Ableism in Bible Study

[beatrice_otter]

Every Tuesday morning I meet with a group of pastors to study the Bible passages assigned for the upcoming Sunday.  And this Sunday's passage is about the healing of the woman who had been "crippled by a spirit" for 18 years and unable to stand upright.  And I mentioned that people with disabilities are, demographically, by far the least churched people in America, partly because of accessibility issues and partly because of texts like this--either they go "and why haven't I had my miracle cure yet?" or they get really uncomfortable with the priority on asking for miracles (and using them as inspiration porn) rather than accepting them into the community and accommodating their needs.

Possibly this was a bad idea, because it started people off talking about the very things I had just told them many people with disabilities find offensive.  As in, I had to break in at one point and say that I knew a lot of people with disabilities of various kinds, visible and invisible both, who would stand up and walk out if they heard a sermon preached like that.  And, granted, in my rural context, you are far less likely to encounter disabled people who have enough contact with the disability rights movement to have the vocabulary for why they don't like or resent certain things, and so they're much more likely to think "it's just me being weird, everyone else thinks it's great, I shouldn't make a big deal of it."  That doesn't mean they'll like it or appreciate it.

It was hard to tell what a couple of the pastors there thought, but one of them was all "but we have to make it relatable to the rest of the congregation who don't have a disability!" as an excuse, and another was all into the "everyone has a disability!" approach.

Without time to prepare ahead of time, I am not as articulate as I am when I can sit down and write things out.  It was very frustrating.

Comments

[laurajv]

that sounds obnoxious to have to deal with. :/

[beatrice_otter]

Yes, it was. :(

[muccamukk]

Bonus fun times if you're in a church where laying of hands healing is a thing, then you get people putting hands on you, and it's YOUR fault for not having enough faith to be healed.

[staranise]

I wonder if disabled people in those churches just get really good at faking 15-minute recoveries.

[muccamukk]

I'd have to ask, but I can't imagine it would work WELL in a close knit community.

[beatrice_otter]

That may work for a big tent revival--not so much if you're in a small, close-knit community where you're going to be seeing everyone for the rest of your life.

[beatrice_otter]

That would be one of the major reasons why disabled people are the least churched group in America.

I once had a class with a seminary professor (now a bishop) who is legally blind. Our tradition isn't really into faith healing; we do laying on of hands and anointing, but not with the expectation that it means you're going to be walking out of there without your crutches. (Now, sometimes miracles do happen ... but if they happened reliably every time, they wouldn't be miracles.) He told a story of how confounded a pastor from a faith-healing tradition was that he couldn't just magically "fix" the "problem".

[staranise]

It's so hard when all our culture's toxic ableist messages came up intrinsically cooked in a sauce of Scripture. Unwinding the strands of Scripture from that toxicity is haaard.

(I do like the approach of, "Look at how Jesus went out of His way to include disabled people! He knew they were important as people who would carry out and spread His message through their words and deeds.")

[beatrice_otter]

A lot of the stories aren't, by the bare text, intrinsically ableist. But we have so many layers of toxic ableism wrapped around them that, yeah, separating them out is hella difficult.

[tielan]

Ugh. Yeah, that would be hard, especially because of the branches of Christianity that propose that our lives here and now should be perfect because of Christ, not just a spiritual foreshadowing of what will be in the kingdom of God.

GRARGH.

Hope you're able to explain the context better at a later point.

[beatrice_otter]

Well, I'm a Lutheran, and we MOST EMPHATICALLY DO NOT BELIEVE THAT. First off, we believe that Christians are both saints (i.e. made holy by God) and sinners at the same time. We're not climbing the spiritual ladder, here; we're slogging through the trenches on the strength of God's grace. And also, we believe that God reveals God's self most truly in the cross--in a place of shame, and weakness, and brokenness, and death. Theologies of glory--everything's perfect and beautiful, and the pretty perfect people are closest to God--are thus inherently flawed and lead you away from God. God is not found in power, but in weakness.

You would think that having these as two of our most foundational pieces of theology would at least mitigate the ableist interpretation of these stories, but apparently not.

[tielan]

Oh, I fully agree with that theology!

However, the attractiveness of the prosperity gospel (or the gospel of God Gives Good Things To His Faithful) is that it fits really well within the context of the Great American Dream: work hard, acquire things, climb the ladder, live well, be blessed. Which, at its base, is a very worldly view. Which is probably why it’s so attractive...

[monanotlisa]

Urgh, that's one of the things I hate, too, about Christianity.

[spiralleds]

We must have been listening to the same podcast. :)

I struggle with how to preach the healing stories in a way that's faithful without making those who deal with disabilities feeling less than or being left with painful questions about worthiness.

I'm leaning toward preaching Isaiah (yeah, kinda need to write something down ASAP), mostly because the passage is speaking to me, but partly because I'm not feeling confident in doing justice to the Luke passage.