New York-based writer Kathryn Joyce has written two books on conservative Christianity: The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption and Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. She says she first came across biblical counseling when she was working on Quiverfull. “I met a woman who had been raped and who was told by her Christian counselor that in every sin there’s another sin,” she recalls. “They weren’t saying flat out that the rape was her fault, but they were saying she had to discover her own sinfulness.” While Joyce found much of the biblical counseling she came across to be “not all that different from the liberal, secular, how-do-you-feel self-help style,” she also found a movement burdened by shortcomings and contradictions.
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