Sacred Spaces in Clinical Practice: Honoring Faith and Difference in Treatment

Course Description

Faith and spirituality shape how patients make meaning, experience suffering, and pursue healing. Yet, these same dimensions can present unique ethical and relational challenges for clinicians. This workshop invites participants to consider treatment as a “sacred space” where both clinician and patient bring deeply held worldviews. Together we will explore four common clinical configurations: (1) when the provider is a person of faith and the patient is not, (2) when the provider is not a person of faith but the patient is, (3) when both share the same faith tradition, and (4) when both are people of faith but from different traditions. Drawing upon ethical standards, spiritual competencies, and real-world case illustrations, participants will learn how to navigate faith-related dynamics with cultural humility, ethical integrity, and clinical sensitivity.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Differentiate between personal, cultural, and clinical dimensions of faith and spirituality in therapeutic work.
2. Identify ethical considerations and boundary issues that arise across four common faith–provider configurations.
3. Apply codes of ethics and spiritual and religious competencies to faith-related clinical decision-making.
4. Demonstrate strategies for integrating a client’s faith framework into assessment and treatment planning without imposing one’s own beliefs.
5. Develop approaches for fostering respectful dialogue when faith differences create therapeutic tension or opportunity for growth.

We’ll wrap up with a lite lunch and an engaging one-hour Q&A session. Bring your questions — and jot down any that come to mind during the first three hours.

Presenting:

Andrew J. Graham, PhD, LMHC, LMFT is Associate Professor of Counselor Education at Asbury Theological Seminary and a licensed clinician in both mental health counseling and marriage and family therapy. He has more than two decades of clinical and teaching experience at the intersection of psychology, theology, and cultural formation. Dr. Graham’s scholarship and training focus on faith integration, ethical practice, and counselor development. He regularly presents at national and international conferences