What you’ll learn in this article…
- The 2026 open-access handbook details the six ASERVIC competency domains.
- Pew data show 29% of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated.
- Spiritual competence screens for religious trauma without imposing counselor values.
Nearly three in ten U.S. adults now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, according to Pew Research Center's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, yet many still bring faith, doubt, or spiritual wounds into counseling without being asked. The new Handbook of Training in Spiritual and Religious Competencies in Mental Health Professions arrives as a practical response, with the ASERVIC competencies serving as its core framework. Those competencies give counselors a shared language for intake questions, ethical limits, documentation, and training, not a script for conversion. The clinical risk is not the client's beliefs; it is the counselor's unexamined default when no structure invites the topic.
What the New Open-Access Handbook Includes
The 2026 volume that counseling programs are discussing is the Handbook of Training in Spiritual and Religious Competencies in Mental Health Professions, edited by Joseph M. Currier, Jesse Fox, and Cassandra Vieten. Oxford University Press is the publisher. Online chapters began appearing on September 17, 2026, and a print edition is expected on December 16, 2026.1 Jesse Fox is an associate professor of counselor education at Stetson University and directs the Episcopal Counseling Center of St. Barnabas. Stetson's news page highlights the handbook at stetson.edu/artsci/counselor/news/fox-handbook-2026.php.
What the volume covers
- Introduction and context: An introductory chapter by Currier, Fox, and Vieten frames why spiritual and religious competencies belong in mental health training.
- Core clinical skills: Chapters address assessment, collaboration with clergy and spiritual leaders, counselor self-awareness, client strengths, and responding to spiritual struggles.
- Coursework and supervision: Sections cover integrating religious and spiritual competencies into clinical microskills, psychotherapy coursework, ethics, and supervision, aligning with experiential learning in counseling education.
- Ethical and trauma-informed practice: One chapter applies a trauma-informed lens to ethical dilemmas in graduate spiritual competency training, and another examines ethics across counseling, psychology, social work, and psychiatry.
Open access and the ASERVIC distinction
One caution is important for readers searching for a free PDF. The sources reviewed here do not confirm that this Oxford volume is open access or freely downloadable. It is available online through Oxford Academic, but online availability is not an open license. This matters because training programs benefit from no-cost readings, and practitioners often confuse this handbook with the much shorter ASERVIC competency document. The ASERVIC competencies offer the shared framework of six domains. The handbook is a separate, fuller training volume that applies those competencies in education, supervision, and clinical work. Knowing which document is which helps counselors choose the right resource for their next step.
The ASERVIC Competencies: Six Domains in Plain Language
The table below reflects ASERVIC's 2009 Competencies for Addressing Spiritual and Religious Issues in Counseling, which comprise 14 competencies across six domains. ASERVIC has since introduced 2025 Spiritual and Religious Best Practices under the Ways Paradigm, but this table uses the 2009 domain structure for clarity. These competencies are aspirational professional guidance, not a licensing rule or a substitute for clinical judgment or jurisdiction-specific legal requirements.
| Domain | What it asks of the counselor | Clinical example |
|---|---|---|
| Culture and Worldview | Understand similarities and differences between spirituality and religion, including major world religions, agnosticism, and atheism, and recognize that a client's beliefs or absence of beliefs are central to their worldview and psychosocial functioning. | During intake, a counselor asks an agnostic client how meaning, community, and values operate in their daily life without assuming religious language will fit. |
| Counselor Self-Awareness | Recognize your own spiritual and religious beliefs and how they may influence the counseling process, and know the limits of your understanding so you can seek consultation or referral when needed. | A counselor recognizes her own assumptions about prayer and does not suggest prayer as an intervention unless the client identifies it as a meaningful resource. |
| Human and Spiritual Development | Understand various models of spiritual and religious development and their relationship to human development. | A counselor considers how a young adult client's changing relationship with religious community may follow a developmental pattern distinct from their emotional maturity. |
| Communication | Respond to client communications about spirituality and religion with acceptance and sensitivity, explore the client's perspective, and address spiritual or religious issues when therapeutically relevant. | A client mentions a religious ritual; the counselor responds with curiosity, asks what role the ritual plays in the client's coping, and refers to a trusted leader only with the client's agreement. |
| Assessment | During intake and assessment, gather information about a client's spiritual and religious perspective from the client and, when appropriate, other sources. | A counselor includes open-ended questions about spiritual background in a standard psychosocial history, avoiding a separate religious interrogation. |
| Diagnosis and Treatment | Recognize that spiritual and religious perspectives can enhance well-being, contribute to problems, or exacerbate symptoms; set goals consistent with the client's perspective; and modify techniques or use practices when appropriate and acceptable. | When a client reports guilt tied to religious teachings, the counselor considers how that belief system may contribute to depressive symptoms before collaboratively setting treatment goals. |
Spirituality vs. Religion: Why the Distinction Changes Your Practice
Counselors often treat spirituality and religion as synonyms, but collapsing the two can lead to missing how clients actually make meaning. The distinction matters less as an academic debate and more as an integrative counseling tool: the same client may draw comfort from private spiritual practice while recoiling from organized religion, or vice versa.
Two Definitions That Shape Assessment
Spirituality is a personal search for meaning, connection, and transcendence that may or may not involve a deity. Religion is an organized system of beliefs, practices, community, and moral codes shared by a group. Neither is automatically healthy or harmful, but each asks different questions in the room.
Three Client Profiles, Three Different Approaches
- Spiritual but not religious: A client meditates, describes awe in nature, and says "I'm not into church." In spiritual counseling, counselors might explore what transcendent experiences already function as resources, while avoiding assumptions that community or doctrine are needed for support.
- Religious but struggling: A client raised in a faith community now feels guilt, doubt, or exclusion. Here questions shift to how religious language helps or harms, and whether spiritual practices can be separated from institutional wounds.
- Nonreligious with strong meaning-making: An atheist client draws purpose from humanism, activism, or family legacy. The counselor explores values, chosen rituals, and relationships rather than searching for a hidden religious framework.
Why the Competency Distinction Is About Emphasis
The "difference between spiritual and religious competencies" is not a clean divide; it is a shift in emphasis. The ASERVIC document addresses both together precisely because clients often hold spiritual and religious dimensions at once. Competent practice, or cultural competence in counseling, means tracking both the personal search for meaning and the communal, doctrinal structures that may support or constrain it.
According to Pew Research Center's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, 29% of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated, including 5% atheist, 6% agnostic, and 19% "nothing in particular." Spiritual and religious competence therefore includes working comfortably with clients who hold no religious identity, not only those who do.
Applying the Competencies: Intake Questions, Assessment Tools, and Documentation
A single optional question versus a structured spiritual history can produce very different clinical pictures. Counselors do not need a formal religious background, but they do need a consistent way to invite, assess, and document spiritual material without steering the client.
Plain, Non-Leading Intake Questions
Try these as optional prompts rather than required screening items: - "Some people draw strength from spiritual or religious beliefs. Is that part of your life right now?" - "Would any spiritual or religious concerns be relevant to the problem you are describing?" - "Are there beliefs or practices I should know about to support your care?" - "Have spiritual or religious experiences ever felt harmful or confusing to you?" - "Would it be helpful to include a spiritual or faith community in your support plan?"
Brief Frameworks Worth Knowing
Three commonly used brief tools are the FICA Spiritual History Tool, the HOPE model, and the SPIRITual History. FICA, developed by Christina Puchalski and maintained by the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health,1 organizes four domains: Faith, Importance, Community, and Address in care, often expanded to thirteen detailed prompts.2 Published work describes FICA as one of the more validated brief spiritual screens, though its open-ended format does not carry the usual test-retest reliability of scored questionnaires.2 HOPE, associated with Gowri Anandarajah and Ellen Hight,1 also uses four domains but is often counted at eleven detailed prompts3; a 2025 scoping review found strong content-validity and feasibility ratings across 31 studies. The SPIRITual History by Maugans is a structured twelve-item clinical history framework,3 widely cited but with less formal validation than FICA. All three are semi-structured interviews rather than scored questionnaires, so session time varies with follow-up, but each is designed for brief clinical use.
Informed Consent and Documentation
Before asking, say something like: "You may decline any question about spirituality or religion. It will not affect your care." In the record, use the client's own words, note the clinical relevance, keep documentation aligned with the APA Code of Ethics, and avoid labels such as "religious preoccupation" unless the client introduced that language.
Referral Triggers and When to Step Back
Refer to clergy or a specialist when spiritual distress is central, when a client requests faith-specific rituals, or when material exceeds your scope. Leave spiritual content alone when the client has not raised it, says it is not relevant, or is in acute crisis where being trauma informed means another focus is needed.
Ethics, Bias, and Scope of Practice: Staying Out of the Client's Belief System
The ethical tension here is between making room for a client's spiritual life and turning that life into the counselor's own project: a matter of professional boundaries for therapists. The ACA Code of Ethics (2014) resolves this through three connected standards. A.4.b prohibits imposing personal values, especially when those values conflict with client goals or are discriminatory. A.2.c requires multicultural and diversity competence, including attention to how religion and spirituality shape worldview. C.2.a limits practice to areas of actual competence based on education, training, supervised experience, credentials, and experience, and calls for therapist peer consultation, supervision, or referral when competence is lacking. The ASERVIC competencies complement, rather than replace, these code standards.1
Three Ways Bias Shows Up
A counselor who is hostile to religion may treat prayer, church involvement, or religious language as avoidance or pathology. An enthusiastic believer can steer the session by asking "Have you brought this to God?" before the client has opened that door. A quieter pattern is avoiding faith entirely and changing the subject when a client mentions spiritual loss or religious upbringing. All three move from exploring the client's worldview to managing it.
A Self-Check Before You Intervene
Before introducing a spiritual intervention, ask: "Am I doing this because the client requested it and it fits their goals, or because I believe it will help based on my own framework?" If you cannot name a client statement, goal, or stated value that justifies the move, pause, and stay curious about the client's meanings instead of supplying your own.2
Prayer, Scripture, and Consent
Client-initiated requests differ from counselor-initiated practices. When a client asks to pray, read from a sacred text, or use a spiritual practice, the counselor can discuss the request, assess its connection to the client's goals, and proceed only with clear consent and competent delivery. A counselor should not offer to pray, cite Scripture, or lead a spiritual practice as a first-line intervention. Spiritual interventions belong in treatment only when they are person-centered, evidence-compatible where appropriate, and explicitly acceptable to the client.
Competence is not about sharing a client's beliefs. It's about never needing them to share yours.
Related Articles
Religious Trauma, Spiritual Abuse, and Conversion-Oriented Requests
Religious trauma is not a formal DSM-5-TR diagnosis1, but it is a clinically meaningful pattern of distress that can follow harm, coercion, or rupture within a religious system. Spiritual abuse is narrower: a leader or community misuses spiritual authority to control, shame, or exploit. Ordinary spiritual struggle, by contrast, may include doubt, grief, or rethinking belief without the lasting fear, hypervigilance, or shame that signal trauma.
Screening Without Pathologizing Faith
Ask these at intake as ordinary parts of a spiritual history: - What role, if any, does faith or spirituality play in how you cope right now? - Have you ever felt pressured, punished, or shamed by a religious leader or community? - Has a faith community been a source of safety, fear, or both? - When you think about your religious past, do you feel relief, longing, anger, or something else?
None of these questions assume that faith is the problem; they position faith as one possible source of meaning, support, harm, or all three.
When a Client Asks for Conversion-Oriented Counseling
Explore the request rather than act on it. Clarify what change the client hopes for, who is asking, and what outcome would mean for family, identity, and safety. Naming external pressure early often makes room for grief work, family work, or identity exploration without a preset destination. Then hold the ethical line: sexual-orientation and gender-identity change efforts are not supported by the ACA, APA, NASW, AACAP, or SAMHSA.2 Major medical and mental health organizations describe these practices as ineffective, inappropriate, or potentially harmful3; the ACA's ethics code directs counselors not to refer to such providers.2
Offer what is supported: affirming, nonjudgmental therapy that helps clients explore identity without a predetermined outcome, reduce family rejection, build social support, and address depression, anxiety, or relational harm. Faith-based counseling may be part of care; promised conversion is not.
Christian Counseling vs. Secular Counseling: Working Across Beliefs
A Shared Standard, Not a Sectarian One
The ASERVIC competencies apply to Christian counselors and secular counselors alike. The test is not which tradition the counselor practices but how well the counselor serves the client. A Christian counselor cannot assume that faith is salient, wanted, or problem-free. A secular counselor cannot treat spirituality as irrelevant, pathological, or off-limits. Both need the same core tasks: assess the client's worldview, respect boundaries, and follow the client's lead.
What the Outcome Research Shows
Spiritually integrated therapy has real but qualified support. Captari et al. (2018) pooled 97 studies with 7,181 participants and found large effects for psychological and spiritual functioning compared with no treatment (0.74), and smaller but significant advantages over secular alternatives (0.33 psychological, 0.43 spiritual). In additive studies, adding a religious/spiritual component did not significantly outperform standard therapy for psychological distress but did improve spiritual well-being. These results do not prove that Christian therapy is superior to secular therapy; they suggest that matching treatment to a client's expressed values can help.
Anderson et al. (2024) reviewed 23 randomized studies and reported an overall advantage, though the clearest benefit appeared for depressed patients.1 Anxiety and eating disorder findings were not significant. Menezes et al. (2021) found anxiety benefit but no standardized model.2 Across reviews, small samples, client self-selection, inconsistent measures, and the absence of a Christian-specific pooled effect limit claims that one tradition outperforms others.
Working Across Beliefs
For atheist, agnostic, and other-faith clients, do not import Christian language or assumptions. Ask about meaning, values, community, and grief in the client's own terms.
- Atheist or agnostic clients: Use secular meaning-making language unless the client initiates spiritual discussion.
- Other-faith clients: Ask about relevant practices, authorities, and community without assuming they mirror Christianity.
- Christian clients: Ask whether faith is a resource, a source of distress, or currently irrelevant before integrating.
Explicit Christian integration, including prayer, Scripture, or faith-based homework, requires informed consent, documented collaboration, and the client's clear initiative. If you are a Christian counselor using such interventions, make them optional and revisable.
Ethical Boundaries for Prayer and Scripture
Prayer and Scripture use should be client-initiated or requested, clinically purposeful, and never used to convert, pressure, or judge. Stop immediately if the client declines or expresses discomfort. If a client's belief system sits outside your competence, consult, seek supervision, or refer.
Faith integration belongs in a session only when the client asked for it and consented to it. Your own faith never replaces assessing the client's values, needs, or trauma history. If they want spiritual work, collaborate; if they do not, keep your personal beliefs out of the clinical agenda.
Implications for Counselor Education and Supervision
Meeting CACREP accreditation standards does not guarantee that counselors are prepared to work well when spiritual and religious themes enter the room. The 2024 CACREP Standards include religion and spirituality within the broader social and cultural diversity requirement (Standard 3.B, Social and Cultural Identities and Experiences), and Standard 3.B.11 specifically asks programs to address how these dimensions affect clients' and counselors' psychological functioning.1 The standards, however, do not tell programs which framework or activities to use, so faculty must translate the requirement into concrete learning.
Curriculum Integration
- Dedicated unit: Spend part of a multicultural counseling or human development course on spiritual and religious development theory and the ASERVIC competencies.
- Case-based discussion: Use client scenarios that involve religious doubt, spiritual identity conflict, or requests for faith-integrated counseling.
- Spiritual self-reflection: Assign a structured reflection that helps students examine their own beliefs, biases, and reactions without requiring disclosure of private faith details.
Supervision
Supervisors can treat spirituality and religion as potentially relevant cultural dimensions rather than assuming relevance or irrelevance. ASERVIC's 2025 Best Practices for Addressing Spiritual and Religious Issues in Counseling encourage supervisors to review how a supervisee's beliefs and reactions may shape assessment, diagnosis, formulation, boundaries, and referral decisions.2 The key stance is cultural humility: exploring difference without persuasion, proselytizing, or imposing the counselor's framework.2 When knowledge or resources are limited, consultation or referral is appropriate.
Demonstrating Competence
Students can show readiness through a case conceptualization that names spiritual or religious factors and their clinical significance, a documented spiritual assessment that follows informed consent and avoids pathologizing belief, or a reflective paper that connects personal values to professional limits. These activities align with ASERVIC's call for lifelong growth rather than a single check-the-box exercise.3
Resources for Further Training and How to Cite the Competencies in APA
Where can a counselor find reliable training in spiritual and religious competencies, and how do you cite the ASERVIC competencies in APA 7?
Training Pathways
Several structured options can build competency without requiring a second degree or another master's degree in counseling specializations: - Oxford handbook: The new practitioner handbook from Oxford University Press is available online through Oxford Academic for case examples and self-assessment. - ASERVIC resources and membership: The Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling publishes the competencies as a free PDF and offers member webinars, conference sessions, and a community of practice. - Continuing education: Many state and national counseling conferences offer ethics and clinical CE sessions focused on spiritual integration, including sessions qualifying for multicultural counseling or ethics hours. - Supervision and consultation: Regular case consultation with a supervisor or peer consultant who has training in spiritual and religious issues is one of the most practical ways to refine skills.
Citing the ASERVIC Competencies in APA 7
The competencies document is published by ASERVIC (2009) and is available as a PDF on the association's website. Include the full organization name in the reference, not just the acronym:
Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling. (2009). *Competencies for addressing spiritual and religious issues in counseling*. https://aservic.org/
In text, introduce the acronym on first use: (Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling [ASERVIC], 2009). Later citations can use (ASERVIC, 2009).
One Step This Week
Download the PDF, read the six competency domains, and bring one client case or supervision question to your next supervision meeting.
