I am attending the conference for <a href=
I am attending the conference for the Institute on Theology and Disability. This is a group of scholars, pastors, and other people with various kinds of interests in theology that has anything to do with disability. Their past presentations are viewable on their YouTube channel, linked above. The group has been meeting for 12 years, and this is my first time attending. I feel a bit like a kid in a candy shop.
I discovered this field when I was beginning my M.Div. work in 2006. It was admittedly the first time that I had reason and tools to do library searches and ability to check out books at the university. I not only checked out what I needed for class but also whatever I wanted for my personal research. The university did not offer any classes in disability studies, so I created my own curriculum. I was well educated about disability psychology and legislation because of my special education and rehabilitation courses in undergrad. So I searched for disability and theology, assuming I would find nothing.
Imagine my amazement when I found books! I ended up spending a lot of time scanning things that were not required class texts.
The earliest publication that is considered to be “disability theology” is Nancy Eiesland’s The Disabled God. I read it and was quite intrigued by the title. I understood the perspective, though I disagreed strongly with it. It was difficult for me to discuss with anyone because I felt that I wasn’t taking the proper disability perspective.
In those early days, much of the literature was written by people who did not disclose their association with disability well. Eiesland was disabled. (She died in 2009.) Some of the writers were parents of children with disabilities. Much theology was written from the perspective of liberation through access. It is not a bad perspective when speaking to people who don’t understand why access is so important.
In one of the plenary sessions yesterday, Erik Carter shared a lot of statistics about a survey that was done regarding congregations and inclusion of people with disabilities. I hope that eventually I will be able to see those numbers. I regretted not taking my laptop with me. I sat listening to the staggering numbers that demonstrated a tremendous lack of awareness and desire to include us, and my heart physically hurt. What was abundantly clear was that there was a resistance to even trying to think of people with disabilities as potential members with value to add to the community who should be sought out and whose presence should be planned for in advance. Only 40 per cent of churches that were surveyed made an intentional effort to include people with visual impairments. Many of the congregations that responded made efforts toward inclusion as a reaction to a need of someone in the congregation and not as a desire to create welcoming space for people they wanted to bring to their congregation.
It hurts to not be desired, to go into a building and simply exist. It hurts even more when this is shown through the ways that access is practiced. This is why there is so much practical theology focused on access. Sadly, I think that books like Beyond Accessibility, Vulnerable Communion, and Copious Hosting are not making it into the hands of the church. The disability theology movement is a choir singing to itself. Parents suffer from lost relationship with friends as their lives are taken up with the needs of children who don’t experience life like other children and so they don’t share common topics of conversation, and sometimes they can’t bring their child to events where community is built. It is those relationships that make it possible to help the church to know why the presence of people with disabilities is important.
But theology that is written by parents is theology that comes from a different perspective from theology that reflects the lived experience of people with disabilities. My own mom is a good observer of things I live. She knows that I get left behind when people want to do something that is visual in nature. She knows that I spent my whole life not singing when everyone took out their hymnals. But she cannot describe what I felt when someone stayed behind to be sure that I was included in that visual activity or what happened in my heart the first time I read from a braille hymnal.
Yesterday afternoon, a group of people with disabilities met to discuss what it might look like to redefine disability theology, to take it out of the hands of nondisabled academics and put it into the hands of people with disabilities, many of whom have never been to seminary.
The group collected a number of proposed definitions of what a theology of disability would be. This tells me that we have a great diversity of perspectives that needs to be celebrated. People with disabilities often leave the church because they are not included at most and, at least, are treated as passive objects of ministry. What happened yesterday indicates a group who wants badly to speak to the church about how they view the relationship between God and humanity and between one human and another. They have important things to say.
One person in the group cautioned that we not leave out academics. I responded that I think we should be sensitive to a variety of perspectives. Someone noted the tendency of writers not to disclose their affiliation with disability studies at the start of their work. I have often found disclosure buried in a person’s work as they have woven it into the way they write about disability. I think that it is important that we be cautious about assuming that a person is not disabled since some disabilities are not visible.
I also think that It is important that while we are insisting on a prominent place at the theology table we not use that place to stifle others who have an important and valid need to be heard. I have spent my adult life working with parents and caregivers, and the pain and stress they experience is real. A fully formed theology of disability needs to reflect the life of the family, including the person with the disability and the caregiver. It really should reach wide and include nondisabled community members who are friends as well.
I am an academic who teaches biblical languages and related topics. I am also an associate pastor of care and inclusion at <a href=“www.ppchog.org” target=“_blank”>Park Place Church of God</a>, primarily working with the care ministry for seniors. The onset of disability can cause a crisis of faith and personal identity that results in deep feelings of terror and isolation. It is the time when a person needs community the most—not always to talk about their disability but sometimes just to be real. This is reflected in hundreds of biographies about disability. People who experience adult-onset disability are traumatized, and often their community does not know what to do. The experience of faith-based response to disability can be a further trauma if the faith-based community is not prepared to be a safe place to experience friendship while coping with disability trauma.
My own definition of disability theology: A trauma-informed liberation theology of empowerment that reflects the lived experience of people with disabilities and displays a discipleship-oriented approach to Scripture.
This is a work in progress. It is hard for me to put in one sentence all of the things I feel about this. This is why theology books are so big. I feel encouraged after sitting in that room yesterday.
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