Page 112 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 5

The Society for Christian Psychology

Agnes May (Germany)
2003-2013: On 10 Years of the Society for Christian

Psychology in the USA

Interview with Eric L. Johnson (USA)

“Christ, the Lord of Psychology” is an article stian psychology, too. Therefore I knew that at
by Eric L. Johnson, published in the Journal of least some philosophers used the term and I
Psychology and Theology (Rosemead School of did so throughout the 1990ies without knowing
Psychology, Biola University) in 1997. In 2006, many other persons with a similar approach.
it was chosen by CAPS, the Christian Associa- Some Christian counselors seemed to work in
tion for Psychological Studies, to be one of the that way, I think of Larry Crabb or Leanne Pay-
“seminal works that shaped the movement” of ne, and some others, although they did not call
integrating psychology and Christianity. When it Christian psychology.
they celebrated their 50th anniversary it was
published in their anthology with33 articles of Getting to know IGNIS encouraged me finally
main influence (www.caps.net). that we should start to gather all the propon-
ents of Christian psychology in the US in order
We (at the IGNIS institute for Christian Psycho- to organize and develop what some people had
logy in Germany) discovered Eric Johnson’s text already thought and/or done.
in 1999 while working on our correspondence
course on foundations of a Christian psycho-
logy, and it certainly was a “seminal work” for
us, because Eric Johnson was the first American
author who seemed to aim for what we wan-
ted to develop: a distinct Christian psychology.
Therefore, we were excited to hear more about
his work and about – as we supposed – a large
group of other Christian psychologists around
him. What we found was not anything like a so-
ciety or an institute, but very soon a dear friend.
It took another few years until an American So-
ciety for Christian Psychology was founded in Eric Johnson in Würzburg, Germany
2003. in 2004, visiting IGNIS

E. Johnson: Yes, I really had not had any plan to Therefore, I invited some of my students and
found a Society for Christian Psychology before some friends, very few people, and we started to
I got in contact with Kathrin Halder from IG- publish a newsletter with different articles. That
NIS. She sent me an e-mail and I was at least as was the beginning of our Society for Christian
excited as you and deeply touched to hear about Psychology. We called it “…for Christian Psy-
a whole group far away in Germany which had chology” to express that we wanted to develop
already been working on the idea of a Christian this approach, not “…of”, as if we already had
psychology for about 15 years. everything worked out.

I myself first got the term from Robert Roberts A. May: The beginning of the society was mar-
in 1990, when I worked at Wheaton for one ked by a few persons with a common vision and
year. He told me about this idea, which had a newsletter with some articles to communicate
come to him by studying Kierkegaard. Stephen the vision. To whom did you send the newslet-
Evans, another philosopher, wrote about Chri- ter?

112