From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministry, and Congregational Leadership

by Erin Raffety

Overview

American Christianity tends to view disabled persons as problems to be solved rather than people with experiences and gifts that enrich the church. Churches have generated policies, programs, and curricula geared toward "including" disabled people while still maintaining "able-bodied" theologies, ministries, care, and leadership. Ableism—not a lack of ramps, finances, or accessible worship—is the biggest obstacle for disabled ministry in America. In From Inclusion to Justice, Erin Raffety argues that what our churches need is not more programs for disabled people but rather the pastoral tools to repent of able-bodied theologies and practices, listen to people with disabilities, lament ableism and injustice, and be transformed by God’s ministry through disabled leadership. Without a paradigm shift from ministries of inclusion to ministries of justice, our practical theology falls short.

Drawing on ethnographic research with congregations and families, pastoral experience with disabled people, teaching in theological education, and parenting a disabled child, Raffety, an able-bodied Christian writing to able-bodied churches, confesses her struggle to repent from ableism in hopes of convincing others to do the same. At the same time, Raffety draws on her interactions with disabled Christian leaders to testify to what God is still doing in the pews and the pulpit, uplifting and amplifying the ministry and leadership of people with disabilities as a vision toward justice in the kingdom of God.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481316941
Publisher:	Baylor University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2022
Series:	Studies in Religion, Theology, and Disability
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Erin Raffety is a Research Fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry, a cultural anthropologist, and an ordained PCUSA pastor.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1 The Problem of Inclusion
2 The "End" of Inclusion
3 Listening beyond Inclusion
4 Listening beyond Rebuke
5 Following Jesus toward Justice
6 Ministers Each and Every One
7 A Disabled Critique of Christian Leadership
8 New Modes of Disabled Leadership
9 Mirrors and Accomplices in the Kingdom of God
Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Julia Watts Belser

In this powerful book, Erin Raffety calls churches to reckon with limits of inclusion by showing how prevailing practices and paradigms rarely challenge the structures of ableism and inequality that disenfranchise disabled people. This is essential reading for religious communities ready to grapple with entrenched assumptions and embrace deeper possibilities for justice and liberation.

Danilyn Rutherford

Erin Raffety writes as a pastor to pastors and as an anthropologist to anthropologists in this forceful, fascinating book which lays bare the violence done in the name of inclusion. In prose that is fierce, humble, and precise, Raffety issues a wakeup call to churches and, by extension, the institutions that shape our field. This book offers a stunning example of what an engaged anthropology could look like and where it could lead.

William Storrar

This prophetic book offers a paradigm shift in our understanding of persons with disabilities within the life of Christian congregations. Raffety changes the focus from inclusion in the community to leadership of the community, seeing disability not as a problem but as a dignified experience in which God is at work for justice.

Walter Brueggemann

Many, perhaps most, readers of this thoughtful volume will be playing catch-up on matters related to disabled persons. This welcome book is in part instruction, as Raffety helps us to clarify categories of our thinking. It is partly a summons to learn from and pay attention to those too long treated in our society in condescending ways. And it is in part advocacy, as Raffety urges us to move beyond a 'paradigm of inclusion' to full empowerment, recognition of and leadership by disabled persons. This book will go a long way to help us catch up in practice to our best but often ill-informed intentions.

Editorial Reviews

With its staunch but very well-argued critique of the practice of inclusion, this book offers an important contribution to the field for experienced researchers at the intersection of religion and disability.

Talitha Cooreman-Guittin