Religion Update: Ministry to the Mind

Dealing with depression.Controlling anger. Boosting self-esteem. Coping with stress. Facing fears. These are the issues that send readers to a bookstore's self-help aisle in search of counsel. But today's sophisticated seekers want more than "I'm O.K.--You're O.K." advice. No longer satisfied with surface solutions, they demand deeper discussions that take into account their religious beliefs, or at least include a spiritual slant.

Within the past decade, publishers have responded with so many books blending spirituality and self-help that sometimes it's hard to distinguish the pop psychology section from the religion/spirituality shelves. Although the genre ebbs and flows (its latest peak being in the mid-1990s), religion-oriented popular psychology is a perennial strong-seller.

For some houses, like Conari, this "hybridization" has become a niche. Says Brenda Knight, Conari's director of sales, marketing and editorial development, "Because we're a mission-based publisher, we try to do books that make a difference, books that give people tools to improve their lives." Conari's latest list is full of authors who have Ph.D.s in counseling or psychology, including Marion Woodman with Jill Mellick (Coming Home to Myself, Apr.) and Dawna Markova (I Will Not Die an Unlived Life, Oct.).

HCI is another big spirituality/self-help publisher, with its famed Chicken Soup series as a well-known example of this hybridization. Other HCI spirituality/self-help books include Walking Through Adversity by Rob Bryant (Aug.) and The 10 Journeys of Life: Walking the Path of Abraham, a Guide to Being Human by Michael Gold (Aug.) from HCI's Simcha imprint. Says PR director Kim Weiss, "It's hard to separate spirituality from self-help these days."

Still, this hybridization can be tricky. "There are a lot of books out there that are somewhat wishy-washy," says Regina Sara Ryan, managing editor of Hohm Press. "What can happen is that the psychological approach can water down the spiritual and make it a feel-good soup, or religious people can downplay psychology. To walk a tightrope between the two is not easy." Hohm has tried to avoid that too-soft approach with confrontational books such as The Way of Failure: Winning Through Losing by Mariana Caplan (Apr.).

But because spirituality sells, some authors have adopted the "bumper sticker approach" of simply adding buzzwords like "soul" or "spirit" to pop psychology books. That bothers author Robert Wicks, a Catholic psychologist who has written several spiritual self-help books, including Snow Falling on Snow (Paulist, May). He says a true integration of psychology and spirituality sets the stage for conversion and transformation. "Books that integrate psychology and spirituality in a real way help to remove a superego-oriented God based on guilt and replace it with an ego-oriented God who calls us to be all we can be without embarrassing us when we are who we are," he says. "That's real grace."

 Religious folks also have concerns about the individualized approach of secular self-help and pop psychology. "Generic self-help doesn't offer a community to fall back on or to look to for support," says Heidi Toboni, director of business development at Loyola Press. Loyola's editorial director Vinita Wright adds, "I think people are tired of this nebulous psycho-spiritual stuff. People are looking for something with a tradition behind it."

At Loyola, that tradition is both Catholic and, more specifically, Jesuit. "St. Ignatius [founder of the Jesuits] had an amazing grasp of the human psyche, of the connection between heart and mind," says Toboni. It's that mind-soul connection that makes the marriage between psychology and spirituality an obvious partnership. "I don't know how you can remove spirituality from self-help or self-help from spirituality," says Toboni, "because the whole point of spirituality is to grow to become fully human."

Loyola doesn't do a lot of pop psychology/self-help because that market is already overcrowded, says Wright. But when they do, the practical advice is grounded in the Catholic tradition, as in God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts (Apr.) by family therapist Gregory K. Popcak.

Of course, religion has always sought to offer advice and answers to these psychological issues, which are ultimately religious and spiritual issues as well. How people deal with loss, negative emotions and questions of identity inevitably involve their deep-seated religious or spiritual beliefs. "The core of the whole endeavor of living is a search for meaning," explains Ehud Sperling, publisher of Inner Traditions and Bear & Company. "As baby boomers age, that quest for meaning becomes more critical."

"Meaning" questions become even more explicitly religious when people face crises in their lives. "These life crises often challenge our beliefs," says Loretta Anderson, who has a doctorate in pastoral counseling and is sales and marketing manager at Twenty-Third Publications, a Catholic publisher. "The questions people often ask are God-centered: 'Why did God let this happen to me?'"

So it's not surprising that people of faith prefer that their psychological advice takes into account that faith perspective. "There is a deep spiritual hunger in people, especially during times of need," says Michele Tennesen of WaterBrook. "It's easy to ignore when life is going well, but when it's not, we turn to God." Books such as Fear: Navigating the Many Uncertainties of Life with Confidence by Jo Kadlecek (Apr.) address a key psychological issue without ignoring that fact that readers believe in God.

Organized religion hasn't always done a good job of helping people with these psycho-spiritual issues. Wright of Loyola surmises that's partly why the secular self-help genre got off the ground. "Religious traditions were not addressing the everyday, practical problems in language that people could understand," she says. The 12-step recovery movement filled that void for many people, until religious organizations finally woke up to the necessity of meeting those needs.

The seminal 12-step text would have to be Melody Beattie's Codependent No More, which has sold more than six million copies since it was published by Hazelden in 1986. A signed, limited, 15th-anniversary edition is planned for September, says Joe Riley, trade sales director at Hazelden, which specializes in addiction and recovery titles. All of Beattie's books are bestsellers, but Codependent No More tops them all, says Riley. "It's the number-one selling addiction recovery book and still sells 90,000 copies a year," he says. Because the 12-step program includes a spiritual component, many of Hazelden's books fit the spirituality/self-help category, including the recently released New Vision, New Reality: A Guide to Unleashing Energy, Joy and Creativity in Your Life by Donald C. Klein with Kathleen Morrow (May).

Having learned a few lessons from 12-step programs and other successful self-help gurus, most religious publishers now do all they can to provide people with practical advice for handling their everyday cares and concerns. Says Sperling of Inner Traditions, "There can be no separation between psychological and spiritual healing." In fact, he argues that psychologically healthy and integrated people have the clearest images of God; thus the need for books like The Toltec Path of Recapitulation by Victor Sanchez (July), which explains an ancient process for healing from traumatic life events.

Perhaps no segment of the religion publishing industry has filled the need for practical pop psychology books grounded in faith as actively as the evangelical Christian houses. "We want to publish books that change lives and meet people's needs," says Pamela Clements, v-p of marketing at Thomas Nelson. "I think people look to books to answer questions they're trying to struggle with on their own."

Not surprisingly, evangelical Christians prefer to get psychological counseling--whether one-on-one or in books--from trusted professionals with solid psychological and Christian credentials. "Of course you would want to be confident that the person giving advice shares your views about important, central tenets," says Clements. Two of the biggest names in the Christian counseling arena are Frank Minirth and Paul Meier, both of whom have published with Thomas Nelson. The Anger Workbook by Minirth and Les Carter (1992) is a strong backlist title, with more than a quarter million copies in print. So is 1999's Mood Swings: Understanding Your Emotional Highs and Lows by Minirth, Meier and Stephen Arterburn. A top-selling newer Thomas Nelson title is Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success (Mar.) by leadership expert John C. Maxwell. That book also has done very well in the general market and is approaching the quarter-million mark in sales, according to Clements.

While most CBA publishers have embraced the pop psychology genre, some still have lingering concerns about the combination of secular social science and religion. Many evangelicals bristle at the term "pop psychology." The phrase "kind of rankles for our readership," says Lonnie Hull DuPont, interim editorial director of Fleming H. Revell, a division of Baker Book House. "Historically, there has been some reluctance about psychology, and some of that still exists." But it's the "pop" part that might be especially problematic for some publishers. "Our readership likes to think that they're not following fads," says Hull DuPont. "But there are trends. For example, it's a trend to now look at depression as more than just a bad day."

Christian publishers certainly weren't the first to tackle such tough issues as depression, but the lag time between secular treatment of these issues and Christian books is narrowing. This fall, for example, Revell releases Unveiling Depression in Women: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Overcoming Depression by the father-daughter team of Archibald Hart and Catherine Hart Weber. The authors encourage women to get the professional help they need, including medication, if necessary.

For Bible-believing Christians who may still be suspicious of secular psychology, it all comes down to the issue of trust, says Lyn Cryderman, v-p and associate publisher of trade books at Zondervan. That's why Zondervan has eased back on publishing so many pop psychology titles and instead has decided to focus on a few trusted and popular authors. Two such names are Henry Cloud and John Townsend, the psychologists whose 1992 bestseller Boundaries has more than three-quarters of a million books in print. Their latest is How People Grow, which Zondervan will release in October.

Cloud and Townsend's solid biblical approach and focus on empowerment appeals to many readers, suggests Cryderman. "It really does go back to the wisdom of the Bible. And for our market, that's something that's highly valued and trusted."