From Universal Design for Learning to Universal Design for Communion with the Living God

Abstract

In this article, Jay Dolmage and John Calvin are brought into conversation with one another to develop a theological framework for pastoral and practical reflection on the intersection of disability and Christian worship. Dolmage has pressed his imagination into accessible education, accommodation, and Universal Design for Learning. His discussion of especially accommodation prompts imaginative consideration of Calvin’s appropriation of the Christian tradition’s theology of divine accommodation. This in turn yields an understanding of worship and its multiple practices as God’s Universal Design for Communion with the Living God, an understanding that is then given practical illustration.

Keywords:

• Accommodation
• Baptism
• Christian worship
• Lord’s Supper
• religious rituals
• sacraments
• Universal Design for Learning
• worship

Notes

1 John Calvin is a progenitor of the Reformed confessional tradition who embraced the Christian tradition before him and sought the reform of the Christian Church in the West in the 16th century according to that tradition.

2 A thoroughgoing study of Calvin’s appropriation of the Christian tradition’s teaching related to divine accommodation is beyond the scope or necessity of this article. Were one to pursue such a study, one would do well to begin with Balserak (2009). Several important article- and book-length studies are referred to there, including: Balserak, 2006; Battles, 1977; Huijgen, 2008; Huijgen, 2011. See also Benin, 1993.

3 Calvin (1559/1960, p. 1277) refers to Augustine for the definition of sacraments as “visible words.” The Christian tradition has long embraced Augustine’s definition.