April 11, 2016 - 21:01
After/during our class last week I searched to find if there was anything written about the intersection of religion and intellectual disabilities. I found this blog post which also has a part two that is written by a women with autism!
http://whoneedsnormalcy.blogspot.com/2016/03/why-churches-can-be-hell-for-autistic.html
http://whoneedsnormalcy.blogspot.com/2016/03/why-churches-can-be-hell-for-autistic_27.html
Of course this is only one persons perspective but I thought that its interesting how the aspects of the religion that are the most inaccessible seemed to be the interactions between people. The religion itself does not seem to come into direct conflict with her disability. It's more the aspects or unspoken/ spoken rules about dress and socializing that is the most difficult. I wonder if these inaccessible aspects are also aspects of society as a whole that ostricize people with autism. For example people with autism would and are stared at and mocked for actions that they may do as a part fo stimming like flapping their arms. I wonder if the discrimination within the church is less of the the religion but actually aspects of societal expectation. I found that many of the problems that she had with the church were ones that might be shared with say a fancy restaruant where it is expected that one dress, talk, interact, and hold their bodies in a certain fashion. What is interesting about that comparison is that the fancy restaurant is very much correlated with class expectations. I wonder if the accessibility of churches differs based on the class of the area or people within the church and whether that is a factor. I found that these articles brought a lot of questions to me about the intersection of class, religion, and disability