a Presbyterian minister, documented historically. I studied it almost exclu- launched an anti-psychiatry movement among sively from primary sources: interviews, publica- IAmerican, conservative Protestants. Partly tions, case records. Adams’s intellectual system inspired by O. H. Mowrer and Thomas Szasz, contained six main parts. First, his epistemology Adams made a threefold claim. First, modern psy- arose from Reformed Protestantism and featured chological theories were bad theology, misinter- the Bible. Second, he defined problems in living preting functional problems in living. Second, psy- morally as expressions of sin. Third, he treated chotherapeutic professions were a false pastorate, physiological and social constraints as the context interlopers on tasks that properly belonged to pas- of personal problems, not their cause. Fourth, he tors. Third, the Bible, as interpreted by Reformed proclaimed the grace of Christ as the comprehen- Protestants, taught pastors the matters necessary sive solution to life’s problems. Fifth, he defined to counsel competently. Adams’s “nouthetic coun- counseling as pastoral and church-based. Sixth, seling” rapidly developed the institutional forms he subjected secular psychologies to a program that typically signal a profession. But it was envi- of suspicion, debunking their intellectual and pro- roned by three powerful professional neighbors. fessional claims. Adams gained followers among Secular psychological professions dominated pastors and their parishioners but largely lost the twentieth-century discourse and practice regard- interprofessional conflict. In the 1980s evangeli- ing problems in living. The mainline Protestant cal psychotherapists successfully asserted their pastoral counseling movement had shaped reli- claim to cultural authority over problems in liv- gious counseling from the 1940s. A rapidly pro- ing, extending their institutional power in higher fessionalizing community of evangelical psycho- education, publishing, and the provision of care. therapists shared Adams’s conservative Protestant The nouthetic counseling movement became iso- faith but looked to integrate that faith with modern lated from the mainstream of conservative Prot- psychologies. A conflict over professional juris- estantism; its institutions languished; fault lines diction ensued between Adams and evangelical emerged internally. But in the 1990s, nouthetic psychotherapists. This conflict has never been counseling again began to prosper.

xvii

Chapter 1 Introduction

I am convinced about you, my brothers, that you are competent to counsel one another. — Paul to the Roman church, c. AD 601

Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. . . . [A] veritable world of miseries is to be found in humankind. . . . Accordingly, the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him. — John Calvin, 15592

Has Evangelical religion sold its birthright for a mess of psychological pottage? —O. Hobart Mowrer, 19613

A good seminary education rather than medical school or a degree in clinical psychology is the most fitting background for a counselor. —Jay Adams, 19704

n 1970 Jay Adams, a forty-one-year-old Pres- that agitators often do, gaining both loyal converts byterian pastor and seminary professor, pub- and resolute foes. Ilished an inflammatory book about counseling. Adams and the movement he created present Written for an audience of theologically conserva- the historian with an unusually discrete case study tive Protestants—chiefly pastors and seminary stu- in jurisdictional conflict. Both the intellectual and dents, but including laypeople and mental health the institutional boundaries between Adams and professionals—Competent to Counsel (CtC) his opponents were remarkably clear. Unlike, for attacked the hegemony of the psychiatric estab- example, the conflicts between doctors and nurses lishment over the church’s thinking and practice in medical settings, this is not a story of infighting in the area of problems in living. Stimulated by to reallocate privileges and responsibilities within the anti-psychiatries of O. Hobart Mowrer, Wil- a set of shared cognitive and institutional assump- liam Glasser, Perry London, and Thomas Szasz, tions. In this story, an intellectual and institutional Adams intended a particularized revolution: he paradigm attacked the dominant paradigm and cre- wanted conservative Protestants to take care of ated a parallel world of practice. At the same time, their own, to defer and refer to psychiatric author- the fiercest conflicts in this story occurred between ity no longer.5 The agitator succeeded in the way people who apparently had a great deal in common:

1 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

Adams and the rapidly professionalizing commu- people began to live according to the pattern of nity of conservative Protestant psychotherapists. “faith and practice” taught in the Bible.8 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Given his redefinition of both the human Context traces the historical, intellectual, and social dilemma and its solution, Adams logically dimensions of this jurisdictional conflict. objected to the institutions of the psychiatric and Adams’s dispute with the mainstream under- psychotherapeutic professions. In Adams’s eyes, standing of personal problems was organized the systems of education, training, and licensing; around a knowledge system framed in explicitly the instruments of publication and public rela- theological terms. He objected to the prevailing tions; the agencies that delivered services—all notions of mental illness and mental health. In his these were enemies, not friends, because they view, the medical model, as an interpretive schema were prejudiced against the beliefs and purposes mapped onto troubled emotions or troubling of the conservative Protestant churches. Adams’s behavior, excised human life of its fundamentally redefinition of the counseling task as explicitly moral character. It defined men and women as “pastoral” brought with it a number of institutional basically nonresponsible, both for themselves and ramifications. Expert authority in the personal to God. Corresponding to this presumed misdiag- problems jurisdiction needed to be reallocated nosis of the human condition, the medical model to pastors and pastoral theologians—away from misinterpreted the therapeutic ideal, contenting mental health professionals who did not interpret itself with producing untroubled emotions and or address problems in living in terms that Adams untroubling behavior. Adams did not think that found acceptable. He claimed that people needed either peace of mind or socially acceptable behav- a pastoral cure-of-souls, not the ersatz of psycho- ior prescribed an adequate goal for the “cure of therapy or psychiatry. Such counseling practice souls.” He asserted instead that the church should needed to be relocated into local churches—away understand the vast majority of problems in living from hospitals and professional offices. in terms of an explicitly moral model. Predictably, Adams suspected those fellow Given this diagnostic framework, he estab- conservative Protestants who sought to acquire lished goals for the church’s counseling that secular credentials and to replicate professional employed the ingredients of the traditional mental health structures, ideas, and practices Christian message. First, because “man’s great- within the Christian community. Their growing est need is forgiveness,”6 the forgiving grace of control over higher education, publication, and Jesus Christ was essential to solving problems in counseling services during the time period of our living. Adams believed that God worked within story seemed to Adams simply to cloak the wolf in the human personality, and that those who were sheep’s clothing. Pastor and church were the pri- forgiven would also be helped by the Holy Spirit mary institutions in Adams’s proposed reconstruc- to alter patterns of thinking, feeling, and behav- tion of counseling practice, intended to replace the ior. Second, as thankful recipients of such grace, characteristic institutions of America’s twentieth- “human beings should look like Jesus Christ.”7 century mental health system. Adams, however, Thus Adams defined the change process, again in did pour a great deal of energy into creating sec- frankly theological terms, as “progressive sanc- ondary institutions that paralleled the forms of tification.” Both normal- and extreme-range sin the established mental health system: programs to and misery would find progressive resolution as provide various levels of training and education, a

2 Introduction

professional journal, an association for accredit- Reformation deriving from John Calvin. Within ing counselors, links with publishing houses will- the Reformed tradition he was most influenced by ing to print his books.9 nineteenth-century American Presbyterianism and Given the theological and institutional assump- by certain elements of twentieth-century Dutch tions that Adams brought to interpreting personal Calvinist philosophy. Adams presented his system problems, he logically objected to prevailing ther- as a comprehensive worldview, explicitly denying apeutic methods. In his view, such methods were that it was “scientific,” or could be validated or predicated on commitments regarding human invalidated scientifically: nature, God, and the role of the human commu- The conclusions in this book are not nity inimical to conservative Protestant beliefs. based upon scientific findings. My method Central to his vision was the notion that human is presuppositional. I avowedly accept the life is meant to be lived under benign authority— inerrant Bible as the Standard of all faith parental, pastoral, ecclesiastical, and, ultimately, and practice. The Scriptures, therefore, are immediate theocratic authority as articulated in the the basis, and contain the criteria by which Bible—whose purposes were to transform human I have sought to make every judgment. Two nature, not actualize it. In particular, he excori- precautions must be suggested. First, I am ated the notion that the counselor’s stance should aware that my interpretations and applica- be detached, nonevaluative, nondirective, and all- tions of Scripture are not infallible. Second, accepting in the attempt to elicit healing forces I do not wish to disregard science, but rather from within the troubled individual. Such a stance I welcome it as a useful adjunct for the pur- only pretended to neutrality in Adams’s view. It poses of illustrating, filling in generaliza- obscured the value-laden character of the counsel- tions with specifics, and challenging wrong or’s covert commitment to a notion—“the solution human interpretations of Scripture, thereby to man’s problems lies in the man himself”10—that forcing the student to restudy the Scriptures. Adams deemed unacceptable, given that Christi- However, in the area of psychiatry, science anity believed in an external Savior and in a neces- largely has given way to humanistic phi- sary conversion from those evils presumed to oper- losophy and gross speculation.13 ate deep within human nature. He conceived of the As a worldview, Adams’s counseling had totali- counselor’s role as activistic—even intrusive. He tarian qualities, like other comprehensive world- believed that counselors needed to become caring views.14 It thus entailed a sweeping critique of mentors: advisory, consultive, didactic, informa- systems founded on other assumptions. In CtC tive, confrontive, guiding. In a phrase, Adams and subsequent books Adams repeatedly attacked called on counselors to be “lovingly frank” or the three major schools of personality theory (psy- “irenically direct” in impressing a biblical world- chodynamic, humanistic, behavioral), along with view on counselees.11 Adams coined a name for medical model psychiatry and all forms of secu- his approach: “nouthetic counseling.”12 lar psychotherapy, for misconstruing the human Adams’s system sought to apply conserva- dilemma. He expressed guarded appreciation only tive, Reformed Protestantism to counseling. The for experimental psychology, for strictly somatic adjective “Reformed” highlights the distinctives psychiatry, and for anti-psychiatrists such as O. of Adams’s theological position within Protestant- H. Mowrer, William Glasser, Perry London, and ism. He was heir to that particular tradition of the Thomas Szasz.15

3 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

Mowrer was particularly catalytic. Adams read theoreticians and institutions he opposed. He had his works and studied with him during the summer little interaction with mental health profession- of 1965. Adams subsequently wrote: als. His reiterated opposition to “Freud, Rogers, Reading Mowrer’s book The Crisis in and Skinner” served in large part as a symbolic Psychiatry and Religion . . . was an earth- resource for his ongoing feud with other Christians shaking experience. In this book Mowrer, who more or less embraced the theories and prac- a noted research psychologist who had tices of secular psychologists. He collided with been honored with the Presidency of the the two groups wielding cultural authority over American Psychological Association for his the personal problems sphere within Protestant breakthrough in learning theory, challenged churches, groups claiming authority in the same the entire field of psychiatry, declaring it a jurisdiction as Adams. First, Adams occasionally failure, and sought to refute its fundamental criticized theoreticians of the “pastoral counseling Freudian presuppositions. Boldly he threw movement,” who had defined pastoral counseling down the gauntlet to conservative Chris- for both liberal and conservative seminaries. The tians as well. He asked: “Has Evangelical pastoral counseling movement had been extremely religion sold its birthright for a mess of influential in the 1950s and 1960s, mediating Carl psychological pottage?”16 Rogers, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Adams answered yes to Mowrer’s question, and others—packaged in liberal theologies—to picked up the gauntlet, and called on his fellow liberal pastors, and to those few conservative pas- conservative pastors to join him in reclaiming tors who thought at all about counseling. Second, their birthright. He urged ministers to retake the Adams more frequently argued with evangeli- personal problems domain for those people under cal psychotherapists who, beginning in the mid- their pastoral care. 1950s, articulated a nonpastoral psychotherapy to The precision with which Adams defined both explain and address the personal problems of con- his program and his audience contributes unique servative Protestants.17 The nascent psychother- features to this case study in interprofessional apy movement among theologically conservative relations and intellectual conflict. For example, Protestants—who called their program the “inte- Adams evidenced little interest in suggesting pub- gration” of psychology and theology—mediated lic policy for a pluralistic society; he intentionally the same set of secular psychologists to a commu- constructed a sectarian counseling system for a nity increasingly interested in thinking about and limited audience. He showed no interest in contrib- practicing counseling.18 uting to forms of counseling that could be tailored If CtC had simply offered one more attack from to the diverse worldviews of people who did not the borderlands of the disaffected and disenfran- share his belief system. He thought others should chised, Adams would merit only a minor footnote come to share his beliefs, hence he was explicitly in the history of his generation’s anti-psychiatric evangelistic in counseling. He had no interest in writings. But he was only secondarily disaffected simply gaining an increased role for pastoral coun- from the mental health establishment in which he selors within the existing mental health system; he had received a fair bit of instruction, and under intended to build a parallel, alternative system. whose intellectual and institutional hegemony he Another noteworthy feature is that little direct had chafed. He was primarily an entrepreneurial confrontation occurred between Adams and those system builder, with aspirations to retake turf for

4 Introduction

a particular constituency. Attacks on psychiatry, Rosenberg noted how psychiatry’s social legit- psychotherapy, theoretical psychology, and the imacy depended on its maintaining a distinctly mental health system19 served defensive functions medical identity. Promises of rationality and effi- for Adams’s positive intentions. He sought to cacy—a science and technology of human dys- offer—in particular to conservative Protestants— function and dysphoria, as it were—define psy- an intellectual, methodological, and institutional chiatry’s badge of authority. Yet the profession has alternative to the mental health system. been unable to provide “either understanding or Adams possessed two resources lacking in relief consistent with the pretentiousness of such most anti-psychiatries. First, he could draw on demands” for cognitive and therapeutic authority.23 a well-developed body of articulated belief and The truth contents are often dubitable assertions of practice, the vast intellectual resources of clas- faith: “We still debate the fundamental basis of the sic Protestantism. To the extent that Adams was most common psychiatric diagnoses and their rela- an innovator, it was in suggesting a new range tionship to belief systems and the realities of social of contemporary implications and applications structure.”24 Therapeutics are equally problematic. of traditional Calvinist beliefs. Second, Adams Only the “hard medicines”—psychotropic medi- belonged to a community that found those beliefs cation, electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomy—and compelling, and had a teaching position at one of physical care of the chronically disabled are easy the leading educational institutions, Westminster to categorize as medicine. Professional claims to Theological Seminary.20 His social location within possess effective psychotherapeutic methods only conservative Protestantism gave him a ready— too easily wobble in the face of both dubitable effi- if, as we shall see, ambivalent—constituency for cacy and the intrinsic difficulty of staking sustain- institution building. Many anti-psychiatrists must able claims to the methods and contents of talking content themselves to play the role of intellectual cure.25 Psychiatry’s identity as a distinctly medical guerrilla or gadfly; Adams was able to establish a specialty is sometimes tenuous. homeland.21 A further complication arises because those affiliated with psychiatry’s most overtly “medical” institutions and clientele—mental hospitals treat- The Genesis and Development ing people with chronic organic syndromes—have of This Project occupied the lowest status within the profession. In conceptualizing this project, I have been The high-status activities of psychiatrists have been chiefly influenced by two writings: Charles Rosen- those least distinguishable from philosophy, theol- berg’s “The Crisis in Psychiatric Legitimacy” and ogy, and pastoral care: “much of our century’s most Andrew Abbott’s System of Professions.22 Let me influential psychiatric writing has consisted of gen- briefly indicate the impact of these two pieces on eral statements about the human condition.”26 Such the definition and framing of my topic. Rosen- high-status activities—to teach the meaning of life berg’s analysis of the status of psychiatry prompted and to cure the soul’s ailments—contribute a great the questions I asked. Abbott’s systematic analysis deal to psychiatry’s status as more than a custodial of jurisdictional disputes—particularly his chapter profession. But the meaning of life is difficult prop- on how psychiatry replaced the pastorate’s juris- erty over which to sustain a professional claim.27 diction over personal problems—suggested the Rosenberg noted that psychiatry has been lineaments of an historical narrative. assigned an immense social role in secular

5 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

America. This profession has assumed responsi- This is “normal” politics. But the biblical counsel- bility for the varied ills, dysfunctions, and pains ing movement presents a case study of a differ- of the human soul. Yet the profession’s knowl- ent sort of border dispute: “secessionist” politics. edge and efficacy lag seriously behind its respon- The case study before us is no contest for rela- sibility to provide aid. The call to love and help tive allocations of power and responsibility within overwhelms the resources of truth and power. The psychiatry’s heartland; it is a breakaway republic. “embittering gap” between social expectation and Theologically conservative Protestants never fit professional performance continually threatens easily into a mental health system that claimed to the profession’s legitimacy.28 explain and treat the wanderings and woes of the Within this general framework, Rosenberg soul as a medical ailment. Jay Adams experienced made two specific comments that catalyzed this and capitalized on such unease and turned it into project. First, “We are no more willing, many of an intellectual and institutional program. us, to suffer the pain of depression or anxiety than Rosenberg concluded that psychiatry’s legiti- that of some more readily localized and melior- macy is tenuous but sustainable within the medi- able physical ailment; in our society neither sto- cal profession, mainstream American society, and icism nor traditional religious viewpoints seem public policy. But Adams found an eddy of society ordinarily to provide a context of meaningfulness within which psychiatric claims could be fiercely for such ills of the soul.”29 Psychiatry not only and—given the presuppositions of his constitu- must deal with society’s most intractable prob- ency—persuasively opposed. Few anti-psychiatry lems: the demented or behaviorally deviant. It also programs have had a social and institutional base must deal with the gamut of Everyman’s troubles from which their claims might be sustained with in life, a responsibility inescapably mirroring in relative success and turned into the legitimating reverse the fortunes of religion in modern society. basis for an alternative institutional structure. Jay Rosenberg’s description of the usual—the modern Adams was able to make a case both for his anti- failure of both stoicism and traditional religion— psychiatry polemic and for his biblical counsel- invited an exploration of the unusual. Jay Adams ing agenda within the institutions of conservative wrote within a cultural context that frequently still Protestantism. His success was modest, for he was found traditional religious viewpoints meaningful opposed more often than embraced, especially in addressing the soul’s ills. among the cultural gatekeepers of his natural con- Second, Rosenberg observed, “Because the spe- stituency. But he won a hearing and adherents to cialty of psychiatry has so diffuse a responsibility his program in certain local churches, conserva- and possesses so little limit-defining knowledge, tive theological seminaries and Bible colleges, it is prone to border disputes.”30 That last phrase mission agencies, and publishing houses. turned on lights. There are many possible configu- If Rosenberg suggested the broad contours of rations of jurisdictional conflict. For example, the my project, Andrew Abbott suggested many par- institutional politics within inpatient psychiatric ticulars. He asserted that “it is the history of juris- facilities often find psychiatrists, psychologists, dictional disputes that is the real, the determining and social workers contending for the territory history of the professions.”32 The Biblical Coun- of psychotherapeutic intervention (with nurs- seling Movement will trace a multifaceted conflict ing staff—psychiatric nurses and mental health between professional groups for authority—both workers—occasionally thrown into the mix).31 intellectual dominance and control over tasks.

6 Introduction

Abbott gave a nuanced set of categories for under- subsequently competition from psychologists and standing this conflict. social workers prompted a “rebiologizing” of per- For example, Abbott emphasized the signifi- sonal problems by psychiatrists. cance of knowledge systems, rather than trivial- We will follow the fortunes of the other profes- izing cognitive content as the cost of recognizing sional group that figures prominently in Abbott’s the importance of economics, politics, profes- story: the clergy. Abbott describes the clergy’s sional organization, and rhetoric. “Knowledge is historical decline this way. In the nineteenth cen- the currency of competition.”33 This proved very tury “clergy analysis remained primitive. . . . The illuminating for my project, in part because it fit so clergy’s failure to provide any academic foun- well the self-conscious beliefs and practices of my dation for their practice with personal problems subjects, people who taught, wrote, and preached ultimately proved their undoing.”38 The absence because they never doubted that structured knowl- of a compelling knowledge system—to explain edge mattered supremely. and treat problems in living, to interact criti- In Abbott’s terms, a profession’s ability to con- cally with newly ascendant systems—accelerated trol a jurisdiction hinges on the viability of its sys- marginalization. “By the 1920s the clergy had tem of abstract knowledge. “Only a knowledge lost any vestige of cultural jurisdiction over per- system governed by abstractions can redefine its sonal problems.”39 They had clearly lost such problems and tasks, defend them from interlopers, jurisdiction over high culture; and even in their and seize new problems—as medicine has recently own self-image and among their own religious seized alcoholism, mental illness, hyperactivity in constituency, the authoritative voices increas- children, obesity, and numerous other things.”34 ingly spoke to the church from the outside, not Jay Adams would have read that list and accused from the church. Abbott summarized the eclipse medicine of trespassing into functional problems of the clergy in these words: “There emerged in in living. He attempted to seize back what he this period [the 1920s] a clinical pastoral training would call drunkenness, flight from responsibility, movement aiming to give young clergymen direct willfulness, gluttony, and numerous other things experience with the newly defined personal prob- also in need of relabeling.35 lems. Seminarians would learn the rudiments of Abbott’s chapter tracing the modern history human nature from psychiatrists, psychologists, of the personal problems jurisdiction in America and social workers who ‘knew’ those rudiments, proved fruitful for my purposes. He described how that is, from the professionals who currently con- “legitimate psychotherapy was to be an official, trolled the definitions of them.”40 Abbott cited public monopoly of the medical profession” from the career of Anton Boisen as an object lesson in the 1930s into the 1970s.36 During this period of the fate of those who fail in conflicts for jurisdic- relative professional peace, “‘neurologists’ gave tion. Boisen “became a guerrilla in the psychiatric organic treatments to patients who had diseases heartland. . . . But few rallied to the flag Boisen with organic etiology, and ‘psychiatrists’ gave psy- raised.”41 Jay Adams agreed with Boisen that prob- chic treatments to patients who had diseases with lems in living had a moral-spiritual explanation, psychic etiologies,” including those who were but he eschewed both the psychiatric heartland “anxious, depressed, and upset with their everyday and the mainline Protestant churches that Boisen life.”37 Abbott, following the trail of the professional had sought to address.42 Adams averred that the fortunes of psychiatry, noted that in the 1970s and controllers of knowledge, who claimed to know

7 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

the rudiments of human nature, had brokered error pastoral counseling movement—tell stories of not truth, and he proposed a different set of defini- thorough-going psychiatric dominance. In each tions. He raised his flag in a different country, and case mainline clergy attempted to retake at least a there won converts. significant portion of the jurisdiction of everyday Abbott concluded his discussion by noting the life problems. But in each case religious practi- “drift of pastoral counseling towards secular psy- tioners ended up in a distinctly subordinate role: chotherapy.”43 Pastoral counseling was supplanted they were either dismissed or assimilated, or they by secular psychotherapy in large part; it also consciously placed themselves in the student role. drifted toward secular psychotherapy even where On the other hand, the most frequently studied it continued to claim a distinct identity. This dual influences of religion on secular counseling—for phenomenon provoked Adams’s anti-psychiatry. example the influence of “positive thinkers” on He launched his jurisdictional offensive by seeking twentieth-century American systems of counsel— to redefine both personal problems and the coun- trace themes characteristic of optimistic, mainline, seling task in opposition to secular psychotherapy. liberal Protestantism.47 The biblical counseling He sought to debunk both secular professionals movement yields a different kind of story. Its anti- (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers) and psychiatric obstinacy continued into the 1990s. religious professionals (pastoral counselors and The pessimism of its view of human nature assailed evangelical psychotherapists) who drifted toward optimistic liberalism in both its religious and sec- a secular and medicalized psychotherapy.44 ular forms. To the historian’s gaze, this movement In many other ways, Abbott’s paradigm helped presents a coherent set of culture-, time-, place-, me both to understand and to tell my story. For and people-specific ideas and practices. Jay Adams example, his discussion of the different ways articulated a distinctive knowledge system that claims may be settled was provocative—even a particular kind of people believed. He built an prescient. He thought that a “jurisdictional recon- alternative institutional structure that those same struction seems to be imminent in psychotherapy,” people chose to inhabit. as he described that form of settlement in which a jurisdiction is divided along the lines of different client constituencies.45 He observed that such Relevant Literatures client differentiation is crucial to the success of The Biblical Counseling Movement: History a group that invades the jurisdiction of another and Context is based on primary sources.48 No group. “The pattern of attacking groups emerg- secondary literature exists because the events and ing from the paraprofessional periphery, serving ideas described have thus far existed under condi- ignored clienteles, and urging reform is the most tions of invisibility to the wider culture. But the common.”46 This is exactly what happened as Jay story told is related to other stories. Many bodies Adams and the biblical counseling movement of literature have proved helpful for understanding identified and engaged conservative Protestants as my topic; I hope this project might also contribute a client type. to a number of different scholarly discussions. All this is of interest historically. On the one History of medicine naturally frames my story, hand, the most frequently studied religious coun- particularly the history of psychiatry and the seling movements—for example, the Emmanuel numerous discussions of the “medicalization” movement, clinical pastoral education, and the of problems in living since the late nineteenth

8 Introduction

century. If the ailments of the human body provide spectives. Other more moderate reformers have “raw material for the imprinting of cultural mes- suggested modifications of emphasis in public and sages,”49 how much more transparently do prob- professional policy. For example, Gerald Grob lems in living carry messages. Matters of value urged that psychiatry vigorously assume a caring and philosophy appear in the problems of living and custodial role, as an act of social compassion domain explicitly rather than covertly. The intel- toward some of the most helpless members of our lectual constructs, therapies, and institutions of society.50 medicine respond to the physical constraints of Like many other anti-psychiatries, the bibli- the human condition. We might say, analogously, cal counseling movement arose in the 1960s. But that psychotherapy, broadly defined, responds to unlike them, it has not had its chroniclers. This was the psychosocial constraints of the human condi- most likely due to the relative invisibility of the tion. Psychotherapy has its origins in the social conservative Protestant subculture until recently, response to timeless realities: dysphoric emotion, a product of scholarly inattentiveness on the one interpersonal conflict, the search for meaning, hand and cultural separatism on the other. Adams decision making, the varied psychological and is a different sort of revolutionary or reformer: the behavioral responses to suffering, child-rearing, builder of a sectarian, parallel system of thought uncertainty about the criteria of truth and good- and practice. His most noteworthy accomplish- ness, disorders of the conscience, and those habit- ment—as I have suggested—is having succeeded ual behaviors variously (and tellingly) labeled in developing a constituency so that his alterna- either sin, vice, deviancy, or addiction. Hence the tive to the mental health assumptions of modern history of psychotherapy is the history of attempts American culture has become institutionalized. to explain and ameliorate the “moral” drama of But both Adams’s accomplishment and the turf the human condition. battle between him and conservative Protestant The anti-psychiatry literature also frames our psychotherapists have been invisible to the wider story. A diverse literature of criticism has arisen in culture. the broad wake of such pioneer critics of institu- As a member of a separatist subculture, Adams’s tional psychiatry as Foucault, Goffman, and Szasz. social vision was very different from that of other Psychiatry’s attempts at asserting normativity and anti-psychiatrists. He focused his attention almost eternality have been assailed from many directions exclusively on local churches and on sectarian for many different reasons. Some revolutionaries schools and seminaries, intending that they should made sweeping policy suggestions. For example, provide an alternative to public therapeutic insti- Szasz suggested the dismantling of coercive institutions. In his few comments on public policy tutions in service of a libertarian social agenda. he contended that well-defined organic problems Marxist historians, such as Scull, made the same constitute psychiatry’s legitimate sphere.51 He suggestion based on a different analysis and aim- added to this a further rationalization for psychi- ing for a different social effect. Other critics have atric hospitals. They might serve as protective and weighed in with intentions more reformist than disciplinary social consequences. People whose revolutionary. Mowrer wished to displace the behavior became so unacceptable that they threat- dominant psychodynamic therapies and explana- ened themselves, others, or the social order faced tions in favor of a moral behavior model. Showal- the psychiatric hospital as a freedom-limiting con- ter pursued a psychiatry sensitive to feminist per- sequence.52 The social agenda Adams proposed

9 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

was not liberationist—like Szasz, Rothman, or practice. One subtheme of this history will be the Showalter—but conservative, like Mowrer. He did extensive writing on psychosomatics and lifestyle not see people as slaves of coercive mechanisms diseases published by medically trained nouthetic of social control, needing freedom in order to act counselors. Medical doctors contributed about autonomously. He saw people as slaves of their one-fifth of the articles in the Journal of Pastoral sins, needing freedom to act responsibly. But even Practice and addressed the physical effects of poor my description is culled from stray comments, dietary habits (gluttony or self-starvation); sleep for Adams only rarely alluded to a general social loss; sexual promiscuity; use of cigarettes, alco- vision. Unusual among anti-psychiatrists, Adams hol, and both prescription and street drugs; worry spoke only to his well-defined constituency. and unresolved anger; and so forth. Articles tar- I have found the literature on alternative medi- geted not only presumed moral causes of physical cine and science in America during the nine- problems but also moral responses to unavoidable teenth and twentieth centuries stimulating. This physical problems such as illness, pain, disability, body of work suggests numerous parallels—and menstrual cycle dysfunction, and aging.55 contrasts—and helps to frame my story.53 Biblical Like many alternative medical philosophies and counseling was clearly deviant, an alien amid the practices, a populist strand ran strongly through dominant psychotherapeutic culture. It replayed the biblical counseling movement. Adams’s writ- many of the themes of disenfranchised medical ing exhibited a tension between the well-trained therapies. For example, the often-noted linkage pastor as “God’s professional” and the traditional between religious interests and alternative thera- Protestant theme of the priesthood of all believers, peutic schemas explicitly appears in my narrative. defining anyone with life wisdom as “competent The history of nouthetic counseling offers a case to counsel.” It provides a case of relatively depro- study that both complements and contrasts with fessionalized knowledge and practice, offering Ronald Numbers’s The Creationists.54 truths and techniques that the common person was Studies of alternative medicine have pro- intended to grasp and apply in self-care and care vided a window on cultural meanings embedded for family, friends, and neighbors. in both diagnosis and treatment. Alternative sys- The biblical counseling movement was also tems appear to incarnate their worldview “obvi- striking in its differences from most alternative ously”; they enable a backward glance that reveals therapies that have been studied by historians. For less obvious worldviews incarnated in dominant example, in contrast to spiritual psychotherapies— medical philosophies. As mentioned earlier, even the Emmanuel movement, Christian Science, and more dramatically than with somatic misery and contemporary “inner healing” movements—bib- dysfunction, problems of living lend themselves lical counseling did not pursue “healing” as the to a great variety of constructions which reflect goal of face-to-face resolution of emotional and the views of practitioners and constituencies. The behavioral problems. Adams saw healing only as a medicalization and moralization of life play tug- metaphor when it came to problems in living, and of-war, as do competing moralizations. he contended that the metaphor had lost virtually Biblical counseling not only sought to “seize all utility because of the medicalization of human back” behavioral problems that had been medical- moral existence.56 Adams did not view problems in ized in the relatively recent past; it also sought to living as dysfunctions to be diagnosed, nor did he reach into areas long a part of standard medical conceive of counseling as therapeutic treatment.

10 Introduction

Rather he claimed to offer a rational assessment counseling in the twentieth century was generally of problems, and then counsel, things meant to be a story of religionists making derivative adap- believed and acted upon. Adams was distinctly tations of the dominant paradigms.61 But from nonmystical and decidedly hardheaded: “I don’t 1970, theological liberals and conservatives alike have a mystical bone in my body.”57 Even when increasingly sought to ground their counseling he spoke of the Holy Spirit as the power of God to practice more explicitly in their (various) concep- change sinful beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors— tions of the faith. and he reiterated this at the beginning of nearly The rapidly growing body of literature on every book—he meant “Holy Spirit” as a refer- American conservative Protestantism proved very ence to an enabling person, the third person of the helpful for setting and interpreting my story.62 Trinity in historic Christian belief, who intended to American evangelical religion is notoriously fluid. enact a rational agenda for cognitive, behavioral, Semantic precision in describing religious groups and motivational renovation. Similarly, the “Word is notoriously difficult to attain. A rather extensive of God” for Adams contained a rational message, literature has grown up in recent years attempt- and prayer was meant to be focused toward spe- ing to map contemporary conservative Protestant- cific, describable goals.58 ism. Adjectives such as conservative, evangelical, As already mentioned above in discussing Reformed, separatist, fundamentalist, and Bible- Andrew Abbott, histories of the professions also believing express a wide range of denotative and bear on the story of biblical counseling. The clergy connotative meanings. I ran through the gamut in is one of the classic professions, and the degrading considering the original title of this book before of their status in the modern age has been repeat- settling on perhaps the most generic term: “con- edly noted. An eddy against the historical flow, in servative protestant.”63 which clergy take the offensive intellectually and Already I have used a variety of terms to locate institutionally, merits notice.59 Jay Adams: conservative Protestant, Calvinist, Histories of pastoral care also frame my story. Presbyterian, Reformed. To this list other terms For example, Holifield traced the development of might be added. Some terms are relatively precise pastoral care in America from the eighteenth cen- but obscure to the general reader: the scholarly Cal- tury to the 1960s. His major thesis is that a theo- vinism of “Old Princeton” Seminary, Old School centric concern for “salvation” was replaced by Presbyterianism, the presuppositional apologetics an anthropocentric concern for “self-realization.” of Westminster Seminary. Other terms are more Holifield significantly breaks off his story with this popular but less precise: evangelical, fundamental- comment: “My narrative comes to its conclusion ist, separatist, Bible-believing. Each of these terms at the end of the 1960s. . . . I would argue that the helps to a degree to locate Adams theologically, end of that decade did mark a turning point.”60 The ecclesiastically, and sociologically. But many of story of pastoral care and counseling evidenced a them, unfortunately, bear a freight of meanings marked “liberalizing” drift for most of two centu- that varies substantially from reader to reader. ries. But at the end of the 1960s a number of more Adams is easiest to describe precisely in terms of conservative tendencies emerged: from theologi- his theological commitments. He was a thorough- cal self-criticism by liberal pastoral counselors, going Calvinist, self-consciously Reformed theo- to the evangelical psychotherapy movement, to logically.64 For Adams, God sovereignly con- Adams’s biblical counseling movement. Pastoral trolled everything, and that assumption saturated

11 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

his counseling system both in theory and prac- Historical analyses of conservative Protestant tice.65 The “Five Points of Calvinism” described phenomena illuminate many of the themes and his view of how God’s grace works.66 Adams also subthemes that play out in and around the history held more particular theological positions within of Adams’s nouthetic counseling. The movement generic Calvinism: for example, the children of was a hybrid, combining intellectual and practi- believers should be baptized as members of the cal features of both the Reformed tradition and covenant community; the mode of baptism is the fundamentalist tradition. It hatched within pouring or sprinkling, not immersion;67 the proper Reformed circles but found its widest reception form of church government is rule by elders— in fundamentalist audiences. Adams himself com- Presbyterian—rather than by bishops or by the bined Reformed commitments with certain fun- congregation;68 the millennium is currently real- damentalist tendencies that made him acceptable ized in the reign of Christ spreading his kingdom to some moderate fundamentalists. These moder- worldwide—amillennialism—rather than occur- ate fundamentalists who received Adams often ring in the future as postmillennialists and premil- were criticized by more militant fundamentalists lennialists believe;69 epistemology and apologetics for deemphasizing the significance of traditional must be presuppositional, in the way of Calvinis- distinctives: premillennial eschatological preoc- tic philosopher Cornelius Van Til, not positivistic cupation, believer’s baptism, sectarian separatism, and evidential.70 instant experiential sanctification, exclusive use of Adams’s ecclesiastical affiliations occurred the King James Version of the Bible, and biblicistic within a series of small conservative Presbyterian proof-texting. Moderates were willing to embrace denominations, several of which had splintered an amillennial, paedobaptist Presbyterian who from the northern Presbyterian Church in the 1930s taught a more painstaking progressive sanctifica- during the modernist-fundamentalist controversies. tion and employed Reformed biblical scholarship. His academic career as a professor of practical the- Yet Adams also stressed traditional fundamen- ology took place at Westminster Theological Sem- talist themes: the authority and scope of Scrip- inary, which had broken off from Princeton Semi- ture; the antithesis between Christian and secular nary during those same controversies, and was also thought; a relatively uncomplicated counseling generally Presbyterian in orientation. But locating method promising relatively rapid progress; an Adams ecclesiastically is complicated by the wider activistic call to arms and action, rather than to impact he had. He found respondents across a wide reflective or scholarly concern; a populist, grass- spectrum of conservative denominations: various roots emphasis; a separatist style of disengage- Presbyterians; Dutch Christian Reformed; fun- ment from both the wider Christian counseling damentalist and independent Baptists; the milder community and the culture at large; a communi- sorts of charismatics and Assembly of God Pen- cation style that emphasized rhetorical abilities tecostals; inner-city, black independent churches; and public speaking rather than measured schol- Brethren churches; Mennonites; Episcopalians arly subtleties. What Noll terms “fundamental- and Congregationalists involved in conservative ist Manichaeism”71—construing the world as an “renewal” movements in their mainline denomina- immediate battleground between Christian forces tions; and even an occasional “renewed” Roman of light and demonized forces of darkness—finds Catholic. He also found opponents—for many dif- articulation in Adams, yet with Reformed subtle- ferent reasons—in the same circles. ties that his followers sometimes did not retain.

12 Introduction

Lastly, my small story is naturally embedded and to provide an extensive bibliography of pri- in one of the largest of historical narratives: the mary sources. secularization of the West, a story whose fur- I will offer my explanations with a cautious ther telling and analysis preoccupied so much of hand. There are two reasons for this. First, my twentieth-century scholarly work. The biblical subject matter is contemporary, and in good con- counseling movement envisioned itself as a coun- science I can only be tentative in offering histori- terculture. But to what degree its pretensions to cal explanations for a movement that is still rap- swim against the current will succeed is a story for idly developing. To extend the apt metaphor of a future historian. It can at this point in history be warfare for professional territory, at times I have considered a reactionary eddy, or perhaps a small felt like a war correspondent dropped near the ripple in an upstream direction. Rearguard action, front lines of a fluid battle. Events have swirled reactionary retreat, accommodation, reconstruc- before my eyes. But to probe cause and signifi- tive engagement, and aggressive debunking have cance demands more historical distance. Second, typically been the themes of churchly reactions to I admit to a certain agnosticism when it comes to modernity. Strands of defense, flight, surrender, determining the weight of the numerous forces engagement, and offense can be seen—in varying presumably contributing to historical causality. I proportions—in the story of nouthetic counseling am sure that my story happened; I am less sure of that follows. why it happened. I hope to contribute in some small way to each Nouthetic counseling was only conceived in the of these bodies of literature. Though my story is mind and practice of its founder during the sum- small and self-contained, it is also a story worth mer of 1965. Rudimentary courses in a theological pondering in other communities of historians. seminary were developed during the late 1960s. It bears on the histories of medicine, alternative The first book was published in 1970, and other medicine, anti-psychiatry, and the professions; it institutional forms were created in the late 1970s. bears on histories of pastoral care and conserva- As a social movement, nouthetic counseling tive Protestantism; and, finally, it bears on histo- enjoyed an initial spurt of popularity in the decade ries of secularization and resacralization. after 1970, leveled off through the 1980s, and then has become resurgent since about 1990. My initial intention, at the point I chose this book topic The Historian’s Stance (1988), was to cover the history of a movement How will I parcel out my attention and pur- that seemed to have peaked historically, leveled poses between the descriptive, the explanatory, off, and even stagnated. I intended to concentrate and the evaluative? I have sought to stand chiefly on the initial trajectory of the movement, cutting in the role of historian-as-narrator. This study things off at the mid-1980s. But at present bibli- plows in previously unbroken soil; therefore, cal counseling is in an expansive mode. Books by my chief purposes will be descriptive. There is new authors are being published, conference atten- a story to be told and positions to be explicated. dance and course enrollments are swelling, fresh It is a story worth entering the repertoire of con- conflicts are occurring both outside and inside the temporary historians of medicine, psychiatry, movement, and institutions are being developed or psychology, and religion. I have labored to estab- redeveloped. My story will sketch events into the lish basic facts—both narrative and intellectual— 1990s. The movement is less than fifty years old;

13 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

many of the principals are still active; interesting wish. . . . [H]istorians . . . can provide criti- things are happening as news, not history. The cal perspectives, especially on traditions contemporaneity of my subject matter demands that they take seriously. Partisanship, then, that the purposes of narrative predominate over although to some degree inevitable, is to be purposes of explanation. I will avoid evaluative suppressed for the purposes of such histori- commentary, neither indicting nor extolling my cal understanding. subjects. Neither will I speculate on the trajec- This approach will not entirely please tory of a movement that currently appears to be those who see Christian history as ade- in early adolescence: headstrong, with signs of quately understood only as a battle in greater institutional and cognitive maturity col- which it is perfectly clear who stands with locating with certain conflicts and uncertainties the forces of light and who with the forces about identity. of darkness.72 Here is the place for an autobiographical aside. I also see many ways where my own thinking has Let me say outright that I am a sympathetic critic been shaped by that relativizing of self and society of my subjects. My sympathies arise from shar- that an historical and cross-cultural consciousness ing similar Christian convictions, of a Reformed produces. I grew up in a place that was as Asiacen- persuasion, nurtured through master of divinity tric as Eurocentric—Honolulu—and most of my studies at Westminster Theological Seminary. My schoolmates were Amer-Asians. My father taught sympathies are also nurtured by my participation Asian history, and our dinner guests were as often and friendship with many of the individuals and as not from South or East Asia. Subsequent educa- institutions studied. To a minor degree, I am even tional and practical experience—a degree in social an actor in the later phases of my story. I teach relations at Harvard College, ’60s-style alienation pastoral counseling at Westminster Theological from capitalist and nationalist values, three years Seminary and succeeded Adams as editor of the of work on the wards of McLean Psychiatric Journal of Pastoral Practice in 1992 (an appoint- Hospital, and doctoral studies at the University ment that both slowed and enriched this book). of Pennsylvania—have reinforced habits of criti- My criticisms of nouthetic counseling also cal disenculturation and dislike of Whiggish tri- arise from Christian convictions: the critical, his- umphalism. As an adult convert to Christianity, torical gaze is extremely valuable. Most of life is and as a participant in a sometimes triumphalist lived within the self-justifications of parochial and and parochial movement, I can still find myself a partisan bias. But the glimpse from afar can reveal stranger in the sometimes strange land of conser- the ambiguities, contradictions, and rationaliza- vative Protestant Christianity. tions endemic in human affairs. George Marsden Both debunking and apotheosizing one’s sub- described his work as an historian in words I can- jects shape myths. In both actions the really inter- not improve on. esting things about history are lost in the interests Inevitably one’s point of view will of self-justification. I don’t believe that either shape one’s work. Since it is impossible angels or demons determine human affairs. My to be objective, it is imperative to be fair. intent is to put both relative sympathy and relative One way of being fair is to say something reserve to work, to the end of being a good histo- about one’s point of view so that others can rian. The reader will have to weigh the cumulative take it into account and discount it if they effect of both my sympathetic and critical biases.

14 Introduction

Let me mention three effects of which I am imme- phalistic, simplistic, legalistic, impudent, reduction- diately aware. istic. Many readers have reacted to this, sometimes First, I differ in many ways from “funda- with violent antipathy. But I found my reaction tem- mentalists”—theologically, culturally, politically, pered by a number of things. First, I read Adams both ecclesiastically, temperamentally—but I respect widely and thoroughly, which exposed me to many them. When fundamentalists and other conserva- nuances and balances in his thought. Matters that tive Protestants appear in my story, I will make other readers have described as seriously lopsided none of the disparaging and caricaturing remarks after reading one or two books by Adams, I often that one frequently reads when scholars discuss tended to see as understated or overstated matters of those who believe in a living, speaking, authorita- emphasis. Second, Adams discussed his rhetorical tive God. strategy freely. Blunt overstatement sounds different Second, I have sought to write this history as a when understood as a conscious strategy rather than relatively detached observer, but I hold views on as the summary of a person’s position. In person he many of the issues that will be described. Doubt- offered a rationale for conscious overstatement: as less my opinions have shaped both the selection a populist strategy for engaging in turf warfare, it of data and the manner of presentation. Though pushed people to decide either for or against. He every historian of psychology and theology has then criticized scholarly understatement as ineffec- his or her opinions about both the human and the tive strategically, and frequently pusillanimous. He divine, unlike most, I have written some of mine went on to acknowledge lacunae, nuances, qualifi- down. In a number of articles I have articulated cations, and debatable and vexing questions in the criticisms of both biblical counseling and its crit- counseling field and in his own writings. Third, I ics, and I welcome the reader becoming informed found Adams in person to be engaging and humor- of ways I am not simply a dispassionate historian. ous, even riotously so. His generosity with time The appendices of this book include three articles and materials, his genuine kindness on the occasion expressing my personal views in a context of his- of my father’s death, his evident love for those he torical analysis. counseled and taught—these things could not help Third, in doing research for this project I have but make an impression. developed friendships with my interlocutors—on My hope is that the reader will also reserve both sides of the jurisdictional conflict that will judgment, and enter into the life and logic of the be portrayed. My reactions to written words have narrative. Adams’s views (and those of his lead- often been tempered by personal experience. I ing critics, as well) may seem inconceivable from have come to know the people I discuss in many the standpoint of modern culture’s absolutes; and modes: published writings, interviews, correspon- from within the deeply internalized relativism of dence, public lectures and debates, counseling postmodern culture, he may seem sinfully absolut- transcripts and case studies, casual personal hos- ist. In the modern or postmodern West, the gods pitality. This has undeniably affected my “read- of traditional faith are dead, and truth and morals ing” of what I have read and, hence, what I write. relative. Yet for Jay Adams, God is alive, and truth Familiarity may breed contempt on occasion, but and morals are absolute and revealed. He was self- it can as easily breed sympathy. consciously premodern, which at the very least For example, some of Jay Adams’s written state- should enable us to see prevailing assumptions ments sound dogmatic, harsh, polemical, trium- and their implications more clearly.

15 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

For a number of reasons, Adams makes an tant pastoral counseling, and evangelical psycho- intriguing case study. First, he thought and prac- therapists. He emerged out of a sectarian religious ticed with remarkable consistency to his premises. community that had long stressed the epistemo- To enter a full-blown alternative, intellectual and logical antithesis between secular and biblical sys- professional culture cannot help but make us see tems for interpreting human experience. He and our dominant intellectual and professional culture his cohorts founded institutions to provide coun- in new ways. Second, Adams was an unusually self- seling services and education. conscious turf-warrior. What sociologists of pro- Chapter 4 explores Adams’s success as an aspi- fessional competition say people do, he did, inten- rant for jurisdictional authority by analyzing the tionally and out loud. And, as with any case study, counselee population of CCEF. Numerous would- nuances and variations emerge that enrich accepted be counselees chose or were referred to nouthetic models of interprofessional relations. Third, Adams counseling when seeking help for their personal was unusual among alternative psychiatries, problems. psychologies, and psychotherapies because he Chapters 5, 6, and 7 look at Adams’s cogni- emerged from a community that was once cultur- tive system. The first two chapters examine the ally dominant—conservative, Reformed Protestant positive system by which he defined problems and orthodoxy. The voice of this community, though solutions in frankly theological, ecclesiastical, and variously muffled, still catches the ear and arouses pastoral terms. Then chapter 7 considers Adams’s the passions of modern Americans. Adams offered polemics, tracing the nuances of his position and “religious” counseling but from a perspective that rhetoric regarding secular psychologies. The bib- derived neither from sentimental Protestant mod- lical counseling movement arose into a context of ernism (e.g., Emmanuel movement, strands in the well-institutionalized alternatives, and its authors mental hygiene movement, clinical pastoral educa- rarely ventured far without doing battle. tion, positive thinking), nor from a religious fringe Chapter 8 considers the various opponents of movement (e.g., Christian Science, New Age), nor nouthetic counseling. Interprofessional conflicts from pietistic conservative Protestantism (e.g., occurred occasionally with secular mental health demon exorcism, mystical subjective experience, professionals and with the liberal pastoral coun- moralizing). He represented a religious tradition seling movement, and continually with evangeli- that valued rational, hardheaded, and systematic cal Christian psychotherapists. Opposition from thought, just as it valued principled action. Each of the last group was particularly fierce, as they these factors—consistency, boldness, and histori- directly competed with nouthetic counselors both cal memory—makes this case study unusual. for cultural authority among conservative Protes- tants and for clientele. Chapter 9 will briefly trace the story of Adams’s An Outline of the Narrative nouthetic counseling through the 1980s and into Chapters 2 and 3 trace the history of Jay Adams’s the 1990s. It will describe the lines of tension and development of “nouthetic” counseling and its conflict that arose within the biblical counseling leading institutions through 1979. His historical movement, and the results of the jurisdictional context included three professional competitors: conflict between that movement and the evangeli- the secular mental health system, mainline Protes- cal psychotherapists.

16 Introduction

was prominent in the ways both Adams and his critics character- Chapter 1 Notes ized his system. But it is worth noting that Adams qualified this 1. Excerpted from Romans 15:14, as translated in Jay E. Adams, directiveness in three ways. First, he noted that the bias of assump- The Christian Counselor’s New Testament: A New Translation in tions in any system creates at least a covert directiveness; hence, Everyday English with Notations (USA: Presbyterian & Reformed, he only made explicit what he believed was concealed by duplicity 1977), 437. in professedly nondirective systems. Second, he declared that nou- 2. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford thetic counselors could operate in other modes than the directive Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill, The Library of Christian Clas- and gave examples of such. He chose to emphasize the directive sics (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 35–37. in order to highlight one significant contrast between his approach 3. O. Hobart Mowrer, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion and the counseling ethos that prevailed since the 1940s (deriving (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961), 60. from Carl Rogers’s nonintrusive, client-centered therapy: Carl R. 4. Jay E. Adams, Competent to Counsel (USA: Presbyterian & Rogers, Counseling and Psychotherapy [Boston: Houghton Mif- Reformed, 1970), 61. flin, 1942]; Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s 5. Ibid., 18. View of Psychotherapy [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961]). Third, 6. Jay E. Adams, More Than Redemption: A Theology of Chris- though emphasizing more problem-centered, remedial counseling, tian Counseling (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, he frequently alluded to “preventive” counseling that partook of 1979), 184. other modes of human discourse. For example, he mentioned or 7. Jay E. Adams, Change Them?. . . into What?: Counseling in alluded to all three of these qualifiers in the following quotation. America Today (Laverock, Pa.: Christian Counseling and Educa- After citing Carl Rogers’s list of differences between directive and tional Foundation, 1977), 12. nondirective counseling, Adams commented: “Rogers . . . fails 8. Chapters 5–7 will explore in greater depth Adams’s intellec- to recognize the subtle directiveness that even his method must tual system, but this brief summary gives some sense of how he employ. Yet, no nouthetic counselor would consider his activity performed an explicit theologization of problems in living. limited to the items Rogers describes as ‘directive.’ He does all 9. Chapter 3 will trace the founding and initial development of those things that Rogers calls directive but also does many of those the alternative set of institutions created by Adams and his con- things that Rogers calls nondirective. The fact is that the whole freres. range of appropriate Christian responses is available to the nou- 10. Adams, Competent to Counsel, 81; cf., 78–82. thetic counselor. He does not force every case into one limited role. 11. Ibid., 62; Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor’s Manual Rather, in responding appropriately to each client and each prob- (USA: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1973), 59. lem, the entire gamut of possible Christian responses may be used 12. For a summary of the distinctives of such “nouthetic” coun- in nouthetic counseling.” Adams, Competent to Counsel, 89. seling, see Adams, Competent to Counsel, 41–56. We will discuss 13. Adams, Competent to Counsel, xxi. it in detail in chapter 6. Adams derived “nouthetic” from the Greek 14. On the totalitarian interpretive qualities of nonscientific word noutheteo, which underlies the quotation at the head of this conceptual systems, note Michael Polanyi’s skeptical comments chapter, “competent to counsel.” Adams commented, “I have no about Freud, how believers “regarded the all-embracing interpre- great zeal for the label ‘nouthetic’ beyond its obvious advantages. tive powers of this framework as evidence of its truth; only when However, since every school of thought eventually must be identi- losing faith in it did they feel that its powers were excessive and fied by an adjective, I should prefer to choose that adjective for specious.” Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post- myself” (infra, 52). In New Testament usage, the Greek word Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), noutheteo—literally “to place in mind”—meant reproof, admoni- 288. Adams’s system made its faith assumptions overt, and he tion, or other pointedly personal, constructive conversation. The never lost faith in its interpretive powers. word was often paired with expressions of intense love: for exam- Similar to Polanyi, Karl Popper described the “apparent explana- ple, Paul’s “admonishing with tears” (Acts 20:31) and his “as my tory power” of Freud and Adler as akin to myth not science because beloved sons I admonish you” (1 Corinthians 4:14). It served as their systems were “able to explain practically everything that hap- a summary word for wise and constructive conversation: whether pened within the fields to which they referred. The study of them as a general description of mutual counsel (“competent to counsel seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revela- one another,” Romans 15:14) or as counsel delivered with pasto- tion, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet ral authority (1 Thessalonians 5:12). It also summarized the verbal initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming aspects of a parent raising children (e.g., “bring them up in the instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the admonition of the Lord”; Ephesians 6:4). Noutheteo in New Testa- theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth ment usage presumed objective criteria for the message presented: appeared manifest.” Freud’s and Adler’s theories “describe some according to Colossians 3:16, the “word of Christ” was to be spo- facts, but in the manner of myths.” Karl R. Popper, Conjectures ken to others both publicly (“teaching”) and personally (nouthe- and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: teo). Adams’s intention as a biblicist was to replicate these sorts of Harper & Row, 1963, 1965), 34–38. Adams’s system was self-con- activities in a twentieth-century context. sciously “mythical,” in Popper’s terms, rather than pretending to Adams believed that the Bible’s objective authority mandated validation as “science.” He literally called for conversion on the a style of counseling that was direct and directive. This emphasis basis of a revelation.

17 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

15. William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psy- occupied the immediate jurisdiction for which Adams aspired. Yet chiatry (New York: Harper and Row, 1965); Perry London, The Adams often expressed high regard for psychology as a discipline Modes and Morals of Psychotherapy (New York: Holt, Rinehart that studied psychological, psychophysiological, and psychosocial and Winston, 1964); Mowrer, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Reli- topics. His explicit objections were to psychologists acting in what gion; Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a he saw as the proper role of theologians and pastors: as theoreti- Theory of Personal Conduct (New York: Harper & Row, 1961). I cians and therapists of the human condition. will delineate the nuances in Adams’s view of psychology-related Anti-psychotherapist is probably the most accurate description fields in chapter 7. of Adams’s central concern. The term captures his opposition to 16. Adams, Competent to Counsel, xvi. Citation of Mowrer is both the intellectual systems and practical methods operating in from Mowrer, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, 61. secularized versions of generically “pastoral” activities. But even 17. “Evangelical” is perhaps the broadest term for nonfunda- that term doesn’t capture Adams’s objections to psychotropic med- mentalist conservative Protestants. See George M. Marsden, “The ications being given to redress functional problems in living. Evangelical Denomination,” in Evangelicalism and Modern Amer- Some of Adams’s critics eventually even labeled him the founder ica, ed. George M. Marsden (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, of an “anti-counseling” movement. In fact he was an energetic pro- 1984), vii–xix; George M. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: moter of counseling—a certain kind of counseling—into a commu- Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Wil- nity that was often resistant to and suspicious of counseling activi- liam B. Eerdmans, 1987), 1–11; George M. Marsden, Understand- ties under any guise. His polemics were directed toward secular ing Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: William counseling and toward what he perceived as secularizing tenden- B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), 1–6. See the discussion cies in those conservative Protestants he criticized. of terminology later in this chapter and a sketch of the history of the Strictly speaking, then, he is the founder of an “anti-secular-psy- evangelical psychotherapy establishment in chapters 2, 3, and 9. A chotherapy-and-psychiatry” movement, in the interests of his own full history of the evangelical psychotherapists, the “integration- system of personal, pastoral counsel. Adams primarily objected ists” who squared off against Adams, remains to be written. to attempts to minister secularized explanations and solutions— 18. Chapter 8 will treat the criticisms of Adams emerging from whether psychological or medical—to people experiencing prob- the pastoral counseling and evangelical psychotherapy movements. lems in living. This footnote ought to be borne in mind when for For an intellectual history of the pastoral counseling movement, see concision I employ various shorthand terms in the pages that fol- E. Brooks Holifield, A History of Pastoral Care in America: From low. It also ought to be borne in mind when I seek to disentangle Salvation to Self-Realization (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983). the rhetoric of attack and counterattack in chapters 7 and 8. Pages 231–69 trace the development of the clinical education move- 20. Westminster’s founder, J. Gresham Machen, authored Chris- ment from the 1920s until World War II. Pages 269–348 trace the tianity and Liberalism, one of the defining works in the religious resurgence of postwar pastoral psychology. Holifield cuts off his controversies of the 1920s. He is the subject of a recent critical story in the mid-1960s. For a sketch of developments subsequent biography, D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen to 1965, see Donald Capps, “The Bible’s Role in Pastoral Care and and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America Counseling: Four Basic Principles,” in The Church and Pastoral (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). Care, ed. Leroy Aden and J. Harold Ellens (Grand Rapids: Baker 21. Chapters 3, 4, and 9 will look at the ground Adams’s biblical Book House, 1988), 41–55; and Donald Capps, Reframing: A New counseling movement gained—and lost. Method in Pastoral Care (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990). 22. Charles E. Rosenberg, “The Crisis in Psychiatric Legiti- 19. Rather than continually repeating these four variously over- macy: Reflections on Psychiatry, Medicine, and Public Policy,” lapping terms—referring respectively to a profession, a protean in American Psychiatry Past, Present, and Future, ed. George form of practice employed by several adjoining professions, pro- Kriegman et al. (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, tean intellectual constructs, and a complex institutional arrange- 1975), 135–48 (reprinted in Charles Rosenberg, Explaining Epi- ment—I will vary my terms depending on the primary referent. But demics and Other Studies in the History of Medicine [New York: typically I will intend loose, mutually inclusive meanings, rather Cambridge University Press, 1992], 245–57); Andrew Abbott, The than precise differentiation. System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor Anti-psychiatry—as used, for example, in my original subtitle— (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). usefully provides a historiographic reference, connecting my sub- 23. Rosenberg, Explaining Epidemics, 140. ject to other anti-psychiatries and my work to other histories of 24. Ibid., 137. anti-psychiatry. Though even Szasz has distanced himself from the 25. The literature debating psychotherapeutic efficacy is vast. term—see Thomas Szasz, “Mental Illness Is Still a Myth,” Soci- During the 1960s, two influential works were H. J. Eysenk, “The ety 31, no. 4 (1995): 34–39—I think the appellation still usefully Effects of Psychotherapy,” in Handbook of Abnormal Psychology, applies to Szasz, et al., who have generally opposed attaching med- ed. H. J. Eysenk (New York: Basic Books, 1961); and Charles B. icalistic labels to human behavior. Truax and Robert R. Carkhuff, Toward Effective Counseling and Anti-psychology is ambiguous and potentially misleading Psychotherapy: Training and Practice (Chicago: Aldine Publish- but may serve as a synecdoche with appropriate qualifications. ing, 1967). Jay Adams would cite Eysenk (Adams, Competent to Adams was frequently termed an “anti-psychologist” or “psychol- Counsel, 2f.) to the effect that patients did not get better under psy- ogy basher” by the conservative Protestant psychotherapists who chotherapy. Evangelical psychotherapists frequently cited Truax

18 Introduction

and Carkhuff’s description of the conditions for successful therapy 41. Ibid., 309f. (e.g., Andre Bustanoby, “Without These, Don’t Start,” Christianity 42. See chapters 2, 7, and 8 for further discussion of mainline Today [August 1973]: 38f.; William T. Kirwan, Biblical Concepts pastoral counseling and its relationship to Jay Adams. for Christian Counseling: A Case for Integrating Psychology and 43. Abbott, System of Professions, 310. Theology [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984]). 44. Adams hoped to foster a sharp-edged division. “[The] incur- 26. Rosenberg, Explaining Epidemics, 142. For example, Carl sions of psychiatry and clinical psychology into areas that require Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Alfred Adler’s Under- one to determine ethical norms as the basis for the alteration of standing Human Nature, along with Sigmund Freud’s Introductory attitudes and behavior, therefore, should have been met by a sig- Lectures on Psychoanalysis are texts of enduring influence that nificant response from the church. . . . O. Hobart Mowrer, Wil- illustrate Rosenberg’s thesis. Psychologists have written similar liam Glasser, E. Fuller Torrey, and others have been exposing the works: e.g., B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Carl fundamentally nonmedical nature of the psychiatric enterprise for Rogers’s On Becoming a Person, Rollo May’s Man’s Search for more than a decade and have awakened even many sleeping mem- Himself, and Abraham Maslow’s Toward a Psychology of Being. bers of the church to the reasons for the growing disenchantment 27. Similar observations underlie Thomas Kuhn’s claim that and disillusionment with psychiatry. Increasingly, the basically most aspects of the social sciences are prescientific and function ethical nature of psychiatric activities has become apparent and has more like the arts, being “still characterized by fundamental dis- resulted in a growing concern over the attendant dangers involved agreements about the definition of the field, its paradigm achieve- in an uncritical acceptance of these activities. . . . The future of the ments, and its problems.” Thomas S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension: relationship between the mental health movement and conservative Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago: Uni- biblical Christianity . . . can hardly be predicted. But it would seem versity of Chicago Press, 1977), 222; cf., 118, 228–32. that in the period immediately ahead the antithesis between clinical 28. Rosenberg, Explaining Epidemics, 144. psychologies and psychiatries that are based upon non-Christian 29. Ibid., 139. presuppositions and biblical Protestant Christianity will come into 30. Ibid. sharper focus, thus separating the two into distinct camps in which 31. My own experiences as a mental health worker at McLean the issues that divide them and the discussions that shall ensue Psychiatric Hospital (Belmont, Mass.) during 1973–1976 bear this will center about the ethical question.” Adams, Shepherding God’s out. I remember a sharp dispute between psychiatrists and social Flock, 167–70. workers over the appropriateness of the latter doing “psychother- 45. Abbott, System of Professions, 77f. apy.” And in the professional ecology of that hospital at that time, 46. Ibid., 95. clinical psychologists did no counseling but were restricted to diag- 47. Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: Popular Religious nostic testing. Nursing staff who talked too often and too long with Psychology from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale and patients were occasionally reproved for attempting to do therapy. Ronald Reagan (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 32. Abbott, System of Professions, 2. 1988). 33. Ibid., 102. 48. See the Note on Sources that precedes the bibliography. 34. Ibid., 9; cf., 30. 49. Rosenberg, Explaining Epidemics, 4. 35. Jay E. Adams, The Language of Counseling (Phillipsburg, 50. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1981) illustrates the degree to Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: which Adams was scrupulous to give away as little terminological Pantheon Books, 1965); Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the ground as possible. Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden 36. Abbott, System of Professions, 302. City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961); Gerald N. Grob, Mental Illness 37. Ibid., 303. and American Society, 1875–1940 (Princeton: Princeton Univer- 38. Ibid., 286. Adams had commented in similar fashion: “With sity Press, 1983); Mowrer, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion; notable exceptions, there has been a general failure of the church Andrew Scull, Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of since apostolic times to enter into the study and pursuit of personal Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England (New York: St. Martin’s counseling with the enthusiasm and vigor that must characterize Press, 1979); Andrew Scull, ed., Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and any serious endeavor. No large body of theoretical thought or case Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era study data has been accumulated. The meager amount of discus- (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Elaine sion concerning the work of counseling that has been preserved Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English seems to view counseling as little more than a subhead of Church Culture, 1830–1980 (New York: Penguin Books, 1985); Szasz, The Discipline. As a result, personal counseling was carried on largely Myth of Mental Illness. in unsystematic ways. It is no surprise, then, that personal counsel- 51. His view of the social role of psychiatry resembled Gerald ing by ministers so readily was supplanted by psychiatrists.” Jay Grob’s on this point (see previous footnote for reference). E. Adams, Shepherding God’s Flock: A Handbook on Pastoral 52. Adams was not averse to using the mental hospital as a threat Ministry, Counseling, and Leadership (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, to recalcitrant counselees exhibiting bizarre behavior or as a pro- 1974–75), 168. tection for suicidal counselees. Interview, December 4–5, 1990. 39. Abbott, System of Professions, 308. Cf., Jay E. Adams, “The Christian Approach to Schizophrenia,” 40. Ibid., 309. in The Construction of Madness: Emerging Conceptions and

19 The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

Interventions into the Psychotic Process, ed. Peter A. Magaro (New Reforming Fundamentalism; George M. Marsden, Fundamental- York: Pergamon Press, 1976), 143. ism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century 53. See, for example, Norman Gevitz, ed., Other Healers: Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, Unorthodox Medicine in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 1980); Marsden, ed., Evangelicalism and Modern America; Mars- University Press, 1988); Steven C. Martin, “The Only Truly Sci- den, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism; Martin entific Method of Healing: Chiropractic and American Science, Marty, Modern American Religion (Chicago: University of Chi- 1895–1990,” Isis 85, no. 2 (1994): 206–27; John Harley Warner, cago Press, 1986ff); Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical “Medical Sectarianism, Therapeutic Conflict, and the Shaping of Mind (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1994). Orthodox Professional Identity in Antebellum American Medi- 63. Cf., preface for discussion of the change in title for this edi- cine,” in Medical Fringe and Medical Orthodoxy, 1750–1850, tion. ed. W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 64. Adams described his approach to the tasks of counseling this 234–60. The references in Gevitz (pp. 265–91) provide a thor- way: “I can speak only from my conservative, Calvinistic view- ough bibliography of this literature—both primary and secondary point as a Christian” (Jay E. Adams, “Grief as a Counseling Oppor- sources—as of 1988. tunity,” in The Big Umbrella and Other Essays and Addresses on 54. Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists (New York: Alfred A. Christian Counseling [USA: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1972], Knopf, 1992). 68). Similarly, “What has been going on in the practical theology 55. Adams respected medical doctors and gained a significant department at Westminster [Theological Seminary] in the area of following among physicians. Chapter 5 will explore Adams’s counseling has issued from a tight theological commitment. The views of medicine and the body, and his interactions with conser- position that has been developed and articulated is the direct result vative Protestant doctors. of Reformed thinking.” (Jay E. Adams, “Counseling and the Sover- 56. Interview, October 7, 1991, Lafayette, Indiana. In biblicist eignty of God,” in Lectures on Counseling [Grand Rapids: Zonder- fashion, Adams cited chapter and verse to support his view: “The van, 1975–77], 72). metaphor has been detached from its referent. Jesus said, ‘It is not 65. Jay E. Adams, Counseling and the Sovereignty of God (Phila- those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are delphia: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1975); Jay E. Adams, sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’ People take How to Overcome Evil (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, the first half of that and read into it any meaning they want.” 1977); Jay E. Adams, How to Handle Trouble: God’s Way. Phil- 57. Interview, October 5, 1994, Lafayette, Indiana. lipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1982); Jay E. Adams, The 58. Consistent with this, biblical counseling was highly skepti- Grand Demonstration: A Biblical Study of the So-Called Problem cal of mystical religious approaches to healing physical ailments, of Evil (Santa Barbara, Calif.: EastGate, 1991). for example, the ministrations of healer-evangelists such as Oral 66. In Jay E. Adams, Counseling and the Five Points of Cal- Roberts. vinism (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1981). He 59. Joseph Ben-David, “Professions in the Class System of Pres- applied these traditional Reformed emphases to counseling issues. ent Day Societies,” Current Sociology 12 (1963): 247–98; Eliot The Calvinistic “TULIP” consists in the following: Freidson, Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Total depravity: though people are never as bad as they could Formal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); be, every part of human nature—intellect, volition, emotions, Everett C. Hughes and Agostino DeBaggis, “Systems of Theologi- passions, body, conscience, memory, and so forth—is affected cal Education in the United States,” in Education for the Profes- by sin in some way; sions of Medicine, Law, Theology, and Social Welfare, ed. Everett Unconditional election: God saves people from sin based C. Hughes et al. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 169–200. on his choice, not because of any good or anticipated good in 60. Holifield, A History of Pastoral Care in America, 12f. them; 61. Abbott, System of Professions, 309f. Howard Clinebell is Limited atonement: the death of Christ was personal and exemplary in this regard. Anton Boisen’s co-opted revolution was effective, forgiving the sins of those whom God chose unto eter- a “sport” that found no ecological niche. Some mainline Protes- nal life; tant pastoral counselors were hostile to the modern therapeutic Irresistible grace: God makes the dead alive, and those in paradigms: e.g., Thomas Oden assailed the practice of “aping inef- whom he works will come to faith; fective psychotherapies” by “secularized, hedonically oriented, Perseverance of the saints: all whom God makes alive will fee-basis ‘pastoral psychotherapists.’” Thomas C. Oden, Pastoral continue in faith unto death and the fulfillment of their hopes at Theology: Essentials of Ministry (San Francisco: HarperCollins, the return of Christ. 1982), 4f, 8f. 67. Jay E. Adams, The Meaning and Mode of Baptism (Phillips- 62. Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., “Fundamentalisms burg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1975). Observed,” The Fundamentalism Project (Chicago: University of 68. Adams, Shepherding God’s Flock, 167–70. Chicago Press, 1991); Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., 69. Jay E. Adams, The Time Is at Hand (Greenville, S.C.: A Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Fam- Press, 1966). ily, and Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); 70. Adams, Competent to Counsel, xxi. Richard T. Hughes, ed., The American Quest for the Primitive 71. Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, infra. Church (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Marsden, 72. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism, xi.