Resisting Therapy Culture: The Dangers of Pop Psychology and How the Church Can Respond

Let Churches Be Churches and Therapists Be Therapists

We live in an age where "therapy culture" dominates our cultural milieu. Everywhere we look, therapeutic language and psychological concepts are popularized, misapplied, and lose their medical significance. Therapy and psychiatry are good practices, but when people begin to filter everything in life through a therapeutic lens, it becomes harmful rather than helpful.

The church is not immune to this phenomenon. Increasingly, people's expectations of the church and its leaders are viewed through the lens of psychological health and wellness.

In this book, Matthew Loftus unpacks how this kind of "therapy culture" can distort the Christian life. He argues that the church cannot do for people what therapy and psychiatry are designed to do. While church should be a place of healing and love for people who are suffering from mental illness, churches and their leaders should focus on what they are called to bringing people together to worship God.