« Back to Issue 36

Positive Christianity

Reviewed by Christopher MacKenna.

(This is one of two books reviewed in Edition 36 which seek to relate psychological understanding to Christian faith. The other is: Leslie J Francis, Faith and Psychology: Personality, Religion and the Individual,  Darton, Longman and Todd: London, 2005)

Dr Baker Fenn is clearly a man possessed of deep humanity, profound religious faith, and wide (and multi-cultural) psychiatric experience.  As a Christian, he takes seriously the insights of other faiths; as a man of science, he is open to the possibility of paranormal experience.  More than this, he is prepared to engage openly with the anguished questionings of his patients, and it is his candid responses to these questions which form the substance of this book which contains his thoughts about the Concept of God, Good and Evil, Sickness and Healing, Life Death and Thereafter, Suicide Prevention as a Christian’s responsibility, Prayer and Meditation, and Glimpses into the life of Christ. 

So far, so good; but the book curiously fails to satisfy.  Page after page is devoted to the thoughts and considerations which Dr Fenn finds therapeutically useful, but the relentlessly conversational style, and the endless flood of questions made this reader long for a more considered approach, rather than this ad hoc philosophising which ranges - almost embarrassingly - from the trite to the profound.

In fairness, Dr Fenn acknowledges that he is neither a theologian nor a philosopher.  Readers expecting a systematic theological approach, or a coherent presentation of psychotherapeutic ideas, will be disappointed.  What they will find, though, is one man’s deep trust in the reliability and love of God; a Christian counsellor who cares passionately, yet is prepared to be open, to wonder, and not always to know.  This book displays what the Christian faith means to him.