Introduction
The counseling profession has increasingly framed social justice, equity, and advocacy as ethical imperatives embedded within counselor identity, supervision, and professional dispositions. The article Professional Disposition Considerations in Clinical Supervision: A Social Justice and Disability Perspective (Soldner et al., 2022) reflects this broader trend by positioning social justice–oriented supervision and advocacy as central to ethical counselor education and evaluation. While the article offers a thoughtful synthesis of disability awareness, supervision practices, and concerns about bias in professional disposition assessment, its conceptual framework raises significant ethical and theological concerns when examined, especially through other lenses of social imaginaries, including but not limited to a Christian worldview.
Before examining these concerns, it is important to establish a foundational distinction that the profession itself recognizes. The American Counseling Association defines multicultural and diversity counseling as counseling that recognizes diversity and embraces approaches that support the worth, dignity, potential, and uniqueness of individuals within their historical, cultural, economic, political, and psychosocial contexts (ACA, 2014, p. 20). This is distinct from social justice, which the counseling profession defines as actions taken by counselors to remedy social oppression and ensure that all persons have equitable access to resources and opportunities (Ratts, 2009). While multiculturalism focuses on recognizing, understanding, and respecting human diversity within the counseling relationship, social justice extends into advocacy and systemic change. This distinction is critical to the argument that follows, because it reveals that the profession itself recognizes two related but operationally different commitments—one centered within the therapeutic relationship and one extending beyond it. When these commitments are collapsed into a single construct, as much of the contemporary literature tends to do, the ethical clarity that each demands is compromised.
From my perspective, the framework advanced in this article is concerning because it reflects a particular ideological worldview that risks prioritizing advocacy that has shifted toward activism—rather than a client-centered advocacy bounded by the therapeutic relationship—over unconditional positive regard, professional boundaries, and the ethical primacy of the individual client. Carl Rogers (1957), the founder of client-centered therapy, identified unconditional positive regard as one of the necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic personality change—a condition requiring the counselor to accept the client without selective evaluation, coercion, or ideological direction. When advocacy—particularly when it shifts toward activism rather than care for the individual client—becomes the organizing principle of counselor supervision and professional competence, the Rogerian foundation of the therapeutic relationship is placed at risk, as are the Christian ethical commitments rooted in the confessional Lutheran tradition.
Although Scripture clearly calls believers to seek justice and defend the vulnerable (Isaiah 1:17; Proverbs 31:8–9; Micah 6:8), justice within Christian counseling must remain grounded in God’s Word, the rule of law, and humility before objective moral truth. When justice is redefined according to shifting ideological standards or politicized constructions of equity, the counselor risks substituting moral faithfulness and client-centered care with prescriptive advocacy that may conflict with client autonomy, dignity, and informed consent. Seeking justice for the individual—understood as the restoration of one’s sense of agency, dignity, and identity—can be an appropriate goal of the therapeutic relationship when it is defined by the client themselves. However, conflating this individualized pursuit of justice with broader social justice agendas introduces external priorities into the counseling process that may complicate treatment or cause harm by imposing conceptual frameworks that are not grounded in the client’s lived experience or therapeutic goals.
This paper critically evaluates the article’s conceptualization of social justice, equity, and advocacy and the Critical Theory tradition from which it draws, with particular attention to the risks of moral relativism, advocacy without boundaries, the neglect of forgiveness and reconciliation, and the absence of explicit worldview transparency. Drawing on established counseling literature, ethical codes, forgiveness therapy research, and Christian theological ethics, this reflection argues that the counseling profession must resist reducing ethical practice to ideological alignment and must instead anchor justice in enduring moral truth, client-centered care, and the dignity of the individual.
Conceptualizing Social Justice and Equity: Who Defines What Is “Just”?
Soldner et al. (2022) define social justice largely in terms of equity, power redistribution, and systemic transformation, drawing on established counseling literature that frames justice as correcting disparities rooted in social structures—this is an important consideration in understanding the particular narrative and voice of the article, which forms the foundation of their point of view. The authors build upon Vera and Speight’s (2003) definition of social justice as a societal vision in which resources are equitably distributed and all members are safe and secure, and they cite Goodman et al. (2004) in defining social justice work as professional action designed to change societal structures so that marginalized groups gain increased self-determination. Equity is presented not as impartial fairness, but as differential treatment based on group identity, historical disadvantage, and perceived oppression.
The conceptualization of social justice advanced by Vera and Speight (2003) and Goodman et al. (2004) reflects a philosophical lineage consistent with early twentieth-century Critical Theory. Emerging from the Frankfurt School, Critical Theory emphasized structural analyses of power, inequality, and domination, along with a normative commitment to social emancipation (Horkheimer, 1937). The focus on equitable resource distribution, systemic change, and professional action aimed at restructuring societal institutions parallels Critical Theory’s rejection of value-neutrality and its call for praxis-oriented transformation. Although these authors do not explicitly situate their work within Critical Theory, their framework clearly resonates with its core assumptions regarding power, justice, and the professional’s role as an agent of social change. Understanding the philosophical foundations of such arguments is essential, as terms like social justice are often employed without explicit clarification of their theoretical commitments. When grounded in this tradition, social justice is best understood as a form of activism rooted in a particular philosophical framework, rather than as an extension of client-centered therapeutic care focused primarily on the needs, goals, and well-being of the individual client.
While this approach is common within contemporary counseling scholarship, it raises a foundational ethical question: Who determines what is equitable or just, and by what authority? When justice is defined primarily by influential academic, professional, or cultural groups, rather than by an objective moral framework, the counseling profession risks moral relativism, creating different faculties of moral reasoning that fluctuate with cultural power structures. This relativism allows ethical standards to become contingent upon ideological alignment rather than principled discernment, placing counselors in the role of social arbiters rather than therapeutic servants. As a result, advocacy may supersede humility, activism may eclipse empathy, and the counselor’s moral authority may quietly displace the client’s lived experience and freedom of conscience. Such a shift undermines the foundational ethical commitments of counseling—respect for persons, beneficence, and nonmaleficence—by substituting stable moral grounding with socially constructed imperatives.
Standards of “justice” may shift with political trends, social movements, or ideological consensus, leaving counselors vulnerable to ideological capture or conformity pressure. In such a climate, disagreement with dominant frameworks can be reframed as an ethical deficiency rather than a legitimate moral or theological dissent. This is particularly concerning in the context of professional disposition assessment, where Soldner et al. (2022) acknowledge that evaluations are often informal and based on existing norms within a training program (Levine et al., 2019). As Garner et al. (2020) noted, professional disposition ratings lack interrater reliability, meaning that subjective ideological standards applied inconsistently could result in disparate treatment of trainees who hold dissenting moral convictions.
From a Christian worldview, justice is not socially constructed but rooted in the character of God. Scripture consistently ties justice to righteousness, truth, and impartiality under God’s law (Isaiah 1:17; Proverbs 31:8–9). The prophet Micah summarizes the divine standard: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8, NIV). Biblical justice seeks the protection of the vulnerable without redefining moral truth based on group identity or power dynamics. Moreover, the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC, 2023) Code of Ethics explicitly anchors counseling practice in a Judeo-Christian worldview, recognizing the Bible as the final authoritative basis for faith, values, and all ethics while simultaneously affirming human worth, dignity, and cultural competence. Without anchoring justice in an objective moral source, counseling risks replacing ethical discernment with ideological conformity—a particularly dangerous dynamic in supervision and gatekeeping contexts where power differentials already exist.
Notably, the very power dynamics that Soldner et al. (2022) seek to address in the supervisor-trainee relationship may be inadvertently replicated when social justice frameworks become non-negotiable standards of professional fitness. If a trainee’s religious convictions or moral reasoning lead them to a different understanding of equity or justice, the gatekeeping process could function as an instrument of ideological exclusion rather than genuine ethical evaluation. Entwistle (2015) cautions that all psychological theory and practice operates from worldview assumptions, and that failure to acknowledge these assumptions creates the illusion of neutrality where none exists. Slife et al. (2012) similarly argue that secular psychotherapy often operates under the myth of methodological neutrality, obscuring the fact that naturalistic presuppositions are themselves a worldview commitment with significant implications for clients and practitioners alike.
Client Advocacy and Social Change Advocacy: A Critical Distinction
A distinction that the contemporary counseling literature frequently obscures—and that the framework advanced by Soldner et al. (2022) fails to adequately address—is the fundamental difference between advocating for the individual client in one’s care and advocating for broader social or systemic change. These are not the same activity. They differ in scope, in ethical obligation, in professional role, and in their relationship to the therapeutic alliance. Collapsing the two into a single construct of “advocacy” creates confusion that can compromise both the counselor’s ethical clarity and the client’s welfare.
Client advocacy—advocating for the individual person sitting across from you in the counseling room—is a direct, bounded, and ethically mandated function of the therapeutic relationship. It is the counselor’s responsibility to help the client navigate systems that affect their well-being: assisting a client in accessing appropriate mental health services, helping a person with a disability secure reasonable accommodations, writing a letter of medical necessity for insurance purposes, or connecting a veteran to benefits they have earned. This form of advocacy arises from the counselor’s fiduciary duty to the individual client, is grounded in the specific needs and stated goals of that client, and is governed by the ethical principles of beneficence, autonomy, and nonmaleficence (ACA, 2014). The ACA Code of Ethics is explicit: “When appropriate, counselors advocate at individual, group, institutional, and societal levels to address potential barriers and obstacles that inhibit access and/or the growth and development of clients” (Section A.7.a.). Critically, this advocacy is initiated in response to the client’s identified needs and is carried out with the client’s informed consent and collaboration.
Social change advocacy, by contrast, is a broader ideological and political enterprise directed at transforming institutions, policies, cultural norms, or power structures. It may be informed by a counselor’s professional knowledge, but it extends beyond the therapeutic relationship and beyond any individual client’s presenting concerns. Social change advocacy is driven by the advocate’s vision of what society should look like—a vision that is inevitably shaped by worldview, political orientation, and ideological commitments. When Soldner et al. (2022) cite Dollarhide et al.’s (2021) supervision model, which defines the overarching goal of supervision as “transformation” of the profession toward social justice, they are describing social change advocacy, not client advocacy. The target is the system, the profession, and the culture—not the person in the room. Indeed, when Ratts (2009) defines social justice as actions taken to remedy social oppression and ensure equitable access, the definition itself reveals the systemic and political orientation of this enterprise—an orientation that, while valuable, operates in a fundamentally different ethical space than the client-centered multicultural competence the ACA (2014) describes.
The conflation of these two forms of advocacy is ethically hazardous for several reasons. First, social change advocacy does not require the client’s consent, input, or participation. When a counselor or supervisor pursues systemic transformation as an assumed professional obligation, they may act in ways that claim to benefit marginalized populations in the abstract while disregarding the concrete preferences, values, and autonomy of the individual clients they serve. A client who seeks counseling for depression does not necessarily consent to having their experience interpreted through a political lens, nor does the therapeutic contract authorize the counselor to leverage that client’s story in service of broader ideological goals. As Toporek et al. (2009) noted in the ACA Advocacy Competencies, effective advocacy requires a continuum of actions ranging from empowerment of the individual client to systemic intervention, and practitioners must carefully discern which level of advocacy is appropriate in a given context—a discernment that requires distinguishing between what the client needs and what the counselor believes society needs.
Second, the professional role boundaries differ substantially. When a counselor advocates for a specific client, the counselor acts within a clearly defined relationship governed by informed consent, confidentiality, and the ethical codes of the profession. The counselor’s authority is limited, accountable, and tied to the client’s welfare. Social change advocacy, however, positions the counselor as a political agent operating in arenas—policy debates, institutional reform, public discourse—where the ethical safeguards of the therapeutic relationship do not apply. The counselor’s professional credential lends authority to their advocacy, but that authority is not subject to the same accountability structures that govern clinical practice. There is no informed consent process for the populations on whose behalf the counselor claims to speak, no confidentiality obligations, and no clearly defined client whose welfare serves as the measure of success. This absence of accountability creates the conditions for the performative advocacy described earlier in this paper—advocacy that serves the moral identity of the advocate rather than the tangible needs of those who are suffering.
Third, when social change advocacy is embedded into counselor competency standards and professional disposition evaluations—as the framework in Soldner et al. (2022) effectively proposes—it transforms a political activity into a professional requirement. This is a profound shift. It means that a counselor who excels at client advocacy—who is attentive, empathic, culturally competent, and effective at helping individual clients navigate barriers—could nevertheless be judged professionally deficient if they do not embrace a particular vision of systemic transformation. The counselor who spends hours helping a client with a disability secure appropriate services but who declines to participate in political activism around disability policy is, under such a framework, inadequately disposed. This inversion of priorities reveals the danger of treating social change advocacy as synonymous with, or a necessary extension of, client advocacy. They are distinct activities with distinct ethical obligations, and the profession must resist conflating them.
From a Christian worldview, this distinction is not merely procedural but deeply theological. Scripture calls believers to serve the person before them—the neighbor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger—with humility, compassion, and direct action (James 1:27; Matthew 25:35–40; Luke 10:25–37). The Parable of the Good Samaritan does not depict a man who lobbied the Jericho city council for road safety reforms; it depicts a man who stopped, knelt beside a wounded stranger, bound his wounds, and bore the cost of his care. Both forms of response to suffering have value, but the biblical model of service begins with the individual, is characterized by personal sacrifice, and is measured by its tangible impact on the person in need—not by the sophistication of the advocate’s ideological framework. Counselors who are faithful to their clients and to their calling must prioritize the person in the room above the cause in the culture, trusting that faithful service to individuals is itself a profound expression of justice.
Advocacy Without Boundaries: Risks to Neutrality and the Therapeutic Alliance
A central concern in the article is the elevation of advocacy and social activism as core components of counselor and supervisor competence. Soldner et al. (2022) explicitly align ethical supervision with modeling activism, allyship, and systemic change efforts, drawing on Dollarhide et al.’s (2021) social justice supervision model, which defines the overarching goal of supervision as “transformation” toward a socially just profession. The model envisions supervisors who practice, model, and teach social justice with the goals of supervisee and client liberation and transformation of the profession. While advocacy has a legitimate place in counseling—particularly when clients request support navigating systems—advocacy without clear boundaries can undermine the very foundations of effective therapy.
The therapeutic relationship depends on empathy, presence, neutrality, and respect for client autonomy. Rogers (1957) argued that the therapist’s role is not to direct, interpret, or impose, but to provide a nonjudgmental environment conducive to honest self-exploration. The client is believed to be the expert in their own life. When counselors or supervisors prioritize systemic activism over therapeutic attunement, the client risks becoming a means to an ideological end rather than an individual deserving unconditional positive regard. The ACA Code of Ethics (2014) explicitly addresses this concern, stating that counselors must avoid imposing their values on clients and must honor client autonomy. Section A.4.b. specifically warns against imposing personal values, reinforcing the principle that the counseling relationship exists to serve the client’s goals—not the counselor’s ideological commitments.
Excessive advocacy can subtly coerce clients toward particular interpretations of their experiences, political narratives, or identity frameworks, even when those frameworks do not align with the client’s own values or worldview. Research has demonstrated that when political agendas infiltrate the therapeutic space, client autonomy is compromised, value neutrality is lost, professional boundaries are blurred, and client welfare is deprioritized (ACA, 2014). The case study presented by Soldner et al. (2022) ironically illustrates this risk: the supervisor Joan’s eagerness to demonstrate social justice consciousness by initiating discourse about the Black Lives Matter movement—based on assumptions about what “people like Vivian” would appreciate—resulted in a ruptured supervisory alliance. This example demonstrates that zealous advocacy, even when well-intentioned, can cause relational harm when it overrides attunement, humility, and respect for the individual’s unique experience.
Ethically, counselors are called first to beneficence, nonmaleficence, and respect for autonomy (ACA, 2014; CRCC, 2017). The Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification’s (CRCC, 2017) six core principles of ethical behavior—autonomy, beneficence, fidelity, justice, nonmaleficence, and veracity—place justice alongside, not above, the other principles. Advocacy that eclipses these principles threatens the therapeutic alliance and risks role confusion, particularly when supervisors evaluate trainees’ “professional dispositions” through an ideological lens. Advocacy must remain client-centered, voluntary, and subordinate to the therapeutic task—not an assumed moral obligation imposed by the profession. As Collins (1993) argued, all clinicians operate from a particular theoretical perspective based primarily on their worldview; the ethical imperative is not to eliminate worldview but to ensure that the client’s welfare, autonomy, and self-determination remain paramount.
Justice, Empathy, and Forgiveness: A Missing Dimension
Another significant limitation of the article’s framework is its emphasis on justice as redress and transformation without sufficient attention to empathy, compassion, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Drawing from Forgiveness Therapy literature, justice pursued without these elements risks becoming punitive rather than restorative. Enright and Fitzgibbons (2015), whose Forgiveness Therapy model is published by the American Psychological Association and supported by over three decades of empirical research, demonstrate that forgiveness is a pivotal process in helping clients resolve anger over betrayals, relieve depression and anxiety, and restore peace of mind. Their process model of forgiveness proceeds through four phases—Uncovering, Decision, Work, and Deepening—emphasizing that forgiveness acknowledges harm while resisting the dehumanization of offenders and the entrenchment of perpetual grievance.
Baskin and Enright (2004), in a meta-analysis of nine published studies, found that process-based forgiveness interventions showed large effects on both forgiveness and broader emotional health outcomes, including reductions in depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress. Reed and Enright (2006) demonstrated significant therapeutic gains among women recovering from spousal emotional abuse through forgiveness therapy interventions. Enright received the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology in 2022, recognizing the breadth and significance of his work. Forgiveness-based approaches emphasize acknowledging harm while enabling clients to release the emotional burden of resentment—a process that is fundamentally different from condoning injustice or minimizing suffering (Freedman & Zarifkar, 2016).
Christian counseling, in particular, understands forgiveness not as denial of injustice, but as a pathway to healing that interrupts cycles of resentment, retaliation, and identity-based hostility. The Lutheran theological concept of simul justus et peccator—simultaneously saint and sinner—reminds us that all human beings are both wounded and capable of wounding, both deserving of justice and in need of mercy. This theological anthropology resists the binary categorization of individuals into oppressor and oppressed, recognizing instead the complexity of human moral experience. When justice frameworks focus primarily on naming oppressors and systems of harm, without integrating forgiveness and reconciliation, they may inadvertently cultivate bitterness rather than healing—both within clients and within the profession itself.
Empathy and compassion are not optional soft skills; they are ethical imperatives. Rogers (1957) established empathic understanding as one of the three core conditions of effective therapy, alongside congruence and unconditional positive regard. A justice framework that lacks room for mercy risks undermining the counselor’s capacity to sit with complexity, ambiguity, and moral tension—essential elements of clinical work. Worthington (2006) similarly argues that forgiveness and reconciliation are distinct but complementary processes, and that evidence-based methods of reconciliation—restoring trust in damaged relationships—are essential to holistic healing. The absence of forgiveness and reconciliation from the social justice supervision framework proposed by Soldner et al. (2022) represents a significant gap that limits the framework’s therapeutic utility and risks reducing counseling to activism without healing.
The Absence of a Christian Worldview and the Need for Transparency
Notably, the article does not engage Christian theology or faith-based ethical frameworks, despite acknowledging religion as a dimension of identity and despite the significant body of literature supporting the integration of faith into counseling practice. This omission reflects a broader trend within counseling scholarship to treat secular social justice frameworks as morally neutral or universally applicable. However, all ethical frameworks are grounded in worldview assumptions, whether acknowledged or not (Entwistle, 2015; Collins, 1993). In the interest of the very transparency this section calls for, I write from a Confessional Lutheran framework, which is itself a worldview commitment and not a neutral vantage point; the argument here is not that one tradition is uniquely free of presuppositions, but that no tradition is, and that honesty about those presuppositions is a precondition of genuine ethical dialogue. Slife et al. (2012) have demonstrated that the myth of methodological neutrality in psychotherapy obscures naturalistic assumptions that may conflict with theistic worldviews, and that failure to acknowledge these assumptions can lead to what Genia (1994) described as a “secular shadow” of the client’s religion.
Worldview transparency matters because counseling ethics shape how justice, equity, harm, responsibility, and healing are defined. Research reveals that a significant majority of evangelical Christian clients seeking psychiatric services believed that therapists did not understand their beliefs and values, resulting in hesitation to initiate treatment (Furman et al., 1996, as cited in Ratts et al., 2016). This finding underscores the practical consequences of worldview opacity in the counseling profession. When secular social justice frameworks are treated as the default ethical standard, Christian clients and counselors alike may experience marginalization—a deeply ironic outcome for a profession that claims to center the experiences of marginalized populations.
The ACA’s (2015) Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC), which Soldner et al. (2022) cite approvingly, include religion and spirituality as dimensions of identity. However, as Evans and Nelson (2021) observed, spirituality and religion are mentioned as multicultural components to consider, yet there has been less emphasis on ways to adapt counseling to a client’s spirituality and religion compared to other multicultural components. Moreira-Almeida et al. (2014) outlined practical guidelines for the integration of religiosity and spirituality in counseling, including maintaining ethical boundaries, implementing a person-centered approach that honors the whole person, and exploring the client’s worldview development. These guidelines demonstrate that faith integration is not an imposition of values but an expression of genuine cultural competence—one that the social justice framework in its current form inadequately addresses.
From a Christian perspective, justice divorced from God’s revealed truth risks becoming ideological rather than moral. Counselors who hold faith-based convictions are left navigating a profession that increasingly assumes secular activism as the ethical norm, potentially marginalizing dissenting moral perspectives. As one Counseling Today contributor noted, the ACA Code of Ethics applies equally to the evangelical Christian who should not force beliefs on a client as it does to the nonevangelical who should not attempt to force beliefs on a client (Duba Onedera, 2019). Biblical justice emphasizes humility, restraint, love of neighbor, and submission to God’s authority. Integrating this worldview does not negate concern for oppression or suffering; rather, it grounds such concern in enduring moral truth rather than shifting cultural standards.
When Advocacy Becomes the Goal: Losing Sight of the Client
Perhaps the most consequential risk of embedding advocacy as a core professional competence is that advocacy itself can become the goal—displacing the individual client as the central focus of the helping relationship. When this occurs, the profession does not merely lose its ethical bearing; it actively harms the very people it claims to serve. This danger is not theoretical. As a standing member of the Winnebago County (WI) Public Board of Health and the Winnebago County (WI) Human Services Board, I have witnessed firsthand how systems ostensibly designed to serve vulnerable populations can lose focus on helping all people when deference is given to the priorities of particular advocacy groups or ideological frameworks. Resources are redirected, policies are restructured, and programmatic language shifts—yet the individuals and families who are suffering continue to suffer.
Too often, I have observed situations in which advocacy is pursued “in the name of” a marginalized group while the tangible outcomes for that group remain unchanged or even deteriorate. Programs are celebrated for their ideological alignment rather than their measurable impact on human well-being. Committees adopt the language of equity and justice while the individuals sitting in waiting rooms—the single mother navigating mental health services for her child, the elderly veteran seeking substance abuse treatment, the person with a disability trying to access community resources—remain underserved. This pattern reveals a critical distinction between advocacy as performance and advocacy as genuine service. When advocacy becomes performative, it satisfies the moral sensibilities of the advocate while failing to address the material and relational needs of the person in crisis. Lipsky (1980), in his foundational work on street-level bureaucracy, demonstrated that front-line workers in public service systems exercise significant discretion in how policies are implemented, and that institutional priorities can easily override individual client needs. When institutional priorities become ideologically oriented rather than person-centered, the discretion exercised by those in helping roles may reflect the system’s values rather than the client’s needs.
In my professional experience serving in county government, I observed a growing homeless encampment at the Winnebago County Courthouse that revealed the practical and ethical tensions embedded in certain social justice frameworks. Under the banner of social justice, policy discussions increasingly favored the preservation and encouragement of the encampment as an expression of advocacy for a marginalized population, while the human services that population needed went largely unprovided. However, this approach failed to adequately account for the broader human consequences of that decision. Ongoing drug use and illicit behavior within the encampment created barriers to providing effective substance abuse counseling services and significantly compromised the sense of safety for individuals entering the courthouse property, including victims of violent crime seeking legal and social services. In effect, the application of social justice principles resulted in the prioritization of one marginalized group at the expense of others who were equally vulnerable. Little consideration was given to recovering individuals struggling with addiction or to trauma survivors whose access to services was impaired by the environment. This experience underscored a critical limitation of system-driven justice approaches: when individuals are viewed primarily as members of categories rather than as persons, justice becomes a zero-sum exercise in which some voices are amplified while others are rendered invisible.
The counseling profession must reckon with this same dynamic. The ACA Code of Ethics (2014) establishes that the primary responsibility of counselors is to respect the dignity and promote the welfare of clients (Section A.1.a). The CRCC (2017) similarly emphasizes a primary obligation to the client’s welfare and rights. When advocacy—whether in supervision, education, or direct practice—becomes an end in itself, it can paradoxically reproduce the very power imbalances it seeks to dismantle. The advocate assumes the authority to define what the client needs, what justice looks like, and what healing requires, often without meaningful input from the client whose life is at stake.
From a Christian perspective, genuine service requires humility before the individual, not merely humility before an ideology. The Apostle Paul’s instruction to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:3–4, NIV) speaks directly to this concern. Advocacy that centers the advocate’s moral identity rather than the client’s lived experience falls short of the biblical standard of service. True justice, as Micah 6:8 reminds us, requires not only acting justly but loving mercy and walking humbly. Humility demands that we continually ask whether our advocacy is actually producing the outcomes we claim to seek—or whether it has become a self-referential exercise that leaves the suffering untouched. The counseling profession, like public service more broadly, must hold itself accountable not by the sophistication of its ideological commitments but by the tangible well-being of the individuals it is called to serve.
Conclusion
Professional Disposition Considerations in Clinical Supervision: A Social Justice and Disability Perspective offers a well-intentioned and thoughtful contribution to discussions of supervision, disability, and fairness in counselor education. The article’s attention to the experiences of trainees with disabilities and intersecting identities addresses a genuine need within counselor education, and its call for culturally humble, collaborative assessment practices has merit. However, its conceptualization of social justice, equity, and advocacy reflects an ideological framework that risks subordinating client-centered care, ethical neutrality, and humility to activism and systemic zeal.
From a Christian counseling perspective, justice must be pursued with reverence for God’s Word, respect for the rule of law, and unwavering commitment to the dignity and autonomy of the individual client. Rogers’ (1957) core conditions—unconditional positive regard, empathy, and congruence—remain indispensable to ethical practice, and they cannot be subordinated to ideological litmus tests. Advocacy must be bounded by professional roles and ethical codes (ACA, 2014; CRCC, 2017). Empathy must temper justice, and forgiveness must remain central to healing (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015; Worthington, 2006). Without these anchors, the counseling profession risks replacing unconditional positive regard with ideological alignment—an outcome incompatible with both ethical counseling practice and biblical justice. The path forward requires worldview transparency, genuine respect for religious and moral diversity, and a renewed commitment to the primacy of the individual client—the person sitting across from the counselor who deserves to be seen, heard, and valued as a whole person, not as a vehicle for systemic transformation.
References
American Association of Christian Counselors. (2023). AACC code of ethics. https://aacc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/AACC_Code-of-Ethics-2023_FINAL.pdf
American Counseling Association. (2014). ACA code of ethics. https://www.counseling.org/resources/aca-code-of-ethics.pdf
Baskin, T. W., & Enright, R. D. (2004). Intervention studies on forgiveness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Counseling & Development, 82(1), 79–90. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2004.tb00288.x
Collins, G. R. (1993). The biblical basis of Christian counseling for people helpers. NavPress.
Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification. (2017). Code of professional ethics for rehabilitation counselors. https://crccertification.com
Dollarhide, C. T., Hale, S. C., & Stone-Sabali, S. (2021). A new model for social justice supervision. Journal of Counseling & Development, 99(1), 104–113. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcad.12358
Duba Onedera, J. (2019). Respecting the faith of clients and counselors. Counseling Today. https://ct.counseling.org/2019/05/respecting-the-faith-of-clients-and-counselors/
Enright, R. D., & Fitzgibbons, R. P. (2015). Forgiveness therapy: An empirical guide for resolving anger and restoring hope (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.
Entwistle, D. N. (2015). Integrative approaches to psychology and Christianity: An introduction to worldview issues, philosophical foundations, and models of integration (3rd ed.). Cascade Books.
Evans, W. R., & Nelson, K. (2021). Multicultural and social justice counseling competencies: Expanding the conversation on religion and spirituality. Journal of Counseling & Development, 99(4), 448–456.
Freedman, S., & Zarifkar, T. (2016). The psychology of interpersonal forgiveness and guidelines for forgiveness therapy: What therapists need to know to help their clients forgive. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 3(1), 45–58. https://doi.org/10.1037/scp0000087
Garner, C., Freeman, B., Stewart, R., & Coll, K. (2020). Assessment of dispositions in program admissions: The Professional Disposition Competence Assessment–Revised Admission (PDCA-RA). Professional Counselor, 10(3), 337–350. https://doi.org/10.15241/cg.10.3.337
Genia, V. (1994). Secular psychotherapists and religious clients: Professional considerations and recommendations. Journal of Counseling & Development, 72(4), 395–398.
Goodman, L. A., Liang, B., Helms, J. E., Latta, R. E., Sparks, E., & Weintraub, S. R. (2004). Training counseling psychologists as social justice agents: Feminist and multicultural principles in action. The Counseling Psychologist, 32(6), 793–836. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000004268802
Holy Bible, New International Version. (2011). Zondervan.
Horkheimer, M. (1937). Traditional and critical theory. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 6(2), 245–294. (English translation commonly cited in: Horkheimer, M. (1972). Critical theory: Selected essays (M. J. O’Connell et al., Trans.). Continuum.)
Levine, A., Sung, C., & Strain, A. (2019). Gatekeeping in master’s level rehabilitation counseling programs: An exploratory study. The Journal of Counselor Preparation and Supervision, 12(2).
Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services. Russell Sage Foundation.
Moreira-Almeida, A., Koenig, H. G., & Lucchetti, G. (2014). Clinical implications of spirituality to mental health: Review of evidence and practical guidelines. Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, 36(2), 176–182.
Ratts, M. J. (2009). Social justice counseling: Toward the development of a fifth force among counseling paradigms. Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education and Development, 48(2), 160–172.
Ratts, M. J., Singh, A. A., Nassar-McMillan, S., Butler, S. K., & McCullough, J. R. (2016). Multicultural and social justice counseling competencies: Guidelines for the counseling profession. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 44(1), 28–48. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmcd.12035
Reed, G. L., & Enright, R. D. (2006). The effects of forgiveness therapy on depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress for women after spousal emotional abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(5), 920–929.
Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95–103.
Slife, B. D., Stevenson, T. D., & Wendt, D. C. (2012). Including God in psychotherapy: Strong vs. weak theism. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 40(3), 212–224.
Soldner, J. L., McCarthy, A., Levine, A., & Taylor, A. (2022). Professional disposition considerations in clinical supervision: A social justice and disability perspective. Rehabilitation Counselors and Educators Journal, 11(3). https://doi.org/10.52017/001c.57696
Toporek, R. L., Lewis, J. A., & Crethar, H. C. (2009). Promoting systemic change through the ACA advocacy competencies. Journal of Counseling & Development, 87(3), 260–268. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2009.tb00105.x
Vera, E. M., & Speight, S. L. (2003). Multicultural competence, social justice, and counseling psychology: Expanding our roles. The Counseling Psychologist, 31(3), 253–272. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000003031003001
Worthington, E. L. (2006). Forgiveness and reconciliation: Theory and application. Routledge.
Life Vocations 