ANXIETY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE

Skilled in pastoral counselling, the author has written a book which endeavors to point out how one may deal constructively with the inevitable anxieties of life. In doing so, Dr. Oates brings to bear upon the various types of anxieties the insights and disciplines of the Biblical message, the findings of modern psychiatry and the clinical experience of pastoral counsellors. In successive chapters the following kinds of anxiety are dealt with: economic anxiety, finitude anxiety (i.e. basic decisions), anxiety of grief, anxiety of sin, legalistic anxiety, anxieties of the morally indifferent, anxiety of the Cross, holy dread, and anxiety and the fellowship of the concerned. There are no pat formulas for banishing anxiety, but there are very helpful leads to the understanding of them and to the handling of them. The Biblical and theological parallels seem somewhat forced at times, but pastoral counsellors and all members of the fellowship of the anxious will find it a helpful book. Protestant, but not sectarian.