The
church offers great potential for participation in ongoing relationships and
prevention of abandonment. At times, those of us who are not intellectually
disabled, can emphasize the importance of relationships with peers who are not
disabled while those with disabilities may not recognize this difference. We
are motivated to seek to integrate people for the benefit of those without
disabilities (individually and as the Body of Christ) as well as for the
benefit of those with disabilities. We do this out of obedience to our
understanding of what the Bible teaches about people. This is true even though
those with intellectual disabilities themselves might not understand these
motivations and even though the larger Christian church might not understand
these motivations.
To
truly embrace belonging, we cannot say to someone, “You belong over there.”
That is not belonging, that is segregation. In spite of the care of those in
the group to which someone is assigned, to be assigned is to not fully belong.
We also see a difference between those doing the assigning and those being
assigned. Howard Thurman in part encapsulated this.
Segregation can apply only
to a relationship involving the weak and the strong. For it means that
limitations are arbitrarily set up, which, in the course of time, tend to
become fixed and seem normal in governing the etiquette between the two
groups. A peculiar characteristic of
segregation is the ability of the stronger to shuttle back and forth between
the prescribed areas with complete immunity and a kind of mutually tacit
sanction; while the position of the weaker, on the other hand, is quite
definitely fixed and frozen. (Thurman 1976, p. 42, as cited in McNair &
McKinney, 2015)
Belonging
to the Body of Christ versus to a subgroup of the body changes things. If I
belong to the whole body, I have expectations for the whole body. If I belong
to a subgroup of the body, there may be different expectations, but they may or
may not be antithetical to the goals for the entire body. So,
A.
Subgroups should reflect the mission of the whole (assuming the mission of the
whole is a true reflection of the Bible).
B.
If the result of the work of the subgroup facilitates the mission (or what
should be the mission), then that is desirable.
C.
If the mission of the whole is wrong and the subgroup facilitates that mission,
that is wrong.
D.
But if the mission of the whole is wrong but the subgroup facilitates an
alternative mission that is in line with the teaching of the Bible, then that
subgroup is attempting to facilitate cultural changes within the larger group.
Belonging
is basic to that mission. It is also basic to the vision of what the church
should be. Many churches are not
embracing belonging, and many ministries are not embracing belonging. They may
think they are, but if they are segregated there is an aspect of that mission
that they are not getting entirely right. Leaders who do not embrace people
fully belonging are teaching their congregations about who they believe those
people to be. That is the lesson that has been taught for decades which has led
us to the situation we find ourselves trying to dig out of.
This
important conversation is about how to understand and facilitate belonging, is
evidence of the degree to which we have misunderstood, as the Christian church
in the world, our responsibility towards people who have been devalued because
of disabilities they experience. But are we willing to do what belonging would
require?
McNair
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