Resisting Therapy Culture: The Dangers of Pop Psychology and How the Church Can Respond

by Matthew Loftus

Let Churches Be Churches and Therapists Be Therapists

We live in an age where "therapy culture" dominates our cultural milieu. Everywhere we look, therapeutic language and psychological concepts are popularized, misapplied, and lose their medical significance. Therapy and psychiatry are good practices, but when people begin to filter everything in life through a therapeutic lens, it becomes harmful rather than helpful.

The church is not immune to this phenomenon. Increasingly, people's expectations of the church and its leaders are viewed through the lens of psychological health and wellness.

In this book, Matthew Loftus unpacks how this kind of "therapy culture" can distort the Christian life. He argues that the church cannot do for people what therapy and psychiatry are designed to do. While church should be a place of healing and love for people who are suffering from mental illness, churches and their leaders should focus on what they are called to bringing people together to worship God.

Genres: Counselling

224 pages, Paperback

Published August 18, 2026

About the author

Matthew grew up in a family of 15 children and completed his medical training in Baltimore, Maryland. He wrote a sci-fi Christian romance novel at age 12 (kind of a Star Wars meets Gilbert Morris thing) but has subsequently pivoted to primarily writing nonfiction about health, theology, medicine, culture, politics, and games.

Since 2015, Matthew and his family have lived in East Africa, where he currently teaches and practices Family Medicine at a mission hospital. His work has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Atlantis, Comment, Christianity Today, and Mere Orthodoxy. He is the 2025 recipient of Trinity Forum's Michael J. Gerson Prize for Excellence in Writing on Faith and Public Life.

Reviews

[Matthew A LaPine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to IVP for the advanced copy of this.

This book is my favorite new book I’ve read this year. I am by disposition more of a constructive theologian than a defender. The title made me suspect this was a defensive work. I hoped for nuance in the critique, and got far more. Matthew Loftus has managed to build a powerfully constructive vision for understanding mental health, while aptly warning against therapeutic culture. This book is an excellent, and I expect it to be widely read. He was the right person to write this. Thank you, Matthew, for this gift.

More to follow.

[Ross Von Hausen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, but as it went on, I questioned its usefulness. My criticism boils down to the fact that I don’t think it is robust enough to convert anyone to his point of view. While I personally agree with him, I suspect most people deeply immersed in therapy culture will unfairly dismiss his claims as merely religiously motivated (despite Loftus’ numerous rejections of anti-therapy attitudes within Christian circles).
Now, I have long been a critic of therapy culture, but my criticisms have mainly been from a secular standpoint grounded in figures like Szasz, Illich, Rieff, and Foucault. In my opinion, these thinkers give examples of how therapy culture smuggles in subjective cultural values under the guise of objective science. What Loftus does uniquely offer over these thinkers is a Christian worldview which differentiates the healing roles of the Church and the therapeutic establishment, and why these two institutions cannot be combined.
(4.5 stars)

[Alan Noble · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I said in my endorsement, Matthew has written an excellent, accessible, and necessary book which brings to light many of the complex realities of therapy culture in the contemporary world. As someone who has dealt with OCD for 18 years, I am acutely sensitive to dismissals of the reality of mental illness. This book does not do that. But what it does do is recognize the ways therapy can be misused, misapplied, overdiagnosed, and misunderstood. Loftus walks a tightrope, giving hope to those who suffer while advocating for clarity in our language and practices. I highly recommend this book.