Anton Boisen

(1876–1965)

Anton Boisen — the founder of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), the movement that transformed theological training by putting seminary students in hospitals alongside patients. His book The Exploration of the Inner World (1936) argued that mental illness could be a doorway to religious insight, and his own experience of psychiatric hospitalization became the foundation for a new model of pastoral formation. The CPE movement he launched now trains tens of thousands of hospital chaplains and pastoral caregivers each year.

Connection

Seward Hiltner worked in the pastoral-care tradition that Boisen founded; the two are paired as the founding generation of CPE and pastoral theology as a serious academic discipline.

Why Herbert Would Be Delighted

As a pastoral theologian, Herbert's career stands directly on the foundation Boisen laid. CPE is not just a training method — it is an epistemology: the idea that you learn theology by sitting with suffering people. That Herbert is two handshakes from the man who invented this is a connection with deep professional resonance.