Pastoral Theology and Psychology
Theological Education as Preparation for Ministry

Pastoral theology and the field of psychology have continued to intertwine themselves in the preparation of persons for ministry. Although no continuous BTI faculty colloquium exists currently in this area, the field is of enormous interest to respective faculty and to school programming. Each BTI school has faculty dedicated to this area. Some schools have particular programs, examples of which are the following:

Boston University, Danielsen Institute

http://www.bu.edu/danielsen/

The Albert and Jessie Danielsen Institute at Boston University was established through the vision and generosity of Albert V. and Jessie Boyd Danielsen “to promote the benefits of a close collaboration between psychology and religion to alleviate human suffering and enhance human growth.”  To this end, the Danielsen Institute

• operates the Danielsen Institute Clinic, a multidisciplinary mental  health clinic which is licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and serves the psychotherapeutic needs of clients in the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The Clinic offers psychotherapy, psychiatry, psychological testing, and consultation services that attend to all dimensions of a client’s personhood: biological, psychological, social, and spiritual.
• conducts clinical training programs in psychodynamic psychotherapy, with a specialization in spiritual, existential, religious, and theological issues. Several clinical training programs are offered: a practicum level training program for Boston University students in Social Work, Clinical Psychology, and Counseling Psychology and Religion; an APA accredited pre-doctoral psychology internship; a psychiatry residency elective; and APA approved continuing education programs.
• supports academic programs in Boston University’s School of Theology and Boston University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences which focus on the interface between psychology and religion, including a Doctor of Philosophy in Counseling Psychology and Religion.
• conducts research through The Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology at the Danielsen Institute that involves both empirical and humanistic approaches and benefits from the Danielsen Institute’s place within a large research university that includes graduate programs in comparative religion, theology, psychology, neuroscience, counseling, social work, psychiatry, sociology, and education.

Preparation for ministry has frequently been guided by elder ministers taking on apprentices in one way or another. This may be seen in both the hierarchical as well as more representative or democratic-oriented churches and their polities. The development of the seminary as a locus for theological education, beginning with the emergence of a professional graduate school for theological education at Andover Seminary, as it emerged out of theological ferment in the early Harvard College, begins to add a further element to the story of ministerial preparation. Today, new technologies and forms of instruction continue to reshape theological education.

Through all of these changes in the nature of ministerial preparation, one continues to see a common thread, the importance of handing on the craft from one generation to the next (II Timothy 1:14). As the Dean of the Harvard Divinity School (1958-1968), Samuel Miller drew on threads that evolved through the twentieth century to make issues of formation for ministry central to the curriculum of a newly re-fashioned Harvard Divinity School. The work of early leaders in the twentieth century in religion and psychology, such as Anton T. Boisen, the founder of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), and associated with Worcester State Hospital, Andover Newton School of Theology and the Episcopal Seminary in Cambridge, came increasingly to the fore. Since Boisen’s day and that of Samuel Miller, many others have given leadership to the field.

The emergence of Field Education in the schools of what would become the Boston Theological Institute is a story of the increasing importance given to the field of pastoral theology and to the discipline of psychology and thir joint impact upon the practice of ministry.