Page 113 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 5
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The Society for Christian Psychology
E. Johnson: We did not send it to anybody. At grounds to promote the dialogue between more
that time, we neither had a mailing list nor a academic and more practical orientated propo-
lot of members of the society. We just delivered nents of Christian psychology. I personally li-
the newsletter at conferences or in our personal ked that very much, but we got feedback that
environment. I think there must be still some the different levels were very confusing to some
copies left, maybe we can sometime hand them of the participants. They could not find the
to a museum… common topic and missed personal relevance
in the contributions of theologians, philoso-
A. May: … unless all our readers want to get phers, academic psychologists, and practical
a copy now. But how did you continue after psychotherapists and counselors.
this first newsletter? Could you please tell us
more about some of the important steps of the Therefore, we decided to have conferences,
10-years history of your society? which are more counseling and psychotherapy
orientated along with the AACC conferences,
E. Johnson: There were some more newslet- and separate conferences with academic topics.
ters … An important step to a higher degree of The first one was about human agency in 2010
recognition was when Diane Langberg, a psy- and another about Christian positive psycholo-
chologist and psychotherapist of our starting gy in 2012. Even at these conferences, we rea-
group, approached Tim Clinton at an AACC lized that academic theologians, philosophers,
conference and asked him whether we could and psychologists still have difficulties in un-
join AACC, the American Association of Chri- derstanding one another. We are not used to co-
stian Counselors. He agreed and so we became operating, we do not know more than our own
the 10th division of this large organization with language, our specific thinking traditions, me-
about 50000 members. This means that we are thods, concepts. Even if we talk about the same
listed on their website, that we are represented topic, we have a very different approach.
at their annual conferences, and that we can get
financial support for our publications. Nevertheless, I am very encouraged, because
In 2005, we had our first own conference as a we are enriched by crossing disciplinary bor-
pre-conference of the AACC conference, with ders and listening to one another, and it is a
for example Diane Langberg, Stephen Evans, helpful challenge to find ways of getting our
Robert Roberts, and myself, and with guest ideas across. Before our second conference, we
speakers from Germany. advised all our speakers to be aware that they
would speak to an audience from different dis-
ciplines and therefore should try to be as close
as possible to a language that everybody could
understand – and it went better than before, not
perfect yet, but we are learning.
A. May: And what about the times between the
conferences? What else do you offer to people
interested in Christian psychology?
E. Johnson: I have not mentioned yet, that, besi-
des our newsletter – now called Soul & Spirit –
we also have our own journal, Edification. Sin-
2005 ce 2007, we have been editing two issues a year.
This was possible when Paul Watson und Timo-
Since that time we have had more good confe- thy Sismore agreed to work as editors. So far, we
rences. We first tried to have mixed conferences have had 12 issues with very good articles, and
with speakers from various professional back- the structure of the journal corresponds to our
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