A Baptismal Ecclesiology of Inclusion for Every Body

Sarah Barton has written a very important dissertation, which is in the process of being edited for Baylor University Press's groundbreaking Studies in Religion, Theology, and Disability series. ¹ In that work, Barton developed a baptismal hermeneutic for thinking theologically, and especially ecclesiologically, about disability. After a comprehensive literature review that examined the past 30-plus years of disability theology, she makes the following observation: in an effort to affirm the personhood of those with disabilities, disability theologies have highlighted Christian themes like the image of God (the imago Dei), vulnerability, friendship, hospitality, and other practices of inclusion. All too frequently, however, theological reflection on disability occurs outside of the central life and practices of the church and apart from the core doctrines of Christian faith. Barton's baptismal hermeneutic of disability locates disability in the center of our ecclesial and theological imagination, as baptism is in most traditions a sacrament or rite of initiation, a welcome into the body of Christ, and a public proclamation of Jesus’ death and resurrection. When people with disabilities are baptized, congregations are challenged in their anthropology to rethink disablement with the baptismal font as the orienting paradigm for developing an inclusive theology of personhood in a way that grounds unanchored theological themes in a shared life and contests dominant cultural evaluations and articulations of personhood.

What was particularly striking in the Missing Voices Project research findings was how these young people pivoted on the same theological themes that Barton discerned were central for the leaders in the field of disability theology. From the standpoint of grounded theory, the data (interviews with youth from participating churches) bear witness to a nascent and intuitive theology of disability along with elements of an inclusive, activist ecclesiology. The remainder of this article will amplify their witness and demonstrate how their insights have already found purchase in disability theology.

Imago Dei, Friendship, and Practices of Inclusion

One emphasis that emerged throughout the interviews is an attempt on behalf of the youth to make sense of and articulate their convictions that all humans have some essential things in common and all humans are different from each other in ways that make them of particular value to a Christian community. These young people want a church where everyone experiences belonging. The biblical and theological themes they seemed to find most fitting to support these claims with respect to disability were imago Dei, friendship, and practices of inclusion. These are well-developed themes in the field of disability theology. As mentioned, Barton's excellent study on the reimagination of Christian anthropology in disability theology discerned the imago Dei, friendship, and practices of inclusion as among the primary ways that disability theologians have dealt with the reality of intellectual disability in a world that maintains the presumption that rationality and intellectual capacity are essential to personhood.

Expressed in terms of creation and God's commitment to and love for creation, young people found ultimate worth in people with and without disabilities grounded in the divine origin of all humans. They can affirm at once that “none of us are perfect” according to some worldly standard, and “he made everyone perfect in his own image” from a divine perspective.

So God created everyone. Equally. He loves everyone equally. He views everyone the same. Everyone is so amazing. And everyone, like none of us are perfect. He loves us all so much. ²

Rooted in the understanding that all people are created in God's image is a corresponding conviction that no person who is markedly negatively “different” from others by societal standards (whether by disability or sexual orientation) can be considered defective, a burden, or fundamentally imperfect. According to one youth, “different is amazing.” ⁴

So I guess feeling as if I’m not just some burden to God, some defect he made of human instead of actually one of his people, is nice. Being more accepted and stuff. ⁵

One could argue that when it comes to bearing the image of God, all people are imperfect—all people are impacted by sin. Kathryn Tanner argues that the true image of God is the second person of the Godhead, Jesus Christ, and people image God together by means of attachment to or participation in the life of Jesus. What all people have in common is not a certain capacity or ability to reflect God, but no capacity apart from God's action. As Tanner explains, “Human beings through divine power become what they are not and have no capacity of being by themselves: human versions of the divine image itself.” ⁷ It is in this sense that no person is defective or unable to bear God's image.

Beyond the fact that the doctrine of imago Dei insists that no person created by God is defective, the doctrine also suggests that everyone is needed in order to complete the image of God as a community. Since imaging God is a communal activity, if some people are missing from the community, then it is the community that is missing out. People with disabilities bring their gifts and unique perspectives to the community in a variety of ways that enrich the church.

I obviously knew kids with IDD. But I never thought, like, oh my gosh, like, they’re not coming to church because I never saw them. And so now that I’m, like, thinking about it and it's always on my heart, in my mind, I’m like, oh, wow. Like, we really are missing this whole entire just like body of people that can be put in the church. And like, not only benefit from the church, but like everybody around them is benefiting from them being there. And I think that, like, when we when we realize that, like, these awesome people are not in the church, that we realize that we’re missing out more than anything. ⁸

This important insight by youth about the importance of the presence of youth with disabilities in their congregations resonates with observations by their leaders and others in their congregations, who bring in “body of Christ” imagery and the language of spiritual gifts to further emphasize the point.

Kids with IDD … have this incredible gift that they’re bringing to us and that we are actually missing out when they’re not part of the church body. You know just, whatever their presence is whatever they offer God has given them something unique to bring. The fullness of his presence and it makes us a better witness, you know as a church, when we are using all the guests and the whole body is operating you know because I can't operate without. Arms or the noses and all that part of the body and our […] like it's been sweet to become more and more aware of this, through this whole process. ¹⁰

These observations, by both youth and their leaders, rooted in the doctrine of the image of God, echo what missiologist and churchman Lesslie Newbigin wrote about over forty years earlier in his forward-looking article, “Not Whole without the Handicapped.” ¹⁴ In this important article, Newbigin challenged the Western, Enlightenment-driven notion that we live in a world without limits and encouraged the church to embrace human limitations and incorporate the limitedness inherent in being human into its witness. He identified people with disabilities as among the missing voices (this is not his language, but it is consistent with his argument) and suggested that they are “utterly indispensable to the Church's authentic life.” Finally, similarly to the students and leaders of the Missing Voices Project, Newbigin characterized people with disabilities not as defective or as “a problem to be solved” but as “trustees of a blessing without which the Church cannot bless the world.” ¹⁵

For it is only when the witness of [people with disabilities] is an integral part of the witness of the whole Church, that this witness is true to the Gospel of the Crucified who is risen, the risen Lord who is the Crucified. Only with this witness as part of its total message does the Church's message measure up to the heights and depths of the human situation. ¹⁶

The youth from the Missing Voices Project realize that in order to include people who have been marginalized in society in their churches, they will need to cross some boundaries.

We don't want to identify people, sure like for some legally in some other places, but like for here it's not about if you’re disabled or LGTBQ or anything it's about the commonalities that we all have the same is that we want to grow in the ministry of God you know and to grow in that experience. We want to get past those boundaries so that's how we want to grow and make our places. ¹⁷

A theology and practice of welcome or hospitality involves a kind of boundary-crossing that creates spaces of belonging that move beyond simplistic slogans like “Everyone's welcome.” ¹⁸ Youth have an idea of how true welcome should be experienced, and it requires going beyond the obvious: “You can't just not exclude someone. You have to go out of our way to include others and make sure everyone feels welcome.” ¹⁹ According to the youth, creating such an environment requires taking initiative to invite those who are typically excluded, making clear that they are cherished and wanted, and, perhaps most importantly, communicating to them that their perspective is valued and needed. While not clearly expressed in these terms, these youth are pointing toward a theology of Christian friendship.

These youth would certainly affirm John Swinton's sentiment, “The priority of friends is the personhood of the other and not the illness [disability].” ²⁰ For these youth, the relationship of friendship is not instrumental to some other goal (like church growth), but involves instead sharing life together in such a way that the unique humanity of youth with IDD is affirmed and they are afforded a new, socially valued identity—friend. In Swinton's phrasing,

Through the practice of spiritual friendship, a person with profound learning disabilities is no longer a member of an amorphous group—“the mentally handicapped”—excluded and alienated from sources of value and positive self-worth. Rather, in and through the gift of friendship, the learning disabled are enabled to develop a new identity as “persons in relation” with whom others desire to relate and are prepared to strive to find ways of relating, which operate beyond the boundaries of cognition and intellect. ²¹

Through boundary-crossing friendship these youth are participating in what ethicist Hans Reinders considers a vocational calling rooted in God's prior action:

I wish to confront the longstanding convictions in the Christian tradition with implications of exclusion that have never been properly questioned … Every human being is worthy of being chosen as a friend simply because that is what God does—choose us to be friends … [F]riendship with fellow creatures is our vocation. ²²

Reinders explains further,

The practices and politics of inclusion will not create a lasting change for persons with disabilities unless there will be people willing to invest in friendships with them. Without true friendships, disabled persons will enjoy the new opportunities created by their equal rights most likely as “strangers in a strange land.” ²³

While, for Hans Reinders, our friendship with God is dependent on God's grace and not human initiative or capacity for purposive agency, friendships that follow God's lead are not one-way relationships. Youth with disabilities are to be chosen as friends because including them for their own sake is one way that Christians live out their vocation—and this aside from any benefit or good that the inclusion of disabled youth provide for a community. Such friendships are an extension of God's friendship, which is offered as a gift with no prerequisites are requirements beyond reception of the offering. However, once the space (physical, sociocultural, emotional) is created for encounter through the initiative of the typically developing peer, youth leader, or a program that places people with and without disabilities in close proximity, transformation occurs and the relationships can be understood as mutually enriching. Some of the youth acknowledge a perspective change brought about by their attempts to include and value students with disabilities. This statement from a student, already quoted above, can be read in this light:

I obviously knew kids with IDD. But I never thought, like, oh my gosh, like, they’re not coming to church because I never saw them. And so now that I’m, like, thinking about it and it's always on my heart, in my mind, I’m like, oh, wow. Like, we really are missing this whole entire just like body of people that can be put in the church. And like, not only benefit from the church, but like everybody around them is benefiting from them being there. And I think that, like, when we when we realize that, like, these awesome people are not in the church, that we realize that we’re missing out more than anything. ²⁴

The adults interviewed similarly experienced mutuality in their friendships with youth with disabilities through a reorientation to time and a reorganization of values. As they explain,

Just that they take the time to stop and do silly things and giggle about it and look back and connect with other people. ²⁵

A “Youthful” Ecclesiology

Their understandings of disability in terms related to the theological theme of the image of God and friendship have implications for the youths’ functional ecclesiology. From the interviews, an ecclesiology can be discerned that has grown up in the early 21st century. The youth of the Missing Voices Project have been shaped by a world of school shootings and gun violence, racial tensions, fights over LGBTQ inclusion and rights and gender equality, climate change, and what they perceive as ineffective legislators and church leaders who tell them to “wait your turn.” Frustration with these cultural realities, combined with possibilities opened up by social networking, has created the conditions for a blossoming of youth activism. Just a few examples of this activism include the creation of Turnout, a social network for young activists that “informs young people about events going on in the area, and provides resources for actions like voter registration and reaching out to legislators;” ²⁷ Future Coalition, a youth vote and climate network and community that addresses issues of gun violence, climate, and gender equality; ²⁸ March for Our Lives springing from the Parkland shootings, which addresses gun violence among other issues bearing the mission statement, “To harness the power of young people across the country to fight for sensible gun violence prevention policies that save lives”; ²⁹ and, Zero Hour, which features a “national day of mass action, led by youth” intended to pressure elected officials to take climate change seriously. ³⁰

When they imagine their roles in the church and the role of church in society, it is unsurprising that these youth think more dynamically of their churches than their elders. They tend to imagine the church as outward-facing and in terms of social movements rather than in terms of preserving the traditions or the doctrines of the church. In the opinion of many youth, the church has been complicit in, or at least impotent in addressing, the very problems that dim their future. As “networked individuals” who connect beyond place and live less institutionally bounded lives, ³¹ these youth also tend to think more globally and inclusively than many of their elders and imagine their ministry extending far beyond the impact it may have on their local congregations—a kind of prophetic critique of the church universal. In the words of one youth,

And hopefully we’ll be able to inspire other people of other churches to like. The goal isn't just for each of us to have the best church. It's like to start a movement of like to show other Christians to show people that we can all like go to church together and be accepting of everyone and include everyone into the church because God loves everyone. So we should, too. ³²

At its best, this youthful ecclesiology features a church that is incomplete without everyone, eschews segregated ministry, is a place of connection and belonging, and a place to discover God-given gifts and use them. One challenge for this youth movement will be finding ways to draw upon the existing wisdom of the intergenerational community and the historic, formative practices of their congregations. Returning to Barton,

Without robust connections to core church practices, theological anthropologies rooted in the imago Dei, friendship, and inclusion largely fail to support transformation of churches’ lived practices, leaving their anthropological imaginations vulnerable to the priorities of modern Western liberal democracies. In other words, when theological frameworks for disability lack robust connections with the paradigmatic Christian practices—the celebration of baptism, partaking in the Lord's Supper, to name a few—churches cannot make clear connections between the core practice of their life together and the full flourishing and participation of disabled people. ³³

Baptism signals much of what these young people intuit—that in Christ, human diversity is not a problem to be solved, but a gift to be received. The waters of baptism remind us that God calls all of us to God's community and to participate in God's redeeming work in the world. Whatever our capacity or giftedness, we are each called to foster one another's growth in faith and service. As Swinton explains, “As people are baptized into the body of Christ, so they enter into a space of deep and radical belonging. Within the body of Christ, every body has a place, and every body is recognized as a disciple with a call from Jesus and a vocation that the church needs if it is truly to be the body of Jesus.” ³⁴ The baptismal gift of belonging is more powerful and enduring than social movements or strategies of inclusion. Belonging is a gift of the Spirit to be lived into and is not the result of a social movement, the consequence of common agreement to an ideal of equity, it is not contingent on the possession of any inherent common capacity, nor is it the result of policies of inclusion or any human effort to overcome differences related to human diversity. ³⁵ Baptism is one practice of the church that young people can draw upon to support their vision for a church where all belong.

“Belonging” is not the same thing as “being included.” To be included, one simply needs to be present “somewhere,” wherever “somewhere” might be. Belonging is different. In order to belong, one needs to be missed if one isn't there. In order to belong to the community of strangers, people … need to be missed when they’re absent. If they’re not missed, they don't belong and if they don't belong, there is no true community—for anyone. ³⁶