Evangelicals Do ‘Counseling’ with a Gay Secret

“Biblical counseling” has a skeleton in the closet

In Evangelical churches, a service is offered that might be called “counseling,” or more fully, “Biblical counseling.” It’s not a mental health service.

It’s all religion, and it has a curious backstory going back to the 1940s, when a famous psychologist named O. Hobart Mowrer realized that psychotherapy had limits. He had a problem which resisted all cures.

He wondered if religion would work better.

O.H. Mowrer in 1960 (Courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives; colorized)

The story that was public was a famous psychologist expressed approval in religious concepts.

Mowrer elaborated the case in a 1961 book, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, where he suggested that a better concept for dealing with wrongdoing and anxiety would be ‘sin’.

In 1961, Christianity Today reports: “Mowrer is no religious crank, nor even a theologian, but an eminent psychologist.” The way it read, publicly, was a famous psychologist was affirming conservative Christianity.

There was more to the story, a private side .