Description
Book SynopsisHow do communities consent to difference? How do they recognize and create the space and time necessary for the differences and disabilities of those who constitute them? Christian congregations often make assumptions about the shared abilities, practices, and experiences that are necessary for communal worship. The author of this provocative new book takes a hard look at these assumptions through a detailed ethnographic study of an unusual religious community where more than half the congregants live with diagnoses of mental illness, many coming to the church from personal care homes or independent living facilities. Here, peopleâs participation in worship disrupts and extends the formal orders of worship. Whenever one worships God at Sacred Family Church, there is someone who is doing it differently. Here, the author argues, the central elements and the participation in the symbols of Christian worship raise questions rather than supply clear markers of unity, prompting the questio
Table of ContentsPreface | ix
Introduction: Disabling Liturgy, Desiring Human Difference | 1
1. Gathering: Unfolding a Liturgy of Difference | 29
2. Weaving: Aesthetics of Interdependence | 65
3. Disrupting: Aesthetics of Time and Work | 99
4. Naming: Aesthetics of Healing and Claiming | 131
5. Sending: Aesthetics of Belonging | 167
Conclusion: The Disabled Church: Beauty and the Creation of a Community of Difference | 195
Acknowledgments | 215
Notes | 217
Bibliography | 235
Index | 241
