Disabling Mission, Enabling Witness

Exploring Missiology Through the Lens of Disability Studies

Benjamin T. Conner

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780830885688
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

In recent decades churches have accommodated people with disabilities in various ways. Through access ramps and elevators and sign language, disabled persons are invited in to worship. But are they actually enfolded into the church's mission? Have the able-bodied come to recognize and appreciate the potential contributions of people with disabilities in the ministry and witness of the church?

Benjamin Conner wants to stimulate a new conversation between disability studies and Christian theology and missiology. How can we shape a new vision of the entire body of Christ sharing in the witness of the church? How would it look if we "disabled" Christian theology, discipleship, and theological education? Conner argues that it would in fact enable congregational witness. He has seen it happen and he shows us how.

Imagine a church that fully incorporates persons with disabilities into its mission and witness. In this vision, people with disabilities contribute to the church's pluriform witness, and the congregation embodies a robust hermeneutic of the gospel. Picture the entire body of Christ functioning beyond distinctions of dis/ability, promoting mutual flourishing and growing into fullness.

Here is an enlargement of the church's witness as a sign, agent, and foretaste of the kingdom of God. Here is a fresh and inspiring look at the mission of the church when it enfolds people with disabilities as full members.

Missiological Engagements charts interdisciplinary and innovative trajectories in the history, theology, and practice of Christian mission, featuring contributions by leading thinkers from both the Euro-American West and the majority world whose missiological scholarship bridges church, academy, and society.

Epilogue

Enabling Witness

More than 25 percent of American families have at least one relative with a disability.1 The experience of finding oneself, a family member, or a friend closer to the “dis-” side of the dis/ability spectrum at some point in life is an unremarkable feature of human existence. Disability can provide a perspective—a point of reference, a kind of hermeneutical advantage—for more fully understanding the human condition as people actually experience it and, relatedly, for refining Christian theology, reconsidering pastoral practices, and cultivating a more credible witness in the world. In other words, when we [dis]able Christian ministry and witness—by which I mean divest it of ableist biases and open it to the full range of human embodiments, capacities, and modes of communication—we enable witness.

Hans Reinders, in his explication of Jean Vanier’s theology, explains Vanier’s understanding of “the essence of Christian witness” in the following terms: “the people on whom our world has turned its back reveal the mystery of Jesus.”2 The revelation of Jesus provides the necessary contrast for revealing certain things about our society and us. The presence and perspective of people with disabilities, when attended to through the lens of this gospel, can help the church to unmask cultural biases against all kinds of embodiments, physical and intellectual variances, and mental health differences. Such biases unchecked sustain interpretations that authenticate values that, in turn, support the oppression of people with disabilities in the church and beyond and squelch our witness. Judith Roberts writes, “Discipleship with the marginalized at the centre calls the church to acknowledge the brokenness and sin that preserves systems that produce inequities in church and society.”3 When congregations acknowledge the subtle ways that they exclude the contributions of people with disabilities from the church and become awakened to the disproportionate impact incarceration, unemployment, homelessness, and abuse have on persons with disabilities and then align themselves with Jesus, who aligned himself with the marginalized, they are participating in Christian witness in a way that is transforming to both society and the church.

In the previous chapters I presented an introduction to disability informed by disability studies with the intention of complexifying commonsense understandings of disability for the sake of reengaging the concept through the lens of mission studies. Throughout the book, I have attempted to demonstrate ways that mission studies and disability studies can work synergistically to enable witness. In this work of Christian missiology, I admitted from the start and emphasize now that the most important enabling for Christian witness is the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. However, concepts from missiology such as missio Dei, indigenization and contextualization, and witness are also important for liberating and amplifying marginalized voices. Additionally, readings of mission history that privilege the activity and perspectives of people with disabilities can stimulate the imagination of pastors and parishioners to see disabilities in terms of gains instead of primarily in terms of losses. Such re-engagements of mission history and theology can provide models and visions of Christian witness that “measure up to the heights and depths of the human situation.”4

NOTES

Introduction

1Residents of Friendship House with disabilities have taken on the identity of “Friends” or “Friend residents.”

2For more on therapeutic riding, see the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International (PATH Intl.) at www.pathintl.org or Renew Therapeutic Riding Center at www.renewtrc.org.

3Mary McClintock Fulkerson notes how people communicate and recei...