AFTER THE RIOTS: THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS : Therapy With God : Christians Find Answers to Their Pain in Monday Night Solutions

IRVINE —  They come for all kinds of reasons.

Some have been abused by parents or spouses. Others are recovering from the physical and emotional ravages of alcoholism or drug abuse. For some, dysfunctional families have made life miserable.

They share their Christianity. And they share the fact that, after years of struggling with church teachings that either denied their problems or blamed them on lack of faith, they have come out of the closet to squarely face their pain.

“There are a lot of Christian ideas that can make you crazy, and one of them is that there is no place in the Bible for pain, doubt and dysfunction,” said Henry Cloud, a psychologist, Christian and co-director of a Newport Beach-based clinic called Minirth-Meier Clinic West.

“Too often, people with emotional problems are treated like lepers (in church); they’re told that if they had their moral lives together, they would be OK.”

Cloud’s answer is Monday Night Solutions, a weekly gathering in Irvine that attracts as many as 500 Christians from as far away as Los Angeles and San Diego. The quest: to bridge the longstanding antipathy between psychology and religion by discussing addictions and other personal problems from a Christian perspective.

“Our goal is to create an atmosphere of acceptance,” Cloud said. “We try to provide the bridge between good recovery principles and a good understanding of the Bible.”

Dubbed the Church of Recovery by some of its practitioners, the phenomenon represented by the Monday night gathering is relatively new and radical in a God-centered institution long regarded as poles apart from the human-centered realms of psychology. The movement began about 10 years ago, Cloud said, partly in response to the increasing interest in psychology and the wide-ranging human potential movement that started in the 1960s.

Monday Night Solutions has been meeting since 1989. And today, Cloud said, hundreds of people throughout the country are involved in religion-based counseling, despite the protestations of some conservative Christians that it is ungodly.

In Orange County, Cloud said, several Christian churches, including South Coast Community Church in Irvine and Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, host 12-step programs for drug addicts and alcoholics as well as various counseling groups for people with other problems. At Crystal Cathedral alone, according to Linda Bos, a minister there, about 35 groups cater to the needs of a wide range of people, including spouse abusers, sex addicts, gamblers, divorced people, overeaters, people with AIDS and the parents of gay children. And at Jewish Family Service of Orange County, non-Christians are forming support groups for Jewish adults who were molested as children.

Near the center of the movement, however, is the Minirth-Meier Clinic West, a group of Christian psychologists. In addition to counseling, the clinic produces a daily talk radio show syndicated throughout the western United States, during which callers phone in with personal problems.

But most of the action takes place on Monday evenings when hundreds of people pay $5 apiece to file into Irvine’s Radisson Plaza Hotel and unburden themselves.

The format is simple: The hosting psychologist, expounding on a theme that is usually announced beforehand, offers a brief lecture before opening the floor to questions or personal statements. Recent themes have included depression, anger, perfectionism, setting boundaries, victimization, dysfunctional families and growth.

Often, the Monday night gatherings take on an almost confessional air.

“I was in a lot of pain,” said Jeff Bunnell, 33, a free-lance musician who drives in from Los Angeles for the sessions. As the child of an alcoholic parent, Bunnell said, he had learned to suppress his emotions and later had trouble relating to women. “I was looking for some answers to the problems I had in my life,” he said.

Paul Host, also 33, of Newport Beach said he began attending the Monday night gatherings after receiving little solace from his church as he was going through divorce three years ago.

“Their opinion was that I wasn’t reading the Bible enough or didn’t have enough faith,” he said. “It led directly to my depression.”

And Meggie Righton, 38, of Dana Point said she turned to Monday Night Solutions a year and a half ago because of what she described as abusive relationships with various family members.

“The pain of the family breakup propelled me to come here,” she said. “I didn’t have the answers any more.”

Not everyone agrees, however, with psychological approaches to substance abuse and other problems. At Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana, for instance, “we teach them the Bible and send them home,” said Pastor Romaine, a church leader who doesn’t use a first name. “The Bible works, so we stick with what works.”

And Pastor Al Fox of Santa Ana’s Calvary Church (unaffiliated with Calvary Chapel) said he thinks that psychology without religion is ineffective.

“Rather than using psychology,” he said, “we use the Scripture. I don’t think psychology has the solution; in terms of really giving people principles to live by, it leaves a lot to be desired.”

But those arguments miss the point, according to Cloud.

Christian-based psychology works, he says, because it is deeply rooted in biblical principles. “God lives inside us,” he said. “If you read the Bible, every time someone has an encounter with God he looks inside himself. The Bible is on the side of people who are facing their problems and trying to grow through struggle and pain.”

By coming together to share, the psychologist said, “some hurting Christians have found a place where they can be honest without being condemned.”

Many seemed to appreciate the experience.

“It’s changed my life,” said Deidre Andre, 34, of Whittier, who said she began attending the sessions because of serious family problems. “It’s brought me closer to God and to people. It’s brought me to forgiveness.”