Houston Baptist University is pioneering a new program — and chartering a frontier where psychology and Christianity intersect.

The college recently unveiled its Gideon Institute of Christian Psychology and Counseling, a program that will offer resources, therapy and public works in the field, right on campus.

Starting this fall, students can pursue a masters of arts in Christian psychology or Christian counseling, combining Biblical therapies with modern science.

Institute director Eric L. Johnson said that this new institute will offer the first master’s degree of its kind, since it is built around Christian psychology from the beginning.

Johnson is an academic psychologist and author of “God and Soul Care: The Therapeutic Resources of the Christian Faith.”

He taught undergraduate psychology for 10 years at University of Northwestern in Minnesota, as well as Christian psychology and counseling for 17 years at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition, he served as founding director of the Society for Christian Psychology.

“In America, theology is considered a separate discipline from psychology,” Johnson said. “But Christianity, ever since its inception, has a keen interest in humanity, how people function and relate to each other, the way we grow.”

Merging the two fields allows the study of individuals as religious beings, he explained.

“It’s a version of psychology that takes God seriously,” Johnson said.

Having worked in Christian psychology for the past 30 years, he was eager to establish a resource center. First, he had to identify an ideal home base.

Discussions with Houston Baptist University and the Gideon Charitable Trust revealed a common interest in establishing a facility.

“Maybe Houston is a place where this could take off,” Johnson thought.

He then continued to develop the concept further with university leaders and continued conversations with the Gideon Charitable Trust.

“They’re lay people with a great interest in providing high professional care for people with mental illness and psychological problems,” Johnson said. “They want to see if there’s a way to bring Jesus into the healing process.”

He spent the past year working with HBU to design the curriculum and bring the program together. Then, he was ready to meet with potential faculty.

Longtime associate Michael Cook was one of his first calls. They had already known each other for more than a decade.

Cook taught psychology and counseling at the university level for more than 20 years. He is also a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in trauma therapy and spiritual direction.

“In terms of the way we were thinking about psychology, Eric and I were very similar,” Cook said. “When he was having conversations with HBU and asked if I was interested, it was an immediate yes. This will be the first program of its kind, and that’s exciting to me.”

He plans to move to Houston in July and looks forward to teaching and providing clinical supervision for graduate students.

“There’s so much potential within this program to create students who are the next generation of therapists, who can demonstrate the efficacy of a Christian approach,” Cook said.

He said that the Gideon Institute will advance a distinct perspective of psychology based on a Christian worldview, instead of secular humanism.

“How does the field start to look different if we start with the Gospel as a foundational narrative?” Cook asks. “It becomes a significant reconstruction of the whole discipline.”

He personally dove into this examination. “I had on Christian glasses but secular eyes,” he said. “I began to question the way I related the two. This deeply theistic Christian worldview was within me. The wall holding it back just came crumbling down.”

Cook plans to continue to explore a psychology built on faith that also contains mainstream psychology at the Gideon Institute.

Johnson said that hiring other positions for the program, as well as a director for the clinic, is ongoing.

The summer will be spent fine-tuning the curriculum, publicizing the program and preparing for students in the fall.

The Christian Counseling Clinic will also begin seeing students in the fall. In previous years, the university would refer students to outside therapists.

“It’s ideal to do that on campus,” Johnson said. “Plus, we’ll be training counselors to work with students.”

Eventually, the clinic will expand its services to the general population.

“It will have a natural, organic growth cycle,” Johnson said. “Once it’s established on campus, our plans are to open it up and make it a source of therapy for the community.”

Outreach at the Gideon Institute will include conferences, overseeing an online journal and hosting educational opportunities for the city.

Johnson said that historically, Christians have sought spiritual counseling directly from the Bible and that the religion has a wealth of knowledge about therapeutic methods.

In the past, there have been efforts to integrate Christianity into already established psychological practices.

Johnson aims to reverse that structure — and instead insert psychology into theology.

“The difference is the starting point,” he said. “Typically, it begins with the science of psychology and then brings the Christian faith in. We want to begin with the resources of the Christian faith and then bring in learning from mainstream psychology.”

That approach will make HBU’s offerings distinct, Johnson said.

“There’s no program in North America that’s beginning with such a robust sense of spirituality,” he said.

Johnson believes the center will have great potential to strengthen the field.

“We’re all indebted to modern psychology,” he said. “But they wanted to develop a science of psychology that assumed a worldview of naturalism, which doesn’t allow for the resources of any religion.”

Johnson believes there’s more to offer than a secular approach allows.

“There’s a kind of emptiness,” he said. “It’s filled when we’re made in God’s image and we’re made for a relationship with a transcendental being. Psychology can develop a lot more in this area. The way to do that is to take seriously the religious beliefs of people.”

Lindsay Peyton is a writer in Houston.