“Prayer Is Fine, but Don’t Then Quickly Move on, as If You’re Done and Dusted”: How Can the Evangelical Church Better Support Those with Mental Illness?

Abstract

There is a long history of holistic responses to mental illness and suffering in many Christian traditions. In recent years, however, there has been growing controversy surrounding the response of the Evangelical Church to mental health. Adopting often literalist interpretations of scripture, these church communities may conflate mental illness exclusively with sin, demons, or diminished faith, thereby inadvertently promoting shaming and voluntaristic notions of psychological suffering. Other church communities, meanwhile, have perhaps over-secularized psychological illness, with neglect to the healing power of faith and community. This empirical paper seeks to contribute toward an open discussion of how the Evangelical Church can both respond to, and support, Christians with mental illness by being both faithful to theological witness and asserting that theological anthropologies must be reexamined from the site of lived experiences of mental illness. Qualitative responses from 309 UK-based evangelical Christians who have experienced some form of mental illness are, in this study, analyzed regarding their views on how the church can best support Christians with mental illness. A thematic analysis suggests that a relational and spiritually sensitive approach is advocated; one that moves beyond dichotomized accounts of psychological suffering as exclusively spiritual or biomedical and toward relational care and valuing of the other.

Keywords:

• Christianity
• Church
• Evangelical
• healing
• psychological suffering
• qualitative
• relational theology

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to all the participants who openly and authentically shared their experiences for this study. I would also like to thank Dr. Jonathan Jong for supporting the earlier ethical approval process, as well as Reverend Peter Needham for providing both a listening ear to my analytic reflections and a place of balance, in which I could seek perspective.

Declaration of interest

The author declares no conflicts of interest.

Ethical statement

This project received full university ethical clearance. The author abided fully by the Ethics Guidelines for Internet-mediated Research (BPS, 2017) and the British Psychological Society’s Code of Human Research Ethics (2014).

Notes

1 See Brock and Swinton (2012); Cook and Hamley (2020); Greene-McCreight (2015); Scrutton (2020a); Swinton (2020); Weaver (2014); Webb (2017).

2 Interested readers can refer to my papers here, which document the process of these interviews and findings (Lloyd, 2021a; Lloyd & Hutchinson, 2022; Lloyd & Panagopoulos, 2022; Lloyd & Waller, 2020).

3 “Seedling psychologies” refer to ontological statements or beliefs surrounding the reality of mental illness. This may include beliefs surrounding what mental illness is, possible aetiological factors, and what might constitute viable treatment options (Hartog & Gow, 2005; Lloyd & Waller, 2020). These beliefs may be individually and/or community located and often stem from deeper theological teaching regarding what it means to be human and to experience suffering. For example, some Christian communities may believe that mental illness exists as a spiritual phenomenon while others may believe in biopsychosocial origins, or a combination of spiritual and biopsychosocial explanations. These beliefs may alter how mental illness is conceptualised, talked about, and remedied.

4 It is vital to consider the “meaning” a belief or experience holds for individuals rather than judging externally. For example, for some, medical or psychological explanations may make the most sense, whereas for others, spiritual narratives may be most helpful.

5 It should be noted that there is a small number of qualitative doctoral theses in this area, e.g., Allan (2019) and Waite (2021).

6 It is not my intention here to argue for, or against belief in demonic forces or agents. While I retain a belief in the demonic, and other spiritual forces, my concern here is more their function and consequence when applied unilaterally to all experiences of mental illness. Historically, I think evangelical Christian circles have at times labelled mental suffering, as exclusively caused by spiritual factors, while minimizing or disregarding the role of social, physical and economic drivers. For example, where mental illness is conceptualised as demonic in origin and other lifestyle factors, such as relationships, beliefs about self and others, trauma, economic status, to name just a few, are not explored.

7 That the majority of participants were female (73%) is not necessarily surprizing. Firstly, it is widely recognized that more woman attend church than men (Pew Research Center, 2016). Consequently, it can be inferred that more woman were eligible to take part in this survey. Another explanation may be that women are known to participate more in online surveys (Smith, 2009).