BIBLIOGRAPHY online: http://bit.ly/1qUGAHc John Weaver, PhD Cynthia Mullen Kunsman, RN, BSN, MMin, MD

1. Alternative Christian Evangelical
Counseling Programs:
Thought-Reform Tool
and
Hindrance to Recovery?
John Weaver, PhD
Cynthia Mullen Kunsman, RN, BSN, MMin, ND

2. Evangelicals and Mental Illness
“It's a Big Problem”
 Southern Baptist
Convention
 New President's
MH Initiative
 Intense focus on gender
and sexuality
 Matthew Warren
 2013 suicide

3. Most churches would welcome me if I
had a mental illness.

4. Defining Terms
 Licensed and trained therapists who are Christians can
certainly provide counsel from the Bible
 For the purposes of this discussion,
Biblical Counseling is
 Specific type of Pastoral Counseling
 Eschews modern clinical care
 Generally “Biblical-only”
 May or may not be therapeutic

5. Benefit or Harm?
 Not a diatribe against Biblical Counseling
 Focus on misuse
 Pitfalls inherent in the model
 Much depends on the skill and maturity of the counselor
 Many Biblical counselors are licensed through in
a traditional MH disciplines
 Many Biblical counselors do recognize their own
limitations
 Can be very beneficial when applied appropriately

6. Understanding the Evangelical
 The Bible is an Authoritative Document (ultimate truth)
 Epistemological style
 Axiomatic vs empirical truth
 Hermeneutics (e.g., literal interpretation)
 Ministers are experts on ethics, mind and spirt
 Distrust of modern psychology / psychiatry is common
 Humanist and secular
 More so for Fundamentalist (Evangelical subtype)
 Difficulty with Ambiguity

7. Conceptual Models of Mind
 Trichotomist vs Dichotomist

8. Human Agency
Dispensationalist
 Man is basically good
Calvinist (Presbyterian)
Man is basically evil
Pitfall: Can tend toward
pessimism / misanthropy

9. Etiology of Mental Health Problems
and Therapeutic Approaches
 Sin (“Nouthetic” Counseling)
 Healthy: Cognitive Behavioral Approach
 Unhealthy: Shame and Blame
 Demons (Deliverance / Exorcism)
 Possession / Oppression
 Inner Wounds / Deficits (Theophostic Methods)
 Mystical concerns about spirituality
 Combination of counseling and deliverance

10. Can serious mental illness be healed
with prayer and Bible study ALONE?

11. Biblical Counseling:
Mental Illness as Sin

12. Jay Adams' “Nouthetics”
 noutheto: “to admonish”
 Preferred by Fundamentalists and many Evangelicals
 Competent to Counsel book (1970)
 Mental Illness as a Misnomer
 Brain can be sick but the mind cannot
 Mind problems = spiritual problems = sin

13. Nouthetic Confrontation
 Purpose:
“Effect personality and behavioral change”
 Reproof (or Rebuke) followed by correction
 Focuses on one's worldview
 Presupposes that the counselee has a problem
 Inevitably a sin problem
 Condemns certain “sinful” emotions

14. Influences on Development
BEHAVIORISM
 William Glasser
 Thomas Szasz
 The Myth of Mental Illness (1961)
 President of the Citizens Commission on Human
Rights, the Scientology front organization
 PRIMARY INFLUENCE: O. Hobart Mowrer
 Adams' successor: David Powlison
 less driven by behaviorism

15. The Ideological Spectrum of Biblical
Counseling

16. Spectrum I: Pastoral Care Focused
 Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC)
 Formerly National Assoc of Nouthetic Counselors
 Accrediting agency; more conservative
 Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation
(CCEF)
 Intellectual arm; progressives
 Powlison's theory dominates this group

17. Spectrum II: Psychology Bashers
 More extreme than ACBC or CCEF
 Psychology is truly dangerous for the Christian
 Psychoheresy Ministries (Martin & Deidre
Bobgan)
 Psychology Debunked (Ryan & Lisa Bazler)
 Berean Call (Dave Hunt)
 CCEF's tone is often different, but content is just as
extreme as the psychology bashers

18. Concerns about Biblical Counseling
 Shepherding Discipleship Movement Influences
 Submission to strict hierarchy
 Overtones of patriarchy → misogyny
 Enforce legal contracts that suppress dissent
 Discourage reporting of physical / sexual abuse
 Mentally ill are scapegoated as sinful
 Repentance and discipline for treatment of serious
mental health disorders

19. Exorcism & Deliverance

20. Modern History of Deliverance Practice
 Late 19th Century into 20th Century Revivalism
 Keswick / Higher Life Movement
 Revivalism and Healing Movements into the 1950s
 Latter Rain Movement
 Charismatic and Pentecostal Movements
 Charismatic Renewal / Shepherding Discipleship
Movement in the late 1960s – early 1970s
 Don Basham & Derek Prince

21. Modern Deliverance Practice:
Major Systems
 Sozo Model (Bill Johnson)
 Pigs in the Parlor (1973)
 John Sanford
 Agnes Sanford
 Restoring the Foundations Model
 Toronto Blessing of the 1990s
 Most extensive taxonomy (demonic “family tree”)
 Mercy Ministries

22. Nancy Alcorn & Mercy Ministries
 Infamous use of RTF manual
 Skepticism indicates oppression
 Heavy focus on sexuality
 Exorcism for eating disorders, addiction, sexual abuse
victims, LGBT, serious mental health problems, etc.
 Less credible psychological therapies (recovered memory)
 Hypnosis; theophostic techniques
 Expelled from Australia due to public outcry

23. Inner Healing / Theophostic Ministry

24. History and Features
 History
 Sanford's Inner Healing (1950s)
 Smith's Theophostics (1990s)
 Much like New Thought Christianity spirituality
 “Lie Based Thinking” with demonic features
 Some groups focused on Satanic Ritual Abuse
 Abuse of hypnosis and altered consciousness
 Repressed / recovered memory
 Traumatic induction of symptoms
 Deliverance as a cure

25. Primary Concerns
(Deliverance and Inner Healing)
 Mentally ill are considered to be demon possessed
 Cease clinical treatment
 Scapegoating children as possessed leading to abuse
 Physical and psychological harm
 Exporting of these ideas to Africa
 Trend of labeling children as witches
 Soul ties connecting sex abuse victims to rapists
 Cure only comes through forgiveness

26. Exorcism at a National Level
 “Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare”
 C Peter Wagner, Cindy Jacobs
 Mass Exorcisms of Countries
 Destabilization in Third World
 Uganda: “Kill the Gays” bill
(Antihomosexuality Act of 2014)
 Financing by Evangelicals in the US

27. The End