Synopses & Reviews
What would the church be if those who are "disabled" and those who are "able-bodied" understood themselves to be equal parts of the Christian community? Brett Webb-Mitchell, an authority on the subject of disabilities, responds to this question with some of his most passionate reflections.
In Dancing with Disabilities we meet Rachel, a young girl with multiple disabilities who is inspired by the dancing in her congregation's worship. June, a fifteen-year-old with Down's syndrome, carries the cross in the liturgy at her Episcopal church. Kevin, on adult with mental retardation, shows his joyful enthusiasm every time he witnesses a baptism in his Anglican church. Six-year-old Jenny, who has cerebral palsy, belongs to a formerly divided Presbyterian congregation that has come together to raise money to help pay for her care. It is these children and adults who put a human -- and the author would say Christian -- face to "disabilities". Their presence challenges the church to welcome them -- and all God's children -- to their rightful place in the Christian community.
Synopsis
Dancing with Disabilities is about the ever-lasting relationship between two groups...locked like dancers in either a passionate embrace or a dance of separateness, trying to move the rhythm of the music that one or the other hears. Brett Webb-Mitchell teaches at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina.