Reckoning with the careless ableism of the church

Imagine minding your own business at church when a stranger approaches and offers to pray for you. Does this sound comforting? Faithful? What if it’s because they assume that something’s wrong with you because you’re in a wheelchair?

Unfortunately, this scenario happens to people with visible disabilities with a regularity that’s hard to imagine for those of us who are, as Amy Kenny puts it, “temporarily nondisabled.” I recently experienced two cancer battles and was often annoyed by people I barely knew assuming they knew something about me because they heard about my diagnoses. I can’t fathom how much more exhausting this would be with complete strangers and a visible disability.

Kenny, a Shakespeare scholar who says she “hates Hamlet,” has a wheelchair, a motorized scooter named Diana (as in Wonder Woman), a cane named Eileen, and a passion for bringing disability justice to the church. A few chapters into her book, I found myself somewhat reluctant to continue reading because the author’s passion includes righteous anger. I was uncomfortable recognizing myself in the careless ableism Kenny points out: my cancers did not absolve me. I realized that my discomfort puts me among the 67 percent of people Kenny cited who feel uncomfortable merely speaking to a person with a disability.