Steven J. Sandage

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON RELIGION AND PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC PROCESSES AND OUTCOMES : A 10-YEAR REVIEW AND RESEARCH PROSPECTUS

A decade of research on religion and counseling, consisting of 148 empirical articles, was reviewed. Methodological sophistication, poor a decade ago, has approached current secular standards, except in outcome research. Religious people cannot be assumed to be mentally unhealthy. Nonreligious and religious counselors share most counseling-relevant values but differ in the value they place on religion. Those religious differences affect clinical judgment and behavior, especially with religious clients. Religious interventions have been techniques imported from formal religious traditions and used as adjuncts to counseling or traditional theories of counseling adapted to religious clients. The authors suggest a research agenda and speculate about future mental health practices.

Christian Counselors’ Resources for Multi-Cultural Understanding and Counseling

Seven resources are discussed that Christian counselors have to offer multi-cultural counseling and understanding: a viable epistemology, a sense of community, a universal story, a recognition of the supernatural, a paradigm for forgiveness, an appreciation for symbols, and a shared experience as a minority. Psychologys response to multi-cultural issues is parallel to the response of Western missionaries encountering cultural pluralism. Suggestions are made to enable Christian counselors to understand the acculturation of their minority clients.