📝 From the Pastor’s Desk

Every Body and Mind Belong | How Disability Theology Transforms the Church

Dear Holy Covenant,

Over the last two years, one of the many things I love about Holy Covenant is its commitment to asking deeper questions about who we are becoming as a church community. Not simply who we say we are, but that we are living out who we say we are in our worship, how we fellowship, the way we show hospitality, and the pursuit of social justice. Doing so helps us bear witness to the God who is present in every mind and every body.

In recent years, the intersections of disability theology and disability justice have helped the wider Church rethink long held assumptions about the embodiment, participation, and belonging of people. Rather than seeing disability as something that needs to be “overcome” or “fixed,” disability theologians have been inviting people of faith to see the diverse ways human bodies and minds reflect the image of God and call us toward fuller, more just and loving expressions of being in community with one another.

Amy Kenny, a who’s a disability scholar and the author of My Body Is Not a Prayer Request, puts it this way:

“Disabled people bear God’s image, not in spite of our bodies and minds, but through them. Our disabled existence celebrates the many ways God’s body is revealed in the world. The kingdom of God is incomplete without disabled people taking our place at the table—not as objects of charity, but as co-creators of beloved community.”

Like other disability theologians, Amy Kenny challenges the assumption that disability is a problem to solve. And instead, she argues that disability is not only part of our human tapestry, but part of God’s creation. She points out in her book that Jesus’ life and ministry consistently centered those who lived at the margins of society, not by “fixing” them, but by restoring their dignity, their agency, and their participation in community. The point of Jesus’ message was those on the margins were to be included and belonged. Not on the fringes of society, but at the center with everyone else.

Rev. Dr. Sarah Lund, Minister for Disabilities and Mental Health Justice in the United Church of Christ, emphasizes in her book Blessed Minds: Breaking the Silence about Neurodiversity the sacredness of mental health struggles, neurodiversity, and diverse embodiments. Lund insists that the Church’s call is not merely to include people with disabilities and mental health challenges, but to be transformed by them so we reshape our communities as sacred places where all bodies and minds can participate fully, without barriers or shame. And to do so because as she says, “We are all made in love, by Love, for love, and that love is expansive enough to hold every form of human complexity.”

Both Lund and Kenny, like other theologians before them that have done work on disability justice, have pushed the Church to recognize that accessibility is not something we’re simply adding-on or offering out of courtesy to others. It is a theological commitment, that we believe God meets us in our particularities and differences, not in some perceived version of “normalcy”. And in that belief, we see accessibility as a practice of justice and a spiritual discipline that requires both humility and a willingness to change.

Here at Holy Covenant UCC, I believe we have been steadily working toward embodying this theological commitment. Like other social justice commitments, accessibility is not something we “arrive” at, but something we keep striving for as we learn more about the needs of our community and the ways we can remove barriers to participation. Over the past several years and even in the last few months, many enhancements have been made to support those of various physical, sensory, and neurodiverse needs. Some of these changes include:…