Disability - Julie Clawson

On Banning Books and Forgotten Memory

Posted on October 11, 2025

As an avid reader, a common trope I encounter in books is that of cultural history fading from memory. In The Lord of the Rings, the memory of the One Ring fades and we see Gandalf digging through dusty old scrolls to find fragments and mentions. In The Chronicles of Narnia, after the Pevensie children are returned to our world after their reign as kings and queens in Narnia, they later return to discover a Narnia in ruins, devoid of magic and Aslan, where their reign is dismissed as myth. In The Hunger Games, the Districts have forgotten their history (as the United States) and even the very existence of District 13. In Star Wars, the Empire so destroys the Jedi with Order 66 that a mere 20ish years later Han Solo says he’s flown from one side of the galaxy to the other and has seen no evidence of the Force. Even in the Bible, after the Israelites were conquered, the Babylonians relocated the rulers and scholars of Israel by force into exile. When the Persians allowed them to return to Jerusalem some 70 years later, they had forgotten their faith, and it was only after discovering an old scroll of the Torah in the Temple and tracking down the elderly prophetess Huldah that they were able to returned to their faith (2 Chronicles 34).

When the stories of history are no longer told they are forgotten. If the powers that be want people to forget that something exists (usually something of great power in opposition to them), they destroy all mention of its existence. It benefitted Sauron that the One Ring (the source of his power) was forgotten; it benefited the Calormen to destroy stories of Aslan and magic; it benefited Snow to tell people District 13 (the rebels) no longer existed; it benefitted the Emperor and the Dark Side to erase every bit of knowledge about the Jedi and the Light Side; it benefited the Babylonians to destroy the Israelites’ faith and identity as a people. If there is memory of something different than authoritarian oppression it must be destroyed in order for the oppressors to hold onto power. Stories that contradict their narrative can give people hope that a better world is possible and hope is the most dangerous thing of all to authoritarian regimes.

And so, one of the very first things authoritarians do is try to control the narrative. Despite them out of one side of their mouth claiming that banning guns won’t stop children dying because banning things never works, they jump headfirst into banning books and knowledge. They change how history gets told – making it illegal to teach about slavery, or internment camps, or the mere accomplishments of women or people of color. They instruct their monuments to take down mentions of Trans people so that story doesn’t get told. They tell their military to remove stories and pictures of women and people of color from their social media. They ban public displays like rainbow crosswalks and “Black Lives Matter” signs. They remove books from schools for even mentioning that LGBT people exist – redefining the very existence of gay people as porn or smut. They make sure they control the narrative in every way, so only the stories they want people to know are ever told. And when someone’s story doesn’t get told, people come to believe they don’t exist or are a strange aberration to be shunned from society.

For instance, under the oppressive USSR government it was considered un-patriotic for visible reminders of the government’s failings to exist in public. So, when their horrible environmental practices and disasters like Chernobyl led to children being born with numerous birth defects, these kids were not allowed to exist in public. Much like when the Nazis rounded up all disabled people into concentration camps, these children were taken from their families and put into “orphanages” where they were hidden away from society, and no one was ever reminded that the government wasn’t perfect. Shortly after the fall of the USSR and before an even more oppressive regime was institute under Putin, I had the chance to visit Latvia and Russia. I almost wasn’t allowed to go on the trip with my youth group because I too am missing my lower left arm and it was well known that people like me were not allowed to be in public there. But I went and at one point we visited one of these orphanages full of people with varying disabilities. I got to spend an afternoon surrounded by kids who were missing limbs just like me being asked questions like “So in the USA are you allowed to go to school?” This is why when RFK Jr. talks about putting people with Autism and other disabilities into Health/Education camps, I know exactly what that is about. If we can be hidden away then we do not exist, we will be forgotten as normal humans and considered freaks. Banning us means us no longer being seen as humans deserving of rights, but as diseases to be dealt with.

Banning people and stories about them rewrites history and cultural perception as well. For example, the Institute for Sexual Science was a sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. It conducted research on transgender, gay, and intersex people and campaigned on rational scientific grounds for LGBT rights. When the Nazis gained control of Germany they declared the institute un-German; their censorship programs then destroyed the institute and youth brigades burned its research documents in the streets. The most intensive and detailed research about these topics in existence at the time was not just suppressed, but utterly destroyed. This resulted in a massive setback for LGBT rights and public awareness. To this day people believe that being transgender is some new fad or that intersex people have never existed. None of it is new, none of our sexual desires or attractions are new, but when the research is destroyed and people are banned from talking about it (even sent to concentration camps and tortured for it), it fades from memory and those in control can twist the narrative to make people believe it is something abhorrent and unprecedented. There have ALWAYS been gay, trans, and intersex people but when all records of them are destroyed and it becomes a crime to write or talk about them, the public can be told any lie those in power want and it will be believed.

Censorship is terrifying because it works. Stories teach us empathy towards others. Knowing a person’s story, a people’s history, helps us see them as human – people to be loved and accepted. Seeing disabled people or people of color, or LGBT people represented in books and media, existing in public without fear, and being able to be fully ourselves normalizes our very existence and leads to greater acceptance. Those that want to harm and oppress us can’t allow that to happen. When people know we exist, know our stories, they come to accept us – people (usually) only fear and hate that which is outside of their experience. So, the authoritarian powers that be seek to ban us – they ban our stories, they ban our presence, they ban any reminders of us. We become erased so that they can more easily oppress us and spin the narrative they desire.

That is why we have to be loud. That is why we celebrate Banned Books Week and insist that all stories should be told. That is why when they paint over Pride crosswalks the community draws the color back in. That is why we still celebrate Indigenous People’s Day despite the government trying to overturn it. That is why we protest ICE removing people of color from our communities and disappearing them into secret prisons. That is why we shout that vaccines work and Autism isn’t a disease to be cured. We will not be erased or silenced or have our stories forgotten. That is why we rage against the dying of the light and choose to cling to hope. Rebellions are built on hope. We must tell our story.

On the Americans with Disabilities Act Turning 35

Posted on July 24, 2025

ADA 35

Cross posted from Turning Aside

July 26, 2025 marks the 35^th anniversary of the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. For many in the disability community this anniversary is marked both with a desire to celebrate what progress has been made in securing our basic rights, but also with lamentation and frustration at how far we still must go. While (for now) public laws and codes require most public spaces to theoretically meet a bare minimum standard of accessibility (which is generally nowhere near sufficient to earn that label), the collective consciousness of the nation still seems to default to ableism.

I want to believe that the ablism as the default mentality is done out of ignorance instead of malice, but I know it is often a mixed bag. There are people who insist that it is their God-given right to mock the disabled, cruelly insisting on making us the brunt of their jokes or calling us “snowflakes” if we ask them to not use the R-word. Even the current President mocked a reporter’s disability at one of his rallies and his fan-base had no problem with it. So, I see the malice and the cruelty that fuels ablism, but I also see the ignorance.

When I was a kid in grade school the trend on the playground was to tell stump and Helen Keller jokes – making those with limb differences, deafness, and blindness their punchlines. People did this in front of me – a person with a limb difference. I thought we were beyond such ignorance as a culture, but in recent years I’ve been hearing stump jokes resurface – often told to my face cluelessly by people who are utterly ignorant that they are using my very existence to elicit a laugh.

Groups of friends plan events in upstairs locations and never wonder why I can’t attend. At parties I am left sitting alone while groups stand in a circle chatting a few feet away, clueless that I physically cannot do the same. I attempt to join meet-up groups only to discover that they too meet in inaccessible upstairs rooms, or at places with no parking (assuming anyone can park blocks away on the street), or at standing only venues, or at outdoor venues with loose gravel yards that my mobility devices can’t manage. These locations are never chosen with a deliberate purpose to exclude the disabled, it just never ever occurs to them to think about accessibility needs.

Or since developing mobility disabilities I’ve had to pay closer attention to accessible parking spaces. More often than I ever would have imagined I see handicapped spots full of cars without the necessary tags or plates. There have been times when I’ve been at a restaurant for a couple of hours in view of the handicapped spots and over and over again I see cars pull into them with no plates or tags and the person run into some store (usually a liquor store or pizza place) for 5-10 minutes. A selfish, self-centered behavior that puts their momentary convenience above the actual needs of others. When I mention this occurrence to store managers I get told that they don’t want to offend customers by having them ticketed or towed (which tells me clearly that they don’t care about offending their disabled customers). When I mention this habit to friends, they are incredulous and say that they can’t imagine anyone doing that so it must never really happen. Selfishness and ignorance.

The ADA was a start; but it is up against a culture that still looks down on disability. I’ve joined and followed disability groups in the last few years and have been shocked by the sorts of comments trolls leave there. Even the mere suggestion that a house be built with accessible features sparks outrage from these people about how the disabled are lazy, want handouts, and want to ruin life for “normal” people. Liturgies at churches still include prayers for the healing of the disabled – treating us as problems to be dealt with instead of people to be included. If I dare to mention that it is not my disabilities, but the inaccessibility of the world around me that limits me even the most open-minded people I know try to argue with me. When I mention Disability Pride Month the most common response I get is confusion about why I would be proud to be disabled and not just desire to be cured. Ableism abounds.

Fifteen years ago on the 20^th anniversary of the passing of the ADA I wrote this blog post about attitudes in the church about the disabled. In the very place where I would have hoped that the disabled would be welcomed and embraced, I was finding deep aversion to including us. Since then, my disabilities have multiplied, but I’ve seen little progress in society in thinking differently. Back then I rarely talked about disability, but now I realize that unless more of us use our voice and challenge all forms of ablism (both ignorant and malicious) then nothing will ever change. Acceptance, inclusion, and accessibility should be the norm, but we are not there yet. I wish more had changed in the past 35 years, but there is still a long way to go.

Never Pray Again

Posted on May 14, 2014July 12, 2025

This post is part of a blog tour for the book Never Pray Again by Aric Clark, Doug Hagler, and Nick Larson. I received a copy of the book as a participant in this blog tour.

Prayer can hurt. All too often it serves as the easy way to meet one’s spiritual quota for the day. Pray before meals thanking God for the food while ignoring the plight of the impoverished workers who labored unseen to bring you the food, send up prayers for stuff you need much like you would wish upon a star, pray that the people/sinners you don’t like will become more like you and check, you’ve done your duty for the day. This is called being close to God. This is the extent of many Christians’ daily spiritual practices. While it may seem benign this sort of praying can often do more harm than good.

As Never Pray Again delves into, prayer often misses the point of what it means to be a Christian. Instead of following the way of Jesus and living into one’s faith, prayer is used as means to look spiritual but not actually do anything. But prayer is not a substitute for action – for actually living out one’s faith. We can hurt ourselves by restricting ourselves from fully embracing our faith when we merely rely on perfunctory prayers, but we also fail to do God’s work in the world. We are God’s hands and feet in this world, it does no good to ask God to fix something in this world unless we are willing to function as such. We let hurt and suffering in this world thrive when all we do is pray. Faith is about going and doing, not simply making a wish and feeling like we’ve been let off the hook.

It is in the chapter titled “Heal!” that the book explores some of the ways prayer can be the most harmful. It is common in churches to pray for the healing of people – from people with cancer, to those with mobility issues, to even those with mental illnesses. And while it may sound extreme the prayers to ‘pray the gay away,’ or that a man or women would live into their God-ordained gender roles, or even that calamity might befall a person in order to stop them from the ‘sinful path’ they might be on are far more common than we would like to believe. I personally have been told by people that they would pray for me because of my belief that women could be pastors. That I shouldn’t take medicine to help with my anxiety issues but that I just needed to cast my cares on God in prayer and I would be just fine. I even grew up being told in church that if I just prayed enough God would heal my arm (I was born missing my left arm below the elbow). And conference after conference I attend think they are being inclusive of disability when they invite people who work with the disabled (and not the actual disabled) to speak about how they serve (seek to heal) those who are different.

The problem with these sorts of prayers and perspectives, as the chapter points out, is that they assume there is some default way of being in this world and that if you don’t measure up to the default you are deficient in some way and so therefore must be healed to be made whole. People who diverge from the default mold are broken and must be fixed. From gays and lesbians, to independent women, to the obese, to the disabled, to the mentally ill – these are signs of not abiding by a culture norm and so must be things people need healing from. These people are lesser than the default model and so must be changed in order to become whole according to whatever the culture currently happens to be defining that as.

Yes, there are some illnesses that people want to heal from so their suffering ends. Others find that using a wheelchair or prosthetic limb or taking an antidepressant helps them function with more ease in the world. There are steps of healing that are necessary and good and that help people become their full selves. But therein lies the distinction. They do not need healing so that they can be more like the default norm, they seek healing and aid because they want to be fully themselves. There is brokenness all around us and in us that prevents us from being whole or loving others into wholeness. But often it is the very implication that one must be healed (become more like the default norm) that causes the most hurt and pain. When families are kicked out of churches because the church can’t deal with their kid with autism, or a person in a wheelchair is effectively shunned because no one is comfortable interacting with a person they know will never be ‘whole’ like them, or someone prays that you would be healed of something that you consider an integral part of your identity, it is hard not to come to believe that one can never be whole and accepted as they are. They accept their place as broken and inferior and come to despise their very selves for being something other than the culture’s default norm. This is not healing; this is the creation of brokenness.

So as the chapter explores, our perspective of what healing means needs to shift. To heal is not to become like the cultural norm, it is to embrace all people for who they are and to communally help us all to live into wholeness. Being with, truly with, someone in a way that shows you love them for who they are is far more difficult than condescendingly sending up a prayer that people not like you need to be healed, but it is the only way to live into both your and their wholeness.

On Disability and Sola Scriptura

Posted on January 16, 2013July 12, 2025

And now for the disability post.

During the Q&A time with Phyllis Tickle at the Emergence Christianity gathering a woman who uses a wheelchair asked what I thought was one of the most important and telling questions of the event. She commented that even though emergence Christians talk about LGBT folks being the last great “Other” that the church needs to accept, in reality it is people with disabilities who are still otherized the most by the church and asked Phyllis what can be done about that.

I applauded her question.

That’s the thing to do in these sorts of gatherings. When someone dares to bring up the elephants in the room or be a voice for unrepresented voices one applauds if one cares.

I was the only one in a cathedral full of people who applauded her question. It was literally just the sound of one hand clapping.

Phyllis responded that disability is not a truly otherizing or controversial concern for the church because it doesn’t challenge the conception of sola scriptura, next question. I think Phyllis is spot on with her theory that the issues that challenge the church the most are those that shake up our perceived understanding of scripture. If we cling to sola scriptura and our interpretation of that scripture is that slavery is okay, women cannot teach in church, or that same-sex relationships are a sin then to accept those things is to disrupt our entire conception of the scripture. Given the philosophical framework of most Protestants and the lingering predominance of sola scriptura, I fully agree with her description of why such issues caused such turmoil for the church.

What I don’t agree with is that disability is not a challenge to sola scriptura.

I would argue that people with disabilities are in fact the most otherized group of people in the church. Whether it is dealt with well or not, most Christians would agree that racism is wrong and that we should love people of all colors of skin. Many churches would also say that sexism is evil and quite a few even allow women to serve as pastors. It’s trendy to engage in interreligious dialogue and LGBT advocacy is the undisputed cause of the moment. Not so much when it comes to welcoming and showing support for the differently abled.

Basically, we are not and never will be cool. While I fully acknowledge the damaging effect positive stereotypes can have – there is something to be said for the hip factor of Queer folk in advancing their cause. But no one brags about their cool disabled friend they go shopping with. We don’t have Pride parades that end up being the most fun event of the season. There are no sitcoms about witty and fabulous disabled people. Not that this is a competition, just the facts that we are hard to like. We are the awkward ones. We are the ones who are so used to the stares and the pointing fingers and the laughter that we’ve learned to brace ourselves as we enter most social situations knowing that we make other people uncomfortable. For better or worse we have never had the option of a closet to hide in to escape the taunts of the world. We are the freaks and it will never, ever, be trendy to advocate for us much less see us as something other than Other.

Secondly, standing in solidarity with us is costly, literally. If a church starts talking about offering programs for the disabled or even putting in an access ramp they quickly encounter the hard data of the cash it will cost them. Most decide that it is more fiscally responsible to just ignore us. Yes, I get that churches that chose to be welcoming and inclusive of the LGBT community know that there might possibly be a financial cost to that decision. But as members leave and take their tithes with them, the blow is softened by knowing that the loss of income came because the church chose the moral high ground over bigotry. It is easier to accept potential cost than swallow the price tag up front.

But beyond those factors, what I have discovered regarding why disability advocacy is not a cause emergence Christianity (or any form of Christianity really) cares about is that the traditional biblical notions about disability have not yet been challenged the way ideas about slavery, women, and Queers have. Instead of seeing people with disabilities as whole people to be equally welcomed in the body of Christ, there is still a ruling belief in the church that we are broken people in need of healing. We are people to be served and changed, not people to be included and fought for.

Think about the songs we sing (even last week at the Emergence Christianity gathering). The lyrics are all about the poor and the blind being made whole or about rejoicing that “I once was blind but now I see.” If we were singing “I once was gay but now I’m straight” or “I once was Native but now I’m civilized” there would be an uproar, but no one sees any issue in singing such about the differently abled. It is still permissible to assume an absolute normative and cast anyone who appears different as the incomplete other that must be healed and made whole before they can be accepted like everyone else.

The church still repeats the cultural mores of the biblical worlds. Those with imperfections of the body were barred from serving in the Tabernacle and the Temple. Even animals with defects could not be offered up to God in sacrifice. Only those who appeared normative, unblemished, could be accepted as pure and holy sacrifices to God. People with disabilities could not even enter the Temple to worship, but had to remain in the courtyard of the women and the Gentiles. The imperfection of our body made us unacceptable to God. Over time Gentiles, women, and slaves came to be seen as whole persons made in the image of God and therefore worthy of service, but the stigma of incompleteness remains on those with disability.

Phyllis was partially right in her response. Disability isn’t an issue challenging sola scriptura. But that’s because there has yet to be a vocal and vibrant call within the church to challenge ancient cultural assumptions that continue to cast us as Other. And honestly, I don’t know if there ever will be given how “uncool” we are and how costly it is to welcome us fully. That one could even state that how the church conceives of disability isn’t an issue is quite telling of how little attention is given to us at all.

It’s uncomfortable to be the sole person clapping for this cause in a room full of people who generally seem committed to being as welcoming and inclusive as possible. And it’s indicative of how far we still have to go.

–

Emergence Christianity, Women, and the Fall of Christendom

Posted on January 14, 2013July 12, 2025

Last week I was able to attend the Emergence Christianity Gathering in Memphis, TN. In truth, I went mostly to see old friends and to get the fix that comes from surrounding myself (for a few days at least) with people who ask the same sorts of questions I ask. Not that we all think the same, but sometimes I just need that freedom to be myself for a few days. So on that level, the Gathering was amazing. I had some great conversations, heard some good Blues bands, and ate enough barbeque to last a lifetime.

And for the most part, I enjoyed the content of the conference. Yes, there was a serious lack of diversity on stage and amidst attendees. Yes, meeting in a cathedral makes for a very uncomfortable venue. But for what this event was (a celebration of Phyllis Tickle’s life and work), I was prepared to deal with those.

And then came the final session.

There’s no denying that the final session was just weird. Even those who weren’t offended by what was said there thought it was a very odd way to end a conference. I’ve had both people who were there and who were following along on Twitter asking me what the hell happened. I can’t really explain why it happened, but I want to spend some time responding.

A big part of the problem was that people coming to an emergence Christianity event, especially to hear such an intelligent woman as Phyllis, were not expecting to disagree with her much less hear her say such confusing and hurful things about women, people with disabilities (more on this one another day), and African-Americans. From what I gathered, people came there hopeful for what is emerging in the church and left feeing bewildered. They expected to perhaps disagree with some speakers, but Phyllis is beloved and so the disconnect was far more jarring. I’ve heard Phyllis give versions of these lectures before, but never draw the conclusions she did at this event, so even to me, it was unsettling.

The main content of the gathering was Phyllis doing her whole overview of church history to explain where the church is today and how we got here. It’s a fantastic, albeit cursory, survey of church history which far too few Christians have any knowledge whatsoever about. In her talks, she is always one to make snarky comments or sex jokes that no one but a woman pushing 80 can get away with, but the unsettling pattern in her storytelling this time was to blame women for the demise of Christendom. In the final session Phyllis described the rise and fall of Constantinian Christianity and pointed to the emancipation of women in the 20th century as a catalyst for that decline. While most of us there would agree that the fall of Christendom is a very good thing and that women’s liberation significantly changed our culture, it was where Phyllis went with from there that caused the discomfort.

Phyllis described the freedoms working outside the home in WW2 and the ability to control our cycles the Pill brought women and argued that such things led to the destruction of the nuclear family and therefore the foundation of the civil religion of Christendom. While it is a narrow assessment of causality, I can agree with the descriptive observation that such things changed our culture. But then she jumped from these changes as that which brought an end to Christendom to describing how such changes led to the destruction of the ways the faith is passed on to new generations which thereby resulted in a biblically illiterate society. As she described it, when mom is not at home weaving the stories of scripture and the church calendar into her day to day activities in front of her children, they do not receive the basics of the faith. One cannot apparently have a sacred family meal over Papa John’s pizza picked up on the way home from work the same way that one can if one is baking bread, doing family crafts, and eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Phyllis ended the session by encouraging us to discover ways to be back in the kitchen with our children and finding crafty ways to import the rhythms of the church year to them. Essentially to focus on the family and all that. That is the great emergence. The end.

You can see why people left bewildered.

The story as she told it made sense – constructed narratives work that way – women are to blame for the post-Christian era and if we just got back in the home the faith could thrive again. But it is important to note that in her narrative instead of focusing on what has emerged that brings hope in this world, she was telling the story of why things have changed – which are two vastly different perspectives. At some point in telling the story of change it is hard not to get nostalgic about one point or another and hold a sugar-coated vision of that time up as the period we must all try to harken back towards. The problem with such an approach is that it ignores the underside of said period and it imposes guilt upon those who find hope outside that period’s restrictions.

In making the argument that religion was far stronger when the nuclear family (as defined by a working father and stay at home mother) reigned one not only limits the definition of who gets to represent proper religion but also romanticizes a system that was far more broken than is often realized. The truth is, not all Christian families had the luxury of living such a white middle-class, middle-America lifestyle. Even ignoring the patterns of faith outside the Western world, it is only a small demographic of people who ever had a mother at home teaching the children the church year as she cooked their supper. To hold such up as a goal for contemporary Christians to return to privileges white, middle-class, liturgical faith as the only true or acceptable way to be a faithful Christian. While there is nothing wrong with living in such ways, it is not nor never has been the only way to live one’s faith or impart it to one’s children.

To lament that our culture ever changed from such a family structure (even though only a few ever lived it to begin with) also ignores the ills of that very structure. The shift in the Reformation period that empowered women by making them the spiritual leader in the home has over time not only ostracized men from spiritual practices (because such things are “just” for women) but also restricted women’s service to God to just within the household. This way of thinking does a disservice to men, women, and the Kingdom of God. Perpetuating the notion that it is the role of women to care for the spiritual development of their family in their home ignores the fact that it was causing problems for the faith long before the practice began to decline.

Similarly, upholding this family structure ignores that the development of the modern nuclear family wasn’t exactly a healthy historical development. Prior to the Victorian era’s turn to individualized nuclear family dwellings, people lived far more communally. Multiple generations lived together and villages functioned as extended family. There was no such thing as a woman keeping house herself. No one ever had to cook, clean, manage the house, watch the kids, and educate the kids on her own. Younger teens helped around the house. Kids could wander the village knowing that most people there would take care of them and that they too were expected to help others as needed. Crying babies were watched by the tween girls or elderly women while the women devoted themselves to other tasks. The development of the nuclear family took all of those support structures away from women. Those who were not rich enough to afford servants to help them were expected for the first time in history to bear the burden of all the household tasks alone. A few enlightened men in recent decades have begun to lend a hand, but it is rare that extended families much less the community (including the church) feel any need to help women with these tasks – expecting her instead to be some sort of supermom who can do it all. At the same time the turn toward isolated nuclear families took away the safety that being in community provides. When generations live together and everyone in the village knows each other’s business it is a lot harder for abuse of women and children to be hidden. Not that it didn’t happen or that women weren’t treated as property during those periods, but the façade of the nuclear family hid many ills that a nostalgic romanticized view ignores. It was not a sustainable system, and it is no surprise that by the mid-twentieth century women were both “running for the shelter of mother’s little helper” and seeking freedom from such unrealistic expectations.

But just because the story can be told in such a way that explains why things have changed in a regretful fashion doesn’t mean that is the only way the story must be told. Allowing women to lead family devotions was a huge hopeful step forward in empowering women once upon a time. The freedom that working outside the home and the Pill brought women gave them hope of being fully themselves and the ability to stand on their own two feet apart from abusive and controlling husbands and fathers. I think many of us at the Emergence Christianity Gathering were shocked that such stories of hope were ignored in favor of one that piled on the same stale guilt that we have come to expect from traditional religion. I’m not saying that Phyllis Tickle can’t believe whatever she wants about the role and place of women or tell the story of history through her own particular biases, but what dawned on many of us during this final session was that she was no longer telling a story of emergence. The end of the story as she told it was not one of hope and promise, but one of restrictions and guilt that we are already well acquainted with. It hurt to hear that from her, and many couldn’t bring themselves to admit that they had problems with how she told the story – just that it felt like a really weird ending to the conference. It is like we were waiting for permission to disagree, to state that was not the only way to tell the story.

So here I go – as much as I am grateful for Phyllis and admire much of her work, she does not possess the only truth regarding what is emerging. It is okay to tell the story of where we have been as a story of hope and liberation instead of merely one of regrettable change. We are still figuring out how to live within this emerging world and what were once whispered ideas and conversations are now unquestioned facts about the evolution of our culture. Not knowing where we came from is dangerous, but so is staking our claim in a misunderstood past. We are constantly negotiating what it means to witness with hope within this present moment without simply re-iterating the past. How we tell our story determines the shape of that witness.

So my question for Emergence Christians is – how can we use this awkward moment to push us to start telling this story of hope?

My Arm Doesn’t Need Healing

Posted on December 1, 2010July 11, 2025

a post I wrote for the Christian Century blog

I was born missing my left arm below the elbow. This technically means I have a disability, though I find it hard to identify with the label. Missing my arm is simply what I know, part of my basic everyday existence. I know the limits of my ability, but I see no need to define myself by them. Similarly, I don’t mind being asked about my arm, just as I don’t mind being asked about a new haircut–I feel no need to be ashamed or apologetic for my physical form.

So it is always a bit jarring when I encounter people who think I should feel ashamed about my appearance. These people, when meeting me, look at my arm and immediately say, “I’m sorry.” From their point of view my life must be so miserable that I deserve their pity.

I have church friends (and yes, family members) who let me know that they have been praying for years that God would grow my arm. According to their view, if I only had the faith of a mustard seed then some sort of miraculous arm sprouting would occur. I’ve learned to take such responses in stride, knowing that their rejection of who I am says more about their insecurities than it says about me. But I struggle more when I hear such things from church leaders.

For instance, Rowan Williams, writing about the eucharistic interdependence of the corporate body of Christ, says that abled people should not respond in fright to handicapped people but instead realize that abled people need the healing of the handicapped for their own good–just as the handicapped need abled people’s wholeness for theirs. He calls this the outworking of the sacramental vision.

I could barely read any farther, as his words forced me to realize that he views people with disabilities as “other.” Instead of being allowed to be ourselves, we are reduced to a category of people who must be healed before we can be accepted as equals.

Few people would deny that it is hurtful to tell a woman she must become a man or to tell a black man he must become white in order to be a full member of the body and experience wholeness. But some people still assume that people who are differently-abled need to become like someone else in order to be whole.

Our faith celebrates the idea of the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, yet we reject physical bodies that seem different. It is one thing to say that our condition as human beings is broken. It’s another thing to assert that some people are more broken simply because they have only one arm, or use a wheelchair, or have different mental processes. We are all the broken body of Christ struggling to be in communion with God and each other.

God created me to be tall, to be a woman, to have brown hair and a left arm that ends at the elbow. I don’t need to be healed of any of that in order to be a member of the body of Christ.

Accessible Church

Posted on November 29, 2010July 11, 2025

Posted at Envision Access –

Hi, I’m Julie Clawson. I’m a writer and a mom. I’ve served as a pastor and currently help coordinate Adult and Children’s Education at my church in Austin Texas. I was also born missing my left arm below the elbow.

I’m very involved in the emerging Church movement, and many of us in this movement like to do church a little differently. That means our worship services are very experimental and artistic – making use of various sorts of media and hands on experiences. As much as I appreciate these diverse ways to connect with God, I’ve seen the awkwardness they can create for people with disabilities. Prayer stations with art or video’s with words shut of the blind in the congregation. Body prayer exercises and juggling prayer books is difficult for me as a person with just one arm. And the command to stand up for prayers or songs always makes my friends in wheelchairs flinch.

I recall one Good Friday service when part of the worship experience involved nailing a prayer to a wooden cross. It was a moving activity for many, but I had to sit it out because I am unable to use a hammer. In no way did I think the activity should not have been done simply because I could not participate, I just wished someone had been aware of my difficulty and offered to help me out.

Often what many of us with disabilities desire from the church is just an awareness of who we are. Making worship activities inclusive of our needs would be affirming while not condescending. Something as simple as instead of telling everyone to stand up to invite those who desire to stand up. Or encouraging people as they start a hand-on worship experience to be there for each other and lend a hand where it is needed. Reminders like that acknowledge that there are diverse needs in the congregation, but don’t single any one out as being too different.

Sometimes it is hard to feel like we are part of the body of Christ when those of us with disabilities are either always treated with condescending pity or alternatively have our needs ignored. Churches are striving these days to people with different learning styles and spiritual languages. I applaud those efforts, but also want to send a gentle reminder for churches to be aware of and include the people with disabilities in their congregation at the same time. We want to connect with God in diverse and hands-on ways as well, we just sometimes need to church to be proactive and creative in inviting us into that space.

Americans with Disabilities and the Church

Posted on July 23, 2010July 11, 2025

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act, signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990. It seems a bit strange when you think about. It has only been for the past twenty years that people with disabilities have been guaranteed fundamental civil rights in our country. Granted, it has only been within the past century that women and other minorities have been assured of those rights as well. And of course we all know how often those rights are denied or ignored, and that there are groups in America who have yet to be legally given such basic rights at all. But seriously, twenty years ago many disabled people could not physically enter most buildings, ride public transportation, attend mainstream schools, or not be denied a job simply because they used a wheelchair. There were no signs saying “Able People Only,” but the entire world was set-up to keep the disabled on the outside.

Sad thing, even as a disabled person the only reaction I ever heard about ADA was negative. People complained about the hassle of making space for the disabled. They said it was unfair that the disabled were being given special privileges (yes, seriously people were stupid enough to say something like that). And, most of all, they complained about the cost. And being in the church world, where I heard that complaint most often was from churches. Now I understand that churches often don’t have a lot of money, and to add another few hundred thousand onto a renovation budget to be ADA compliant is difficult. A church I was at once attempted to renovate their sanctuary to fit in more seating, but in the end we lost seats because of the ramp we had to put in to make the stage accessible. It was hard and forced the church to rethink where the money was to be spent, which of course led to some choice words being said about the “liberal nonsense of the ADA.” But in truth, I had to wonder why the church wasn’t the one out there doing whatever they could to include the disabled – even without being forced to by law. Jesus went out of his way to be with the disabled in his society, the church could at least do the same.

Where this gets confusing for me is the intersection of disabled people and worship. Straight-up, there is a lot that churches do in worship (especially in more experimental experiential worship) that is just plain inaccessible to the disabled. There have been a number of times at my current church where I have just sat quietly in my seat because whatever worship activity we were doing would have been impossible to do with one hand. And I always cringe a bit when we do active things, or create art, or meditate on a film and exclude the wheelchair users and the blind in our congregation. I similarly don’t wish to exclude the say, kinesthetic or visual learners in the church, but it sometimes feels as if there is no awareness of how a disabled person could enter into the worship experience. As a church have we forgotten how to go to the lengths of cutting open a roof and lowering our disabled friend in through the ceiling just so they could meet Jesus?

So as we celebrate these twenty years, I think it should be as a reminder of how far we still have to go in our culture and in the church. There are still churches that ban the disabled from serving as priests. And there are churches that see disability as a result of sin or of a lack of faith in the Lord to heal. I’ve been told to just have enough faith and the Lord will grow my arm, or to at least look forward to having two perfect arms in heaven. Disabled people need to be included in worship, but first, we need to be accepted as who we are. Not as people to be pitied or to be cured, but as children of God created the way God wanted us to be. We want to be included in community not because a law forces us to be put up with, but because the church desperately wants to love us and desires to hear our voice.

Disability as Entertainment

Posted on October 1, 2009July 11, 2025

So I’m a fan of So You Think You Can Dance. I enjoy watching dance and I used to dance, so I like the show even though it is a mostly scripted reality TV program. At this point in the season they are just showing the try-outs – which predictably have the fools trying to get on TV alongside the good dancers and the poor folks who think they can dance but obviously can’t. But I’ve been bothered the past couple of seasons during the try-outs with how they deal with the handicapped dancers who come to give it a shot. It really hit home this week when they showed a one armed girl who had come to try out.

These handicapped dancers make it on the TV broadcast unfortunately because they make for good dramatic television. They get to tell their story and the judges get to do a teary-eyed moment before they tell them some version of “you really wouldn’t work for our program, but we are so proud of your courage.” Basically, “you look too weird and awkward to appeal to a wide audience but we will boost our ratings by using you to elicit pity and then move on”. It is never an affirmation of the person embracing their handicap and working with it, but always a pat on the back for choosing to live life out among regular people even though they are handicapped. Like with the one armed girl this week. Granted she had just lost her hand in the past couple of years, and so had to relearn how to do life, but even as the show commended her courage it couldn’t get past her handicap. As I watched her dance, I kept wondering why she wasn’t really using her half arm. It stayed close to her side and it seemed like she was hiding it. The judges then praised her for hiding her handicapped while she danced so that the viewers didn’t have to deal with seeing an imbalanced form.

I’ve been there. I recall during try-out week for drill team in high school, I was reminded over and over again that my arm might prevent me from doing the dances well – I would never look perfect alongside the rest of the team. I got the message and dropped out of try-outs. I stayed in the dance classes though as a teachers assistant and I took over teaching the special education students that had been mainstreamed into the class. The teacher wanted nothing to do with them or me and shuffled us off to the side. And I’ve mentioned here before about visiting children’s homes in Latvia where children born missing limbs are sent to live where the public won’t have to be confronted with them. I was appalled then, but I wonder how different that is from TV shows that parade us out there to show us pity but then still won’t accept us in their world as we are. (or support universal health care so that we handicapped folks won’t continue to be denied coverage for being born like this, but that’s a whole different issue…)

I don’t normally define myself as handicapped (or differently-abled or whatever the term is these days), but I also don’t try to hide that part of me. Missing my arm is just a part of who I am. I don’t want to be told that some day I’ll be perfect and have two hands in heaven just as much as I don’t want to be seen as a lesser thing to be pitied. Sure, I might need a little extra help here or there (there’s good reason why Mike does most of the diaper changing around here, one hand + poopy diaper + squirmy baby = disaster), and I’ve gotten used to the stares that constantly remind me that I’m not normal, but I’m not a circus freak here for your entertainment – and that includes those emotional tear-jerking TV moments. So I applaud those on the show who fight to get that which is different accepted as normal. The same-sex ballroom dancers are beginning to gain respect, perhaps one day handicapped dancers will be accepted as more than just subjects of our pity.

Mocking Our Neighbor

Posted on March 22, 2009July 11, 2025

Last week Eugene Cho posted his thoughts on how it hurt him and his children when people, especially celebrities, do the slanty-eye thing mocking Asians. His post was simple – basically “hey people, that’s offensive, stop doing it.” One would kinda hope that we are way past the making fun of other people because of their race thing, but no such luck as the subsequent conversation displayed.

Reading the comments there was a bit disturbing. I somewhat expected the comments that told Eugene he was overreacting, but was unprepared for the number of people defending mocking others. Some of them weren’t even saying that the gesture isn’t offensive, but that they know it’s offensive and mocking and that’s okay. Or as one guy commented, “I’m not racist, but I do enjoy my ethnic jokes.”

What sort of messed up world do we live in where our entertainment serves as justification for hurting others? Okay, I’m not naive, and I realize that there is nothing new about it, but I just can’t wrap my mind around Christians defending the practice of making fun of people, much less how God created people to be. I don’t care if it happens all the time, just think about that concept. Instead of loving our neighbor (and enemy), we are destroying them for a moment’s entertainment. We think it’s funny to tear down the image of God in others, and then claim it is our right to continue to do so. Does anyone else see the utter absurdity there?

Growing up missing a limb had me at the butt of many jokes. Kids in elementary school found it amusing to tell “stump” jokes to my face. They were almost as popular as the Helen Keller jokes mocking deaf people. And I’m sure we are all familiar with current phrases and jokes that mock women and gays. It is a strange thing to have someone make fun of you, and then insist that their right to be entertained by hurting you is more important than your feelings and identity. And that their right is more important than the command to love our neighbor. I just don’t get it. As a child I was too unsure of myself to stand up to those kids and tell them that their jokes weren’t funny. Sad thing is – none of the other kids, or teachers, or parents sent that message either. So the jokes continued.

I think it’s sad that when guys like Eugene say “please stop making fun of my family,” people (Christians!) get mad at him. There seems to be a huge failure of love happening here. So what do you think needs to be done to change things? Are churches working to change this or are they part of the problem? How can the body of Christ learn to love so much that we can’t fathom mocking the other, much less defending out right to do so?