On transformation of theology to therapy...

From Chapter 5 "The Modern Age and the Gospel" (pp.118-121)

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In one of the most telling chapters in his book, American Evangelicalism, James Davison Hunter shows how modern Evangelicals have unwittingly adapted to the privatized, individualist and subjectivist trains of structural pluralism, and recast Christianity not as an inculturated and grand narrative for the modern world, nor even as a domesticated sitcom for the local churches, but as therapy for the lost and the sick, the unhappy and the repressed.

Strictly speaking, he is referring to the later modernity, where individualism has been tainted by narcissistic features absent from classical modernity. Nevertheless, what he describes has its origins in the privatization of religion determined by structural pluralism. He trawls some title from Christian bookshelves, which demonstrate what happens when the grand narrative has been interiorized to the point of disappearance. We could augment them by many similar titles from our own bookstores, the demonic and the dysfunctional figuring more largely these days. At random, some of Davison Hunter's chosen titles read:

Transformed Temperaments

Defeating Despair and Depression

God’s Key to Health and Happiness

Release from Tension

Feeling Good about Feeling Bad

You and Your Husband’s Mid-life Crisis

How to be a Happy Christian

How to become Your Own Best Self

This transformation of theology into therapy, where the language of the scripture has been translated into psychological discourse, and where stories have been replaced by prescriptions, has prompted Professor Harold Bloom to doubt whether American culture is Christian at all – although as a Jewish agnostic, this causes him no regrets. He argues, in The American Religion, that in reality American culture is a mixture of gnosticism and orphism (mystery religions), where the concept of redemption has been replaced by the American wish fulfillment of self satisfaction. For Bloom, Christianity has become a delicious solipsism where we are never happier when alone with our God. He cites the line from the favorite nineteenth-century Evangelical hymn, ”I came to the garden alone”, as being quintessentially what American Christianity in its Southern Baptist incarnation has become.

Bloom’s thesis is controversial and exaggerated, but he has highlighted the logical extension of religions of the heart, of piety without normative sanctions, of rampant individualism without community control, of revivalistic fervor slewed-off from the historic tradition, of a grand narrative left behind in the struggle for spiritual satisfaction. In so doing he has touched on the larger question of the communal disconnectedness of cultural pluralism to which we now turn.        

Excerpt from:

Walker, Andrew. Telling the Story.  Gospel, Mission and Culture Gospel & Culture. London: SPCK, 1996.