Issue 32 DisabilityBlog | Disability and inclusion
Disability and inclusion
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 23.09.22
I know a little about what it feels like to be excluded. The pupils at the schools I attended as a child were constantly telling me to ‘go black home’ or sending other racist slurs in my direction. I grew up thinking I didn’t really belong. Just as I struggled to fit in at school, I also struggled to fit in at church: it seemed to me to be a place full of white people teaching me Bible stories illustrated with yet more white people. What a difference it would have made to me to realise back then that most of my Bible heroes had brown skin just like mine.
Reflecting on this recently, my wife and I have written two children’s books. The first celebrates Bible characters from all around the world with all sorts of skin-shades. The second celebrates Bible characters who seem to have disabilities – not the people that get healed, but the ones who God chose to do amazing things, just the way they were. This second book was inspired by an array of children in our lives – as foster parents we have cared for many with visible and invisible disabilities. I wanted them to see themselves in the Bible, and know that God loves, welcomes and uses people with a wide range of abilities.
Reading around this subject area, I have come across some excellent books that can help us to make sure our churches are inclusive, considerate and welcoming communities. Here are my top two recommendations.
AT THE GATES Naomi Lawson Jacobs and Emily Richardson (DLT, 2022)
‘As long as there has been a Church, disabled people have been part of the Church. Jesus’s mission to the marginalised brought him close to those who knew the stigma that came with illness and impairment, those we would today call disabled. Yet for many disabled people today, the Church is a tower built in the shadow of disability injustice.’
