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PRINCIPLES AND METHODS
This new evaluation of fellowship is important because it is
actively counteracting the individualistic tendencies that have
become very marked in the Nonconformist Churches since the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In some ways these new
movements represent a return to the ideals of the Reformation.
On the other hand, recent developments in psychology and
characterology have stimulated religious leaders and teachers
to approach the care of souls from a new point of view; and
they are interesting themselves in those aspects of physical and
psychological medicine that promise to throw a fresh light on
human problems which have not yielded to the more orthodox
religious methods.
The rapid development of psychology and psycho-therapy
has had another result: it has thrown into sharp contrast the
Christian and the secular or non-religious methods of dealing
with the human soul. Today the physician and the
psychoanalyst are taking over many of the responsibilities that were
hitherto held to be the special province of the spiritual adviser.
This secular care of souls has a humanistic basis. Behaviour
that is, from the religious point of view, sinful is by the
psychotherapist regarded merely as a symptom of neurotic
maladjustment; and by psycho-analysis or some form of mental guidance
the attempt is made to relieve the soul of its burden of guilt or
shame.
Within many of the Churches, also, there may be seen a
tendency to encourage methods of approach to the care of
souls that are markedly individualistic and non-ecclesiastical
in character. Some contemporary experiments of this kind
suggest that many ministers and teachers have lost their faith
in the power of the Christian faith and Gospel and almost as a
forlorn hope are trying to rejuvenate it by grafting on to it some
young shoot from the tree of science.
However this may be, there is ample evidence of an
increasingly clear divergence between the Christian and the secular
attitudes towards the care of souls. There are several reasons for
this divergence. It is partly to be ascribed to the changed
religious situation that has accompanied the development of
the scientific method of thought and its practical effects upon
the structure of contemporary society. Moreover, the orthodox
religious approach to human personality has in many ways
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