Religion,counterprivates,and disabilites

Introduction

Religious studies and disability studies have generally been approached as two separate and distinct fields. Religious studies, as it currently exists in Western academia, originated in the nineteenth century from sociology and anthropology, among other scholarly approaches (Masuzawa, 2005). By contrast, disability studies is widely recognized to have emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, influenced by the work of disability rights activists (Society for Disability Studies, 2015). However, in recent years the interaction between religion and disability has stepped into the spotlight, both in scholarship and in wider society. While scholarship on interactions between religion and disability exists, it is often undertaken from a faith perspective that prioritizes theology over other potential approaches and ignores the value of bringing disability into contact with broader questions.

Our project intends to contribute to the emerging intersections of religious studies and disabilities studies by conceptualizing what we refer to as counterprivates specific to religious spaces. To accomplish this task, we investigate the ways in which persons with disabilities, both physical and cognitive, engender counterprivate spaces within Evangelical and Mormon churches. Specifically, we show that those with disabilities constitute a counterprivate (a) within evangelical communities through theological incompatibility and (b) within Mormon spaces through the ways in which counterprivates inform counterpublics. Throughout this paper, we elucidate Mormon and Evangelical spaces as a means of investigating the heterogeneity of private, religious spaces often unrecognized by scholarship. Counterpublics are spaces in which normative discourses within a broader public sphere are challenged, and are inherently relational to this public. Conceptions of the counterpublic are, generally, framed in relation with a private sphere, usually defined as partitioned from economic and political transactions. Counterprivates are relational spaces in which, like counterpublics, normative discourses of a private sphere (for the purposes of this paper, religious private spaces) are challenged or new channels of communication are created. We argue that oppositions and negotiations of ostensibly maintained norms within private spheres constitute counterprivates.

The decision to investigate Mormonism and Evangelicalism in particular for this project came in large part from our research backgrounds. Terry Shoemaker studies Evangelicalism extensively, while Alexandria Griffin was similarly trained in Mormon studies. In conversation, we each realized that, while we were extremely familiar with our respective traditions of study, we knew almost nothing about each other’s. From there, we undertook a series of collaborative site visits to both Evangelical and Mormon congregations. This process led to our identifying potential sites of production with disability frequently emerging as a theme. In addition to our site visits, we examined literature on these respective religious traditions and disability, while also paying attention to the literature on religion and disability more broadly. In conjunction with religion and disability, we found ourselves continually returning to literature on secularism and concepts of public and private. What did disability have to do with secularity? How did disability map onto public and private spaces, especially once religion and religious spaces entered the equation? How does each tradition conceptualize notions of body—its limitations, expectations, and ideals? These questions emerged throughout our site visits and created a unique cross-pollination of analyses.

Consequently, we seek to highlight the alternative counters within the privatized spaces of religion particularly focusing on counter discourse within these spaces. In order to elucidate this arena, we focus our attention on those persons with disabilities within Evangelical and Mormon religious spaces. Any research must select a limited number of sites of analytical focus, and, for multiple reasons, Evangelicalism and Mormonism provide unique sites for research. First, both Evangelicalism and Mormonism are demanding traditions. By demanding, we borrow from Charles Taylor’s (2007) A Secular Age, in which he decries the plurality of religious options available to religionists within the modern world along with the intense focus on individual self-interests instead of communal commitments. Due to this plurality of options and a concentration on individualization, Taylor suggests that undemanding forms of religion permeate the landscape, which minimize commitments. However, both Evangelicalism and Mormonism typically require intense behavioral, economic, and social commitments to the religious community leading to epicenters of religious ferment. Second, these particular religious traditions are instantiated with political influence due to sheer size and politically driven agendas. Evangelicals compose 25.4% of the American population, with Mormons at 1.6% (Pew Forum, 2016). Both groups maintain aggressive political commitments, typically to the Republican Party. Each remains so heavily concentrated in specific regions that the regions colloquially carry religious names—the Bible Belt and the Book of Mormon Belt respectively. ¹ Last, both of these religious traditions boast unique histories within the American context. Evangelicalism is often noted for its religious fervor initiated with the Second Great Awakening and traced through the Moral Majority of the Ronald Reagan era. The Latter Day Saints movement highlights the often-tenuous emergence of new religious traditions within the American context. It is a church that continues to exist to the present day, even developing a large globalized membership base.

As pertains to people with disabilities, Mormonism and Evangelicalism each maintain unique understandings. These understandings are influenced by dynamic theological constructs that manifest themselves in nuanced ways within private, religious spaces. In fact, it is the theological understandings of disability that garner the most attention of scholarship. However, we argue that persons with disabilities are more than mere theological objects. Beyond theological discussions, disabled bodies and minds exist and participate within religious spaces. Disability studies supplies the academic lens by which one can do justice to the disabled body and recognize the structures limiting full participation:

Disability studies does not treat disease or disability, hoping to cure or avoid them; it studies the social meanings, symbols, and stigmas attached to disability identity and asks how they relate to enforced systems of exclusion and oppression, attacking the widespread belief that having an able body and mind determines whether one is a quality human being. (Siebers, 2008: 3–4)

Publics and counterpublics/privates and counterprivates

The question of public and private spheres has animated many of the most central debates in the humanities. This is largely an outcome of the ways in which the existence of a public sphere has been seen as essential to the kind of societies envisioned by modern liberalism (Asad, 2003: 187). The public and private spheres are often envisioned as two components, with the public being shared by all under the authority of the liberal nation-state and acting as a marketplace of ideas, the site of commerce, and political activity, and the private sphere comprising families and life within the home, religion, sexuality, and other domains imagined to be outside the eye of the state. These spheres can be interpreted and spoken of in multiple senses, whether in terms of actual physical spaces (i.e. the marketplace or the home) or more metaphorically (i.e. which activities are perceived to be public or non-public, regardless of the spaces they take place in). Publics, in these critiques, are often envisioned as discursive, either in actuality or in representation. The notions of public and private spheres frequently have been sites of critique for feminist, critical race theory, disability, and other scholars of those on society’s margins.

Religion has also been a site of critique for the notion of public and private spheres. In the USA, as in other countries, these forms of critique take particular local forms of expressions as they react to different concepts of secularism. For example, Joan Wallach Scott (2007: 15) notes that in France, the local form of secularism, known as “laicite,” centers on the ideal of sublimating all private difference (including religion) to the public ideal of being a secular citizen of the French republic. Conversely, Scott (2007) argues that American notions of secularism are more concerned with protecting religions from the state than protecting the state from religion (15–16). In the USA, for some religious people, the critique of public and private spheres is often concerned with the idea that religion is improperly confined to the private sphere and is wrongly denied a role in the public, or, alternately, that elements of the public sphere are intruding on the private sphere of religion. This has taken a wide range of forms regarding concern about the roles of prayer or devotional Bible reading in public schools, to opposition to various worldly practices or ideas that are seen as threatening to religious beliefs (Barringer Gordon, 2010: 84–92). This critique of public and private spheres, and of the concept of secularism more broadly, has been opposed as a fundamental challenge to religiosity, which some feel cannot be adequately cordoned off into the private sphere. Moreover, the positioning of religion in debates about public/private is complicated by the way religion can be presented as a public or a private. A religious tradition may be public since anyone can attend religious meetings, and church hierarchies often participate in public discussions about various issues. But religion is also presented as private in that the space of a church service is highly regulated and only some are authorized to speak; it is thus often a discursively limited space. Because of this, in this paper, we recognize religious spaces as both private and public.

Understanding the limits of the idealized public and private divide, some have noted the contestations that occur within these spaces (Warner, 2002). Michael Warner, for instance, works out what he calls a counterpublic or created spaces used to challenge public norms. Warner’s suggestion of counterpublics is useful in also thinking about contestations in private spaces as well. For example, two scholars have noted the possibility of an often unrecognized sphere in which countering discursive practices are engendered in private spaces—a sphere they term counterprivate. Jessica Blaustein (2003) and Mark Leeman (2006) both argue that specifically the home (the physical dwelling place) constitutes a counterprivate space providing a venue where circulations of counter claims and notions develop and cultivate vis-à-vis the public. Each of these works recognizes the permeability of the public/private divide—that political discourse is not limited to the public. Focusing on the discursive practices within religious communities, Leeman’s research indicates the heterogeneity of the private in (re)negotiating values, structures, and practices. Additionally, Blaustein’s work demonstrates the need to critically examine the idealized, private spaces of the American social landscape. Because she works from a reparative agenda that endeavors to discover potential worlds hidden in the prescriptive normativity, she advocates for an approach like that of Talal Asad (2003:16), who recognizes that one can only pursue the Secular through its shadows. Thus the permutations of the counterprivate, particularly those discursive activities within religious spaces, have the potential to inform and influence the ways in which those members of the counterprivate engage with the public, by way of a counterpublic or through other spaces.

With this scholarly discourse in mind, we propose to supplement both the work of Leeman and Blaustein in explicating and mining the characteristics and operations of the counterprivate spheres. Like these scholars, we concur that the counterprivate sphere discursively engages with the public sphere. But we propose that the privileging of the public in these analyses, as the target and objective of discourse, reaffirms the modern project of secularity as the space that has value. Stated otherwise, prior analyses assume that the secular/public sphere constitutes the space of human progress and freedom juxtaposed to the private sphere that can be envisioned as limiting and impeding progress. We suggest that this binary of private/public privileges the public. Rather than being purely separate from the public sphere, religious spaces within the USA have historically been staging grounds from which to engage in the public discourse, while also maintaining a spatial independence. Yet, we also recognize the intra-discourse occurring within private spaces. These discourses encompass counter religious and political claims often leading to renegotiation of tacitly held private norms. Thus by counterprivate, we mean the ways in which individuals or collectives oppose, negotiate, contradict, or contest the norms ostensibly maintained within private spheres.

Evangelicals, counterprivates, and disabilities

Evangelicalism in the USA is difficult to define, categorize, or classify. Constituted by a diversity of Protestant denominations, church sizes, loose connections, and regional locations (although heavily concentrated in Southern states), Evangelicalism is more a movement of particular churches and religionists focused on theological and political objectives. One means of classifying the commonalities of Evangelicals that has received some scholarly traction is the fourfold general definition provided by David Bebbington, which accentuates the conversionist (dependence on a conversion experience or “being saved”), biblicist (recognition of the bible’s authority), crucicentrist (recognized importance of the crucifixion of Jesus as central to the world), and activist (emphases on proselytizing and political engagement) traits of the movement (Bebbington, 1989). These four traits highlight the theological understandings (biblicism and crucicentrism) along with the ways in which these theological understandings inspire and motivate Evangelicals to engage with those outside of their religious confines (activism and conversionism). The intentional and energetic attempts to recruit individuals into religious conformity with Evangelical theology and engage beyond the walls of the church space produce an often vocal, but not homogenous, assembly. Stated differently, for many evangelicals, Christian life fails to be contained within the limits of a privatized church space—a space that profoundly influences political allegiances and positions.

Scholarship has long been interested in the political motivations and practices of Evangelicals within the USA. One leading scholar working to quantify and qualify the aspirations and objectives of American Evangelicals within the political sphere is Christian Smith (1998, 2002). Smith’s numerous works indicate a diversity of views within Evangelicalism but note that Evangelicals typically work best through mobilization and organization at moments when Evangelicals feel defensive. In this regard, Smith posits that the resources and tools of Evangelicals tend to work both for and against their objectives. Others are less gracious and argue that the primary objectives of Evangelicals consist of establishing dangerous and undemocratic theocratic policies (Goldberg, 2007; Hedges, 2006). Goldberg (2007: 210) succinctly summarizes this position when she states, “Christian nationalists [Evangelicals] worship a nostalgic vision of America, but they despise the country that actually exists – its looseness, its decadence, its maddening lack of absolutes.” Although these works comprise a spectrum of Evangelical intentions, the descriptive approach (Smith, 1998, 2002) and the normative (Goldberg, 2004, 2007) each highlight the work of Evangelicals in engaging with the public (although again each differ in the evaluation of these efforts).

Moreover, further scholarship features localized forms of Evangelical activism predicated on the intentions of eventual conversionism. For instance, Omri Elisha’s (2011) research focuses on the charitable work conducted by Evangelicals in an attempt to reduce local suffering (i.e. poverty), but ultimately through a soteriological means. Likewise, sociological works, like Robert Putnam’s (2000) Bowling Alone, surmise that the private arenas motivate Evangelical members to high levels of commitments in exercising faith through volunteer efforts outside of the religious space, but still through the church’s organizing. Additionally, the focus of scholarship explores the forms of communication whereby an Evangelical message is broadcasted beyond a private, religious sphere. In this regard, Shayne Lee and Phillip Luke Siniteire (2009) supply case studies of Evangelical efforts to capitalize on technological advances. In sum, often works pertaining to Evangelicals describe and theorize the unidirectional work from religious private spaces to public spaces. This work is political in the sense that it engages with the public sphere. Thus Evangelicalism, broadly speaking, constitutes a counterpublic in the ways that Warner (2002) and Nancy Fraser (1990) denote.

But we highlight these counterpublic movements of Evangelicalism to also note that much of the counterpublic work is formulated, negotiated, and constituted through the work conducted in the private, religious sphere. This begs the question: why doesn’t more scholarship seek to understand the practices, discourses, and interactions within that private, religious space? We do not mean to devalue the work focusing on public engagements, but there are valuable insights, beyond mere theological constructs, transpiring within private religious contexts that would offer keen insights into the lived realities, motivations, and understandings of Evangelicals. Some scholars are aware of this. For example, at the end of his work American Evangelicals, Smith (1998: 218–219) speculates, “part of religion’s adaptability appears to derive from its capacity to sustain itself through rituals, practices, microcommunities, organizational routines, and so on, which serve as powerful plausibility structures … We know that religion gets worked out in religious contexts.” The processes of “working out” religion, within a private, religious space, in this case Evangelical spaces, are what we focus on in this study.

To contextualize and aid in the elucidation of this portion of our argument, we begin by describing observations at a local evangelical church. To acclimate the researchers to the Evangelical environment, we randomly selected an Evangelical church for observation. This church had typical evangelical services, in its prayers, music, and preaching. Structurally, the service incorporated various actors participating in prayers and music. Congregants participated in these rituals throughout the service. The religious community consisted of approximately two hundred attendees that morning, and we were surprised at the number of those attending with varying levels of disability. There were elderly there using walkers, crutches, and canes; they were dispersed throughout the pews and the church. A mother aided her blind son as he navigated the layout of the church sanctuary. The two back rows of pews held several people from a local care facility. They were assisted by care facility staff and had been transported to the church in facility vehicles (demarcated in the parking lot).

Internal understandings in Christianity relating to disability have a long and debated history. Christians typically look toward theological prescriptions and examples to form conceptualizations regarding physical and cognitive disabilities. In older traditions, many Christians understood disability as a result of sin. Alternatively, some Christians perceived the disabled body and mind as “representing opportunities for the faithful to do works". Instead of sinfulness, then, the disabled body became a means of demonstrating faithful dedication by those who were able-bodied. Due to this recognition of opportunities, Christians have contributed in the creation of care facilities while also voicing the need to care for the disabled.

How do these theological understandings work out in the lived experiences of those within Christian spaces? There exists scant research qualifying the perspectives and attitudes of people with disabilities within religious spaces. But one such example is the work of Erna Möller who recorded and analyzed the experiences of those with disabilities to provide thick descriptions in the context of South African Christian churches. Aligning with the previously mentioned theological understandings of utilizing disabled bodies and minds as a means for abled-bodied Christians to work out their faith, Möller’s respondents described being objects for either theological discussion (i.e. who sinned?) or targets for healing. And while her respondents noted some liberating and inclusive aspects, Moller (2012: 158–159) argues:

Biblical interpretations that have an oppressing influence on people with disabilities in faith communities include ideas about normalization of the body, prayer, and sin in relation to disability. In the way that others respond to them, people with disabilities experience that they have to be normalized and that their disability should be healed. They become the victims of prayer practices, which they do not ask for, and feel the compulsion to be healed.

In our experience within the Evangelical space, there was no direct “normalization of the body” as Moller discovered; instead, there existed a subversive normalizing message. This message centered on a recurring image within Evangelicalism – the Body. On this particular Sunday, the minister delivered a sermon regarding the ideal form of church government. In many ways, this sermon echoed Foucault’s (2007) notion of pastoral power. This common trope constructs a hierarchical pyramid with God ultimately in control and Christians submissive under this godly authority. Situated between God and Christians in the hierarchy is the role of the pastor working like God in a “shepherding” role. Foucault (127) refers to this as the “government of souls and conduct,” in which “it looks after the flock, it looks after the individuals of the flock, it sees to it that the sheep do not suffer, it goes in search of those that have strayed off course, and it treats those that are injured.” In this particular church, some members are disqualified from performing these pastoral duties. In fact, the pastor reiterated to all those who were present that only men were qualified candidates.

The shepherding responsibilities are predicated on an understanding of the “Body” of believers—a Pauline metaphor describing the relationship between individual members and the composite whole community. ² Within this metaphor, most fully explained in 1 Corinthians 12:12–27 and referenced in this particular sermon, the argument was made that individual Christians compose part of a whole—the whole being the Body of Christ. This whole is dependent upon the cooperation of parts in fulfilling the tasks prescribed by the divine. The parts must continually fulfill their roles so that the utility of the whole is maximized. There are benefits for the individual parts, for this Body provides a support network for each participant.

The pastor explained that in the Body, the believer was never alone. Moreover, the ultimate objective, as deduced by the pastor, is a perfection of the Body of believers through a perfecting and disciplining of individual bodies. Our project is not whether the pastor provided a correct exegesis of this passage, but rather how these articulations get written on physical bodies within the space. This push toward perfection leads to the question: what if the physical bodies that compose the metaphorical Body are not consistently meeting up to the expectation of perfection? That morning the pastor explained that when the Body fails to meet expectations, it is as if the Body is walking on crutches or crippled. In other words, the Body is disabled. These binary metaphors and symbols—bodies/Body, perfection/disabled—powerfully constrain participation by many within these spaces because the symbols are not morally neutral descriptors in this context.

How are we to make sense of this situation? In a private, religious space, the spokesperson for the religious community articulates an ideal objective for the community based on able-bodiedness, while in the midst are several disabled bodies and minds. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s notion of misfitting supplies an interesting approach for explicating this scenario. Misfitting “denote(s) an encounter in which two things come together in either harmony or disjunction” in resource distribution and access (Garland-Thomson, 2011: 592). Drawing upon materialist feminist conceptualizations of disability, Garland-Thomson seeks to describe the unstable, material relations of disabled bodies to public environments not conducive to disabilities. Moreover, “the critical concept of misfitting emphasizes location rather than being, the relational rather than the essential” (604). Certainly, Garland-Thomson’s misfitting works in this private space as well. The disjunction between the prescribed abled-Body and abled-body metaphors and the presence of disabled bodies constructs a misfitting for there is not equal access to the roles of the Body. Again, the disabled bodies and minds are accessories for abled-bodies to work toward perfection. Or as Tobin Siebers (2008: 7) claims, persons with disabilities are merely perceived as an “accessory to the real work of constructing a perfect body/bodies.” Obviously there are counterexamples to our analysis herein, but the Evangelical image of the Body as a collective whole and healthy ableness constructs tacitly maintained structured environments marginalizing disabled bodies and minds. Those with disabilities become an object for abled bodies to continue to perfect themselves individually and spiritually while at the same time reifying the collective abled-Body metaphor.

We want to push this analysis further by arguing that both a material/relational and discursive engagement occurs in this particular scenario. Within religious spaces, as previously stated, there exist normative positionalities. These claims are formed and structured, not just with theology in mind, but are influenced by public and counterpublic structures. Persons circulate through the public and private spheres because the spheres are permeable and porous, although they do not always gain recognition in these spaces. But counters exist to these normative claims and positions in private spaces. These are the counterprivate. In this case, we posit that the convergence of able-bodied discourse with the disabled bodies in attendance produces incongruency. This incongruence is facilitated through an embodied critique supplied by the diversity of disabilities throughout the space. Those with disabilities in this space serve as a relational counterprivate to a socially and theologically constructed notion of wholeness. The discursive-materiality of the disabled bodies serves to interrogate the stability of the Body metaphor. “Embodiment – our particular ‘shape’ in the broadest sense – is always dynamic as it interacts with world,” reminds Garland-Thomson (2011: 595). Quite possibly the perfection of the metaphorical Body is unattainable in any proprioceptive sense due to the temporality of able-bodiedness.

Interestingly, in this Evangelical space, there existed few religious symbols. In fact, in the entire gathering space, only a single cross hung at the front of the area. Was the body/Body the primary symbol circulating in the space? The perfecting and disciplining of the individual body extends into multiple aspects of the Evangelical life. Often cited in this regard are “muscular Christianity” and the attempt to defeminize American Christianity. ³ These closely related endeavors place a huge emphasis on physical discipline and attainments as an avenue whereby spiritual formations occur. The Body and body are valued to the degree they can attain a constructed perfection and facilitate spiritual development. Unintentionally or not, these notions align with socially constructed ways of understanding disability. The socially constructed understandings of disability can be summarized as: “ability is the ideological baseline by which humanness is determined. The lesser the ability, the lesser the human being” (Siebers, 2008: 10). Just as several disabled bodies and minds were relegated to the back pews, within the Body metaphor, those with disabilities also were marginalized to the periphery of inclusion. But even the periphery is constituted by “diffuse networks of talk,” to utilize Warner’s (2002: 56) language. In this particular instance, the disabled bodies mediate a counter to the perfectible, communal ideal.

Mormonism, counterprivates, and disabilities

Scholarship on Mormonism has, in the past, been heavily focused on history, with more recent forays into questions of race, gender, and sexuality, as well as other methodologies such as social scientific approaches. However, there has been little engagement with the relationship of Mormonism to concepts of public and private. Conceptions of Mormonism as a counterpublic have shifted over time. In the nineteenth century, Mormonism was posited by non-Mormons as a counterpublic due to the practice of polygamy and the movement of many Mormons to the Utah territory, and by Mormons as a counterpublic to what was seen as a fallen and sinful world. In the contemporary era, the church has often asserted itself as a counterpublic through its conservative stances on issues like same-sex marriage. Mormonism’s stance as a counterpublic has remained nearly continuous since its founding, with both Mormons and non-Mormons positioning it as such. However, this social conservatism has occasionally resulted in political alliances with other groups such as evangelicals who would normally not welcome any association with Mormons. ⁴ Here, as with Evangelicals, the counterpublic is relational.

During the research phase of this project, we visited an LDS congregation during a fast and testimony meeting to contemplate the ways in which disability functioned in a Mormon context. LDS congregations meet on a weekly basis, and the first Sunday of the month is a meeting wherein attendees are supposed to fast until church meetings are concluded for the day, and time is allotted for any member to bear their testimony and speak extemporaneously to the rest of the congregation. During other meetings, talks are assigned to a specific member of the congregation in advance.

A few different instances exemplified the ways in which disability complicates and informs the ways in which Mormons constitute a counterpublic. One woman spoke about the ways in which her husband’s physical disability and use of a wheelchair had affected their lives. She emphasized that although he “couldn’t work a nine to five job,” he was “a good man,” referencing both conservative gendered understandings of men as household providers as well as a broader Mormon emphasis on the value and importance of labor. She acknowledged their normative value, while arguing that her husband was able to meet these standards in a different way, speaking of the amount of time he was able to spend with their children and grandchildren, as well as the time he devoted to doing genealogical research (viewed in Mormonism as salvific and often referred to as “family history work”) through their home computer.

Another woman rose to talk about her recent prayers and personal revelation regarding her deceased parents. Mormons believe in posthumous salvation, which is offered to the deceased through temple ceremonies (often referred to as “temple work”), with names generated through genealogical research. The woman was an adult convert to the church, and spoke about her concerns over the posthumous salvation of her parents, for whom she had conducted temple ceremonies. In Mormon theology/cosmology, deceased persons can accept or reject these salvific ceremonies done on their behalf, and the woman expressed a concern that her father had rejected the ceremonies performed for him. Specifically, she felt that her mother may have accepted them, but that that due to her father being “very depressed” at the time of his passing, she was concerned that this state had persisted posthumously and had resulted in his rejection of the ceremonies. ⁵

These examples from our visit to an LDS congregation open up two different ways to approach the question of disabilities and counterprivates within Mormonism. In the first, we can see the ways in which people with disabilities and their families negotiate religious and cultural norms that may otherwise exclude them to find ways in which they can be accommodated. In the second, disability, often falling outside of the purview of official Mormon doctrines, is often a site for theological speculation and shifting. We will examine the potential implications of both of these modalities for the notion of counterprivates.

In order to analyze these counterprivates, we must address the ways in which Mormonism differs from many other religious traditions. Mormonism does not have a systematized theology (like Catholicism) or a jurisprudential tradition (like Islam or Judaism). Rather, Mormon belief is heavily informed by the cosmology set forth by Joseph Smith and other early church leaders. This cosmology posits a continuity of the existence of human spirits from before life on earth into the afterlife, God having a physical body, and the ability of humans to eventually become like God, among other factors (Bowman, 2012: 230–231). In addition, pronouncements from prophets and other ecclesiastical authorities and scriptural interpretation often inform theological views. While there are some matters in which the church has made its stance quite explicit (such as the nature of God or the prophethood of Joseph Smith), there are many cases in which a matter is not formally codified and remains open to some degree of individual interpretation. For example, while the church formally ended polygamy in 1890, debates over whether polygamy is still a component of marriage in heaven or in the afterlife more broadly continue among the laity (259).

Simultaneous to this, however, Mormonism is highly bureaucratized and operates on a system of handbooks and guidelines for actions by ecclesiastical leaders. There are very few situations encountered by a bishop or other leader that do not have a codified procedure attached to them, from how meetings are run to how various infractions are handled. ⁶ This does not mean that leaders of the church do not allow or encourage members to use their own discretion in various situations. In fact, the phrase “bishop roulette” has been used among both LGBT Mormons and supporters of women’s ordination to denote the ways in which an ecclesiastical leader’s discretion can be used to look the other way on some infractions or to react against them more harshly. ⁷

In some ways, “bishop roulette” can be seen as a continuation of the complex interactions between public and private (and thus, counterpublics and counterprivate). Like the establishment of Mormonism as a counterpublic itself, Mormon counterprivates are relational and contingent. Church members whose individual interpretations fall within the sphere of the church’s positioning itself as a counterpublic find themselves in a precarious position, while other matters are considered private (or perhaps, counterprivate) and thus cause no trouble. To return to a previous example, individual opinion on the eternal status of polygamy is outside of the church’s constitution of itself as a public or a counterpublic in the current era. However, believing that polygamy should be a current practice of the church marks one as belonging to the church’s counterpublic of polygamists, and thus places it outside of the realm of accepted individual theological speculation.

One can assume that disability falls squarely into the realm of the private and counterprivate. Idiosyncratic views, such as those of the woman at the ward we visited who felt that something about her father’s mental illness has persisted after death, seem to operate as a counterprivate. Unlike a counterpublic, there is no real anticipation that a broader public will engage with these ideas. However, disability can easily cross over into counterpublics, whether in the church’s positioning of itself as a counterpublic or in the creation of counterpublics to the church. We will examine two examples from discourse around same-sex marriage and women’s ordination within Mormonism.

Disability has often emerged within LDS discussions of same-sex marriage. Specifically, people with disabilities have been brought forward as rhetorical instruments in statements from LDS leaders about their opposition to same-sex marriage. A 2006 interview with Dallin H Oaks, an LDS apostle, and Lance B Wickman, a member of the quorum of the seventy (a secondary rung of the church’s hierarchy), was conducted by the church’s public affairs office in an effort to expound on some of the church’s views on same-sex marriage and homosexuality more broadly. In response to a question about whether it could be argued that it is unfair to claim that the church’s sexual morality is nondiscriminatory in that both heterosexuals and homosexuals are expected to remain chaste outside of marriage, given that within the church same-sex relationships are forbidden, Oaks responded that

There are people with physical disabilities that prevent them from having any hope–in some cases any actual hope and in other cases any practical hope–of marriage. The circumstance of being currently unable to marry, while tragic, is not unique. It is sometimes said that God would not discriminate against individuals in this circumstance. But life is full of physical infirmities that some might see as discriminations–total paralysis or serious mental impairment being two that are relevant to marriage. If we believe in God and believe in His mercy and His justice, it won’t do to say that these are discriminations because God wouldn’t discriminate. We are in no condition to judge what discrimination is. We rest on our faith in God and our utmost assurance of His mercy and His love for all of His children. (Mormon Newsroom, 2015a, “Interview with Elder Dallin H. Oaks and Elder Lance B. Wickman)

Similarly, Wickman replied that

There’s really no question that there is an anguish associated with the inability to marry in this life. We feel for someone that has that anguish … but it’s not limited to someone who has same-gender attraction … I happen to have a handicapped daughter. She’s a beautiful girl. She’ll be 27 next week. Her name is Courtney. Courtney will never marry in this life, yet she looks wistfully upon those who do. She will stand at the window of my office which overlooks the Salt Lake Temple and look at the brides and their new husbands as they’re having their pictures taken. She’s at once captivated by it and saddened because Courtney understands that will not be here experience here. Courtney didn’t ask for the circumstances into which she was born in this life, any more than somebody with same-gender attraction did … what we look forward to, and the great promise of the gospel, is that whatever our inclinations are here, whatever our shortcomings are here, whatever the hindrances to our enjoying a fullness of joy here, we have the Lord’s assurance for every one of us that those in due course will be removed. (Mormon Newsroom, 2015a, “Interview with Elder Dallin H. Oaks and Elder Lance B. Wickman)

Disability is perceived to be analogous to other issues often encountered by marginalized members of the LDS church. For example, in a post from the blog of the Ordain Women movement, a woman simply identified as “Gail” provides her personal story of advocating for women’s ordination in the church, and ties this advocacy to issues around disability. When asked about her youth in the church, Gail wrote, “I learned that what was offered to me as a disabled young woman wasn’t enough,” tying her frustrations as a young woman to her frustrations as a person with a disability (Alston, 2015). She further noted that within her current congregation in the Netherlands

The unit is small and there aren’t enough men to do the priesthood work … I was told that I don’t have callings [a leadership or teaching position] because I’m a woman with a disability and my Dutch is not at the native level. The truth according to a Dutch guy I know is this: I’m a threat and as long as leadership is threatened by me, my skills won’t be used … I’m disappointed and angered that I can be told that as a woman of strength and a woman with a disability that there is not a place for me in this church. (Alston, 2015)

Here, we return to official LDS church discourse. As mentioned previously, the church is highly bureaucratized and provides official guidelines for ecclesiastical leaders in nearly every position. These guidelines also concern disabilities. We will examine the ways in which these guidelines can be seen as an effort to prevent the formation of a disability-based counterprivate. Whether or not this is, in fact, successful is outside the scope of this paper; rather, we seek to examine the ways in which official church rhetoric operates in this realm. Within this rhetoric, who is the imagined audience, and how might this create a counterprivate regarding disability?

The LDS church’s website contains webpages on topics, ranging from scripture to work placement services. The offerings on disability are diverse, spanning physical and cognitive or intellectual disabilities and addressing topics like defining disability, providing accessible versions of church materials, accommodating people within a class, and addressing issues that persons with disabilities may face within the church. It is possible to see these webpages as part of the Mormon public/counterpublic, as they are clearly addressed to church members and especially to anyone running meetings, teaching classes, or otherwise in administrative position. It is worth noting that, with the exception of webpages addressing what kinds of accommodations can be provided and how they should be procured, the imagined audience of these pages seems to be persons without disabilities.

The webpages are more prescriptive than descriptive; any descriptive work is done in the clear service of a stated agenda of accommodation and inclusion. For example, the introduction for a page entitled “Physical Disabilities” begins by describing various forms of physical disability, before adding that

People with mobility and movement impairments may find it difficult to participate when facing social and physical barriers. Quite often they are individuals of courage and independence who have a desire to contribute to the fullest level of their ability. Some are totally independent, while others may need part- or full-time assistance. (Mormon Newsroom, 2015h, “Physical Disabilities”)

Similarly, the church’s webpage on intellectual disabilities combines information on the disabilities themselves with instruction for accommodating them in a classroom setting and religiously specific reminders. In addition to being told to consult with the person themselves as well as “family or caregivers” on “strengths, abilities, and learning style,” the reader is reminded that “individuals with intellectual disabilities can still feel the influence of the Spirit” (Mormon Newsroom, 2015g). A webpage providing links to handbook pages concerning disability accommodations within specific contexts (such as youth groups or priesthood councils) is accompanied by a picture of several young children, one of whom appears to have Down Syndrome. The picture is captioned with “And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. 3 Nephi 22:13” (Mormon Newsroom, 2015c). The combination of the picture with the reference to a scriptural text conveys to the reader that children with disabilities, and by implication anyone with disabilities, cannot be separated from the rest of the church.

The combination of descriptive information with prescriptive admonition and religious justification continues throughout the church’s webpages on disability, with an emphasis on inclusion and an assumed audience of people who do not have disabilities. For example, there are webpages directed toward parents, siblings, and grandparents of people with disabilities, but no page actually addressing people with disabilities themselves as an audience (Mormon Newsroom, 2015c, 2015d, 2015e, 2015f; “Helps for Mothers,” “Helps for Fathers,” “Helps for Grandparents,” “Helping Siblings Understand”). Despite the repeated exhortations to include people with disabilities, the fact that they are not part of the audience inherently creates a counterprivate. However, as seen in our discussion of the ways in which counterprivates bleed into and inform counterpublics, to be counterprivate is not necessarily to be silent. The full potential impact of disability as a counterprivate in Mormonism remains to be seen.

Conclusions

A substantive orientation of modernity and secularism is the imaginative differentiations of public and private (Casanova, 1994). Although debates continue regarding what exactly constitutes private or public, these differentiations typically allocate and relegate religion to private spaces and individual internalizations. Likewise, another key formation of the ethos of the modern consists in privileging the mind over the body. And where the body is integrated, the perfection of the body is ideal following what Siebers refers to as a “medical model.” He states, “the medical model defines disability as an individual defect lodged in the person, a defect that must be cured or eliminated if the person is to achieve full capacity as a human being” (Siebers, 2008: 3). From a critical examination, the public sphere and abled-body are privileged as rational and perfectible, respectively, within modern structures. This privileging leads to unrecognized activities and discourse within non-public spheres and by disabled bodies and minds. Yet, scholars like Warner and Fraser extensively argue that the public/private binary simply fails to encompass the lived realities of persons actively engaging in discursive pursuits. Evinced by our case studies and arguments is the heterogeneity of private spheres, particularly as it relates to disabled bodies and minds within those spaces. As Talal Asad (2003) posits that there exists a diversity of secularisms across the globe, we argue (or just possibly structure a reminder) that there exists a diversity of private spaces and a diversity of perspectives and attitudes within private, religious spaces. The heterogeneous voices within these spaces often go unrecognized, but truly offer much in understanding the ways that counterprivates are constituted.

Admittedly, this work does not attempt to provide a comprehensive record of counterprivate spaces. Instead, we offer two case studies demonstrating the viability of the concept. In our case studies, we explicate two distinct modalities of counterprivates. One modality exists as an informative counterprivate. Those with disabilities are marginalized within Mormon spaces much like those identifying as non-heterosexual. These intra-discursive practices, offered as counter to the normativity within these spaces, inform and influence the counterpublic agendas and actions of the Mormon church. Unrecognized by scholarship, disabled bodies and minds challenge, and possibly threaten, acceptable notions of which bodies are capable, able, and permitted to conduct the work required by the demanding Mormon tradition. The second demonstrated example consists of a discursive and physical countering by disabled bodies within Evangelical spaces. This embodied critique challenges a theological understanding that extends into the social lives of Evangelicals. Theologically, disabled bodies challenge the perfectibility of Evangelical bodies by straining the ideals of the symbolic church Body. Unrecognized within these particular religious spaces is the understanding that “what is universal in life, if there are universals, is the experience of the limitations of the body” (Davis, 2002: 32). Both cases serve as disputations over and against normalizing, religious structures; but, as we argue, these disputations are not constrained by notions of a private sphere. In each of the highlighted cases, the understandings of counterprivate could be further expanded. For instance, disabled bodies in Evangelical spaces inform the construction of counterpublic stances and positions much like what we argue is occurring in Mormon spaces, but with possibly different outcomes. Likewise, much of the work accentuated within Mormon spaces informs not only Mormon positions as a counterpublic, but also positions internal to Mormonism. Each of these instances draws attention to the complex dialogical and relational developments transpiring within religious spaces.

Our intention with this study is to accentuate the investigative potentials unrecognized within private spaces by intentionally focusing on the discursive and material heterogeneity. In many religious communities, doctrines and praxis are more negotiable and unstable than many people of faith would admit. Likewise, scholarship has ignored this negotiability within religious spaces choosing alternatively to assume categorical homogeneity of religion. The myriad forms of counterprivates inform the systems of governance, belief, and practice intermittently leading to new or reformed ways of engaging with the public. To complicate working assumptions of both religion and private, we suggest analyses prioritizing, interrogating, and theorizing contestations within religious spaces. Moreover, the continuing effects of a democratic public in sparking many of these counterprivate contestations within religious spaces should be analyzed. In other words, as the public sphere continues to expand to include divergent voices (although not completely neutral), how does this influence religionists to work in constructing religious spaces that mimic the public sphere? Scholarship must pay attention to the ways in which truly private spaces in religion, such as Mormon temples, complicate the public/private relationality of congregational meetings.

Furthermore, much of disability studies concentrate on the ways in which persons with disabilities live within and negotiate public spaces. To be sure, this is valuable work that needs to continually critique structures that fail to make room for disabled bodies and minds. However, disability studies scholars cannot ignore the lived realities of disabled bodies and minds within private spaces. Disabled bodies and minds negotiate the private sphere where able-bodiedness, like many public spaces, is considered the norm. Private spheres supply unique opportunities for disabled bodies and minds to integrate and participate while also constructing unique and similar forms of marginalization. Acknowledging sites of opportunities for both participation and critique, a comparative study of how various religions and various Christian denominations integrate or exclude disabilities would inform the scholarly discourse and public understandings of integrating persons with disabilities more fully into society.