While I was speaking at a conference for professional Christian counselors in Brazil, I asked several conference participants to identify the one counselor who has had a pioneering impact in their country. Consistently, they mentioned the name of Dr. Ageu Heringer Lisboa. A cofounder of the Corps of Christian Psychologists and Psychiatrists (CPPC), Ageu grew up in a Christian home, but became a communist and guerrilla revolutionary guerrilla before he turned his concern for social issues into a career as a Christian psychologist. As part of our series on Pioneers in Christian counseling, we want to recognize leaders in other countries. Dr. Heringer is such a leader a South American pioneer. He answered the following questions in Portuguese and his responses were translated by a young psychologist and pastor, Robson Gomes.
*Tell us a little about your background.*
*Ageu:* I am the fifth of 12 children…I grew up in an area where there was no electricity. When we were children, my father just turned on the gas lamp to get us together and read the Bible to the children. I learned to read when I was about five years old and I taught myself to read the Bible. We would get together around a big table, tell stories, write our own stories, and read the Bible together. At about age nine, I moved to the capital of our state and this move from a rural area to an urban area had a great impact on me both culturally and emotionally. This was in 1964, near the time when we had a revolution. I had always been concerned about social conditions, so I when I was 14 I got involved with the communist party. This caused a crisis in my church. Then I moved from the communist party to the more radical party. My oldest brother was a leader of this very violent faction of the revolution.
*Tell us about your work as a psychologist. What have you done? What is your interest?*
*Ageu:* In the beginning I thought that I would be a behaviorist. Then for eight years I was involved with a social work force working with marginal people like street kids and drug addicts. I was influenced by psychiatrist Hans Büch from Switzerland. He and his wife came here five times and they had a lot of influence on me. There were others like Frank Lake from England and Carlos Zetlander from Argentina. Most Important influences came from people who wanted to integrate psychology with theology. In the past 10 years I have been working with systems family therapy, and I am always reading about religion and science or the science of religion. I make my money now doing client work: family, people, marriage counseling. I also counsel people about sexuality, including gay people.
*Describe your writing experiences.*
*Ageu:* This year I wrote an article on sexuality during the teenage years, and another one titled Homosexuality: The Controversial Issue. It is a study of David and Jonathan. A lot of homosexual people come to my clinic. They do not want to be that way. They want to change. Many are deeply in sorrow and troubled about their sexual past. They want to break from the past; they do not want to be more sexually promiscuous. They have the self-help groups where they talk about the need to work on their sexual identity. These are Christian groups.
*You made a comment about your study of David and Jonathan. Some people say they had a homosexual relationship what do you conclude?*
*Ageu:* I went to the chief rabbi in Brazil, and he agreed that during that time in that region ways to celebrate friendship were different from today. The terms that David used for Jonathan and Jonathan used for David are the same words that Jacob related to his son. Moses used the same words for parents. It is never sexual. When David cried about Jonathan, it was not only him but the generals, the army, the friends, the parents, all the people he grieved for. Now is a time when masculinity is in crisis. To be a man in Christ we have to relearn friendship between the people of the same sex without sexuality, without erotic connections. They were anti-government, leftists, very strong, very military, and very radical. In the middle 60s, wet he whole family just fought for the communist ideal. I read a lot about Karl Marx, Che Guevera, and others. But still I was always reading the Bible! And then I began to find a lot of contradictions inside the communist movement. I was always searching for a way of socialism that works along with freedom. But I did not find it.
*You wanted socialism with freedom?*
*Ageu:* Yeah. And I did not find it. But the Bible just touched me in a very deep way. By reading it, I discovered that I should not be tied to the communists. I was very Impressed by the prophets and the evangelists, the ones that preached and proclaimed justice, the idea of the kingdom of God with justice and peace without violence. So I was involved with this military group they are clandestine, always hiding, having other names so the police would not find them. So I talked to my father and asked him to tell me something about God. I believed that I could talk to God and relate to him. And I believe that I got new illumination from God and discovered new horizons. So I decided to break up with the left side of the party and be a Christian militant. This was a more problematic position for me. When I was 19 or 20, I was arrested five times. After I broke up with the communists I got arrested again and I was rejected by the old partners. So I got into the university in psychology and they gave me support. It was there that I understood that I should have a radically Christian way to live. I changed my old passion for the militancy to the passion to be a Christian, to be a Christian militant. I became a Christian fighter and found other groups of Christians inside the university. I found the gospel can be relevant to society and to psychology. So I understood that I could be a very good professional in psychology but also deeply lodged in the Bible and in theology. I decided to find other friends from the university that had the same hunger to integrate faith and science. Then I met Dr. Uriel Heckert and together we organized the first meeting for the CPPC, although it was not called CPPC at that time. The first congress (national convention) was for the Inter Varsity ministry around 1967.do not see that there can be that kind of relationship, genuine non-erotic friendship between people of the same sex.
*A number of people in Brazil consider you a pioneer in Christian counseling. Why would they think of you in that way?*
*Ageu:* I am the principal face of the movement; I am the one who showed up first. The first pioneer here was really an American. He was a professor at the Baptist Seminary in So Paolo. His name was Carl Lochler. He pushed me. He started to teach integration between psychology and theology and gave support to all of the first people that tried to study psychology. Of course, there were a number of others. I see myself as a visionary, to see the great field that should be developed in this area. I view science through the divine light of God’s Word. I am gifted by God to lead people. I mobilize people and I give them jobs, and they do jobs. Nowadays, other people lead, and I am just supporting them I do not want to lead them. I am just a consultant. I never want to lead people anymore. I am the editor of the newsletter of the CPPC. Beside the newsletter, I am now preparing a magazine that will be out soon. I am always preparing people to do better than myself. For now, my challenge is to raise my family. I am the father of six from two marriages. We had three children with the first marriage and the other three are with my second wife. With the separation of the first marriage there was so much trouble, a lot of suffering. For the children, divorce is always painful. They have to work with the pain all the time. I am the wounded healer.
*What are your plans for the future?*
*Ageu:* Some time ago, I got an invitation that’s very important to me: to work with two other psychologists to build up a home for the elderly, actually one of the first in Brazil. I will develop the religious and also the social support of the elderly. We are building the Westminster- Cannoterbury retirement center. It helps people that are elderly to work with social things. From this organization, they will try to raise funds also to help the elderly poor. So the elderly rich pay for and they borrow this money to help the elderly poor. It is privately owned; it is not Christian but the administration is Christian all of them.
*Are there other visionary things youre thinking about?*
*Ageu:* I want to give more time to my family. I am tied to the kingdom of God, but now I am just trying to raise my children. Id like to study more; give to them in their studies. Sometime I’d like to have a sabbatical just to take care of my personal life.
*What are your thoughts about the future of Christian counseling in Brazil?*
*Ageu:* The demand for mental health is just huge. I think the church and the pastor have special roles to give support because God is the Healer and the One who cares for the hurting. He himself showed care for the church and the pastor should do the same thing. So I am praying and hoping for more pastors who have more training. We have a lot of preachers, few pastors. A lot of people are without pastors. We have more than 100,000 pastors in Brazil, but we do not find real pastors. Now some are eager to take care of people, but they are just improvising they do whatever they can, but they do not have any training.
Many do not want to go through theological training, much less psychological training. I have a lot of concern about pastors who would like to take advantage of the present situation and give themselves accreditation that they have no basis for. I am concerned about this. In Brazil There is a group of pastors who call themselves psychotherapists. They all want to do therapy and psychoanalysis. So they give a 12-18 month course where people read some and then get certification to be a counselor. After 18 months, wherever you come from, you became a therapist and start to charge people, too. They have found a way to make this legal, but its just horrible. I believe that it’s a crisis in the churches identity, and these pastors are taking advantage of it. I think that we should put more attention on the biblical heritage, along with good training for the pastors who are fed up with the things like I have been describing. We need to allow theology to give birth to a more healthy therapy.
*It seems that a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists do not have very much training in theology.*
*Ageu:* Its true. They are aware of this, and they are trying to bring a few pastors and others to speak to the CPPC people. They have 16 psychology and psychiatry topics for pastors. They want to do something in a similar way to give theology for the psychiatrists. They are planning this but its not on yet. It would be nice if CPPC could organize a series of courses and give a diploma in Christian counseling. People could be psychiatrists or psychologists they are already licensed but in addition they could get a diploma in Christian counseling, with talks about integration and theology. The pastors could also get a diploma, but they would have to be seminary graduates.
*What would you like to say to the American counselors who will read this interview?*
*Ageu:* We appreciate the work that Americans have done so far in writing about counseling. Also we have the Latin American writers that we appreciate also from Peru, Argentina, and Ecuador. We appreciate what you have done, We need to allow theology to give birth to a more healthy therapy. Here is therapist directory for your help.
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