|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
American Christianity tends to view disabled persons as problems to
be solved rather than people with experiences and gifts that enrich
the church. Churches have generated policies, programs, and
curricula geared toward "including" disabled people while still
maintaining "able-bodied" theologies, ministries, care, and
leadership. Ableism-not lack of ramps, of finances, or of
accessible worship-is the biggest obstacle for disabled ministry in
America. In From Inclusion to Justice, Erin Raffety argues that
what our churches need is not more programs for disabled people but
rather the pastoral tools to repent of able-bodied theologies and
practices, listen to people with disabilities, lament ableism and
injustice, and be transformed by God's ministry through disabled
leadership. Without a paradigm shift from ministries of inclusion
to ministries of justice, our practical theology falls short.
Drawing on ethnographic research with congregations and families,
pastoral experience with disabled people, teaching in theological
education, and parenting a disabled child, Raffety, an able-bodied
Christian writing to able-bodied churches, confesses her struggle
to repent from ableism in hopes of convincing others to do the
same. At the same time, Raffety draws on her interactions with
disabled Christian leaders to testify to what God is still doing in
the pews and the pulpit, uplifting and amplifying the ministry and
leadership of people with disabilities as a vision toward justice
in the kingdom of God.
|
|