Medicine and the Ministry: A Medical Basis for Pastoral Care

Despite the fact that in recent years a number of books dealing with the subject of pastoral counseling have been published, there has not been an adequate publication dealing with the general problems of medicine and the ministry written especially for clergymen. Dr. Sharpe has made an attempt to fill this void with his book,Medicine and the Ministry. Unfortunately, the book has many shortcomings, lacking any type of freshness or enthusiasm in exploring a relationship between the ministry and medicine which has persisted from the beginnings of both. The table of contents offers a wide variety of interesting material, but the text has a tendency to read like an etiquette manual for clerical behavior in medical situations. The major portion of the book deals with psychiatric problems, shallowly covering old diagnostic categories without offering the new insights of modern psychiatric practice or understanding. No attempt is made to demonstrate