LAY COUNSELING IN THE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN CHURCH: A CASE STUDY (PSYCHOTHERAPY

Traditionally, the Christian church has been concerned with human souls, with their salvation, their healing, and their nurture. The science and art of psychotherapy has also been concerned with the cure or healing of the soul or mind. Both Christianity and psychotherapy claim jurisdiction over human psyches, yet they have not always worked collaboratively.;In particular, evangelical Christianity has viewed psychotherapy with suspicion, and its adherents have spurned the mental health services which have proliferated in the past century in the United States. Much contemporary psychotherapy has, on its part, viewed conservative Christianity as useless and sometimes dangerous to mental health. This schism between Christianity and psychotherapy has been bridged in recent years, and, even with respect to evangelical Christianity, there is evidence of a rapprochement.;This dissertation examines a particular Christian lay counseling service within an evangelical church as a symbol of this rapprochement. Participant-observation of the service over an eighteen month period, supplemented by interviews and other data, yields a detailed description of the service. A functional and structural analysis of the service informs an understanding of why the service exists in place of alternative modes of helpgiving. A philosophical examination of theological and psychological integrations within the counseling service and a sociological analysis of the strains toward professionalism within the group, inform an assessment of the success of this rapprochement.;The Christian lay counseling service is attempting a pioneering task within the evangelical church. In this it is relatively unaided by the professional groups with which is has some identification. It is a marginal group--not a professional health service, nor a pastoral counseling service. This marginality accounts for its successes and failures as it attempts to bridge the schism between evangelical Christianity and psychotherapy.