From experience to ethics: The shaping impact of narrative on youth ministry and disability

Abstract

Youth workers are uniquely positioned to address the individual, communal, and eternal dimensions of the adolescent experience. The opportunity to address these three dimensions in the lives of adolescents with disabilities requires an intentional relationship between theory and practice. The relationship is bridged by ethical strategies that address the individual, communal, and eternal dimensions. The author offers ethical strategies for youth workers to foster a culture of true belonging for adolescents with disabilities.

Keywords:

• Disability
• adolescents
• ethics
• individual
• communal
• eternal

Notes

1 Disability in the Christian Tradition, edited by Brian Brock and John Swinton, offers examples of such gaps. Another more general look at the gap between what is taught and what is lived may be found in Bridging the Gap: Connecting What You Learned in Seminary with What You Find in the Congregation by Charles Scalise, 2003.

2 A few noteworthy examples would be the American Academy of Religion and their “Theology and Disability” section; the Summer Institute on Theology and Disability; Joni and Friends with their Christian Institute on Disability and a dedicated journal; Western Theological Seminary; and the Centre for Spirituality, Health, and Disability at Aberdeen (United Kingdom).

3 I am indebted to my former professor, James McClendon, in this area. His wording is different, but the influence is clear. McClendon adapted Ludwig Wittgenstein’s three-strand approach for Christian ethics. He wrote, as Christians, we “find ourselves with three necessary ways of talking about morality. Correlated with the fact that we are 1) part of the natural order, organic beings, bodies in an organic continuum, God’s natural creation; but also 2) part of a social world that is constituted first by the corporate nature of Christian existence, the church and thereby by our share in human society, God’s social creation, as well; and 3) part of an eschatological realm, the kingdom of God, the ‘new world’ established by God’s resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead” (McClendon, 2016, p. 66). McClendon calls each strand the body, the social, and the resurrection, respectively.

4 As an example, this report documents where federally mandated evaluations and accommodations were found to not be adequate in public schools in Texas: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/11/federal-special-education-monitoring-report

5 For example, see Ben Conner's work in Amplifying our witness: Giving voice to adolescents with developmental disabilities, 2012.

6 In academic terms, ethics and doctrine are related. Over time, doctrine and ethics separated into two fields, related yet distinct. The solidification of doctrine took place within the powerful communities of churches, denominations, universities, and seminaries; the lived story of faith became more and more distant. Doctrine was separated from ethics as an academic exercise in precision to get right the documents of faith that had been left behind. A small elite portion of the population had access to early documents, and an even smaller portion determined what they meant and how they were to be lived out.

7 For the full story and links to the series, see https://www.npr.org/2018/01/08/576428410/npr-investigation-finds-hidden-epidemic-of-sexual-assault

8 http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/05/us/chicago-facebook-live-beating/index.html