People with disabilities have a long relationship with faith communities. Take for example the following passage from the book of Deuteronomy on people who are blind: "And you shall grope at noonday as the blind gropes in the darkness" (28:29). How do we interpret this passage? Jewish and Christian traditions tell a very similar story to interpret it. The Jewish telling of the story goes like this:

Now what difference does it make to a blind man whether it is dark or light? I didn't find out until the following incident occurred. I was walking on a pitch black night when I saw a blind man walking in the road with a torch in his hand. I said to him, "My son, why are you carrying a torch?" He replied, "As long as I have this torch in my hand, people see me and save me from the hole and the thorns and briars." (Megillah 24b in Astor, 1985, p. 76-77)

Not withstanding the exclusion and rejection that members of faith communities have practiced toward people with disabilities, throughout history there have always been members of these communities who loved, supported, and respected their fellow human beings with disabilities. They did this mostly through charity work toward people with disabilities: caring, feeding, housing, and protecting them. Take, for example, the Catholic and Protestant Bishops in Germany during the time of Hitler who carried out letter-writing initiatives, to the risk of their own lives, against Hitler's murder campaign against German people with disabilities. One of our favorite stories from this time goes as follows:

In the little village of Absberg, in southern Germany there was the Abbey of Ottilienheim. The Abbey which was across from the parish of St. George had been home for people with disabilities for many, many years. The nuns of the Abbey cared for their residents, most of whom were from the town itself, members of the local Catholic families of farmers and trades persons.

One day in the fall of 1940 a gray bus came into the courtyard of the Abbey. While the villagers watched, a number of the residents of the Abbey were put on the bus and taken away. Never seen again, the villagers and the nuns were told by the local constable that the residents all died of influenza. However, the villagers did not believe this story. These were members of their own families, and known to most of the villagers. In this small Catholic village, the nuns and the people with disabilities had always been a part of St. George's services.

In the winter of the following year, the Mother Superior was informed by the Nazi's that another bus was coming. She was told not to tell anyone. However, Mother was very upset by this news and told the local priest. The next morning, before sunrise, the nuns woke their residents and despite the risk, took them to mass for a special service at St. George's. After mass, the priest told the residents that 75 of them were about the be taken away on one of the gray buses. The residents knew what this meant. When the bus came later that day, the entire village followed the bus to the Abbey, in protest. The residents refused to get on the buses and many of the nuns and residents hung to each other. It was no use, the Nazis used force to drag them apart and onto the buses ...

(retold from Gallager, 1995)

Today, stories such as the these two have inspired members of faith communities to work with people with disabilities to develop inclusive faith communities.

This information package includes examples and resources of how these people think about, and work toward, building faith communities where all people are welcome. The package is divided into four sections. The first section contains articles, books, curricula, and videos that discuss both philosophical and pragmatic ways in which faith communities and their congregents, with and without disabilities, can work together for the building of inclusive faith communities. Within this section we have included a subsection on writings about L'Arche. We separated out these writings because L'Arche faith communities are a unique example of full-time, life-sharing, intentional religious participation. They are not meant to represent the only way by which people with disabilities can be included in faith communities. The second section lists newsletters, the majority of which are free-of-charge. In the third section we have listed several mission and pastoral statements. These statements lay out how different faith communities support and work for the inclusion of people with disabilities. For example, Rabbi Schneerson of the Lubavitch Hassidic Jewish community makes it very clear that Jewish children with disabilities have the full right to be included in Jewish life. Similarly, the pastoral statement of the U.S. Catholic bishops makes its clear that Catholics with disabilities have every right to be included in all aspects of church life. The fourth section lists organizations who work and publish information on how to make faith communities inclusive. In the final section we have included several reprints of articles and mission and pastoral statements that we feel best detail the meaningfulness, the complexities, and the challenges of working toward this inclusion.

We realize that this is not a comprehensive package, and we are continually working to find new resources especially from those faith communities which admittedly are underrecognized here. There is a dearth of information available on this topic. Some of this information recognizes that people with disabilities have spiritual lives and needs, yet addresses this life and need within the contexts of separate, "special" services and programs. What we are interested in is faith communities that are thinking about the complexities of, and working toward, including people with disabilities within mainstream faith settings and practice. For this reason, we chose resources that we feel best represent this inclusive philosophy.

Gallager, H. G. (1995). By trust betrayed: Patients, physicians, and the license to kill in the Third Reich (Rev. ed.). Arlington, VA: Vadamere Press.

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