Worldview Course Coming in June
Worldviews, Ethics, & Distinctly Christian Therapy
Course Description
A worldview (WV) is the usually implicit set of beliefs, loves, ethics, practices, and possibilities that is assumed in a complex culture or community that grounds and guides its life and activity. Therapy is an activity especially shaped by WV assumptions, and modern therapy reflects the assumptions of its secular WV. So, to do distinctly Christian therapy in our day, Christian therapists need at least a basic understanding of a Christian WV and its secular counterpart. This course focuses on the WV foundation that undergirds all therapy models, the differences between secular and Christian WVs, and how therapy ethics reflects the assumptions of one's WV community.
A worldview (WV) is the usually implicit set of beliefs, loves, ethics, practices, and possibilities that is assumed in a complex culture or community that grounds and guides its life and activity. Therapy is an activity especially shaped by WV assumptions, and modern therapy reflects the assumptions of its secular WV. So, to do distinctly Christian therapy in our day, Christian therapists need at least a basic understanding of a Christian WV and its secular counterpart. This course focuses on the WV foundation that undergirds all therapy models, the differences between secular and Christian WVs, and how therapy ethics reflects the assumptions of one's WV community.
Course Information
This is a live, online, short course that will be held every Friday, at 3-5pm EST, beginning on June 20 and ending on July 25, 2025, and will last two hours each time, including some Q & A.
Cost: $200
This is a live, online, short course that will be held every Friday, at 3-5pm EST, beginning on June 20 and ending on July 25, 2025, and will last two hours each time, including some Q & A.
Cost: $200
Learning Objectives
Participants will
- Appreciate the pervasive influence of WV assumptions on contemporary psychotherapy and counseling and why WV matters in therapy.
- Distinguish the main features of Christian and secular worldviews within the context of psychotherapy and counseling.
- Identify the main reasons modern therapy doesn’t highlight its own WV assumptions in its training and practice, and the resulting ethical challenges.
- Practice therapy with greater awareness of the significant ethical issues involved with WV and with greater sensitivity to the WV assumptions of their counselees
- Be better able to address the psychospiritual needs of their Christian clients in therapy
Reading List
Poplin, M. (2014). Is reality secular? Testing the assumptions of four global worldviews. InterVarsity.
Long, D. S. (2010). Christian ethics: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Long, D. S. (2010). Christian ethics: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Course Schedule
Week 1 - Worldviews as Eyeglasses, Loves, and Possibilities
Every complex culture lives according to a set of foundational beliefs and values – called a worldview (WV) – that profoundly affects how its people understand themselves, the universe, and ultimate reality. We will explore the impact such assumptions are having on contemporary counseling and psychotherapy, and consider the difference a Christian worldview foundation would make on therapy for Christians.
Week 2 - Worldviews & Therapies: Christian, Secular, or Mixed
Throughout its long history, Christianity has pursued soul-healing in Jesus’s name, based on WV assumptions like God is central to the process and the Bible is foundational. Originating in the late 1800’s, modern therapy has discovered a wealth of knowledge about how people change, but it’s based on a secular WV. The great soul-care challenge facing the Church of the 21st century: Can it develop its own unique version of therapy, enriched by modern psychology, but without the secularism?
Week 3 - Revolutions that Shaped Modern Therapy
Western culture has had many revolutions over the past two millennia, and some of the most important have come to shape the way psychotherapy and counseling is done today in the West—the birth of Christianity and the person, the scientific revolution, the secular, the Marxist, the sexual, including the way therapy is done in the West. We will briefly consider the role each has played in shaping the values, practices, and ethics of contemporary therapy, and the need for a distinctly Christian approach.
Week 4 - Therapy Needs All Kinds of Knowledge—Not Just Empirical
The material blessings of science and technology can make it hard to recognize how much humans are also being harmed and held captive by materialistic and empirical powers and principalities—some of which drive modern therapy. Christian ethics, values, and practices are needed to resist, if not prevent, the worst consequences of these trends, and they call for a cultural renewal.
Week 5 - The Ethics of Therapy: Being a WV Minority in a Secular Therapy World
The values and virtues of Christian ethics that bear on therapy overlap in some ways with those of secular ethics, particularly a concern for the common good, but they differ a lot in other ways, like the role of God in psychological healing and the place of social obligations in human flourishing. The Christian therapy community has a prophetic role to play today in exposing secular bias and the suppression of therapist faith and calling for confessional pluralism as a more just framework for public mental health.
Week 6 - Christ-Centered Ethics and the Very-Good Life
“The glory of God is a human fully alive” (Irenaeus). Therapy based on Christian ethics assumes a vision of humanity made in God’s image and according to God’s design plan. Christ-centered therapists, therefore, aim to listen well and love like Christ. In our day, that means, minimally, supporting the poor in spirit, whoever they are; denouncing spiritual abuse and challenging spiritual by-pass; valuing the human body, male-female sexuality, marriage and the family, and singleness; and promoting the common good, wherever we can, with those who have a different WV.
Every complex culture lives according to a set of foundational beliefs and values – called a worldview (WV) – that profoundly affects how its people understand themselves, the universe, and ultimate reality. We will explore the impact such assumptions are having on contemporary counseling and psychotherapy, and consider the difference a Christian worldview foundation would make on therapy for Christians.
Week 2 - Worldviews & Therapies: Christian, Secular, or Mixed
Throughout its long history, Christianity has pursued soul-healing in Jesus’s name, based on WV assumptions like God is central to the process and the Bible is foundational. Originating in the late 1800’s, modern therapy has discovered a wealth of knowledge about how people change, but it’s based on a secular WV. The great soul-care challenge facing the Church of the 21st century: Can it develop its own unique version of therapy, enriched by modern psychology, but without the secularism?
Week 3 - Revolutions that Shaped Modern Therapy
Western culture has had many revolutions over the past two millennia, and some of the most important have come to shape the way psychotherapy and counseling is done today in the West—the birth of Christianity and the person, the scientific revolution, the secular, the Marxist, the sexual, including the way therapy is done in the West. We will briefly consider the role each has played in shaping the values, practices, and ethics of contemporary therapy, and the need for a distinctly Christian approach.
Week 4 - Therapy Needs All Kinds of Knowledge—Not Just Empirical
The material blessings of science and technology can make it hard to recognize how much humans are also being harmed and held captive by materialistic and empirical powers and principalities—some of which drive modern therapy. Christian ethics, values, and practices are needed to resist, if not prevent, the worst consequences of these trends, and they call for a cultural renewal.
Week 5 - The Ethics of Therapy: Being a WV Minority in a Secular Therapy World
The values and virtues of Christian ethics that bear on therapy overlap in some ways with those of secular ethics, particularly a concern for the common good, but they differ a lot in other ways, like the role of God in psychological healing and the place of social obligations in human flourishing. The Christian therapy community has a prophetic role to play today in exposing secular bias and the suppression of therapist faith and calling for confessional pluralism as a more just framework for public mental health.
Week 6 - Christ-Centered Ethics and the Very-Good Life
“The glory of God is a human fully alive” (Irenaeus). Therapy based on Christian ethics assumes a vision of humanity made in God’s image and according to God’s design plan. Christ-centered therapists, therefore, aim to listen well and love like Christ. In our day, that means, minimally, supporting the poor in spirit, whoever they are; denouncing spiritual abuse and challenging spiritual by-pass; valuing the human body, male-female sexuality, marriage and the family, and singleness; and promoting the common good, wherever we can, with those who have a different WV.
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