The modern confessional: Anglo-American religious groups and the emergence of lay psychotherapy<FNR>1</FNR><FN>This article grew out of a paper presented at a seminar devoted to “Themes in Religious History since 1700,” at Oxford University in June 1998. The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful suggestions of John Barrow, Martin Conway, Jane Garnett, Myfanny Lloyd, Jeffrey McNairn, David Channer of MRA Productions, Robin Mowat, and the anonymous JHBS reviewers regarding the preparation of this manuscript. </FN>

This article reconceives of secularization as a gradual process of increasing interaction between the (social) scientific and spiritual realms by examining the influence of Christian ideas of group confession on lay psychotherapeutic groups in Britain, Canada, and the U.S. in the early twentieth century. This article focuses on three religious group leaders of the interwar period: Frank Buchman (1878–1961), Gerald Heard (1889–1971), and Henry Burton Sharman (1865–1953). Influenced by Natural Theology and the holiness movement, they placed sin and its redemption within the world, reconceiving it as psychological individualism and its redemption as self-sacrifice to the group. This reconception endorsed the moral power of groups and influenced Alcoholics Anonymous and various groups within the Human Potential Movement. &#169; 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]