The Professionalization of Pastoral Care: The SBC’s Journey from Pastoral Theology to Counseling Psychology
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
When the organization and structure of the church in America was altered in the early 1900s to meet modern demands, the role of the pastorate became more specialized to adapt to the burdens of the new, “efficient” structure. In 1920, Gaines Dobbins utilized the business efficiency model at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to formulate a distinct ecclesiology. Discontent with traditional methods of instruction in theological education, Dobbins sought to implement theories and methodologies from modern educationalists. He adopted a psychologized educational methodology and utilized the psychology of religion as an empirical measure of the soul, human nature, and human behavior.
Use of the social sciences seemed to grant Dobbins, as a practitioner, academic respectability within the realm of theological education. Both the professionalization that resulted from Dobbins’s efficiency standards, and a working theory of human nature derived from psychological models, were synthesized into a specialized system of pastoral care. Dobbins followed the new shape of pastoral theology in America, adopting Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) as the model for pastoral training. As a result, CPE became an integral part of the curriculum at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for over sixty years, and spread to influence many other SBC entities.
- Seeks to demonstrate the ways in which Gaines Stanley Dobbins synthesized an ideology and methodology that inaugurated professionalized counseling within the Southern Baptist Convention>
- Explores the impact that Gaines Dobbins had on the practical ministry within Southern Seminary, as well as Southern Baptist churches
- Raises the question regarding the degree of faith Christians choose to place in the philosphy of psychology, as an assumed empirical science, and its dominating grip on western culture and religios thought
The drift of the Southern Baptist Convention beginning in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries into a reliance upon psychological professionalism (secular anthropology) rather than being true physicians of the soul (biblical anthropology) for pastoral ministry is a microcosm of what has happened in almost every church and ecclesiastical organization in the world. Christian counseling became a form of modern esoteric Gnosticism. Scholarly theology has taken a back seat to psychology. . . . Johnson’s historical analysis of ‘professionalizing’ counseling in the church serves as a passionate warning for those committed to pastoral care and counseling in the church. This is a much-needed book!
John D. Street, Chair, BC Graduate Program at The Master’s University & Seminary, and President, Association of Certified Biblical Counselors Board of Trustees
For those who love the church, the care of souls, and contemporary history, The Professionalization of Pastoral Care is important reading. I am grateful for Dale Johnson’s work here and am glad to see this book in print.
Jason G. Duesing, Provost, Midwestern Seminary