There’s a reason more women seek help from therapists than pastors

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 9, 2025.

The Gospel Coalition’s New Year’s resolution apparently is shoring up pastoral power by shaming conservative evangelical women for seeking therapy.

“In my role as a women’s ministry director over the past 15 years, I’ve observed an increase in church women struggling with emotional and relational issues and a decrease in women coming to pastors, women’s ministry directors and small-group leaders for help,” TGC’s Laura Kleinschmidt laments. “Many women are turning to therapy instead.”

Laura Kleinschmidt

Kleinschmidt appears to be a dream choice for the men of TGC to enlist for their cause. She has a master’s degree in counseling from Westminster Theological Seminary, which gives her credibility in the world of white evangelicalism. But she knows her place. Her TGC bio says she’s the “director of women’s ministries … where she assists the pastors in pastoral care and leads women’s events.” And her website shows photos of her speaking to an audience from behind a pulpit but carefully captions the photos by calling them “Laura’s talks recorded at women’s events.”

She’s being platformed by complementarian men who want to make sure she knows she’s simply a director, not a pastor, who gives talks, not sermons. In fact, she’s not even an assistant pastor. In the spirit of Dwight Schrute on The Office, she’s merely an assistant to the pastor.

I share these nuances not to mock her but to reveal how the men of TGC operate. They think they can get away with their sexism by enlisting women they control like Kleinschmidt to shame other women into submission. So it’s no surprise that Kleinschmidt would observe an increase in conservative evangelical women having emotional and relational issues and being less interested in going to their pastors.

Not to mention the aversion too many conservative pastors have toward therapy.

It’s about male authority, not women’s well-being

Kleinschmidt’s primary concern isn’t the well-being of women but the authority of God through the authority of men over women. In contrast to what she calls “secular therapeutic culture” where she thinks people live “under the authority of that therapist,” she argues God is “the final authority over the psychological.” Then she builds the case for women submitting to their pastors, who according to TGC, all must be men.

In an interview with BNG, Shane Moe, who is a licensed therapist, said: “I definitely think there’s defensive concern among a lot of male pastors (likely including her own) about losing authority over the women in their churches and that these pastors and churches are anxiously (and often accurately) experiencing therapists as a threat to that authority.”

Shane Moe

This threat is inescapable in complementarian Christianity, where men must be considered to be in authoritative positions over women in the home, the church and often in society.

Moe explains: “Licensed therapists tend to promote equality (with the research significantly suggesting that marriages marked by equality generally promote better emotional and relational health for both partners), which is likely to prove an obstacle to, and to undercut, the aims of any patriarchal pastors who endeavor to promote hierarchical marriages and men’s entitlement to female submission. And of course, insofar as they identify themselves as representatives of and spokesmen for God — and effectively identify their interpretations of the Bible with God’s authority — these pastors (and churches) are likely to see any women foregoing, questioning or rejecting their or their church’s authority as foregoing, questioning or rejecting God’s authority.”

Who women trust to help them

Kleinschmidt does seem to want to help women. She mentions how church leaders “long to lead them to the rock that is higher than us all.” She says her church creates biblical resources and short-term small groups, while encouraging the women in their churches to “come to us early in their emotional and relational struggles so we can minister to them through the word and prayer.”

But apparently, conservative evangelical women are signaling they need more support than their pastors’ thoughts and prayers.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.