Let’s talk about Ableism
What is ableism? How else can we talk about this concept? Learn from Dan Vander Plaats and Meagan Gillmore as hey wrestle through these questions, share stories of their experiences, and offer insight on how the Church might advocate for change.
Listen to Meagan’s podcast, Connecting Disability, wherever you get your podcasts or at ami.ca/Connecting-Meagan
The 5 Stages of Changing Attitudes by Dan Vanderplaats can be found at wheaton.edu/wheaton-center-for-faith-and-disability/disability-foundations/the-5-stages/ or by searching Dan’s name on the internet.
Meagan Gillmore is a freelance journalist currently based in Ottawa. She has worked for news organizations in the Yukon and New Brunswick and covered labour issues for rabble.ca. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in publications including: Broadview,CBC, Chatelaine, Toronto Life, Toronto Star, The Walrus, Faith Today and Christianity Today. She’s reported on disability news and policy for Accessible Media Inc.’s programs since 2016 and currently hosts the podcast Connecting Disability on the Accessible Media Inc. podcast network. Meagan was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2022 and a Digital Publishing Award in 2021 for writing and reporting related to disability. She won the David S. Barr Award in the college division from The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America in 2011. Religious Education and Disability
Dan Vander Plaats is the Vice President of Advancement, Marketing, and Communications at Elim Christian Services, a Christian disability ministry based in Crestwood, Illinois. Dan serves on the advisory committee for a bi-denominational Disability Concerns committee. In 2009, he developed “The 5 Stages: Changing Attitudes” to help churches and individuals assess and change their attitudes toward people with disabilities, and he’s the author of Changing Attitudes about Disability and a co-editor of Everybody Belongs, Serving Together: Inclusive Church Ministry with People with Disabilities. He is married to Denise (Hiemstra) and is father to Ben and Emma.
[00:00:06] [Keith] Welcome to Disability and the Canadian Church, a podcast where we talk about the intersections of disability and the Christian faith in Canada and beyond. I'm Keith Dow.
[00:00:17] [Jasmine] And I'm Jasmine Duckworth. We'll be your hosts and we're so glad you're joining us today. We're excited to learn from diverse voices as we welcome a couple of guests each week to share their insights and expertise on aspects of disability and faith.
[00:00:39] [Keith] Today we're talking with Meagan Gilmore and Dan Vander Plaats. Meagan's a freelance journalist currently based in Ottawa. She's worked for news organizations in the Yukon and New Brunswick and covered labour issues for rabble.ca as a freelancer. Her work has appeared in publications including Broadview, CBC, Chatelaine, Toronto Life, Toronto Star, the Walrus, Faith Today, and Christianity Today. She's reported on disability news and policy for Accessibility Media Inc's programs since 2016, and currently hosts the podcast Connecting Disability on the Accessible Media Inc's podcast network. Meagan was nominated for a national magazine award in 2022 and a digital publishing award in 2021 for writing and reporting related to disability. She won the David S. Barr Award in the college division from the Newspaper Guild Communication Workers of America in 2011.
[00:01:39] [Jasmine] Dan Vander Plaats is the vice President of Advancement Marketing and Communications at Elim Christian Services, a Christian disability ministry based in Crestwood, Illinois. Dan serves on the advisory committee for a bi-denominational disability concerns committee. In 2009, he developed The 5 Stages: Changing Attitudes to help churches and individuals assess and change their attitudes toward people with disabilities. And he's the author of Changing Attitudes About Disability and a co-editor of Everybody Belongs, Serving Together: Inclusive Church Ministry with People with Disabilities. He is married to Denise Hemstra and his father to Ben and Emma. Keith, what stood out to you about our conversation today with Dan and Meagan?
[00:02:22] [Keith] Well, as with many of our other podcasts, their honesty, their relation to kind of the personal impact on them, those were the compelling, so compelling parts of our conversation. But I also really appreciated being able to dive into the different cultural aspects. I mean cultures, society, disability culture, church culture, how these things interact, the value of a term like ableism, where it might or might not be helpful. And then also Al as always, the opportunity to think through the theological aspects of this too. So where our church is coming from and how can we work to be, not only more accessible, but also as, as Dan pointed out, how can we work to be co-labourers in Christ. What about for you? What stood out for you today?
[00:03:16] [Jasmine] For me, it was when we asked a question about internal ableism and they talked about some of their own experiences and as they shared, it was like they were in my mind, telling my experiences in much more eloquent words than I could put together. And it was just really interesting to resonate so deeply with what they were talking about. And I think that goes to what you were just saying, talking about disability, culture and some of those shared experiences. I also really loved how they kept bringing the ideas back to the theology and the idea of what we know in scripture about sin and about being made in the image of God and just these ideas that we know them if we're in the church, but they applied them in such concrete and interesting ways to the idea of disability and community and ableism.
[00:04:08] [Keith] That was powerful for sure. And now to the interview.
[00:04:31] [Jasmine] Hi Dan. Hi Meagan. Thanks for joining us today. We're so excited to chat with you. Do you wanna each say hi?
[00:04:38] [Dan] Yeah, hi. I'm really glad to be here, Jasmine, thank you for inviting me.
[00:04:43] [Meagan] Yeah, thanks. This is really great.
[00:04:45] [Jasmine] Awesome. So we are here today to talk about ableism in the church. Not a very cheery topic, but an important one and one that I know both of you have a lot of thoughts about and a lot of things to say. We've heard, Keith and I have both crossed paths with you in various places, and we've heard you share great insights on this. So that's why we invited you here today and we're so thrilled that you accepted our invitation. So let's start off with just like the basics. How do you define ableism? Some of our listeners will be very familiar with this concept. Some of our listeners, this might be a new term. So for those of us who might not be sure what it means, let's, let's get all on the same page. So I don't know, maybe Meagan, do you wanna start us off? How would you define ableism? And then Dan, you can follow up and add.
[00:05:33] [Meagan] Sure. So this is a bit of a hot take that you might wanna edit out or I'll just get canceled after this. I'm actually not even the biggest fan of the word ableism, and I think for me it's because of the way it looks. It's the E in the I combination in the middle there that throws me off, but I sometimes think it can be a little wonky for people, or they hear it and they latch onto it and they're like, this is my new cause I'm going to crusade against ableism. And they don't know what it is. It's something we're calling everything ableist, even if it isn't, and it's confusing. So the way I try to explain it for people is I try to break it down with two parts of that word, able, an ism. An ism refers to like an ideology or belief system and they've got the able part. So I would, I typically like to think of it as like a system or practices that value the lives of disabled individuals or individuals with disabilities lesser than those who don't have disabilities or able-bodied. Or, and that it would phrase disability always as a negative. That's how disability would be seen in ableist conception, that the best life is a life without a disability and taken to its logical conclusion. It would say that it is better to be dead than to live with a disability.
[00:07:02] [Dan] Yeah, thanks for that definition, Meagan. I would agree with not being a huge fan of the word, the term ableism. And I know the context in which we operate, me being in the Midwest of the United States has some impact on that. I find that would like ableism carry a lot of political connotations and that can either incite a conversation in a direction other than the one you intended to go, or it can shut down conversation before it even gets started. And so I think asking for a definition of it is extremely helpful. And a couple definitions that I had that I've shared, one is, and I think this is just like a general like Wikipedia version, ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. At its heart ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require fixing and defines people by that disability. That's pretty good one. But Emily Ledo, who wrote Demystifying Disability has a definition that comes a lot closer to even what Meagan said. She says, ableism is attitudes and actions that devalue someone on the basis of their disability. And I find that a very helpful and simple definition, which is very accurate because I don't know, for me it has a lot to do with a sense of value, the, the sense of value that we place on other human lives for a lot of reasons that don't have anything to do with who that person is.
[00:09:02] [Keith] Well, I love this. It sounds like it's gonna be a really fascinating conversation on ableism with two people that don't necessarily suppose ableism as a term, but I think that's really helpful for us and for our listeners as well. And correct me if I'm wrong, I don't hear either of you saying, this isn't a thing, right? That these beliefs on this way of approaching reality does exist. Maybe what I hear you objecting to more is how is this term employed in different spaces. And Dan, you mentioned kind of the political reality of it, Meagan, I know as a journalist and as a writer I'm with you in terms of certain words just have bugged me in different ways as well. So, so let's, let's dive into this just a bit more that words, terms can be used strategically in different ways, sometimes very effectively and sometimes counterproductively almost. And so I, I think we, we've talked with others about advocacy as well. I think we need to have these kinds of conversations where we talk about what is the use of ableism as a term to help move the conversation forward. Where is it maybe distracting or detracting or unhelpful? And I'll, I'll throw it an idea and then I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
[00:10:28] [Keith] I think sometimes terms can be polarizing, in a good way or in a bad way. And so the power of ableism is that it puts it right in our faces, right? It takes something that maybe we had held subconsciously, and it brings it and holds a mirror up to our society to say, have you considered that this might be ableism, right? These attitudes, this, these discriminatory beliefs, these things that maybe haven't been talked about much in the past and are just an undercurrent that hey, this is an "ism," this is, this is something that you don't want to be, an ableist, right? Which for some people can be really powerful. Like, oh, wow, I haven't thought of that. There's, there's something to that and I need to take a deep look at myself and ask, were those ableist tendencies or beliefs. And then for other people, it might just cause 'em to run screaming for the hills saying, that's not me.
[00:11:23] [Keith] I am nothing like that. How dare you. Right? And then it, it doesn't necessarily lead to a productive conversation. So as we're thinking about church context, as we're thinking about engaging with other Christians on this topic, I'd love to hear a little more from you in terms of how do we go about that conversation. How do we introduce like, and, and Meagan, I know you've done a lot of work on the, the, the medical impacts in terms of Medical Assistance in Dying and some of those different devaluing programs, I would say for, for disability rights and disability advocacy. So it can be striking, it can be harsh. How do we go about getting into those topics in a way that's going to welcome people into that conversation?
[00:12:09] [Meagan] I would say for me, building Keith on I love, what you're saying is I try to ask a lot of questions. So before I come out and say, I think you are a total ableist, and don't you understand that like, I am a legally blind woman in Canada and I, I live in a country or the criminal code, like if I wanted to, I could find doctors who could give me a lethal injection simply because I'm legally blind. And you know, so you are ableist and you are now supporting the ideology that is literally leading to the deaths of thousands of Canadians. That's pretty harsh. And while I think that, I think those things are connected, if I ever have a conversation with somebody, I just wanna ask them a lot of questions. Like even "what's been your experience with disability?" Because I understand that I come to this conversation from a place of a lot of privilege.
[00:13:05] [Meagan] I was born legally blind, right? I've, like, I've never had to adjust to my disability in the sense that it's always been there. I've had to adjust to how it impacts different parts of my life and different relationships, but I never knew a world before it. So I just assume that everybody's perception of the world can contains disability and, and it doesn't for everyone. So I have to learn some humility to be like, okay, like where are you coming from? Yeah, just ask a lot of questions about that. Cause people like, like what are you afraid of?
[00:13:36] [Meagan] And I'm really mindful right now, like we were having this conversation about ableism in the church, and I may say some things, they may say some things that may sound very bold and harsh. And I just wanna know, like, I know for me, my heart, and I think the heart around here is the only reason I'm having this conversation is because I believe in the church that that is God's design for Christians, that we be involved in churches. And the best way that you can experience Jesus is through a group of people who are committed to following him as he's revealed in scripture. So I think when we were having this conversation, like from a, with other Christians, a lot of it is like really comes down to like, what do we believe about God and how does disability interact with that? How, what might Jesus want to say to our fears or our anxieties about disability?
[00:14:33] [Keith] Yeah, that's beautiful. And I think you've, you've really set the tone for how we're approaching this conversation too, right? That it's not, it's not with a big hammer just wanting to whack people for wrong beliefs or wrong ideas. Because when we know, I'm speaking for myself, I'd have to hit myself over the head with that as well. It's, it's how do we enter into this in a spirit of love and, and constructive feedback for, for, for others and for ourselves. Dan, did you wanna pick up on that and, and add anything to what Meagan was saying?
[00:15:05] [Dan] Sure. I I, I really appreciate your perspective on that, Meagan. And what kept on coming to mind for me is the conversations I've had and the carefulness with which I use a term like ableism. Or even other, you know, disability advocacy slogans that are out there because I want in every situation for full participation to be possible. And that means the conversation needs to be accessible. And a conversation about ableism is, is somewhat less accessible to somebody who has no idea what ableism is and for whom the term might even sound politically dissonant. Like, okay, so now I've got one more thing that's wrong with me that I have to address and you're gonna tell me all the other things I have to fix on top of the thousands of other things I have to address and atone for, let's just talk, as you said, Meagan, let's ask questions and, and help each other understand why ableism is a real thing and how it's impacting not, not only how it impacts us, but even what it's rooted in, what it says our society believes about people compared to what the scriptures say about who we are, how valuable we are, how indispensable Christ and his father have told us we are, repeatedly.
[00:16:46] [Dan] So I, I find ableism can be a helpful term, but I also want to be very careful about when and how I use it in order to make sure that the conversation actually happens.
[00:16:59] [Jasmine] I've heard you both talk about your own experiences, Meagan, you talked about your experience of being a woman who's legally blind and what that feels like, and having that since birth and how that shaped who you are. And Dan, you just talked about finding value in who we are in God and being created by him. I am somebody who's acquired a disability later in life and I've had to adjust to that. And my faith was a big factor of how I processed that and the grief and the joys that I found in living with disabilities. And I found I had a lot of, we'll call them internal ableist beliefs that I needed to work through and process and unlearn. Thankfully, I've been able to do some of that unlearning because I've spent a lot of time being mentored and loved by people with disabilities. But that was kind of a revelation for me as a person with disabilities to realize some of the prejudice ideas I held about disability. I don't know if your experience is different because both of you have lived in the bodies you're in the way they are since you were born. But have you found similar instances of this internal prejudice or internal ableism that you've needed to work through in yourself? And then how did your, your faith or your church factor into that? Did it make it easier or more difficult to process those feelings?
[00:18:27] [Dan] Yeah, I'll, I'll take that one. Thank you. Well, I think it's, yeah, because I was born with the disability that I have, the speech disability that I have, but wasn't really aware that I was disabled until I was, I don't know, 8, 9, 10 years old, you know, that I had a different experience than other people did. And even then, not that significant of a difference, but my parents made that story part of my story. And, you know, I, I began to draw a sense of identity from the fact that I had the disability I did, that I had overcome the challenges I had. And what I didn't realize I was doing was that I was internalizing an ableism a form of ableism as a result of that, I think it's impossible to grow up with a disability. It probably is impossible to grow up with a disability and not kind of internalize or normalize ableism within your life in some way.
[00:19:33] [Dan] What I, the way I've seen that happen and still manifests itself today is in two main impacts. The first is I have this inherently defensive reactive posture that I have to always modulate in which I am constantly poised to overcome every situation that people believe I cannot handle. You know, this kind of, I'll show you type of attitude. The second main kind of psychological impact of, of that ableism, that internal ableism is this innate self-doubt that says I don't deserve it when good things do come my way. And while I've never, ever actually actively sabotaged the things that come my way, I do find that I still question them, like, how is it that I got married and have kids and that we have a healthy family and we all, you know, faithful and following God and spending time together. How is it that my church family cares so much for me that other people look up to and respect me? How could I have even earned the position that I'm in at the organization where I serve? There must be some excuse or somebody wasn't paying attention that I got put into this role and don't actually deserve it. And that's why earlier when I was defining ableism, I really resonated with Meagans, you know, connecting it to value because that's exactly how I process it as well.
[00:21:16] [Dan] There's this question of am I worth it, am I worth the efforts of other people? Am I worthy of time and attention from other people? These internalized and externalized examples of ableism are simply skewed views of human value. They root our value in what we do or what's wrong with us or what we accomplish, what we get paid, what we have in our bank accounts, who our friends are. And recently as I've struggled with a sense of whether or not I deserved the, the new position I earned at Elim, I was simultaneously receiving all these other forms of affirmation for other areas of my life. And it caused this weird dissonance that was very challenging to reconcile this dissonance between am I worthy of the role I have and then hearing good things about other areas of my life. So why do I think that? I think it's because we just inherently, our fallen, broken nature.
[00:22:22] [Dan] The sin impact on someone, a disability isn't so much about the disability. Perhaps it's about our attitudes to the, the, you know, diverse issues of disability that we place on ourselves, that we have against ourselves. And I think the church has been particularly helpful in many regards with that because the message is constantly, it's not about you, it's not about what you do, it's not about what you bring to the table, it's about what Christ has done for you. It's about the fact that he loves you. At the same time, the church is infused with ideas that don't come from the scriptures. They come from a world around us. And so you measure yourself against the people who are sitting in the pew next to you. And at times there's dissonance in that as well. Cause you're hearing the truth of God's love for you at the same time that you're measuring yourself against your non-disabled pews.
[00:23:21] [Meagan] Yeah, that, that's beautiful. Dan. I resonate with a lot of that, like, yeah, like many children who grew up with disabilities, I don't think I was cognitively aware of it fully until maybe around the same age, like 8, 9, 10. And then puberty again, I said this often like puberty as a disabled girl is like its own special form of like hell, like it's just, it's like understanding how to relate to your body. Like it's just, it's all the messy things but you don't, may not even understand how to express it because there's just so many things going on at one time.
[00:24:04] [Meagan] So for me, very similar, the need to overcompensate for my disability. So the sense that like I always have to be prepared, right? So for example, I am currently finishing a graduate degree in journalism at Carlston University in Ottawa and I'm taking a course on reporting on the Supreme Court of Canada. I'm very excited for this class. It was one of the classes I wanted to take when I started in this program. And last week, so we're speaking at the end of March. So last week my class attended a supreme court hearing. It was a really important case in Canada right now about a federal environmental law and whether or not it infringes on provincial jurisdiction. Anyways, if you're a policy wonk and care about Canadian federalism, this is the kinda stuff. So we're there in the hearing cause we have to, our class assignment is to write an article about it and you can go online beforehand and the Supreme Court will tell you who all the lawyers will be, who are presenting and their names, their proper spelling and all that things.
[00:25:06] [Meagan] So I went on beforehand and I printed out a large print version of that. So I would have it for me. And then like my prof came up to me at one point was like, oh Meagan, like you might not be able to see it, but here's the list of names. And I said, no problem. I have it. Like I've already gone, I've done my extra homework, I am super prepared for this. Yay. So like this. And like sometimes that's a really good skill in the sense of like being able to problem solve or think about how different people are accessing information. But it's also exhausting to feel like, oh I always have to be like 10 steps ahead of everybody else and be prepared for every contingency plan.
[00:25:49] [Meagan] And it's all on me. Like I have to hold all of this and if I, if I mess up, then we're all, it's all done. So there's definitely that, you know, for me, and this is funny 'cause in the last week I've had like two conversations with journalism classes about disability reporting. The fact, professionally, because I do do some writing on disability policy, like devaluing the work around that and being like, oh, they only thought that article was good because it's about disability and they're pittying me and blah blah blah blah. And I say that and some of those articles have been nominated for national awards. Okay. Like they've got a national, they haven't won anything yet, but like they've got a national recognition. But there's still part of me that's like, okay, but was it cause it was or was it cause it was about disability?
[00:26:45] [Meagan] Like I dunno. So not being able to take a compliment, like at all, is probably one of the ways. And then at other times thinking, and we might get into this more like times where I've been hurt because of how somebody has treated my disability or let's say how somebody like in church leadership has maybe talked about disability or addressed it. When I feel that pain sometimes my first reaction has been, oh, it's not that big of a deal. Like let's try to brush this off. It's just about this. This isn't as big as someone else's problem. And I know for me, like my parents, like Dan's, I think like I just wanna be really clear on that. Like my parents are not perfect parents, but they on this topic hit some things out of the ballpark to, for a baseball analogy, opening day soon very quickly, like the fact that my parents, I'm a 34-year-old adult, they have zero tolerance for any discussion of this is a punishment, this is a bad thing, God is mean because of this, like zero tolerance for that discussion. My parents were very clear from the beginning that every human life is made in the image of God and that includes disabled life. And there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with you having a disability. And I grew up in church environments that would be very opposed to theologies that would indicate that God must physically heal you.
[00:28:24] [Meagan] So even in that environment, it still sneaks in. And I think going with Dan said, I think for me it's just a reminder of, and I've spent a lot of my adult life in churches that would fall in the reformed theological traditions. This is probably coming out here, it's probably like a reminder of how pervasive sin is, right? And like Adam and Eve are in this garden, they have everything provided for them and still there is this part of them that goes, maybe God isn't good, maybe that one tree, maybe he's holding back something good for me and we need to go and we need to grab it. Maybe he actually isn't as good as he tells us that he is. So I would say, even though my disability has often been a reminder of the goodness of God, because sin being what it is, it's, it's the thing that I will lobby against him and lob against him and be like, you know, if you were doing your job, this wouldn't have happened. And like living in that, a tension,
[00:29:21] [Keith] I love how you've brought in the connection between the theology of many of our church practices and the weight or the toll that that can have on particular people, groups of people, right? And I think that's something that's been powerful for me as I've wrestled with ableism in myself as, you know, a temporarily abled or relatively abled white male, middle-aged. I, I have a lot of privilege and it's easy to just walk -- and there we go, there's an ableist term through life in kind of a, a way that assumes that things are going okay, right? When you have a, when you have a world that is basically made for you, it's, it's, it's easy to look at those who are facing barriers who are wrestling through things and saying like, why is, why is this so hard? And so ableism is a way for me or a term for me to say, okay, there's something here, right?
[00:30:26] [Keith] There's a weight, there is a toll that my expectations that are societal expectations that are constant devaluing of the disabled experience have. And it's a toll as each of you have shared so powerfully that impacts your own lives in different ways. It's a toll that impacts Canadian society in different ways in terms of how we engage people, how we, how people to be full and flourishing members of our communities. And it's a, it it's a, it's a toll that has a really profound effect on our church experiences. And I would say our ability to live out what it means to be the body of Christ. Right? And Dan, you mentioned earlier how our culture, how our society, how our, how the waters that we swim in continue to impact church, right? They seep into a community that is supposed to be shaped around Christ's example around seeing each person as beautifully created in God's image and together created creating God's image.
[00:31:33] [Keith] A place that, that sees each member as indispensable and having a unique gift and contribution. And it, it can distort that, it can distort us to not see the barriers and the, the difficulties and the realities for so many people that are part of the community. So let's talk a little bit more about that. Let's dive into that either and you can take this as a direction that you want, either how have you seen the church become a counter-cultural example of God's love in your lives or in your community or how have you seen it, maybe take on some of those devaluing instincts that we see in our ableist context. Dan, why don't you sure you dive into that either, either direction.
[00:32:17] [Dan] No, I appreciate that. It, it's funny as, as Meagan was talking and I started thinking about an adult who comes to Elim for services and she went to college, got a journalism degree and just so we're clear, I also have a journalism degree. So I think we're all journalists here. And she got a journalism degree, actually worked for the local paper. She had some cognitive delays and had some physical challenges that meant that at a certain point her family could no longer provide a home for her. And so they found a placement with a residential setting and that residential setting sends their adults to Elim for our day program and have gotten to know Beth there. She does have opportunity out in the community to volunteer and work at a couple other places other than Elim. But there's a lot of her relationships, a lot of her world that is defined by the boundaries that we have set up for her experiences, her experience of life.
[00:33:31] [Dan] So you're gonna be going into this program five days a week and you will go to church if we have enough staff to support you going to church, even though church is very important to you, you know, these are just practical realities for an organization that's trying to support people with disabilities. Nothing positive or negative inherently about that, just some challenges. But what that says about best experience of church life and my experience of church life becomes two very different things. I have a church life experience that is fairly typical for a typical church member. It's fairly easy to get past my disability and see me as you know, just another member of the family for someone like Beth, she comes in with the group and she leaves with the group. So that looks like the boundaries, that looks like the proper setting for her.
[00:34:29] [Dan] And the difference between me and Beth is not that big. It really is not that big. I am one more move of the forceps in the wrong direction away from being in Beth's situation. Why does my life experience get to be so typical compared to Beth's? What is so phenomenal about me that I get to have deep relationships with the people that I sit in church with and Beth gets the pleasure of maybe volunteering alongside them from time to time and maybe they remember her name and maybe they say hi to her every Sunday. And I will tell you there are some phenomenal people at my church who do exactly that. They invest in deepening relationships with people. But the way that we, you know, it is just kind of this clash of the, of the cultures, even in our church pews, where the tendency is to take this worldly view of what does that person have to offer because the world is coming into our presence and telling us that this person has these boundaries and only these opportunities. How are we as a church going to respond? Are we going to say forget those boundaries, Beth, let's sit together, let's worship together, let's learn from God's word together. How can our, how can the, the kingdom be revealed in that church setting? So that Beth experiences the kind of depth of the relationship that I get to experience.
[00:36:05] [Meagan] Yeah, yeah. Those are good questions. Thanks for sharing Dan. I think for me first I would say that most of my experiences at church, at least as I remember them and as I tell the stories to myself, growing up were quite positive around disability. It's actually only been as an adult that I've encountered really difficult situations and at some cases it's led to, it's been one of the factors that's led to a decision to like, like leave a church that I was heavily invested in for years. So if I cry and get emotional that's like, it is like, it's a really difficult thing.
[00:36:58] [Meagan] So I am, I moved to Ottawa in September 2021. I've been at one church the entire time because I was partly not in an emotional place to church hop. I'm actually really terrible at church hopping too. Like I'm not even good at it. And I had friends at the church, I kind of knew I'd end up at this one but one of the reasons why I ended up there is 'cause we, we rent for the young church, we don't have our own building but it's very clear if you go on the church website that this is a wheelchair-accessible facility. Like that sentence is there. And I remember like the first time I met up with our senior pastor talking about that and he was like, oh like that was a deliberate decision like that we made as an organization that even though we rent, we would only rent a wheelchair-accessible facility.
[00:37:52] [Meagan] There were some individuals who were really influential in that. So like little things like that, even though I don't use a wheelchair, it means the world to me that there are people in my life who I don't think they know Jesus and sometimes they appear interested in the fact that I'm a Christian, I go to church and the fact that I can tell them, hey if you wanna come with me on Sunday, you can, like this is not an issue. That means a lot. I think for me the ways I've seen ableism work in churches, this is partly cause I work with words for a living. I'm every pastor's dream, I maybe overanalyze. But if you're gonna use disability as a sermon illustration, please know that I am sitting there now, even if I was like half asleep 30 seconds earlier, I am now fully alert and on edge.
[00:38:43] [Meagan] So I don't think scripture's ableist as somebody who's legally blind. I do not object to the Bible using blindness as a metaphor for sin. I've seen that actually in my own life and I'm happy to talk about that more later. I often will take issue with how disability is used as an illustration. So the, you know, we're gonna list all the terrible things that could happen to you in your life and it's like your spouse could cheat on you. There could like a war, there could be an invasion of where you live, you could lose your house, like death. And then they'll be like, and you could have a child born with a disability and I'm like, okay here. Like I think we've kind of overstated what it is and not, and to be clear, if you're a parent and you're going through this like I just wanna acknowledge it is difficult to adjust to that.
[00:39:38] [Meagan] Like we're all, nobody's saying this is easy, but any parent I've spoken to who has a disabled child, like they sometimes have a hard time comprehending the question, what's hard about raising your child because of the disability? Like they're like what are you talking about? Like this is my kid, I love them, I'm just doing what any other parent would do. Like why, why like thing. So I notice a lot, I noticed a lot of the illustrations I think Joni Eareckson Tada has spent her life serving the global church and disability, and it drives me crazy that she gets like pulled out in like every random book as like the example of like the worst thing that could happen to you 'cause that's not even what she says if you like read her writing. So I'm like, okay, like what is going on? That's why I noticed a lot. And then how we discuss accommodations that might be needed.
[00:40:28] [Meagan] So, I don't drive a car for the safety of humanity and like Canada geographically we are a large piece of land with a very small population and proportion to our land mass. So that means that transit is often always an issue wherever you are, particularly on Sundays you're trying to get to church. So I like I have rule like I won't attend a church that I can't get to on public transit. Like when I, when I was moving to Ottawa, I had a feeling what church I would end up at. And so when I was looking at where I should rent an apartment, I would just put in the church's address and Google maps and figure out what the transit route was and that's how I figured out where I would live.
[00:41:14] [Meagan] And I have been always overwhelmed by the fact that I've been at this church for like a year and a half now and very rarely has a Sunday gone by where I actually have to take public transit both ways because people were very quick to, of their own initiative, say Hey Meagan, we can set up rides for you. And I protested and I was like no it's okay. Like I can get there. And some people literally had to pause and say, Meagan, we drive by your building. Like we're not going outta the way, we're literally just driving to church and we drive past you. Like we're just swing by and pick you up. And what makes me sad is that I doubted them because I've heard people in church situations, I've heard other Christians talk about how hard it is to have to give you a ride or like why can't everyone just get a driver's license instead of being like, oh, like when we were sinners, Jesus Christ died for us.
[00:42:10] [Meagan] So you know, the least you can do is give somebody a ride to a church event. Like it's actually just a practical application of the gospel. So things like that, like I get a large font bulletin again like that was initiated by somebody else, not by me. And I think for people to realize, like it is exhausting to always have to ask. So when somebody makes it available to you, most of my life I've been the only disabled person that I've known of in my church. It's not the case actually in the church I'm in, that's one of the reasons I'm there. I hardly knew anybody in like a month in, baptized an adult, adult woman who has numerous disabilities and she is an active member of our church, a very beloved member who does everything like everyone else does. And so for me to sit there as a new person and I couldn't see what was going on cause I was sitting too far back, but to be able to figure out what was going on and be like, oh, like these are people who don't question the fact that a disabled person can come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
[00:43:11] [Meagan] And that might sound crazy, but there are people who say things that would insinuate like certain disabilities will keep you away from experiencing salvation. And I would just humbly ask, where is your scriptural evidence for that? And would you say that about any other group of people based on a characteristic of their life?
[00:43:31] [Jasmine] Awesome. You guys made some really good points and thank you for sharing personal examples from your life and stories. And I, I appreciate Meagan, that you even were open to crying on here because Dan made me cry when you were talking about not feeling worthy about things in your life. Yeah, that resonated. So I think that just underscores that what for some people is a academic idea or just a neat bit of like ideology to kick around for other people it's like deeply personal and tied to the the core of their being. So thank you both for being vulnerable enough to share some of those stories today. So you were just responding to Keith's question about how broader society seeps into the church and how we can see those like ableist tendencies shaping our experience of church on a Sunday morning or being part of a church community.
[00:44:27] [Jasmine] And you guys spoke to that really well. But the flip side is possible as well that the church can influence broader society. So let's talk a little bit about how like you gave both give examples of like churches getting it right and doing it well and being intentional to see every person is made in the image of God and part of the body of Christ. So are there ways that the church can take that ideology and influence the broader society and actually advocate for change in the world around us? So can you give examples or can you give advice that you would like to, to give to churches on how they can try to combat ableism in their own practices as well as in the broader community and how they can be that that influence for change, that agent for change? I'll leave it up to you who starts.
[00:45:19] [Meagan] Okay. Yeah I guess I'll, I'll start with this one. So both like some like practical things that you could do within your congregation. One is like both Dan and I have said that we are reluctant to use the word ableism but it is a word and it's a conversation that's happening. So I think especially if you are in a position of church leadership, particularly if your position includes a teaching element where you are teaching people scripture, be aware of like what this conversation is. So you know like in the same conversation, like the first time I ever really talked to the student pastor in my church, we talked about the building being wheelchair-accessible. He used the word ableism. He's like, oh like did you find these certain church experiences elsewhere in your life ableist? And I was like, oh my gosh, pastors know the world ableist.
[00:46:07] [Meagan] I was like, what? Like I don't know what is going on here but wow. So like just like it might help you to just learn some of those things. I understand they probably didn't cover that in seminary. They probably should. So in terms of practical things, I would say you likely have someone in your church who either has a disability or is affected by this on a personal level in Canada it's about 20% of our population over the age of 15 has some form of disability, that is one in five. And when we talk about the need for churches to reflect the diversity of humanity, I'm happy that we were discussing about how that influences men and women, how that influences people from different racial and cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Also talk about the disability makeup of your church and realize that there's likely a bunch of disabled people in your church and if they have disabilities and you don't know that and especially if you're in a position of pastoral spiritual care, ask yourself why do I not know this?
[00:47:10] [Meagan] Like why did somebody never tell me this? So to quote Mike Cosper, the host of my favorite podcast, The Rise Fall of Mar Hill, like ask people and believe them when they tell you this is why I may not have brought this up to you in church. I like, I'm legally blind, I come in with a cane, I grew up in a family, super involved in the church, I can figure out a church structure, I have no problem like having my friends also like be my pastor's wife. Like that's no problem for me cause I, I'm fine with that. But other people may not be as used to church life. I would say if you are teaching through a passage of scripture that really deals with disability, like I don't know one of the stories in the gospels where Jesus heals somebody with a disability cause it comes up a lot or passages in the prophets where disability is used or like I'm reading through Deuteronomy right now and this morning read that verse like great verse curse of be anyone who leads a blind man astray on the road. I love it. As part of your sermon prep, talk to the disabled members of your congregation. Like I can't say how much I would love it if somebody just called me up and said, Hey Meagan, I'm preaching through this story of blind Bartimaeus.
[00:48:27] [Meagan] Tell me how you read that. If Jesus asked you what do you want? Would you say that you wanna see? Like ask us. It's not like we haven't read these passages. It's not like I haven't had to deal with the fact that Jesus healed a bunch of blind people and my eyes aren't healed. Like yeah, so appreciate the depth of big theological questions that disabled Christians have had to wrestle with on just as a fact of life and and use that. And then in terms of broader social things, you're not gonna tell I'm like a millennial when I start talking this way, but contextualization is important and you should know what city you're part of. So get involved in your community housing development projects. So much like zoning regulations and things about like giving disabled people affordable, accessible and appropriate housing at all stages of life.
[00:49:33] [Meagan] That's huge. And if a building development comes up in your neighborhood, get involved with that. If you are a church and you are blessed to own your own building, consider what would it look like for us to maybe use part of this to provide housing for people or to provide employment for people. You have space, you have real estate, you can use that in so many different ways. So I would say like getting involved on the ground up and just asking really good questions. So I had a pastor several years ago who first time we met we were like, just like the disability thing came up and he was talking about it and at the time I just finished my undergrad, so I was still very much employed and my pretty much 100%, sorry, very much unemployed, and pretty much 100% of my income came from the Ontario Disability Support Program, which is the social assistance program for Disabled Ontarians.
[00:50:30] [Meagan] And he very gently but very bluntly asked me, Meagan, how much money is that? And do you have enough money to pay rent because you're going to my church and as your pastor I need to know if there's a way that we can help you if you cannot afford it. And at that time I was okay, but I would tell people like, I know you don't wanna talk about money, but if you have somebody in your congregation who's relying on social assistance, you likely have no idea actually how that system works. And you need to ask them how it actually works for them. And for my, so speaking for myself, if you don't ask me early on, do you need money? I will never ask you. Even if I do, I'm not gonna initiate that conversation. And if you, if you like 10 years later realize, oh maybe I should ask Meagan this, I'm just gonna tell you no because I've decided you don't care.
[00:51:19] [Meagan] And it's just easier for me to not even go there. And that could be wrong on my part, but that's just like, you have to ask those questions like I don't wanna bring it up. Yeah. So things like that. And then I would also say when a disabled congregant, like if we're sharing, hey, this is a hard thing about my life because I have a disability, I would just say be careful what motives you attribute to that. So often, and I've had a lot of people say this, so if you're one of those people and you're listening to this, I think it was meant in love. I don't think any ill intent, but I'll say, you know, I don't like asking people for rides or I don't like asking people for help. Essentially, I don't like asking people for help because of my disability. And I always get some way, some people say, well Meagan, aren't you just being prideful?
[00:52:11] [Meagan] Which is a sin. And yeah, there's a bit of pride in there and there's also the part that you are a sinner too. We live in a broken world and I've also asked for help before and been denied it by Christians. So I don't wanna ask for help because I'm tired of people hurting me. And it's not just my sin that's impacting this conversation, it's your sin, it's social sins. So I think yeah, just being careful about when you, when we assume that somebody's individual sin is impacting a situation before we take the time to get to know that situation and all the different factors that are impacting it. That was a lot. I'm sorry. Dan, go.
[00:52:55] [Dan] Well yeah, I, I've only appreciated Meagan's response because I heard examples good and bad of how churches can be part of responding to ableism and how it permeates our world and our experiences of the church. And I'm so grateful that there have been people who approached, you know, questions that they brought to Meagan out of respect and concern for who Meagan was as a child of God. Just as that has happened for me as well, that there wasn't a kind of this, well we gotta, we gotta take care of the disabled person and we'll come up with a solution and they'll have to accept whether the solution we come up with. You know, kind of that benevolent ruler type of situation. But that, you know, there's actually a concern to say, Hey, you're part of our church and we would do this for every person in our church. And whether or not you have some kind of disabling condition doesn't impact that at all.
[00:54:04] [Dan] Yeah, that's just very heartwarming to hear, but also frustrating to hear some of the ways that that, that the church continues to fail at that. That we continue to fail at that. So what I really took away from me's response, which I wanted to kind of emphasize as well kinda underline, is that yes, there are needs in our churches with people with disabilities, and yes, there are people in our churches that have disabilities who aren't talking up about them because they don't wanna draw attention to themselves. They feel like active churches ignored them for so long. What's the use of talking about it at this point? We as churches need to be addressing those needs. We should be knowing who is coming through our doors, knowing what their needs are and not just their needs, but their relational, you know, what are they part of this church?
[00:54:58] [Dan] Are they actually fully participating in the life of the church? Are they part of our leadership structure? Not just, you know, there on Sunday. But then even outside the church walls, the church has an opportunity to be part of this conversation, I think must be part of this conversation about ableism broadly. Not only because we have, you know, we can influence politics, we can influence our communities, but cause we have something very different to offer a lot of advocacy work, a lot of, you know, yeah, I guess advocacy work is rooted in a, in a sense, in a warped sense of who we are as people. Not that we are people who are created for a purpose, but that we access essentially for ourselves. And so the goal much advocacy work is how do we get this person to be as independent as possible? And I feel like our Christian churches are telling us the exact are supposed to be telling us the exact opposite. That we're not supposed to be any more in, we're supposed to be less independent than we are. We not only need God, we need each other. And that's exactly the format that the first and second greatest commandments take as well. To love God and to love other people.
[00:56:29] [Dan] And it means that we as churches have something to offer not only our society, but also to people with disabilities, that we can tell them something different about themselves than what society can tell them. Than what the world can tell them. And you asked Jasmine about The 5 Stages and that's, I keep bringing that up because if we maybe use these stages to understand how we do look at people with disabilities and how we could look at people with disabilities that hopefully our churches will more and more offer something different to the world around us. So I was, you know, this is about 15 years ago, but I was on this trip and I just experienced a situation where I was in a restaurant with a couple of other adults from Elim who also had speech challenges and some other, you know, developmental disabilities that weren't as evident.
[00:57:32] [Dan] And we were going around the table introducing ourselves and they got treated with kind of this sweet, nice, toned by the waitress. And then the waitress turned to me and, you know, started talking to me. And I got the same treatment as the adults that came from Elim. And I was offended, which sounds odd because she was so nice to them. But what it felt like to me is those two were worth kind of a condescending, sweet tone. But don't use that on me. I'm worthy of better than that. I'm not disabled like that. And boy was that a very incriminating situation because I realized that the problem there wasn't how the waitress treated me, the problem was that I didn't have a problem with how she treated us until she directed that treatment toward me. And I just realized this is how people look at me.
[00:58:40] [Dan] This is how people look at people with disabilities. This is how I look at people with more significant disabilities. And so how am I supposed to look at them? I look at them first of all with ignorance. Do I have to have them in my life? So that's stage one in The 5 Stages, Ignorance. The second stage is, I feel really bad for those folks. That's too bad that they're disabled. So that's Pity, stage two. Stage three, you've maybe moved on a little bit. You've realized that ignoring people with disabilities isn't really a solution, just feeling sorry for them is not a solution. So this is what a lot of Christians feel like as a whole, let's care for people with disabilities, stage three. But I don't want people just to care about me and the challenges that I have, nor do I want that for the people that we serve at Elim. I want them to be friends with me. I want them to have actual reciprocal relationships with people with disabilities. Real meaningful relationships. Not just "hi," but I'm gonna sit with you, I'm gonna have you over for dinner, I'm gonna check in on you. I'm gonna watch the football game with you or the hockey game.
[00:59:59] [Dan] So, stage four, friendship, but one thing was missing from my perspective and that was kind of this expectation, quality to our disability attitudes. That, you know, everything else so far was kind of treating the person with disabilities almost as two-dimensional. That they were a recipient of the world around them and observer of the world around them. You know, somebody that the world happened to. And I believe that God calls people with disabilities with very specific purposes and callings just as he does for everybody else. And we're supposed to be not just friends, but co-labourers in his kingdom. We're called, at stage five, to see that everybody has something to offer because of, because Christ put them here, Christ has them as part of his body and he wants them there to contribute what they have to offer. Because that's part of his plan for revealing his kingdom.
[01:01:04] [Dan] And so those are the five stages. And I think if I were consistently treated at stage five as a person with a disability, that would not cause me to have these struggles that I have with this internalized ableism. I would have a strong sense of who I was in Christ. And I would realize that my gifts were as valuable as anybody else's. They weren't diminished. I didn't need to question when somebody had complimented me and wonder if that was really a true compliment or if they were just being nice to me because they felt like they had to. And you can find all those stages documented online. If you go to fivestages.com, you'll end up getting diverted to Wheaton College. Wheaton is a Chicago area Evangelical Christian College, which has a Center for Faith and Disability. And if you look up Wheaton College and Five Stages, you can also find it that way. The Five Stages has been translated into 16 different languages at this point. Very simple document, which you know, can use for yourself or in your church or in your organization just to assess disability attitudes, but also to kind of get a very kind of minimalist theological framework for how we as Christians are called to be really considering our attitudes toward people with disabilities.
[01:02:36] [Keith] That's so excellent. And I think one of the reasons why it's so compelling and has been translated into different languages is because of its simplicity, right? We started off today chatting about how you enter into those conversations about ableism, about the structures that shape our experiences, whether it's at churches or in society. And The Five Stages can be another way to do that, to start that conversation to say, where are we at here? Let's take stock. And perhaps, perhaps a different entry point than launching in into talking about ableism, although I believe that has its place as well, but it may be a more accessible, in a way to start off that conversation. So, thank you for sharing that and I hope people will check that out. Excellent. Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. I appreciate you both taking the time today to share with us your experience, your expertise, and I know that our listeners will really appreciate that as well. So thanks so much. If you like today's episode, please take a moment to review us on Apple Podcasts or other platforms. It helps people to find this podcast and why not share this episode with a friend? We'd love to hear your thoughts. Send us an email ministry@christianhorizons.org.
[01:03:53] [Jasmine] This podcast has been brought to you by Christian Horizons and is part of the New Leaf Podcast network. Christian Horizons is a faith-based organization out of Canada. We serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and in several countries around the world through Christian Horizons Global. You can find more information about us@christianhorizons.org. Special thanks to Tim Bratton and to the New Leaf Podcast Network team, and to you for listening.