S H A M b l o g

"AND SO IT WAS written, as the ancients foretold, that the evolution of religion and self-help towards some common ground would continue, rendering unto God that which had previously been found only in the annals of viral marketing, and rendering unto you a new Rolex..." The conceptual similarities between self-help and today's more "secularized religions" were always striking. We've been tracking the phenomenon for a while on SHAM blog . But even your host didn't realize the degree to which today's religion is being explicitly repackaged in self-help terms. Such at least is the message of this cover story by Scott Bass, which I found in a Virginia alternative weekly. * The "relevancy movement" in American churchdom is nothing new, and has been most immediately noticeable in the music. Anyone who's listened to gospel music of late (or almost any music emanating from the so-called megachurches ) will have a hard time distinguishing...

... The speaking gig, which was in Tulsa, went very, very well. Lots of enthusiastic feedback, both during my presentation and in informal meet-n-greets afterwards. Which meant more in this case than it might otherwise, since I was talking (for two hours, remember) to a room full of shrinks—folks, in other words, who know the terrain. I missed no opportunity to remind them that the self-appointed gods of SHAMdom are eating their lunch: i.e., practicing psychotherapy without a license. Heads nodded and murmuring erupted in various corners of the hotel ballroom every time I made a related comment.... Oh, and good steamship round , too. ... Interesting feedback from one attendee arrived in a lengthy email yesterday. I made this same point in SHAM , but he anchors it in his own clinical experience, writing, in part, "It occurred to me that buying help is sometimes a way to delay change. I had that happen early in my career. People would sometimes come to me for help and say that they...