About the Books

During his lifetime, Anton T. Boisen published the three books that are being returned to print in new editions by Verbum Icon (The Exploration of the Inner World, Religion in Crisis and Custom, and Out of the Depths), as well as a hymnal, Hymns of Hope and Courage, and a manual for pastors, Problems in Religion and Life.

The Exploration of the Inner World (1936 / 1952 / 1960 / 1971 / 2015)

The Exploration of the Inner World appeared 15 years after the turning-point event in Boisen's life, his own hospitalization, and just more than a decade after launching the clinical training of theological students in 1925 that became CPE and started the clinical pastoral movement. Lauded as perhaps the most important work in the psychology of religion since William James' Varieties of Religious Experience it established Boisen as a prominent figure across disciplines.

Religion in Crisis and Custom (1955 / 1973 / 2016)

Revolutionary in its time for bringing together the fields of religion, sociology and psychology, Religion in Crisis and Custom was overlooked by many but heralded by those who read it. Profoundly insightful and prescient, Boisen's study of the advent of 20th century Pentecostalism has serious implications for the present-day growth of the "spiritual but not religious" phenomenon and insights for understanding how crisis affects what people hold onto and believe.

Out of the Depths (1960 / 2015)

The case study of Boisen himself, as he understood it looking back over 85 years of life, Out of the Depths has become a classic and a "must read" for anyone who wants to understand the origins and meaning of clinical pastoral care and the movement that was begun by Anton Boisen. 

A Verbum Icon Book, originally published by Journal of Pastoral Care Publications:

Vision From a Little Known Country (1992), edited by Glenn H. Asquith, Jr.

Also forthcoming from Verbum Icon, in a new edition:

Ministry After Freud (1985 / 2015), by Allison Stokes