Ministering to the Whole Flock

At the Maimonides Academy in Los Angeles this week, a roomful of bandits, cowboys, doctors and other costumed kids were kicking their Purim party into high gear.

They merrily danced. They exchanged presents. They ate potato chips and traditional three-sided pastries. And they brayed and booed every time the name of the evil Haman was read from the Megillah scroll recounting how his dastardly plot to destroy the Jews of Persia 2,500 years ago was thwarted by the beautiful Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai.

The children have disabilities ranging from Down syndrome to cerebral palsy, but there was no stopping them from celebrating this most joyous holiday of the Jewish calendar. In this circle, at least, gone are the days when people with disabilities were closeted from the world in shame and fear. These children are reaching out for full inclusion in the hearts, homes, educational programs and worship activities of their religious communities.

Just as the U.S. Supreme Court this week extended educational services for children with disabilities, the “religious inclusion” movement to expand access to congregational life is mushrooming across the land. Next weekend, a national event called Sabbath Sunday will urge churches, synagogues and temples to embrace the disabled through social and spiritual activities.

The Arc, formerly the Assn. of Retarded Citizens, launched the event in 1977 and today sends out more than 10,000 copies of Sabbath Sunday materials, including such biblical verses as Isaiah 56:7: “For my house shall be a house of prayer for all people.”

“Sabbath Sunday is far and away our most successful and popular awareness effort,” said Arc spokeswoman Liz Moore. “When we first started, a church would speak from the pulpit on one Sunday in March about the value of people with disabilities. Now churches reach out year-round with programs, Sunday school classes and social groups.”

In addition, the National Organization on Disability has kicked off a campaign to commit 2,000 congregations by the year 2000 to tackle both physical and attitudinal barriers that prevent a full welcome to those with disabilities. The physical accommodations can range from ramps to large-print prayer books, but activists say accommodations of the heart are far more important.

“Of all the barriers, the greatest ones are those of attitude that limit who we are and what we can do,” said Ginny Thornburgh, director of the organization’s religion and disability program. “We need to realize that those of us with disabilities have gifts and talents to share with our congregations.”

Thornburgh’s stepson, Peter, was 4 months old when he suffered a severe brain injury in an auto accident that killed his mother. Thornburgh became Peter’s stepmother when he was 3, upon marrying former U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh in 1963; she plunged into activism when she realized that others viewed the boy as an invisible child.

That reality was hammered home after she bore a son and was immediately called by her church in Pittsburgh welcoming him to its nursery. Suddenly, she realized: No one had ever invited Peter to church. He did not, in their minds, exist.

“No one had ever mentioned Peter or his right to a full life of faith,” Thornburgh said. “There are these defining moments in life, and that was it for me. The social justice surge goes through you like electricity, and it just changes you.”

Today, Thornburgh is active in spreading the gospel of religious inclusion across faith lines. She persuaded Pope John Paul II to convene an international conference on disabilities in 1992; she speaks across the nation and has edited or written three guidebooks on religious inclusion.

She is also a treasure trove of information on creative ways to embrace all worshipers. In treating people with Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder that can make them inappropriately shout out, for instance, one church installed a stationary bicycle in the back and another passed out origami paper to keep such worshipers calm enough to make it through the service. The origami items were then hung on a tree in the back of the church--thereby sharing the folded artworks with the entire congregation.

Peter Thornburgh, now 39, is also active. He is a full-time volunteer at a food bank. He makes church visits twice weekly and recently played the role of a shepherd in a Christmas play. He lives in supervised housing and calls his parents every night.

In the Los Angeles area, Catholic and Lutheran providers are active in promoting Christian education programs for the disabled. Lutheran efforts range from clergy workshops to independent-living skills programs to church-based seminars at which participants are temporarily disabled to increase their sensitivity to the challenges of such conditions.

In those seminars, impaired vision might be simulated with Vaseline-smeared glasses, hearing loss with airline headsets. Sometimes people are given bulletins in foreign languages to simulate cognitive disabilities. Then participants discuss their experiences over potluck meals.

“By going through this, people can better understand how worship space and style can exclude those with limitations,” said Karen Ingram, vice president of Lutheran Social Services.

Among Catholics, the issue of spiritual inclusion received high-level attention in 1978, when the U.S. bishops issued a pastoral letter asserting the church’s role as an advocate for the disabled: “Because they are persons, because they share in the one redemption of Christ and because they contribute to our society. . . .”

The letter was prompted by a papal encyclical, “Pacem in Terris,” stressing the innate dignity of all people, said Veronica Gray, a disability specialist with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The letter marked a “paradigm shift from viewing persons with developmental disabilities as ‘holy innocents’ incapable of sin or personal growth who needed to be served and ministered to, to people who are fully human and have gifts to share--including their vulnerabilities,” Gray said.

Catholic efforts today are focused on building religious education programs within home parishes rather than at isolated centers. Gray helps parishes adapt their methods and materials with larger print, peer tutors and the like. Parishes are also finding ways to regularly include the disabled in such roles as greeters, Eucharistic ministers or ministers to the sick.

In Los Angeles’ Jewish community, efforts at religious inclusion are spearheaded by the Etta Israel Center. Founded in 1992 through a bequest of the center’s namesake, a former Los Angeles teacher, the center serves more than 200 children in 15 schools each week.

It offers Jewish educational programs in self-contained classrooms for those who need them and support services for students who attend regular day schools. Monthly recreational activities, such as bowling or skiing, teacher training, advocacy and other services are also offered.

When the center’s executive director, Michael Held, first approached Jewish day schools about accepting his students, he says he found resistance.

“People were polite and felt something should be done for these ‘poor unfortunate kids,’ but they were nervous,” Held said.

“The perception within the Jewish community is that every child is an Einstein,” he said, “so [parents wonder] what to do with kids who are not intellectually gifted but have other types of gifts.”

Held decided that the best way to change attitudes was to build familiarity and friendships between the center’s students and the broader community--with Purim parties or basketball games, for instance.

It worked, he says. “The attitudes have shifted, I think permanently,” Held said.

Today, Etta Israel students are deeply involved in their communities. Shloimie, 21, who is mentally retarded, downloads material from Jewish Web sites, prepares sermons and delivers them at three synagogues. His latest stresses the need to never forget the travails of the Exodus from Egypt.

“It felt great,” the beaming, bearded student said of presenting the sermon. “I was not afraid, and I felt proud.”