The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

Written by David Powlison Reviewed By Steven Midgely

When Christians struggle with life’s problems, who is best equipped to help them? Should we turn to churches and pastors or the expertise of the mental health professionals? This is the issue underpinning Powlison’s fascinating account of the biblical counseling movement. As ‘history’ it takes us from the origins of the movement in the 1960s through to the early 1990s. The ‘context’ concerns cultural issues in the church and world as well as the personal characteristics of some of the key actors. All had a bearing on the way the history played out.

At the start of what is an unusually readable adaption of a doctoral thesis, Powlison describes his intention to explore the biblical counseling movement in relation to the anti-psychiatry critics of the 1960s. In response to what they saw as the over-medicalization of life, writers like Rosenberg took issue with psychiatry for claiming jurisdiction over the ‘ordinary problems of life’. At much the same time, a pastor by the name of Jay Adams was becoming increasingly troubled by the ‘defer and refer’ attitude he saw developing in many churches. Mental health professionals were the ‘experts,’ and churches were increasingly handing responsibility for pastoral care to them. The biblical counseling movement Jay Adams helped to found opposed this trend. According to Adams, troubled people in the churches didn’t need mental health experts but pastors because the wisdom they needed wasn’t found in secular psychology but in the Bible.

Unusually for a historical account, the author is a part of the history he describes. He became editor of The Journal of Pastoral Practice, the flagship publication for the biblical counseling movement. He was a faculty member at CCEF (the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation Adams founded). Though he sought ‘to write this history as a relatively detached observer,’ Powlison does, of course, ‘hold views on many of the issues … described’ (p. 15). But any lack of objectivity is hard to spot, and what we get is a history written by someone on the inside who understands his subject intimately and cares passionately about it.

The first main chapter describes influences that shaped Adams. It was a time when ‘the therapeutic was triumphant,’ when ‘psychiatry and psychotherapy [had] displaced the cure of souls, reifying the medical metaphor and so ordaining “secular pastoral workers” to take up the task’ (p. 22). Evangelical psychotherapists who wanted to take both Bible and psychotherapy seriously were setting about the task of ‘integration.’ Though unhappy with the ‘leave it to the experts’ message, it was only when Adams encountered the anti-psychiatrist Mowrer that his concerns were crystallized. In Adams’ own words, ‘Mowrer did two things for me. First hedestroyed the Freudian system in my mind.… Second … he shook my faith in the mental health professionals.… He gave me confidence to go forward’ (p. 36).

The third chapter describes the genesis of the biblical counseling movement. Competent to Counsel, published in 1970, was the watershed. Adams voiced concerns felt by many pastors, for whom three issues were prominent: ‘a commitment to the Bible, an inability to handle people’s deep problems [and] an unease with the secular psychologies’ (p. 62). Adams believed he was fighting a ‘turf war’ for the right to help people with their problems. His combative writing style wasn’t likely to win over his opponents, but that was never his intention. He was writing for sympathizers. He was writing to stir up a grass roots movement who would resist the spread of the therapeutic and restore confidence in the church and the Scriptures.

Three chapters provide an excellent summary of his approach. After surveying those who came for counseling at CCEF, Powlison describes the problems Adams believed sin creates for us and then how ‘speaking the truth in love’ works for our restoration. Theory is fleshed out with plenty of detail about the way Adams’ approach worked out in practice.

The final three chapters describe Adams’ critique of secular psychology and the backlash this produced from evangelical psychotherapists. Adams was strident in his critique. The theories of Freud, Rogers, and Skinner contradicted the Bible by suggesting ‘problems of living could be resolved by use of “the Spade, the Mirror, or the Biscuit,’ ” which denied ‘the need for salvation in Christ and the ministry of the Word’ (p. 158). The evangelical psychotherapists, meanwhile, questioned Adams’ use of Scripture, accusing him of proof-texting and ignoring context. They said he focused on behaviour and ignored motivation, that he didn’t make enough allowance for the effects of suffering or being sinned against, and that his entire approach smacked of legalism rather than grace.

In the 1980s, ‘while the evangelical psychotherapists enjoyed spectacular success, capturing the mind, the respect and institutions of conservative Protestantism’ (p. 202), biblical counseling began to fade. Though maintaining the support of a loyal group of pastors, Adams’s failure to engage with his critics and isolationist stance created problems that caused the movement to stall. But the last section of the book points to a more hopeful future. The history (because it stops in the 1990s) gives only a glimpse of the resurgence to come, but Powlison adds three appendices, which he says, ‘show explicitly where I stand.’ They demonstrate how Powlison and CCEF, while respecting the heritage of Adams, have learned from their critics and arrived at a more nuanced form of biblical counseling. It explains why their influence is growing and why many are finding their approach such a rich resource in their own lives and ministry.

With regard to Christian counseling, this book shows how we got to where we are. And while counseling continues to be so influential both on the world and the church, the questions this book raises and the case it makes for putting the gospel at the heart of counseling aren’t just pertinent to those working in this field; they matter to all of us.


Steven Midgely

Cambridge

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