Sacred Spaces

Abstract

A growing interest in spirituality among psychologists, social workers, and health professionals has created new opportunities for collaboration between religion and psychology. This collaboration challenges pastoral counselors to identify what is distinctive about their identities and practices. The purpose of this paper is to explore the dangers of theological naïveté and elaborate ways in which pastoral counselors are theologically accountable for using first, second, and third orders of religious language, and for identifying the covert comparisons--theological, universal, and phenomenological---they make between their religious worlds and those of their clients.