In 2009, when I published my book The God Virus, I received an overwhelming number of e-mails and phone calls from people asking for help dealing with the emotional and psychological trauma in connection with their leaving religion. In response, I founded Recovering from Religion, now a rapidly growing organization headed by Executive Director Sarah Morehead. Then I published Sex and God (2012). I was deluged with another set of complaints, many of them unrelated to sexual issues. This time people were asking, “How do I find a secular therapist?”
I heard horror stories from people who had sought out therapists and found themselves barraged with talk about spirituality, God, or New Age drivel. At first, I assumed I could help these people simply by coaching them on what to look for in a therapist. It didn’t take long for me to discover how wrong I was. A review of therapists’ websites around the country revealed that even I as a psychologist could not reliably identify secular therapists. Their online descriptions were often so vague as to utterly obscure which practitioners were—or were not—committed to evidence-based methods.
Digging deeper, I found that literally hundreds of religious colleges and universities have taken to churning out marriage and family counselors, psychologists, and addictions counselors. Among them are such bastions of fundamentalism as Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) and Regent University (founded by Pat Robertson). Many of these organizations teach that you can pray the gay away or that prayer can cure depression and mental illness in general. At Regent University, PhD candidates are required to spend one year studying Pat Robertson’s theology in order to get their degree! Unfortunately, when those PhDs receive their degrees, they become eligible for licensure in many states alongside more conventionally educated practitioners.
At last I realized the scale of the problem, one that so far as I knew had previously gone unrecognized. The religious Right has spent years conducting a quiet assault on the entire professions of psychology and counseling. So successful has this campaign been that in most locations, prospective clients have little to no likelihood of locating a secular, science-minded therapist on their own. In cities like Atlanta or Oklahoma City, hundreds of counselors openly advertise as “Christian counselors.” Not one advertises as a “secular counselor.”
Meanwhile e-mails such as this one kept coming: “I have been to three therapists in the last two years and all of them tried to talk to me about spirituality, God, religion or New Age shit. Where the hell do I find a therapist that uses non-superstitious methods?” If only more secular therapists would identify themselves as such, I thought. Then I thought again. I live in the Midwest, and I know the risks of being an “out” atheist psychologist firsthand. I lost numerous clients when The God Virus was published, and many sources of my referrals dried up as well. Imagine being a secular therapist in, say, Oklahoma City. The minute word got out that you were an atheist, half of your clients would stop coming to you. Churches and ministers who once were important referral sources would stop referring. Hospitals and social service agencies would stop using your services as well because many of their employees are very religious. Even local judges would stop sending couples or children and adolescents to you because the judges are religious—or because they are elected and fear the backlash if they are seen sending families and children to an atheist.
Secular people need help, but it is difficult to find good science-based therapy. Good therapists can’t advertise or reach out to the secular community because it is too dangerous to reveal themselves. A similar problem exists in the dating world. Sites such as Match.com and OkCupid.com have developed a way to help people connect anonymously and determine whether they are compatible without identifying anyone until both parties are ready. The same model, I realized, could be used to help clients find secular therapists.
Then I found Han Hills—if there were such a thing, he could be considered the savior of the secular therapy world. Hills is a web developer par excellence and a leader in the secular community in North Carolina (among other things, he is president of the Humanists and Freethinkers of Cape Fear, a local group affiliated with the Council for Secular Humanism). I met Hills while conducting a leadership workshop. I described the problem for him, and he immediately said, “I can do that for you.” I don’t think he realized then how much work he had just volunteered for. Neither did I.
It took us six months and hundreds of hours to develop a new website, seculartherapy.org. We went live in May 2012. We asked secular therapists to register anonymously on our site and promised we would do our best to protect their identities within the confines of our system. Soon secular therapists from Atlanta, Wichita, Tulsa, Dallas, San Francisco, New York City, and dozens of other locations had registered with us. At the same time, we began reaching out to the secular community, urging people to search our database first if they needed a secular counselor.
The early going was frustrating. It seemed that we did not have enough counselors registered, nor were they in the right locations. We had six in San Francisco but none in Omaha. Needless to say, Omaha was where we needed them the most. Nothing against San Francisco, but surely folks in that freewheeling secular metropolis would have little problem locating a secular therapist. Then I realized that I was wrong again. The City by the Bay may not have a Christian counselor on every corner, but it has New Age and spiritual counselors instead. Bay Area seculars needed just as much help finding secular counselors as anyone living in the heartland. (Sometimes I wonder: How many times can I be wrong about my own profession before I am required to turn in my membership card?)
In recent months, we have begun to achieve sufficient coverage. Prospective clients are able to find like-minded therapists in many communities. In March 2013, we had more than 112 registered therapists and 1,328 registered clients; we hope to have 200 therapists by the end of 2013. As the project grows, it will become ever easier to find a secular therapist. Rest assured, he or she will not send you back to Jesus or tell you to get your chakras realigned.
If you are looking for a therapist, simply go to www.seculartherapy.org. Register as a client and write a brief description of what you are looking for. This will allow you to search our database for a therapist in your area. (No names are revealed at this stage.) If you can’t find anyone near you, you can also search for therapists who do distance counseling by phone or Skype. When you find a therapist, simply e-mail him or her through our system. He or she will generally respond in twenty-four to forty-eight hours and may ask you some questions to further clarify whether your needs match his or her specialty and training. You can e-mail back and forth within our system until you are both satisfied there is a good match, and then you can make an appointment. No names or identification are revealed until you both are ready. Remember, this is not free therapy. Each therapist is a professional who makes his or her living through counseling. Therapists set their own rates; the Secular Therapist Project has no role in setting fees.
If you are a therapist, go to www.seculartherapy.org and complete an application. Four secular therapists will look at your application and make a determination. They are primarily looking for evidence that you are secular, that you use evidence-based methods, and that you will never let religion, spirituality, or New Age ideas enter into the therapeutic relationship. Your self-description, website information, and membership in secular organizations or other groups are all considered. Occasionally a religious counselor applies for our service. We generally do not approve them. There are plenty of places where religious counselors can register; this project is strictly for secular therapists. If you are secular but involved in the Unitarian Church or an Ethical Culture organization, this probably will not be an impediment to participation. If you are Baptist or Catholic, it probably will be.
For secular Americans, finding a compatibly secular therapist has just become far, far easier.
Darrel W. Ray, EdD, is the author of The God Virus (IPC Press, 2009), Sex and God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality (IPC Press, 2012), and many other books and articles. He was principal researcher on the groundbreaking study, Sex and Secularism: What Happens When You Leave Religion? A Survey of 10,000 American Secularists (IPC Press, 2011). As chairman of the board of Recovering From Religion and director of the Secular Therapist Project, his primary interest is in creating secular support networks for those who have left religion.
CFI SUMMIT
OCTOBER 24-27 2013
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Joint Conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
The transnational secular humanist magazine
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