Abstract
PSYCHO-THERAPEUTIC techniques provide new means for a study of the various types of religious experience, and Prof. McKenzie applies them to the study of Evangelicalism. For examining it he has the important qualification of having shared in the evangelical experience himself. Evangelical Christianity has suffered much from the dramatizing tendencies of its exponents; they have laboured to heighten the vividness of the colour scheme, and the result has been that they have presented the world with something fantastic. The actual facts are more sober. Not all evangelicals are of the ‘twice-born’ type, nor does the root and centre of their religious experience invariably lie in mystical states of consciousness. Anxious to induce in their converts a conviction of sin, evangelical teachers have sought to deepen their sense of guilt. Prof. McKenzie writes at length and with great insight upon this point, making a clear distinction between “the true sense of sin which involves repentance, and the sense of guilt which is always the outcome of repression and must be removed before repentance and forgiveness can take place”. He holds that the well-meant attempt to deepen the sense of guilt “not only does damage to the personality but is a hindrance to evangelical Christianity”.
Psychology, Psychotherapy and Evangelicalism
By Prof. J. G. McKenzie. Pp. xiii + 238. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1940.) 10s. 6d. net.
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H., J. Psychology, Psychotherapy and Evangelicalism. Nature 147, 10 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147010b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147010b0