Messages spoken at various Camps Farthest Out by Dr. George Parkhurst.
Dr. George Parkhurst was a Tulsa physician and psychiatrist whose medical career took an unexpected turn. He began as a dermatologist, but his work with patients soon convinced him that many physical problems were connected to deeper emotional struggles. As his mother, Genevieve Parkhurst, later explained, he discovered that many of the people who came to him with skin problems also had an emotional problem behind them.
Parkhurst realized that he needed more training to help them, so he went into psychiatry. His preparation included three years of personal analysis, three times a week. His medical career had already been interrupted by World War II; he entered the Army shortly after Pearl Harbor, having begun his internship in 1941. After the war, he continued his postgraduate studies in several cities before eventually settling in Tulsa.
There he became associated with a clinic that had been endowed so that people throughout Oklahoma could receive treatment regardless of whether they could afford to pay. He developed an outpatient day program for people who needed more support than a typical office visit could provide but did not need to be hospitalized. Patients spent the day together in groups with a therapist, five days a week for several weeks, and the program included a sheltered workshop where they could do supervised work and earn a small wage.
Parkhurst believed that healing often began when people discovered they could be honest about their struggles and still be accepted. His approach to psychiatry was deeply connected to his Christian faith, and that combination became especially evident in his ministry at The Camps Farthest Out.
At the camps, Parkhurst taught about the emotional experiences people carry from different stages of life. Using a blackboard, he would walk his audience through childhood, adolescence, relationships, marriage, work, and other important stages, stopping to pray about painful experiences along the way. He believed that people could bring even difficult memories to Jesus and experience His presence and healing in those memories.
Parkhurst sometimes used his own childhood experience to explain what he meant. When he was six years old, he was injured when a flower box fell on him. His parents took him to Winfield for an X-ray, and the primitive equipment frightened him badly. The memory stayed with him for years. Eventually, he prayed about it and imagined Jesus coming into that childhood experience with him. He described it as Jesus “remak[ing] and replay[ing]” the memory.
That experience became part of the way Parkhurst ministered to others. He did not believe that painful memories simply had to be forgotten. Instead, he encouraged people to invite Jesus into those memories and allow Him to bring healing where there had been fear, rejection, grief, or other emotional wounds.
Forgiveness was another important part of his teaching. He believed that unresolved anger and resentment could keep people bound to painful experiences, while forgiveness could open the way to freedom. He also taught about the Holy Spirit, the renewal of the mind, and the healing of the whole person. His ministry reflected his conviction that Christ’s work on the cross was not limited to physical healing but included the emotional wounds people carried as well.
Parkhurst was remembered warmly by other Camps Farthest Out speakers. Jim Christian described him as “long and angular” and said that what he lacked in grace he made up for in intensity. Tommy Tyson called him “this beautiful psychiatrist over in Tulsa” and sought his help himself. His mother, Genevieve, was also a Camps Farthest Out speaker and sometimes incorporated George’s experiences into her own teaching. He likewise encouraged her writing and reviewed one of her manuscripts.
George Parkhurst brought something distinctive to The Camps Farthest Out: the perspective of a trained psychiatrist who believed that emotional healing and Christian faith belonged together. His teaching grew out of both his medical experience and his own life, and he used both to help people look honestly at the wounds of the past and bring them to Christ.
*Note:
Many speakers lived before the days of the internet and many had very limited biographical information available. The information in these biographies came mostly from transcripts of their messages, and relies heavily on their own spoken words. Please contact us if you have any corrections.