LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Faith Integration in Marriage and Family Therapy Education
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
14/2022
The role of R/S in MFT
It is well acknowledged that clients’ R/S are closely related to the issues they present in
therapy (e.g., Shafranske & Sperry, 2005) and that clinicians’ own religious values and spiritual
beliefs factor into how they deliver services to clients (Cummings, Ivan, Carson, Stanley, &
Pargament, 2014). Nonetheless, marriage and family therapists have historically eschewed
these topics, deeming matters of R/S to be outside their scope of competency, fearing that
discussing R/S with clients will be received as proselytizing, and/or holding beliefs that R/S
cause clients more harm than good (Prest & Keller, 1993). Such avoidance of R/S-related topics
in therapy has often occurred despite the fact that, traditionally, family therapists are more
likely to identify with religious institutions and practices than any other type of mental health
professional (Bergin & Jensen, 1990).
Although today the vast majority of marriage and family therapists still consider
themselves to be spiritual persons and view R/S as an important part of their lives (Carlson,
Kirkpatrick, Hecker, & Killmer, 2002), incorporating matters of faith into clinical practice
remains an uneasy task. Among those family therapists who do identify themselves as religious
and/or spiritual, many are hesitant to bring issues of R/S into the therapy room or to make use
of any R/S-informed interventions (e.g., prayer) in therapy. Such reluctance has been found to
relate to therapists’ concerns that they may cause harm to their clients if they attempt to
address R/S-related topics in therapy, in particular because they do not believe they have been
adequately trained to do so (Carlson, Kirkpatrick, et al., 2002; Carlson, McGeorge, & Anderson,
2011). The unfortunate result of family therapists’ refraining from proactively addressing
matters of R/S in therapy is that it may inadvertently keep clients from feeling the freedom to
share their own important R/S-related concerns in their therapeutic encounters (Walsh, 2009).
R/S in MFT education
With these thoughts in mind, in recent years more attention has focused on how MFT
graduate training programs may foster student competence in addressing matters of R/S in
therapy. This increased focus has coincided with the establishment in 2004 of numerous core
competencies for the practice of family therapy by the American Association for Marriage and
Family Therapy (AAMFT). Among these core competencies is the requirement that family
therapists be able to recognize “contextual and systemic dynamics” around various factors,
including “religion and spirituality” (AAMFT, 2004, p. 2). Relatedly, in 2005 the Commission on
Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) began requiring all
programs interested in accreditation to demonstrate how they were developing students’
competencies across a wide variety of diversity issues—religion and spirituality among these
(COAMFTE, 2005).
In light of these initiatives by AAMFT and COAMFTE to increase family therapists’
competencies to address matters of R/S in therapy, several studies have found that the topic of
R/S is in fact becoming more recognized in MFT education. For example, one study exploring
the beliefs of MFT faculty members as related to the integration of spirituality within family
therapy education indicated that out of 93 participants surveyed 78% believed maters of R/S
should be integrated into standard MFT curricula (Grams, Carlson, & McGeorge, 2007). That
said, this same study also found that only about half of those MFT faculty surveyed believed it
necessary to include a course devoted to topics related to R/S in their programs’ standard
sequence of courses. Another study investigated MFT students’ (n = 135) satisfaction with the
R/S-related education they received in their graduate programs (McNeil, Pavkov, Kecker, &
Killmer, 2012). Here, McNeil and her colleagues found that regardless of their individual
religious or spiritual identities MFT students desired more focus on R/S in their graduate
training, with students who had never taken an MFT course on R/S reporting less satisfaction in
the amount and quality of their R/S-related MFT training than those who had taken such a
course.
Other related works have discussed effective ways to integrate R/S into MFT students’
education. Some of these studies have indicated the need for students to explore their own R/S
beliefs and values and to connect these to their work with clients in therapy (Carlson et al.,
2011; Keeling, Dolbin-MacNab, Ford, & Perkins, 2010). Yet other studies have focused on
techniques for addressing R/S in therapy with clients, such as spiritual genograms and ecomaps
(Marterella & Brock, 2008) or ways to ask about clients’ R/S in a nonjudgmental manner
(Keeling et al., 2010). Further suggestions from the literature include expanding MFT educators’
bases of knowledge regarding R/S—including how they personally relate to R/S in their own
lives—as well as incorporating matters of R/S into various MFT courses through associated
readings and assignments (Carlson et al., 2011).
Integrating R/S in Christian faith-based MFT education
Because the field of family therapy has very different epistemological origins (e.g.,
cybernetics, general systems theory, family systems theory) than other schools of
psychotherapy, the extant literature on the integration of Christianity and psychology is not
always transferrable in addressing matters related to the integration of Christian faith and MFT.
Moreover, since those works regarding the role of R/S in MFT rarely focus exclusively on the
Christian faith, neither does this body of literature adequately address questions of Christian
faith and family therapy integration. In fact, it is only in the past decade that the specific topic
of integrating Christian faith and family therapy has begun to receive attention. Most notably,
Yarhouse and Sells (2017) have presented a Christian appraisal of the major MFT theories and
presenting problems that family therapists often face in therapy; Watson (2018) has offered a
model for MFT supervision based in Christian virtues; and Van Dyke, Jones, and Butman (2011)
have offered a Christian critique of family systems theory.
With regard to the methods by which Christian MFTs are educated to integrate their faith
in family therapy, only two scholarly works exist. The first, by Grauf-Grounds and her colleagues
from Seattle Pacific University’s MFT program (2009), notes the importance of spiritual
formation, self-of-the-therapist work, experiential activities, integration-focused course
assignments (e.g., class readings, term papers), and faculty mentorship in helping students to
better understand what it means to integrate personal faith and the practice of family therapy.
The second discusses how students in Christian Theological Seminary’s MFT program are
required to take foundational religion courses (e.g., biblical interpretation, theological
reflection) and also give a capstone presentation in which they write and present to faculty a
paper exploring how their own spiritual journeys impact what it means for them to practice
family therapy (Coyle, 2017).
While many helpful pedagogical recommendations come from these articles, neither offers
empirical support for any particular means of teaching integration to MFT students nor clarifies
how students make sense the integration-related instruction they receive in various classes.
This lack of evidence, coupled with the fact that other related research has not addressed
methods for teaching integration to MFT students studying in explicitly Christian faith-based
programs, leads to questions regarding how best to teach integration to MFT students in these
programs as well as how students interpret what they are being taught about integrating their
faith with family therapy. As such, the current study seeks to begin to identify the best practices
for teaching students in Christian faith-based MFT programs to integrate their faith with family
therapy as well as to better understand how students in such programs make sense of and
utilize the integrative education they are given as a part of their MFT graduate training.
References
Alexander, J., Chenail, R. J., Crane, D. R., Johnson, S., Nelson, T., & Schwallie, L. (2003).
American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Core Competencies. American
Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
American Occupational Therapy Association. (1994). Occupational therapy code of ethics.
Amer J Occup Ther, 48, 1037-1038.
Benson, G. C. (1989). Codes of ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 8, 305-319.
Graves, T. (2005). Building a bridge between graduation and marriage and family therapy
core competency. Utah State University.
