Lessons in Community Building From Including the “Other”: Caring for One An-Other

Editorial

“…This principle of paradoxical counterproductivity, as it is named, entails that caring communities begun as an initiative of taking responsibility for people with disabilities end as places of exclusion. In Gaventa's (2012) words: "Faith communities have often been the ones to initiate community efforts to care for, or include, the other, and they have also often been ones to put harmful stamps of approval, supposedly in the name of the divine, on exclusion" (pp. 232-233).…”

The Perceptions of Persons with Disabilities, Primary Caregivers and Church Leaders regarding Barriers and Facilitators to Participation in a Methodist Congregation

“…While there is a tendency in many Christian congregations for persons with disabilities to become the 'other' through discriminating acts against them and their families (Gaventa, 2012), much is recorded in Scripture concerning additional reasons for such divisions in the Body, as well as the solutions toward oneness. For example, 1 Corinthians 1:10-17, 1 Corinthians 3:1-23 and 1 Cor 12:12-31 (New International Version) show that union among Christians require joint efforts by everyone involved in the congregation, where the obligation for ensuring unity rests on all its members, including persons with disabilities as a part thereof, whether or not they view themselves as such.…”

“…However, unless they become aware of this mindset, they will be complicit in perpetuating the conceptualisations of individual models, such as the pre-modern charity model, and subsequent medical model of disability, conceiving disability as victimhood (Creamer, 2012;Retief & Letšosa, 2018). For true inclusion, belonging and participation to occur, it is crucial that this us-them mentality changes, where everyone, including persons with disabilities, primary caregivers and church leaders, shift their perspectives from viewing persons with disabilities as 'apart from', to 'a part of' their faith community (Gaventa, 2012), in which they recognise one another as equal members of their part-whole faith system, the body of Christ (Brock, 2011). With such an understanding, each member will know their worth and value based on what God says about themnot people, which will empower them to each fulfill their own unique function in their Body.…”