Clinical Pastoral Supervision and the Theology of Charles Gerkin

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., and lecturer in the
Anglican Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver.

This book began life as a Th.D. thesis, which may explain its failure to
speak coherently to the reader. It begins reasonably well with two
chapters giving a history of clinical pastoral supervision and the basic
orientations from which such supervision is approached. The problems
come with the next two chapters in which O’Connor seeks to outline
Gerkin’s incarnational theology and theological anthropology. The
basic difficulty is that Charles Gerkin, a United Methodist cleric, is a
teacher, clinical pastoral supervisor, and pastoral psychotherapist, but
he is not a theologian. Nevertheless, to justify his own project,
O’Connor feels compelled to find a theology in Gerkin’s writings.

O’Connor returns to somewhat firmer ground in the second-last
chapter. Here he examines how clinical pastoral supervision can become a
transformative process for supervisor, supervisee, and the clients and
clinical staff with whom a student chaplain works. This chapter marks a
return to the relatively clear writing of the opening chapters. As a
general observation, this would have been a better book had it been
based on the author’s own perspectives and practice.