IMPORTANT FACTS

1. For centuries, spiritual counseling was the task of the clergy, who used religious teachings to provide comfort.

2. Psychiatry blamed World War II on religion�s failure to solve man�s inhumanity to man, opening the door to psychiatric and psychological �solutions.�

3. By 1952, psychology courses were being taught in most U.S. seminaries and graduate theological schools.

4. For some candidate priests, the preparation for celibate life includes psychology-based seminars that actually arouse sexual desire.

5. As psychiatry asserted that man�s problems were a biological �not spiritual�matter, they assured churches they could help sexually disturbed priests.

6. The pedophile priest scandal of recent years is directly traceable to psychiatry�s subversion of religion and infiltration of the church.

CHAPTER THREE Perverting Pastoral Counseling

Prior to the influence of psychiatry and psychology, pastoral counseling was one of the most respected and vital community activities of ministers of religion. For centuries it had been the task of the clergy to minister to the spiritual needs of their parishioners. By referring to religious doctrine, they helped give meaning to life by providing spiritual solace and sustenance to those in their care.

The dictionary defines pastoral as �of a pastor, his office or his duty, a shepherd or spiritual guide,� (from Latin pastor, shepherd, and pascere, to feed) and counseling as an act of exchanging ideas, of talking things over, giving carefully considered advice (from Latin consilium, counsel, deliberation, and consulere, consult, convoke). In its purest form, counsel means wisdom and prudence.

Constituting a major barrier to psychiatry�s infiltration of churches, pastoral counseling became the focus of concerted attack. Using the fears and turmoil that ensued from World War II, the first step was to convince churches of their failure to provide the solutions to man�s inhumanity to man. Psychiatry and psychology offered their own �superior� brand of purportedly scientifically validated counseling.

In the 1950s, German-born psychologist Kurt Lewin and his associates devised a psychological concept in the United States called �T-groups� (T for training). The term �Sensitivity Training� evolved from the �T-groups.� It was described as having been �developed to study how people could be socially and psychologically manipulated to give up their souls. ��

Psychologist Ed Schein, who studied brainwashing techniques in Korea, admitted that the psychological method used unwittingly by churches to train clergy and counsel parishioners, derived from Pavlov�s brainwashing techniques.

Author Gary Allen later described Sensitivity Training�s effect on morals: �After hearing others confessing their wrong-doing, one is apt to feel that his own deeds weren�t so bad after all, causing him to accept lower moral standards. � In short, Sensitivity Training produces �change� by realigning loyalties away from family, home, church, and co-worker. � Participants � are forced into making an awful choice: morality or moral disobedience.�

However, billed as the fastest-growing social phenomenon of the day, it spread rapidly to religious leaders and churches, including the National Council of Churches (NCC) and the World Council of Churches.

By 1952, 83% of more than 100 U.S. seminaries and graduate theological schools surveyed had one or more courses on psychology. In 1961, around 9,000 clergymen had studied psychology-based �clinical pastoral� counseling courses. Psychiatrists outnumbered the clergy in membership six to five in the U.S. Academy of Religion and Mental Health. The American Association of Christian Counselors has grown from 700 mental health professionals as members in 1991 to 50,000 today.

In Why Christians Can�t Trust Psychology , Ed Bulkley wrote, �Few pastors are willing to take the time to examine the evidences, consider the implications, confront the deceptions, and inform their people about psychology�s failure to pass as a mental health science.� Bulkley stated further: �Christian colleges and seminaries have bought into this incredible deception and now enthusiastically encourage Christians to submit to the insights, methods, and findings of secular psychology.�

Consider the course description on pastoral counseling at a prominent U.S. Theological Seminary: �...Physical illness; symptoms of nervous and mental need; balanced and unbalanced personalities; findings of contemporary psychiatry and their evaluation in terms of evangelical Christianity. ...� Its 2004 curriculum, �melds psychology and theology in clinical practice� and addresses psychological concepts as �persistent mental illness, neuropsychological disorders, depression, [and] family dysfunction.�

The speed and efficiency with which pastoral theology was dismantled was clearly illustrated at a U.K. psychiatric conference in 1967. In a chilling reminder of Brock Chisholm�s agenda, Canon Sydney Evans said: �What does personal responsibility mean in the light of the findings of psychoanalysis? Do the words right and wrong have any further usefulness in the light of our new knowledge of compulsive behavior patterns? � I believe it�s one of the tragedies of Christianity that it has got itself all mixed up with morality.�

Clinical psychologist Paul Pruyser reported the destructive impact of the �psychological disciplines on the training of the clergy�: �The word �soul� has lost its meaning and even its plausibility. � [the clergyman] will find that whether he wants it or not, he is also a front-line mental health worker or he will be so regarded by the specialists in mental health.�

In The Myth of Psychotherapy , Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus, said that his primary purpose for writing the book was �[t]o show how, with the decline of religion and the growth of science in the eighteenth century, the cure of [sinful] souls, which had been an integral part of the Christian religions, was recast as the cure of [sick] minds, and became an integral part of medical science.�

The tradition, heritage and practice of spiritually based pastoral counseling has been progressively displaced by humanist, psycho- logical counseling, until presently it is almost nonexistent.

Next

Back to Contents