Challenges from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Access to Theology and Church Practice in the Church of Norway

ABSTRACT

Understandings of disability and impairments have changed over the last decades both in society and in academia. Policy and law have evolved toward the objectives of non-discrimination and equal access. Norway ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2013. Article e of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (General Principles) emphasizes respect for inherent dignity, nondiscrimination, and difference. The World Council of Churches emphasized the importance of equal right to access and citizenship in the valuable interim statement launched by the Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network in 2003, “A Church of All and for All.” The author investigates to what extent these changes have influenced church practice in Norway. Norway has a state church organization, which is a Lutheran folk church. Approximately 74% of the population are members of the church of Norway. The author discusses understandings of disability and access to ministry in the Church of Norway, between 1997 and 2014, based on the church's recruitment policy. Church documents have been studied, and the heads of the practical theological seminaries have been interviewed. The findings indicate that disability is grossly omitted, and when mentioned, a medical definition of disability seems to be presupposed. Influence from United Nations documents and World Council of Churches policy documents remain scarce. Disability is approached as a topic of inclusion of lay people. Disability is infrequently recognized as a basis for discrimination or as a critical hermeneutical category. A distinct theological engagement in the new understandings of disability as social and relational might pave the way for a theology of access and recognition of the equal status of people with disabilities.

KEYWORDS:

• disability studies
• discrimination
• inclusive ministry
• social inclusion
• systematic theology
• vulnerability

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to express thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Funding

This research was supported by the National Council, Church of Norway, Faith Education Reform.