Abstract
It is a privilege to serve as Guest Editor for this issue of Missiology that centers on ‘Unsettling Beauty: Disabling Spaces, Worship, and Imaginations for Mission’. The theme was first addressed in a panel discussion at the 2023 ASM conference and the richness of that discussion led to a broader call for papers. This issue is the result. The articles gathered here represent many types of disability as well as different access points to disability (personal, through a family member, and through ministry and research callings). Each one examines some aspect of worship and witness to consider how we might reimagine space, materiality, and the embodiment of the gospel in and through our liturgy as well as in and through our witness in the world. Disability is something that affects more than 1 in 6 people globally, and of these, 90-95% are considered unreached. The lack of inclusion in the church leaves many with disabilities (and their families) without a clear sense that disability belongs in the church and more, that people with disabilities are vital and necessary participants in the church and subsequently God’s mission. The authors here believe disability should be central in the work and witness of the church and write with the hope of challenging ableism in the church and releasing a fresh vision for how disability can draw us to see the beauty of God in surprising ways, can offer new ways of imagining missionary and mission work, can form the church toward the enactment of justice in the world through the full participation of people of all abilities in God’s work, and can expand the creative expressions of liturgy and gospelling in order for God to be experienced and more known in the world.
The first two articles set the theological and multidisciplinary stage for how to understand beauty, aesthetics, and missio Dei. Sam Wan begins our conversation by examining the meaning and theology behind our aesthetic responses and casting a vision for centering our sense of beauty in the Trinitarian God, whose Spirit sanctifies and reorients our minds to perceive the missio Dei ‘in all people and all aesthetic markers’. Dave Deuel then turns our attention to consider how the outworking of imago Dei through all kinds of bodies constitutes God’s mission and draws onlookers to discover a God who meets us in our weaknesses.
In considering who participates in mission, the final three articles by Andy Opie, Audrey Seah, and myself challenge the ableist assumption that non-disabled people witness and disabled people receive. Using art, the weakness language of Paul, and personal narrative of pastoring on the mission field while blind, Opie argues that beauty flows though brokenness, making disability a showplace for God’s glory. Seah considers how deaf Catholic material culture reveals the many ways in which deaf Catholics actively participate in mission and operationalize various theologies of mission in robust and spiritually rich ways that are not dependent on hearing people. In the final article, I examine how liturgy is an embodied means of participating in God’s story that shapes participants to know and live out God’s story in the world. Weaving in my own son’s engagement with liturgy, I argue that as a work of the people, liturgy requires the inclusion of people with disabilities as a means for their own formation as well as for the church’s formation and more complete witness.
As you read, I hope you will be challenged to consider afresh who is in the church, who is equipped for ministry, who is released for witness, and how the church, itself, can be reimagined so that all peoples find a place of belonging, purpose, and mission as the church, itself, becomes a more credible and visible sign, witness, and foretaste of God’s kingdom.