The 1963 Turning Point: How Rockefeller Philanthropy Replaced the Church with Clinical Psychology in Missouri Law
I. Introduction
Missouri is often held up as a conservative, Christian state. Yet even here, in the heartland, the machinery of secular psychiatry was written into law in ways that supplanted the Church’s historic role as caretaker of souls. In 1963, Missouri adopted Chapter 552 of its criminal code—the first statutory authorization for court-ordered psychiatric evaluations.
Until then, Missouri relied on the ancient M’Naghten rule of insanity, which was invoked only when a major crime had been committed and a defendant claimed they did not know right from wrong. For civil cases, probate courts could adjudicate someone insane. Beyond these extremes, the ordinary care of troubled souls—whether in grief, despair, or moral struggle—was entrusted to pastors and churches.
The 1963 statute changed that balance dramatically. Judges were newly authorized to order “competency” evaluations by psychiatrists (and later psychologists), often without any substantiated allegation of misconduct. What had been a pastoral, community, and spiritual responsibility was suddenly transferred to a secular professional class whose institutional roots traced directly to corporate philanthropy.
II. The Historical Role of the Church
For centuries, the cura animarum (“care of souls”) was entrusted to the Church. Clergy offered confession, counsel, and correction. Pastors knew their flocks personally, guiding them through Scripture and sacrament. The biblical mandate is clear:
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“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14).
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“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness” (Galatians 6:1).
Before 1963, Missouri’s reliance on the M’Naghten rule et civil probate proceedings shows that the state recognized only two narrow categories for mental incompetency: criminal insanity in major offenses, or extreme civil incapacity. Everyday struggles were not the state’s business. They were the province of churches, families, and communities.
This is not merely nostalgia—it is history. For generations, Missouri thrived under this model, with pastoral care and community accountability sufficient to address the needs of souls.
III. The 1963 Shift: Chapter 552
Dans October 1963, Missouri enacted Chapter 552, the “Mental Responsibility Act.” For the first time, it authorized:
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§552.020 – Court-ordered psychiatric examination to determine “fitness to proceed.”
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§552.030 – Rules for the insanity defense (NGRI).
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§552.040 – Post-verdict commitments.
This was new law—not the extension of any ancient Missouri tradition. By statute, psychiatrists were placed in the role once held by pastors. Over the years, amendments broadened this authority to include psychologists, whose presence in the courts is itself the product of mid-20th-century institutional engineering.
The 1963 law did not arise in a vacuum. It came after decades of national philanthropic initiatives, particularly by the Rockefeller Foundation, which transformed psychology from an academic curiosity into a clinical, institutionalized system with power over schools, hospitals, and eventually courts.
IV. Rockefeller’s Role in Creating the System (Expanded)
1. Funding Psychiatry into Power
From the 1930s through the 1950s, the Rockefeller Foundation poured millions of dollars into psychiatry and psychology. Its stated goal was to integrate psychiatry into medical schools, hospitals, and public institutions. Funding flowed to elite universities—Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, McGill, and Duke—where entire psychiatric departments were created or expanded with Rockefeller grants. These were not small research stipends; they were structural endowments that shifted the academic landscape, ensuring psychiatry would become a dominant clinical authority rather than a marginal theory.
By underwriting fellowships, chairs, and institutes, Rockefeller created a new professional class of psychiatric experts whose influence quickly spread from universities into schools, courts, prisons, and social agencies. This was a manufactured authority, built not by organic demand, but by philanthropic engineering.
2. Conflicts of Interest: Oil and Pills
This philanthropic expansion was not ideologically or financially neutral. Rockefeller’s fortune was derived from Standard Oil, and by the mid-20th century oil byproducts were widely used in the production of pharmaceuticals. Thus, the same family funding psychiatry’s rise also profited from the mass prescription of petroleum-derived medications.
This represents a structural conflict of interest: by promoting psychiatry and psychology as clinical authorities, Rockefeller philanthropy created both the supply of experts (trained psychiatrists and psychologists) and the demand for treatments (medications tied to the oil industry).
3. Shaping the Law: Model Penal Code
Rockefeller influence extended into the law itself. The Foundation quietly funded the American Law Institute (ALI), which drafted the Model Penal Code (MPC). This model legislation emphasized treatment-oriented criminal law, including psychiatric interventions and competency evaluations. When Missouri adopted Chapter 552 in 1963, it was not innovating from state tradition; it was importing a Rockefeller-funded national template.
4. Control of the Press and Cultural Propaganda
Beyond education and law, Rockefeller exercised influence through press outlets and public narratives. By the early 20th century, Rockefeller-connected interests held sway over major newspapers and philanthropic journalism boards. These platforms consistently framed social issues in ways that advanced technocratic “scientific” solutions while marginalizing religion.
A striking historical parallel emerges with Bolshevik Russia. In the years following the 1917 Revolution, Soviet propaganda systematically portrayed Christian clergy as enemies of progress, obstacles to science, and threats to the state. Through newspapers, pamphlets, and show trials, Christian voices were silenced. This propaganda preceded the mass extermination of believers—with historians estimating over 60 million Christians killed or imprisoned in the Soviet system across decades of terror.
While Rockefeller was not a Bolshevik, the tactics overlapped: both used the press to reshape public perception, sidelining the Church in favor of secular “scientific” authority. For example, in 1915, Rockefeller-influenced newspapers ran alarmist headlines about the alleged destruction of “6 million Jews” in Russia—headlines which scholars now recognize as early propaganda tools. Whether or not one accepts every figure, the fact remains: Rockefeller-linked media were actively using emotive mass-atrocity framing to push for technocratic interventions, much as Bolshevik media did to justify suppressing Christianity.
The result was a public climate where religion was increasingly cast as obsolete, while psychiatry was hailed as modern, neutral, and necessary. Yet neutrality was a myth: both in Russia and America, the effect was to weaken the Church’s authority and to empower secular ideologies that sought to dominate the care of souls.
5. A Systemic Bias Against the Church
By funding psychiatry, influencing legislation, and shaping the press, Rockefeller philanthropy created a cultural system biased against Christian soul-care. Ministers who once shepherded their congregations through spiritual and moral struggles were now sidelined. Courts, hospitals, and schools defaulted to secular “experts.” And because this system was birthed from conflicted financial interests and ideological disfavor toward religion, it cannot be presumed neutral.
Just as Soviet propaganda paved the way for the brutal persecution of Christians, Rockefeller’s “softer” propaganda displaced the Church in America through law and medicine. In both cases, the result was the same: the marginalization of Christianity in the very sphere—soul-care—where it had historically been entrusted.
V. Religious Freedom Concerns
Today, Missouri’s Chapter 552 allows compulsory evaluations even where there is no substantiated allegation of misconduct. Estranged family members can weaponize the statute to harass relatives, seeking control over assets or reputation. The bitter irony is that such petitions may be made by individuals themselves impaired by addiction or malice, yet the law empowers them to unleash secular experts on innocent family members.
This presents a double injustice:
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Innocent citizens are deprived of the pastoral care historically entrusted to the Church.
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They are forced instead into the hands of a professional class financially and institutionally conflicted.
Christian scholars Martin and Deidre Bobgan put it succinctly:
“For scientific reasons alone and for biblical reasons alone, Christians should never be sent to a psychologist. Don’t go there, don’t go voluntarily.”
Their warning underscores both the scientific weakness and the biblical incompatibility of compulsory psychology.
VI. Why Churches Must Remain on Equal Footing
Even though churches are not explicitly named in Missouri’s statutes, constitutional protections demand they remain equal (if not primary) alternatives.
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Neutrality – Courts may not privilege secular psychology over pastoral care.
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Least Restrictive Means – Under Missouri’s RFRA (RSMo 1.302), if a believer’s faith forbids psychology, the state must allow pastoral alternatives unless a compelling, substantiated cause is shown.
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Buffer Zone – Churches should be recognized as the first line of intervention, especially when no proven misconduct exists. This prevents harassment and respects history, where the Church fulfilled this role successfully for centuries.
VII. Conclusion
Missouri’s 1963 adoption of Chapter 552 was not a natural outgrowth of its legal tradition. It was the product of Rockefeller philanthropy, corporate conflicts of interest, and a national legal template designed to replace the Church with secular psychiatry.
This history demands scrutiny. Courts cannot treat Chapter 552 as a neutral inheritance when it was birthed from bias and conflict. The First Amendment and Missouri RFRA require that citizens retain the right to reject compulsory evaluations in favor of faith-based care.
The Church was sufficient for Missouri before 1963, and it remains sufficient today. The task now is to restore awareness, assert liberty, and reestablish the Church as the rightful guardian of soul-care in the face of secular encroachment.
Addendum 1:
Restoring the Church’s Equal Role
Before 1963, Missouri—and much of the United States—entrusted ordinary matters of soul-care to pastors and ministers, with secular law intervening only in rare cases of serious crime under the M’Naghten rule. This long-standing practice deserves recognition today, especially in civil or family disputes where there is no substantiated allegation of misconduct and no criminal charge.
Courts may rightly hesitate to rely on ministers for adversarial functions like cross-examination. However, in such cases the parties themselves can agree (by contract between themselves, or in mediation, in a MOU) to certificate-based discipleship or counseling programs offered by churches. These programs can document progress, provide assessments of participation, and furnish reports of completion or achievement. In this way, they satisfy the spirit of evaluation without forcing Christians into unbiblical and often abusive compulsory psychology.
Such contractual recognition respects the law’s concern for accountability, while also honoring the believer’s conscience and the historic role of the Church. It represents a practical middle path: robust Christian discipleship as a lawful and ethical alternative to compulsory therapy in cases where no wrongdoing is proven.
Addendum 2:
Rule of Law, Constitutional Rights, and Church-Based Alternatives to Court-Ordered Psychological Evaluations
Introduction
In 1963, Missouri adopted Chapter 552 of its criminal code, which authorized for the first time court-ordered psychiatric evaluations. Since then, similar statutes have been widely expanded, even into family law disputes where no crime has been committed and no misconduct substantiated. These laws, however well-meaning, raise profound constitutional concerns. They risk compelling self-incrimination, overriding religious liberty, and displacing the Church’s historic role as the caretaker of souls.
This article examines the constitutional violations at stake, the principle of the rule of law as it places “the People” above both legislature and judiciary, and the interim solutions that churches can offer to meet the spirit of statutory law without furthering unconstitutional coercion.
I. The Constitutional Violations
Fifth Amendment: Compelled Self-Incrimination
The Fifth Amendment declares that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” Psychological and psychiatric evaluations frequently require the subject to disclose thoughts, motives, and family dynamics under compulsion. These disclosures can then be used in reports or proceedings against them. Even in civil or family settings, such forced statements violate the principle of non-self-incrimination, because they effectively pressure individuals to testify against themselves outside the normal safeguards of court procedure.
First Amendment: Religious Liberty
For Christians, voluntarily submitting to compulsory psychology is not a neutral act. It represents, in the words of Martin and Deidre Bobgan, a surrender to “psycho-heresy,” trusting a secular priesthood where Christ entrusted the Church. Forcing believers into this process violates both the Free Exercise Clause and Missouri’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RSMo 1.302), which requires the state to use the least restrictive means and to respect sincerely held religious objections.
Legislative Overreach and Judicial Duty
New statutes are not supreme law; the Constitution is. Legislatures may pass laws, but it is the duty of courts—bound by oath—to weigh them against the Constitution. Court-ordered evaluations represent a sphere where judicial deference to statute has sometimes ignored these higher constitutional protections.
II. Rule of Law and the Supremacy of the People
le rule of law in America does not mean blind obedience to statutes. It means that the People are supreme. Article I, Section 1 vests legislative power in Congress only by delegation from the People. Article VI confirms that “engagements entered into before the adoption of this Constitution” remain valid—including the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Mayflower Compact, many of which explicitly invoked the advancement of the Christian faith.
Federalist Paper No. 78 makes the principle unmistakable: “the power of the People is superior to both the legislative and judicial branches.” This foundational truth, echoed by U.S. Courts themselves, reminds us that legislatures and judges are not masters of the People but servants under their supreme law. When court-ordered psychological evaluations violate fundamental rights, they step outside the legitimate authority of government.
III. Interim Solutions: Restoring Churches to Equal Footing
While litigation and petitions for redress may ultimately be required to resolve these constitutional defects, there are practical interim solutions available now. Judges should not be placed in the position of ruling for or against faith, but they can recognize that churches historically provided soul-care and should be allowed to offer equivalent alternatives.
One workable model is the development of certificate-based Christian discipleship or counseling programs. These programs:
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Provide structured ministerial guidance, discipleship, and reconciliation practices.
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Offer certificates of participation or accomplishment that satisfy the spirit of statutory requirements for accountability.
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Can be agreed upon voluntarily by parties (through contract, mediation, or MOU) as an alternative to compulsory psychology.
Such programs ensure that no person is coerced into surrendering their constitutional rights, while also addressing legitimate concerns for structure, accountability, and progress in family or civil disputes.
IV. A Path Forward
The broader problem remains: compulsory psychological evaluations represent a systemic constitutional violation. But until such statutes are corrected or repealed, Christians and courts can pursue non-confrontational alternatives that honor both conscience and law. By recognizing church-based programs as equivalent in spirit, courts can avoid infringing rights while still addressing disputes.
Ultimately, restoring the Church to its historic role is not only a matter of faith but of constitutional necessity. The People are sovereign, the Constitution is supreme, and no statute can override these foundations.
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