Be faithful to me and I will be faithful to you - The Emmanuel Movement

The Emmanuel Movement was a psychologically-based approach to religious healing introduced in 1906 as an outreach of the Emmanuel Church in Boston, Massachusetts. In practice, the religious element was de-emphasized and the primary modalities were individual and group therapy. Episcopal priests Elwood Worcester [1] and Samuel McComb [2] established a clinic at the church which lasted 23 years and offered both medical and psychological services. The primary long-term influence of the movement, however, was on the treatment of alcoholism.

[1]  Elwood Worcester (1862–1940) was the originator of the Emmanuel movement philosophy. He was raised in an educated middle-class family which fell into poverty as a result of business reversals and the death of Worcester's father. After high school, Worcester went to work at a railway claim-department office. One day, while alone in the office, he had an experience of the room filling with light and heard the words, "Be faithful to me and I will be faithful to you." After discussing the experience with his priest, Algernon Crapsey, he became convinced that he was called to the ministry. At the time he was supporting his family, but he later entered Columbia University on scholarship and earned a bachelor's degree with highest honors. Worcester, Elwood (Emmanuel Movement)

After attending Columbia College he graduated from General Theological Seminary and eventually attended the University of Leipzig. There he came under the influence of Wilhelm Wundt and Gustav Theodor Fechner. The Emmanuel Church was one of the first to use psychology as a tool in pastor care.

Freud didn’t like the Emmanuel Movement due to it’s religious overtones and therapeutic suggestion. On the other hand Worcester and McComb found psychology too rigid and dogmatic when they wrote their book “Body, Mind and Spirit”[3] in 1931. In any case the Emmanuel movement let to the acceptance of psychotherapeutic techniques in the Protestant churches and was a forerunner of the modern pastoral care movement. [Handbook of Religion and Mental Health edited by Harold G. Koenig]

 

Isador Henry Coriat (1875 –1943) was an American psychiatrist and neurologist. He was one of the first American psychoanalysts. Coriat worked with the Rev. Elwood Worcester, served as the medical expert for the Emmanuel Movement and co-authored Religion and Medicine; The Moral Control of Nervous Disorders [1908]. ( http://archive.org/details/religionandmedi01corigoog )

 [2] Samuel McComb ( 1864-1938) was raised in Belfast, Ireland and educated at Oxford. He had been a professor of church history at Queens University in Ontario and served as minister of Presbyterian churches in England and New York City, before being ordained in the Episcopal Church. A popular speaker and an excellent writer, he became the primary spokesman for the movement during its active years.

Prayer, what it is and what it does [1913]
The new life; the secret of happiness and power [1917]

Preaching in theory and practice (1926)
Faith the Greatest Power in the World (1915)
Prayers for today, with a series of meditations from modern writers (1918)
A book of modern prayers ; a collection of prayers and readings by modern writers, with an introductory essay on the meaning and value of prayer (1926)

The power of self-suggestion (1909)
The making of the English Bible, with an introductory essay on the influence of the English Bible on English literature (1909)
Christianity and the modern mind (1910)
A book of prayers : for public and personal use (1912)
Religion and medicine, the moral control of nervous disorders (1908)

 

[3] DOES THIS MEAN THE PHRASE “Body, Mind and Spirit” ORIGINATED IN THE 30’S FROM THE EMMANUEL MOVEMENT,  LONG BEFORE THE New Age GUYS?