Featured Books

Dr. Julia Sadusky and I have been working on a book that is due out in 2022. It is title Gender Identity & Faith: Clinical Postures, Tools, and Case Studies for Client-Centered Care. You can read about it here. Here is an early endorsement:

“Gender Identity and Faith delivers an accessible framework for clinicians working with individuals seeking therapy to better understand and integrate the aspects of their identity related to gender and religion/spirituality. Yarhouse and Sadusky provide specific interventions that can be used with clients, accompanied by numerous case examples to illustrate how to approach this complex topic with nuance and cultural humility. Given that many clients seeking therapy for gender-related needs also have a faith background that impacts their sense of self, this book is an essential read for all mental health providers working with gender diverse and transgender individuals.”

Laura Edwards-Leeper, chair of the child and adolescent committee of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and member of the child and adolescent groups revising the standards of care for transgender persons

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My most recent book is titled Emerging Gender Identities. The publisher, Brazos, offers a brief synopsis:

This book offers a measured Christian response to the diverse gender identities that are being embraced by an increasing number of adolescents. Mark Yarhouse and Julia Sadusky offer an honest, scientifically informed, compassionate, and nuanced treatment for all readers who care about or work with gender-diverse youth: pastors, church leaders, parents, family members, youth workers, and counselors.

Yarhouse and Sadusky help readers distinguish between current mental health concerns, such as gender dysphoria, and the emerging gender identities that some young people turn to for a sense of identity and community. Based on the authors’ significant clinical and ministry experience, this book casts a vision for practically engaging and ministering to teens navigating diverse gender-identity concerns. It also equips readers to critically engage gender theory based on a Christian view of sex and gender.

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This is a book is titled Costly Obedience: What we can Learn from the Celibate Gay Christian Community. Here is a brief description from the publisher:

Though we often hear about the “gay problem” today, there is an even deeper problem in the church today–one that we often overlook. The call to follow Christ is a call to costly obedience for all, not just for gay Christians. Far too often, the church has elevated homosexuality above other sins and required a costly obedience from gays that it is unwilling to demand of others. And yet, the answer is not to weaken the demands of obedience. Instead, gay Christians who make the difficult choice to align their lives with the biblical view of sexuality are a gift to the church, reminding all of us that spiritual growth and maturity is costly. There is a price to pay in following Christ and devoting our lives to the call of the gospel, and it is one that we all must pay–gay and straight Christians alike.

Through the stories and struggles of gay Christians who are reorienting their lives around the costly obedience required to follow Christ, Mark Yarhouse and Olya Zaporozhets call the church to reorient as well, leaving behind the casual morality that is widespread today to pursue the path of radical discipleship. Unlike any other book on homosexuality and the church, this is a call to examine your life and consider what God is asking you to lay down to take up your cross and follow him.

Here is an Amazon review:

You need to read this book, especially if you are in any kind of ministry or simply want to be a witness for Christ in our present culture. This book presents significant new research, but is also imminently practical and spiritually challenging. Whether you experience persistent same sex attraction or not, I think you will find this book offers edification for the whole body of Christ. I really don’t think I can recommend this book highly enough. – Robert Kelly

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This is a book titled Sexual Identity & Faith: Helping Clients Find Congruence. This is a book about how to provide clinical services to clients who experience a conflict between their same-sex sexuality and Christian faith. Here are a few endorsements:

• “Sexual Identity and Faith offers the most compassionate ‘third way’ of clinical care for those who want to mature in their sexual and religious/spiritual identities.  A valuable voice in the polarizing cultural discussion that often advocates for either sexual orientation change or affirmation, Mark Yarhouse provides an approach that does not indoctrinate but instead invites clients to craft a life that honors their values, beliefs, and experience.  This book should be a training resource for all professional caregivers who want to be culturally competent, intellectually humble, religiously consistent, and spiritually attuned.”  —Stephen P. Stratton, professor of counseling and pastoral care, Asbury Theological Seminary
• “Yarhouse provides a compassionate alternative to conversion therapy for those who struggle to live by conservative religious values while dealing with their same-sex sexual feelings and orientation.” —Judith Glassgold, PsyD, part-time lecturer, Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology
• “This is a very important resource for those who provide help to the spectrum of sexual and faith minorities. Yarhouse, in plain language, shares what he has been developing these many years of bridge-building, understanding, affirming, and respecting sexual identity and faith. This guidebook is designed to develop self-awareness, knowledge, and skills for working with a broad range of clients to facilitate their identity exploration and development. The descriptive case examples were very helpful in applying these skills, especially in seeing options for mixed-orientation couples and teenagers coming out to family members.” —Lee Beckstead, PhD, counseling psychologist
• “Sexual Identity and Faith is the clearest exposition yet of the contours of ‘Sexual Identity Therapy’ and can successfully inform clinicians in guiding clients to sort out the dissonance between their erotic attractions and their personal religious faith. As the foremost Christian clinician/researcher working in this field, Yarhouse offers us a truly client-affirmative approach in an age of ideologically-foreclosed approaches to such issues. This volume is a welcome and impressive contribution.” —Stanton L. Jones, PhD, professor of psychology, Wheaton College

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Here is a research-based book on the experiences of sexual minorities at Christian college campuses. This is both an academic book and an accessible book. It is academic insofar as we discuss our findings from a longitudinal study of sexual minorities who attend Christian colleges in the U.S. We discuss the salience of their Christian faith, their experience of the campus climate, their response to campus policies, their psychological health and emotional well-being, recommendations they would make to administrators, advice they would give to incoming sexual minorities, and so much more. To do that, we had to show the data and explain it, so in that sense, it will read as more academic.

At the same time, we have many breakout boxes to explain the material and “take away” summary points at the end of each chapter. We draw on interviews we conducted with students, and we share their experiences in their own words. In that sense, it is accessible.

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This book is about gender dysphoria and gender identity. I define key terms and explore what it is like for people who are accurately diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria and discuss some of the controversies in prevention and resolution of gender identity conflicts, as well as offer an integrated framework for how Christians might respond.

Much of the book provides background information and contemporary context for understanding gender dysphoria. The book “thickens the plot,” if you will, so that the complexities are more apparent to the reader.

Could the timing be better for a book to be released on the topic of gender dysphoria? Were you aware of this term a year ago and what it means? Whatever you knew or didn’t know then, now you have an excellent resource in Mark Yarhouse’s most recent work on the topic. He has written extensively on sexuality and gender, and in this book her offers a scholarly look at the issue of gender dysphoria. . . . From the first to the final page, Mark Yarhouse writes to inform, educate and challenge readers to be aware and sensitive to this demographic. . . . I cannot think of a more important time than the present to be gathering information on this topic, to help shape your position, refine it or perhaps change it. . . . Yarhouse has presented a thoughtful, scholarly work on this current cultural issue. I cannot stress strongly enough that this book should be read and available to every ministering person what has opportunity to work with people―the church!                  -Kent Miller, YouthWorker Journal, November/December 2015

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This is a book I wrote when I began speaking regularly at the National Youth Workers Convention, which is an annual conference for equipping youth ministers.

The book introduces some of our original research on the experiences of Christians who are navigating both sexual identity questions and religious identity as a follower of Christ. I draw on a hiking metaphor, that youth are navigating difficult terrain, and that youth ministers can function as trail guides to come alongside them, walk with them, and improve a young person’s relationship with parents (base camp), as well as help them find God on the trail.

The feedback I’ve received is that this has been a helpful resource for those in ministry and for parents of teens who are navigating sexual identity.

From a review on Amazon:

I’ve had numerous parents come to me for advice on Sexual Identity with their students. This has been my go to book to help families navigate sexual identity with their teens. Practical advice on how to speak with your teens while identifying what’s really going on in our hearts and minds. I keep a stock of these books available to hand out to families and youth leaders when sexual identity conversations arise.

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In this book I discuss causes of sexual orientation, whether orientation can change, and then I shift the focus of the book to “sexual identity,” or the act of labeling oneself based on one’s sexual attractions.

The reader is introduced to the concept of “scripts” or cultural expectations for behavior and relating to one another. I introduce the reader, then, to what has emerged as a “gay script,” or a commonly-held set of assumptions in our culture today for making meaning out of same-sex sexuality.

There are then chapters on how parents can respond to a teen who discloses a gay identity, as well as a chapter for spouses who learn that their partner is gay. The book provides more practical suggestions for loving others well with a focus not on orientation but identity.

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This is a textbook on psychopathology from a Christian perspective. The second edition is updated to DSM-5 and we have revised popular, foundational chapters on sin and psychopathology and historic pastoral care, as well as added new chapters on topics like trauma. The book was written for graduate students and professionals who want to think about psychopathology “through the eyes of faith.”

Here is a quote from a review of the second edition:

This revised edition of Modern Psychopathologies will be a very useful text for courses in diagnosis and psychopathology in Christian institutions as well as an excellent resource for Christian students enrolled in secular schools. I appreciate the care the authors have taken to place contemporary conceptualizations of psychopathology within the historical context of pastoral care and current church ministry, as well as to incorporate discussion of theological concepts such as the role of sin and suffering. Their organization of the material around DSM-5 categories will help students better understand this diagnostic system, while their critiques of DSM-5 will help enable students to understand both its benefits and limitations.                                                    – Heather Davediuk Gingrich, professor of counseling, Denver Seminary

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This is a textbook for students and counselors who are studying sexuality and learning how to provide sex therapy. The book is written from a Christian integrative worldview.

There are four opening chapters on perspectives on sexuality: theological, sociocultural, biological, and clinical. Then a section on common sexual dysfunctions, followed by additional presentations counselors may see, such as sexual addiction, the paraphilias, sexual identity conflicts, and gender dysphoria.

Here is a review of the book:

I am delighted to recommend Sexuality and Sex Therapy. As a retired graduate professor and licensed psychologist who has taught and provided psychotherapy for over thirty-five years, I have personally experienced the need for such a book for my graduate students, for help with my clients, and to recommend to pastors and youth leaders. knowing previously of only one written from a Christian perspective, which has been a lone voice regarding sexuality and sex therapy issues for many years. I have also had the opportunity to read and appreciate previous work from Yarhouse and Tan for a number of years, and find that the present volume extends the significant contributions of these authors to the Christian community in the vital area of human sexuality.                                                                                                               – Gary H. Strauss, emeritus professor of psychology, Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University

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Family Therapies is a text for graduate students and Christian family therapists. The second edition covers the various models of family theory/therapy and then provides an integrative approach to Christian family therapy. We also discuss specific topics, such as trauma, divorce and remarriage, cohabitation, and working with LGBT+ couples and families.

The second edition, in casting a vision for integrative Christian family therapy/counseling/ministry, sees the need for local family therapy to be influenced by a shrinking, global world in which family therapists will need to expand their understanding of family structure and relationships. Societal and cultural changes will have an impact on our work and the ways in which we think about and engage the families in ministry and service.

From one reviewer:

Yarhouse and Sells have created a masterpiece work analyzing approaches to family therapies. This is going to be a new classic, matching the accomplishment of Jones and Butman’s analysis of psychotherapies in their book, Modern Psychotherapies.         – Everett L. Worthington Jr., professor of psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University