Ethical Considerations in Counselor-Clergy Collaboration

As professional counselors increase their awareness of, and competence with, client spiritual concerns, the potential for boundary confusion and incursion with clergy could result in harm to clients and compromised therapeutic outcomes. Because both professional counselors and clergy members are ethically obligated by the foundational moral principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence to help and not to harm clients, it becomes necessary to clarify and distinguish the formal and functional roles of counselors and clergy as they increasingly cooperate in their commonly shared work with individuals, couples, and families. By doing so, a set of ethical guidelines for professional collaboration may be formulated.