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Howard joined the Claremont faculty in 1959, just one year after I came.  He and Charlotte bought a house just a block away from where Jean and I lived.  Their three children and our four were much the same ages.  Our two families began to do things together and our friendship deepened.  Howard and I talked privately from time to time.  If we mean by friendship the depth and openness of personal sharing, Howard was the closest friend I have ever had.

When Howard came, the School of Theology had few students, a small faculty, no buildings, and no money.  Its only real asset was a famous and visionary president, who persuaded the faculty to share his dream.  Howard and I were ambitious young Turks with quite different, if somewhat messianic, ideas about how to organize theological education so as to save the church and the world.  I thought it should be saved by good theology.  He thought it should be saved by good counseling.  Clearly, in the endless faculty struggles over curriculum and faculty development, we were often at odds.  At some level, no doubt, we were rivals.  But this never disrupted our friendship.

Both of us matured with respect to our understanding of theological education.  But it was Howard’s growth that was most impressive.  From his beginning as a Freudian psychoanalyst, he expanded to growth counseling and spiritual direction.  From his initial individualistic approach, he moved to family and group counseling and a concern for social relationships and institutions.  And as his thinking developed and expressed itself in a series of books, so did his practice.  In our faculty, it was Howard, and only he, who marched with Martin Luther King in Selma.  It was Howard who organized the remarkably international Pastoral Counselors for Social Responsibility.

The seventies were a period of healthy turmoil in theological education.  Our eyes were opened to the consequences of patriarchy and anthropocentrism.  No one worked harder than Howard to overcome those evils both in his personal life and in his professional work.  His writings pioneered reflection about counseling in these new contexts, and his teaching was deeply affected by them.

Howard was the one member of our faculty with a truly global role.  He lectured and led workshops on every continent.  Students came to study pastoral counseling with him from Europe, Asia, South America, and, most important, perhaps, from Africa.  As the faculty became more aware of the global crisis and, under the leadership of Dean Freudenberger, adopted a curriculum theme expressing this concern, it was Howard who required his graduate students, especially those from other countries, to study with Dean.  Soon the heads of a number of important educational institutions in Africa were people who not only were skilled in dealing with personal problems and interpersonal relations, but also understood these in the context of the deepest crisis of their nations.

Throughout his faculty tenure, Howard suffered from diabetes.  But this never slowed him down.  He taught, counseled, directed dissertations, gave workshops and public lectures, and wrote influential books.  Alongside all that, he was a brilliant organizer.  Locally he organized and often administered the pastoral counseling center, involving much of the faculty in discussions of cases with the doctoral student counselors, so that the whole faculty felt some ownership of the program.  He also organized a series of impressive conferences for church workers and leaders.  If we ask what programs in the history of CST have been most appreciated and best attended by clergy and lay leaders, the answer would have to be those envisioned and implemented, almost single-handedly, by Howard.  Beyond this, nationally and internationally, he led in the professional organization of pastoral counselors.

A good many members of the Claremont School of Theology faculty have played leadership roles in their several fields.  Indeed, Claremont has provided more than its share of such leadership.  But the role of Howard Clinebell in shaping the pastoral counseling movement in North America and around the world far surpassed that of any of the rest of us.

Howard often spoke of pathogenic and salugenic Christianity.  That is, Christian teaching and church life can take forms that are damaging to individuals and to society.  They can also take forms that are genuinely healing and promote spiritual growth.  For him what is needed is not more Christianity in general.  It is the quality of Christianity that concerned him.  He saw that even pastoral counseling can be pathogenic if its practitioners do not understand the depths of the human condition or take into account the social and global contexts in which they work.  I have no doubt that Howard’s influence on pastoral counseling and on the church, as well as on his students and on the many to whom he ministered, was salugenic.  I can testify that his influence was salugenic for me.  The world, the church, and I, personally, are better because of his life and his life’s work.

         

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