BEST PRACTICES IN PASTORAL COUNSELING: IS THEOLOGY NECESSARY?

Abstract

The significance and role of theology in pastoral counseling has been a controversial issue from the beginning of the modern pastoral care movement in the years immediately following World War II. While many factors may have contributed to this debate, an accumulated impression that pastoral care in the heyday of Neo-Orthodox theology had become clumsy, insensitive, and heavyhanded undoubtedly played a major role. Another prominent element was the fact that clinical training in pastoral care and counseling for the most part initially emerged in contexts away from both seminaries and churches. The first wave of pastoral counselors consisted largely of individuals who were enjoying their theological and institutional emancipation. By the time the movement had reached its pinnacle in the 1970’s, this situation had, if anything, become more entrenched. John Cobb, writing in 1977, introduced his book Theology and Pastoral Care with the following words: The academic disciplines of theology and pastoral counseling have too long been at odds. In many seminary faculties their representatives have been suspicious of one another. Professors of theology have suspected that the beliefs that inform the teaching of counseling are not clearly Christian, that they have been derived from secular psychology and only superficially adapted for pastoral use. Professors of pastoral counseling have suspected that most of what takes place in courses on theology is irrelevant to meeting the human needs the minister is called upon to address. Unfortunately, both suspicions are too wellfounded. (1977, p. 1) In the years subsequent to this observation, the relationship between pastoral counseling and theology has appeared to deteriorate. Farley’s words regarding pastoral care are perhaps especially true for pastoral counselors: “The general result was that, in spite of the theological orientations of the early leaders of the movement, pastoral care tended to lose its theological character” (2003, p. 149). Oddly, this has occurred despite emerging perspectives in theology, and even biblical studies, which may prove more amenable to clinical practices in pastoral care and counseling (Patton, 1994). I will begin this essay by outlining evidence for the declining significance of theology among professional pastoral counselors in the period since Cobb’s declaration. Second, I will locate this decline in the sociopolitical context of what has come to be known as neoliberalism. The consequence of this erosion, I will argue, is that the social consciousness of pastoral counseling is reduced. Thus it loses its capacity to resist social conditions that, in my judgment,