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Keywords

Doubt, Faith, Secularism, Agency, Sexuality

Abstract

Issues of faith and doubt are often at the heart of religious clients’ psychological and emotional suffering. As such, they are a topic of genuine therapeutic interest. Latter-day Saint therapists have a unique responsibility to help our religious clients work through their psychological concerns, as well as help them address their religious doubts when relevant in the therapeutic setting. We argue that many of the concerns fueling client faith crises spring from taken-for-granted assumptions absorbed from our larger secular culture. Further, these assumptions are radically different from – indeed, typically antithetical to – the premises upon many of our fundamental beliefs as Latter-day Saints rest. Indeed, these unacknowledged secular assumptions are often the source of our client’s religious doubts in the first place because they are in fact toxic to sustaining a vibrant and coherent faith in the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. By helping clients more carefully and critically examine their secular assumptions, Latter-day Saint therapists can do much to help their clients overcome or avoid otherwise fatal crises of faith and, in so doing, alleviate a great deal of unnecessary suffering.

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