beatrice_otter | Ableism in Bible Study

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.