Dilshad D. Ali, from “Because of Autism,” reprinted with the permission of www:BeliefNet.com “Living a life full of therapy and without a larger sense of purpose was draining me. And I needed to be a whole person, connected with my faith, so that I could be the mother my children needed me to be.” In January of 2005, Ali and her husband went for Hajj, the “once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage” to Mecca and Medina that all Muslims are required to do: “I came away from that experience with the feeling that when you finally accept your fate, you can embrace your life. And then you can actually celebrate and thank God for giving that fate to you. And that’s the golden ticket, I believe, to being happy and strong. An autistic child is not a loss, I realized, but a sort of gift that can be managed through faith.” Janet Grillo, “What Is It Every New Mother Fears?” Huffington Post (11/2/2006) “As if by helium, he lifted away from us, from our family, from our world and inwards towards a remote and private one. The doctors called it “autism.” I did not know what to call it. I still don’t. It is too big for words to organize... Faith is what taught me that what I want is not necessarily what I need, that love is not what I prefer but what is required, that rising to the challenge of what is required enlarges the heart and fills it with more love than I ever knew was possible. That love is the fuel of faith, that by loving my son as he was in our struggle to restore what was not, faith found me. Faith found me through the urgency of living. Fear had to wait.” Lisa Gwinner, “Greetings from Autismland” (11/27/2006) http://lisa-jedi.blogspot.com/2006/11/autism-sermon-part- 2.html “At every turn, we and Brendan have been accepted and continued to feel welcome in this church community. Brendan has found friends here of all ages, understanding Sunday School teachers, mentors, and peers who treat him as a person of worth and dignity, no matter how difficult it may sometimes be for him to participate in class or other aspects of church life. This has been a great blessing for all three of us. There are not many places in public these days that Brendan feels comfortable. Church, school and our sailing club are continues on next page
Autism: Presence & Justice
Kristina Chew, Ph.D., and Jim Fisher, Ph.D.
The presence of persons with autism in communities — including communities of worship/religious congregations — is a starting point for any discussion of autism and social justice grounded in religious and ethical traditions. Though it is unknown when the condition of autism as currently understood first appeared on the spectrum of human cognitive experience, it is clear that for most of the twentieth century, if not earlier, the presence of autistic persons in religious settings — like the presence of other persons with demonstrable cognitive differences — was nearly always treated as problematic because of those differences. Communities of faith rarely, if ever, challenged the dominant paradigms of autism handed down from the psychiatric establishment, most notably the “refrigerator mother” theory associated first with psychiatrist Leo Kanner in the 1940s and 1950s, then popularized by Bruno Bettelheim in the 1960s. The abuses against children with autism later uncovered at Bettelheim’s Orthogenic School helped shape the legacy of autism’s “dark ages.” While such active hostility toward autistic persons and their families is less evident today than in the recent past, everyone that loves, cares for and/or works with persons on the autism spectrum has experienced frustration at times in seeking greater acceptance and understanding. Many persons with autism have grown increasingly outspoken in a variety of ways as they directly experience a sense of disapproval or rejection by those unfamiliar or unsympathetic with the daily challenges of life on the spectrum. The autism community has promoted ways of coping with the inevitable frustrations of navigating the medical and educational systems: professionals in these fields have done their part to break down barriers that arose during the long decades of mutual contentiousness and distrust. Since the processes of public advocacy and self-advocacy remain exhausting if often rewarding, families and individuals generally wish to avoid a replay of these struggles within communities of faith and worship and other voluntary communities that historically provide respite and spiritual renewal. Though “inclusion” is
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Autism and Faith
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