Start of the Paper on Disability Theology

There is an essential question that frequently rises to the surface as I sit in church , any church , where are all the people with disabilities. As I work for a large agency and a school I am familiar with the number of persons with Disabilities in the community and that is just persons with a cognitive disability I see very few of in church on Sunday morning. It is not just a specific church but multiple churches over some 35 years of working in the field of persons with disabilities there is a dissonance between who I know is in the community and who is not in church. Initially when churches were being required to become more wheelchair accessible I naively thought that would solve a large part of the problem. It did allow more accessibility to a few seniors who had found the stairs a challenge, but overall I could see no major increase in the numbers of wheelchairs or persons with visible disabilities in the pew. More disturbing I did not see an increase in able-bodied family members with children or young people with special needs attending in large amounts in any specific place. Many parents had told me how hard it was to find a church where they could have the needs of their child met and often left the very churches which should have risen to meet their needs, disillusioned and weary from the rejection they felt at each new attempt to find acceptance for their child so they could worship together for one hour, once a week. Opening a group home where part of the job requirement was to find a church home for four youth with multiple barriers in wheelchairs ,we experienced firsthand not only what it was like to find a warm and friendly church home for even one of them , yet alone doctors who would serve their needs, friendly neighbours, and school systems that had the resources to take them in. The experience of what it was like to find a church home where they welcomed was a transformational experience and not only for the clients but also for the staff and the people of the church. It became such a positive experience that it left me with a life time question of why here and why not other places, including the church I attended , which eventually started a class for adults with cognitive disabilities . Slowly over the years as all churches became wheelchair accessible the physical barriers could no longer be used as the reason why?. What then was the reason and why did it seem to be endemic across a wide expanse of churches with a very few recent few exceptions. It was a question that stayed unanswered . As people do not usually attend a variety of denominational churches to notice the similarity , most people just assume this is what is normal for their church and that is how it is. My search for a denomination that more fit my changing theology and a cross country move put me in a number of different churches and still the same token few people with disabilities , showed up on Sunday morning church, whether it was a Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, Mennonite or other evangelical church. The two exceptions I found were Reformed churches that had a very active interest in this kind of work as a ministry, and a very progressive church called Fresh Wind. It seemed that these churches had something different in their theology from other churches. My question however in the why not for everyone else was still unanswered.

         A dream one night of meeting an “autistic like” Jesus woke me with two new words “disability theology”. Wondering if this a real something or like Scrooge I was suffering from some late night snacking, I Googled in  these new words and found myself on the cutting edge of some of the latest thoughts on the same question I had been asking all these years.  Folks like Jean Vanier and Henry Nouwen had challenged and comforted me , and I had wrapped their warmth and kind thoughts around me like a wonderful inspirational blanket. Disability Theology is more like a sharp kick to the posterior. It rattles your comfort tree , it challenges all your well held belief systems , it tells you why there are so few disabled people in church.  It exposes the theological and models and practices we had become so familiar with and never challenged.  It teaches us that the idea of an autistic Jesus is not some far flung almost sacrilegious idea but perhaps closer to a workable model then we dare to imagine.

Let’s explore then in my attempt to answer my “why  question” and the challenge of my dream to discover how” disability theology” could  assist me on my journey.

Where did the idea of the” perfect”  person in the church come from . In his book the Theology of Down Syndrome Dr. Yong discusses how we view the perfectness of Adam and Eve within the garden and when cast out of the garden they encounter evil, disease , hardship and death. It seems that the perfect things close to God are within the Garden and the evil and dark things are outside , Over the years the church seems to have developed this idea of keeping things they view to be impure or less than perfect out. Some of this idea came from something called the Levitical Ban.  The Levitical Ban was used in the selection of the lambs for sacrifices and the selection of priests. Only pure unblemished, whole not crippled lambs could be offered as sacrifices. This idea carried across into the selection of priests. This was Jewish law. The same rules seemed to carry over into the selection of priests in the corporate church, based on the idea that Jesus was the able bodied pure unblemished lamb selected for the sacrifice of the cross. The Levitical selection for priesthood stated that only men could be priests. He had to be between 25-50. He could not be blind, defective, hunchbacked or a dwarf. Injuries would make him ineligible. A skin disease or crushed private parts disqualified him to serve .( Leviticus )***

Nancy Eisland in her book ++++ suggests  three models of disabilism in theology.

 That disability is a punishment for wrongdoing “and mars the divine image in humans has often  banned those with disabilities from positions of leadership pr stigmatized them for their lack of faith. 

Disability as Virtuous suffering

Eisland defines that as “suffering that must be endured in order to purify the righteous. Teaching that encourages passive acceptance of social barriers “and obedience. 

Charity.  “For PWD at times means creating justice . It subverts justice when it segregates PWD and keeps PWD out of the public eye rather than empowering them as full, social ,economic and political participants. “

The idea of the broken or disabled body marring the image of God runs  runs into difficulty when we see Christ at the Last Supper, On the Cross and after his resurrection when he showed his glorified body to his disciples.  The Last Supper and the words of the Eucharist say “ This is my body that is broken for you,” “ Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the World “. The Lamb of God is a broken lamb. Christ appeared after his death by crucifixion bearing in his body the marks of a Roman crucifixion. His hands were pierced, his side was pierced, his feet were pierced and his closest female friend did not recognize until him till he spoke her name. This is no pure unspotted physically person we are to worship in the resurrected Christ. This is in fact a disabled Jesus. Again his friends did not recognize him on the road to Emmaus , and did not recognize him until he broke the bread the symbol of his broken body on the Cross. Christ tried to tell us time and time again in his healing of the sick, the lame and the blind. In fellowshipping with the outcasts . Touching the lepers. Healing women who were considered the dregs of society.  The majority of the time we see Christ performing a great miracle there are Pharisees and Saducees in sharp contrast enraged and actively hostile that Jesus has upset their system and healed on the Sabbath day. In thinking about this it seems Jesus healed a frequently on the Sabbath Day,  with the spiritual leaders in proximity. Scripture records these healings across all four gospels. In all instances Christ was healing people who had some form of disability outside of the temple of the day. The disabled people were not inside the temple. Levitical Ban?

The new church in Acts 3 continues with the one of the early miracles by Peter and () outside the temple with the healing of the Blind man. The famous words “Silver and Gold have I none but what I have I give you in the name of Christ rise up and walk. “ This stir of the crowds disturbed the Pharisees and Saducees of the time and netted Peter and () a beating being thrown into prison. Again the tension between the standards of the church of the day and the call of the gospel in the hands of the apostles. Again the blind man is sitting outside of the temple. Have we moved very far in 2000 years of Christianity.

The early church provided deacons to take care of the widows and the orphans and make sure a fair distribution of food was made to the poor. Christ had left them with the admonition that when you feed the hungry, clothe the naked and minister to the prisoner, you indeed minister to Christ himself.

Over the centuries the church took up this view and started works of charity . In each era of the church there are voices within the church that call the church to minister to the needs of the less fortunate.

In the writings of the desert Fathers we find they bring themselves into a oneness with the poor and marginalized by becoming like them and giving their resources away so they can identify with the poor. In countries where there is no social services network “the poor” are also often the disabled who for physical reasons cannot work. In the writings of John Chryssavigis  (TheoDS) ## Abba Agathon cared for a man with cerebral palsy and served him as requested. At the end of the story the  disabled man said Agathon you are filled with divine blessings in heaven or earth. Raising his eyes Agathon saw no one at all it was an angel of the Lord .  

This is how the monastics moved in hospitality to follow the scriptures that by entertaining s

Travellers to Jerusalem and the Holy Land were taken care of in hospitals that were started by religious orders and many of these travellers would have disabling conditions early pilgrimages to the Holy Land

…. some had entertained angels without knowing it.

The monastic traditions of the early desert were deeply rooted in the desert idea of hospitality both from scriptural tradition as well as from the immediate needs for people travelling and living in harsh territory. Hospitality became a key factor in the development of monasteries and the rule of St. Benedict in the early 400’s discusses entertaining strangers and pilgrims as Christ.

Monasteries developed infirmaries and herbal gardens to treat not only the monks but also to treat the travellors and strangers who came knocking at their door for refuge. In female monasteries there were women from royal families, women who felt called to be nuns and women who sometimes had nowhere else to go and both were served by the monastery and served in it. Hospitals for the sick grew from these traditions many of them started from religious orders. Cathedrals in this time had pilgrimages and relics that drew pilgrims and the sick for the healing powers of the relics . The wide spread practice of incense in the church although a sacred concept carried over from Jewish temple worship had a practical application in churches with so many pilgrims present. Still lepers and people with certain disfiguring diseases, and disabilities that were confused with demonic possession were not welcomed in the church.