When Secular Psychology and Religion Met in Tense Combat

The room was filled to overflowing. The aisles were clogged. The atmosphere was electric. The topic was “The Role of Religious Values in Human Behavior: do they belong in psychotherapy?"
The scene was the annual convention in 1979 at the American Psychological Convention in Los Angeles California.

I was there. This is what I saw and heard.
It wasn’t always the case that religious issues would be debated in this scientific body. Professor Allen Bergin, a Latter-Day Saint psychologist from Brigham Young University had taken a courageous stand at a similar convention in San Francisco in 1978 in a hostile and derisive atmosphere.
By both his manner and his scientific training, he was effective in defending a spiritual viewpoint despite the worst attacks mustered against him. He emerged as a leader and spokesperson for psychologists of all religious persuasions in legitimatizing the discussion of spiritual dimensions of human existence.
In this role and through a published article, Bergin attracted the attention of Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Therapy. Dr. Ellis was well known throughout the profession for his personal magnetism, arrogance, forthright and even profane speech. This was also true for his shocking irreverence in discussing matters of sexuality and religion. Dr. Ellis is irascibly ingratiating to his followers, greatly feared by others and by equally devout and religious professionals.

Albert Ellis was the first speaker. He brought up the following points.
1. Religion gives false hope, false certainty, false sense of security and control.
2. Man can only know what is proven by science.
3. There is no salvation by grace or by religious acts. Man gives himself “grace” when he chooses his beliefs.
4. The strong, the assertive and the achieving will get the rewards of this life. Man does not need the help of Deity.
5. Religious laws and rituals serve the purposes of political, economic and sexual censorship. These laws are anti-hedonistic and create unusual frustrations, compulsive rigidity, and mental problems such as guilt, anxiety and depression.
6. Truth only exists in the probabilistic or scientific sense. There are no unconditional “musts” that govern our behavior. Dr. Ellis voiced his own doubts that Jesus Christ was an actual historical figure and certainly not a Deity.
7. Dr. Ellis did not deny the possible existence of God. He states for himself that the probability of a God is infinitesimally small. If he were to have a manifestation of God, then he would believe.
Dr. Bergin rose and thanked Albert Ellis for the “non-dogmatic” manner of his presentation. The audience roared its approval. In his quiet, soft-spoken way, Dr. Bergin made his presentation. There was no spirit of contention but a peaceful and calm exposition of the case for religious values in a mentally healthy lifestyle.
Bergin talked about the core values underlying Christian and Jewish religion and how there is a general consensus about their efficacy among mental health professionals. He brought up studies documenting the effects, both positive and negative, of religion on people’s lives.
He described his own studies at BYU on returned missionaries showing the positive effects on devout believers. He allowed for the minority of cases where religion may interact negatively with some individuals though the cause of the dysfunction is as yet unclear.
Dr. Bergin then discussed the lawfulness of human behavior and the consequences for happiness and unhappiness. He also discussed the influence of the therapists’ values in psychotherapy, the importance of religion living under diverse belief systems and the reality of the negative effects as a small fraction of the good that religion does.
Dr. Ellis was on the defensive. He defended his strong statements as a passionate argument rather than dogmatism. He wondered about the possibility of bias in Dr. Bergin’s studies and ended by defending his notions about the laws of behavior being probabilistic.
One of Bergin’s strengths in psychology was his careful analysis of outcome studies for psychotherapy. To criticize one of his studies played right into his hand. He described the use of one measure he used based on Dr. Ellis’s own theory of irrational beliefs.
When the session ended, it was obvious that a man who believed in God had used the principles of science and scientific discourse to stand up and defeat the chief exponent of Godless psychology. All Dr. Bergin asked was that the religious psychologists have license to be themselves, that they had nothing to be ashamed of and that they never again had to yield to the coercive pressure from secular dogmatism.
Allan Bergin stood greeting a long line of well-wishers after the session concluded, while I watched Albert Ellis slip unobtrusively from the room.
Epilogue: I tried to get permission in 1985 from Allen Bergin to publish my account of this debate on religion in psychotherapy. He wrote back with the following hand-written comment:
“You may have dropped the project by now, which is quite OK – if the time has passed, let it lay. Otherwise you have my support in writing something up. Ellis is bombastic on this topic, but he has also made a number of positive contributions to the field.”
“I’m glad you’re doing so many valuable things in the rural setting. This is great.”
I didn’t pursue it any further but on a trip to Utah last year I tried to look him up and get his permission again. I found out to my dismay that he had passed away three weeks prior to my attempt to visit with him personally. I missed my chance to meet the man and thank him for his contributions to the field of psychotherapy and to learn more about his subsequent relationship with Albert Ellis after the debate.
A decade later in the early 90s, Albert Ellis then publicly acknowledged that religion does aid humanity to cope better and contributes to the well-being and happiness. He noted a few exceptions as did Allen Bergin. Had this this article been published in the mid-80s, it might have caused Ellis to dig in his heels and delay change of heart about the value of religion in people’s lives. My delay followed Bergin’s charitable lead in holding back on publication of this remarkable encounter.
See Wikipedia for account of this debate and its ultimate impact.