Reconceptualising Disability for the Contemporary Church

Frances Mackenney-Jeffs

Description

Even today, there is still an inherent conflict between the way the Gospels speak about disability, and the attitude of the Church. This book seeks to challenge the assumptions which still exist about disability, assumptions which are reflected within the Church.
Blending theory, anthropology, theology, pastoral concerns and the lived experience of people with disabilities, Reconceptualising Disability for the Contemporary Church offers an important and thoughtful challenge to the contemporary Church.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 29 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334059196
• Langue: English

Extrait

Reconceptualising Disability for the Contemporary Church
Frances Mackenney-Jeffs






© Frances Mackenney-Jeffs 2021
Published in 2021 by SCM Press
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978-0-334-05917-2
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction

1. Disability in Historical Perspective
2. Models of Disability and Research Methodologies
3. Being Human and Personhood
4. Further Elements in a Constructive Theology of Disability
5. Fresh Theological Perspectives
6. The Contemporary Scene for Disability and the Church
7. Conversations with Parents of Disabled Children
8. Pastoral Concerns for Support of Families
Conclusion

Glossary





In gratitude and honour to all the exemplary men who have shaped and are shaping my life: my father Vic, my brother Julian, my husband Andrew and our dear son Sam.

And not forgetting my dear mother who, though believing domestic matters to be of utmost concern, discerned that I had it in me to write on theology and duly anticipated that work.




Acknowledgements
The writing of this book has been part of a much longer and deeper project that started in 2003 at King’s College London as a PhD in education research and theology under the supervision of Canon Professor Andrew Walker. My original aim was to write on exclusion in the church, sweeping across race, gender, age and disability. But I needed to narrow down to one factor for the depth of study required of a doctorate. In 2005 my brother died suddenly and then two years later, my mother, due to the appalling distress of losing her son after her husband. Our family went into meltdown and our 12-year-old son, a highly sensitive boy, became very ill. I had already turned towards disability as my area of study. I had no idea how my own personal trajectory was to become so much a part of this research project. I wish to thank Andrew Walker for his pastoral sensitivity and wisdom in moving me away from an exclusive focus on gender and in leading me to spend the first year after my brother’s death reading on the theology of suffering, which began to equip me to see with different eyes the world I had entered by force. In time Andrew had to bow out on health grounds, and I thank Professor Andrew Wright for taking me on, and for bringing so much shape to my work at this stage. I thank them both for their grace towards me at a very unstable time in my life where the completion of a PhD was particularly daunting.
I also wish to thank the Revd Peter Levell from my former church, who was once the CEO of Causeway Prospects, the charity for people with learning disabilities. His passion for inclusion of people with learning disabilities led him to visit me on a regular basis to pray with me for my work. His kindness and encouragement were greatly appreciated at a very depleted time.
For the sake of anonymity, I haven’t named the many people who were part of the research work at the core of this book. For those who know who they are I give my profound thanks for their grace towards me in what might have been perplexing for them at times.
And now to the final Andrew, my devoted husband, who shouldered so much of the task of our life as a family in order for me to pursue what he believed was my calling.
And, last but not least, to Sam who was swept away by the trauma in the family and became a major player in this work as we were led to reconsider what being a human being means when it is no longer possible to jump through all the hoops that our success culture demands.





Introduction
Context
Disability in the twenty-first century is a topic that has come of age. There is a view that it is the last civil rights movement (Driedger 1989), coming as it does after a degree of liberation for women, black, Asian and minority ethnic and LGBTQ+ people. Predictably, perhaps, now that society has turned its attention to disability as a form of social oppression, the church has been taking stock of the fact and considering its own position on the subject. My doctoral work (which this book draws on) sought to uncover the extent to which disability is negatively constructed in the Christian church and the degree to which the church is exclusive, and/or oppressive, of disabled people in its practices. Furthermore, it sought to consolidate some of the progress made as a result of disability legislation in the US and Britain, and the high profile that legal requirements accorded the matter in the conviction that there was something of a kairos moment here (probably initiated by the Holy Spirit) for people with disabilities in the church. While this was my starting point, as I journeyed in my own personal circumstances and on the project of this book I came to see disability as a lens through which the church can see itself more clearly and embrace the countercultural call of the gospel to extend the loving welcome of Christ to all those commonly rejected in wider society and often by the institutional church. So this book is more a call to the church to be all that God intends rather than a tokenist attempt at inclusion of people with disabilities.
While society is of interest, there is a specific focus here on the Christian church, and particularly on its Evangelical sector. Evangelicalism was selected as I have most experience of this approach and anticipated that it might have difficulty with offering full inclusion to persons with intellectual disabilities because of its bias towards the rational and concern with ‘good order’.
There are four main areas of disability: physical impairments, sensory impairments, learning disabilities and mental health needs. Learning disability is the politically correct replacement for ‘mental retardation’, which is a term still in current use in the United States but not in Britain. Learning disability is synonymous with intellectual impairment. Previously, learning disability was subsumed under mental health needs but the two categories are seen as totally distinct now. However, because of this historical tendency, in the literature the two may be conflated. This book focuses on the first three areas: physical impairments, sensory impairments and learning disabilities, giving priority to factors that are visible and permanent as the likely causes of a person being persistently marginalized within mainstream culture. Of the three, particular focus is placed on intellectual impairment. The empirical work was conducted with this constituency as it was thought that if those with learning disabilities were fully included then all others were likely to be too; for intellectual disability had been a late addition to the field.
The attempt to unify all people with impairments has not been unproblematic. From the 1960s organizations were formed that crossed impairment boundaries, the BCODP (British Council of Organisations of Disabled People) being one formed in the 1980s. Despite the need for solidarity, disabled people often internalize society’s attitudes regarding disability, and wish to distance themselves from others with dissimilar impairments which may be perceived as worse than their own (French 1993, p. 22). Thus a wheelchair user with spinal cord injury may not really consider themselves comparable with someone who is intellectually disabled (Oliver 1993). Thus the intellectually disabled became a marginalized group within disability itself (Leach 1991; Aspis 1991; Walmsley 1993).
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My passion for inclusion undoubtedly comes from my own experience of exclusion in some sectors of the church. Many of my early years as a Christian were spent in the ultra-conservative Restoration Movement which came out of the Brethren Church. It is my contention that while they parted company over the gifts of the Spirit in the church today, the Restoration Movement uncritically retained the Brethren Church’s worldview regarding gender, which it had subconsciously absorbed. Being a mature, single woman at that time I was further disadvantaged because women were only truly valued through marriage. The Restoration Movement did not actively teach an Augustinian view of women, but its teaching was consonant with that. In Misogyny and the Western Philosophical Tradition , Beverly Clack summarizes Augustine’s view of the imago Dei: ‘man is completely in the image of God whereas woman is only in the image of the divine when in partnership with her husband’ (Clack 1999, p. 63).
From this very negative and prolonged experience I developed a passion for inclusivity not least because while the church may be excluding, the gospel is clearly not. I l