John Anthony Dunne: Dr. Barton. Thanks so much for joining us.
Sarah Barton: Thanks so much for the invite. It's great to be with you all.
John Anthony Dunne: So we're really excited to talk about your book becoming the baptized body published by Baylor University Press.
John Anthony Dunne: We we'd love to to dig into your arguments, your thesis and what you're proposing for the church. But we thought as a way to kind of open this conversation. Could you tell us a little bit about what led you into this space of a disability and theology?
Sarah Barton: Sure, that's a great question that goes back a long time before the book
Sarah Barton: was even kind of a thought or a project.
Sarah Barton: So I
Sarah Barton: grew up on the west coast of the United States in the Seattle Washington area.
Sarah Barton: and a lot of the work that I did as a high schooler in a college student was around caregiving for children with really significant medical needs and disabilities.
Sarah Barton: And so I kind of got exposed to this world of disability and disability community.
Sarah Barton: and something that I noticed amongst all the families that I was interacting with as a babysitter as a caregiver as a nanny
Sarah Barton: was that many of them had previously been extremely involved in their communities of faith via their synagogue or a local church or another kind of faith-based organization.
Sarah Barton: But once they had a child with a disability, or once they
Sarah Barton: kind of were introduced into this disability. Community, like their child might have had an acquired disability.
Sarah Barton: They were excluded from these faith communities, or they experienced all these new barriers and all these questions from people. Your child doesn't understand what it means to be a member of this community. We don't have a space for you anymore. Your child's too disruptive.
Sarah Barton: Don't you think another community would be a better fit for you.
Sarah Barton: and I also noticed this is maybe disclosing my age a little bit. But when I was growing up like we used to hang out at the Mall all the time, and I never saw children or adolescents with disabilities like hanging out at the Mall after school.
Sarah Barton: and I just started thinking like, Why is this the case? Why are people with disabilities? Family is to either have parents or siblings, or children, or other folks who are disabled. Why, Aren't, they showing up in these public spaces?
Sarah Barton: And this was a question that really concerned me, and started kind of keeping me up
Sarah Barton: at night
Sarah Barton: after kind of my work in caregiving
Sarah Barton: and working with these families.
Sarah Barton: I went to graduate school to become an occupational therapist, and in the process of becoming a clinician and a practitioner. I had, you know, the amazing opportunity to learn more about disability studies and kind of get immersed in this theoretical world, but also this very
Sarah Barton: concrete on the ground activist work of
Sarah Barton: being with the disability community and advocating
Sarah Barton: for learning with and alongside disabled folks. That was in Boston, Massachusetts, where I went to Occupational Therapy school. But then kind of continuing from there, as I continue to move around, have new jobs, and then eventually moving to Duke and starting some theological education. So these questions of
Where are folks with disabilities and the public sphere, and particularly in Faith communities continue to inform my work as an ot.
Sarah Barton: and the questions didn't go away. As I started to work with clients and patients as an occupational therapist. I heard more stories of people being kicked out of faith communities and really struggling with questions of
Sarah Barton: Did God cause my disability? What does it mean to be a disabled Christian. What does it mean to live with this impairment that is disadvantaging me from getting a job from being the kind of parent I want to be from being kind of human being on to be.
Sarah Barton: and I didn't have a good answer. I felt like I could sit with folks. I still don't know if I have good answers today. But these were questions that suck with me.
Sarah Barton: So I went to theological education and brought these set of questions with me, and something amazing that I felt so grateful to to Duke and the folks there for allowing me to do, and just really cultivating and supporting me in
Sarah Barton: was that I continued to work as an ot, and I brought these questions from the
Sarah Barton: patients and families and folks I was working with, and who were
Sarah Barton: teaching me so much about the community in Durham, North Carolina, about the barriers and supports that they had to living their daily life, which is what I've really concerned about as an ot. I care about people having access to in participation in the things that are meaningful that they need to do, and they want to do in their daily lives.
Sarah Barton: And I brought these questions from the clinic into my studies at Duke, and then thought about things and wrestled with things and lived out things. I was learning in my theological education in the context of the clinic. So it's kind of always this back and forth, and
Sarah Barton: and the book, which is a project that comes out of my dissertation
Sarah Barton: was actually kind of rooted in stories. And one particular story I tell in the book
Sarah Barton: from patients I worked with as an occupational therapist.
Sarah Barton: and their stories of of children with disabilities being denied access to faith. Community is, and in particular a baptismal denial which really stuck with me.
Sarah Barton: And so i'll say one more thing about
Sarah Barton: my connection is just kind of my own experience also in graduate school at Duke, being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, and coming into my own identity and sense of what it means to be a disabled Christian, and to live with impairments and
Sarah Barton: chronic health issues that impact every part of my life, from my thinking to how much sleep and rest I need to how much dependence I have on others and my institutions that i'm a part of.
Sarah Barton: So I think, grappling with my own limits to, and navigating my sense of call and vocation as someone with chronic health conditions and disabilities, and taking that on where, as an identity also really shaped kind of the questions that I brought to my theological studies
Sarah Barton: and made it make sense, I guess, to kind of pursue these questions of disability.
Steph Judd: Sarah. Thank you so much for sketching that out for us. And one of the things that I really appreciated in
Steph Judd: in your book was the way that you explained your approach to
Steph Judd: your research, and particularly with I'd love. I'd love to hear from you more about the way you approached methodology
Steph Judd: in in particularly in the context of as you describe the
Steph Judd: the challenges that the the the bent towards abstraction that theology, theological research often presents. I'd love to you from you about the how would you describe. I think at 1 point you describe it as an ethnographic turn in the way that you approach your research. Could you unpack that a bit for us.
Sarah Barton: Sure, thanks. Stuff. That's a that's a great question.
Sarah Barton: So I was influenced by my training at Duke and thinking about what does it mean to do theology out of the site of a wound, which, of course, is not my original idea. I'm pulling on my teachers, like Willie Jennings and Mary Fulkerson.
Sarah Barton: who've written extensively and and down the work for for many years About what does it mean that our theologies might flow from the wounds that we experience in the communities. We are a part of our experiencing the wounds that don't go away. The questions that keep us up at night.
Sarah Barton: and I think one way that many theologians and Christian Ephesus are in the past.
Sarah Barton: Really, 2 decades almost now have have chosen to navigate that
Sarah Barton: diving into the lived experiences of faith community is, and not only taking up
Sarah Barton: concrete realities and Christian practices, but actually looking at very, very particular Christians, their lives of discipleship in very very particular communities, and asking questions like, what is the trying God up to here?
Sarah Barton: What are the pressing wounds that this community has lived with, and continues to try to be faithful in the midst of
Sarah Barton: for for me, as someone who had research training.
Sarah Barton: Before long before I ever got into theology. It was really appealing to me to approach theology not only from kind of a historical point of view, or what we might think of as a more kind of a traditional, like constructive theological point of view.
Sarah Barton: But to really robustly think about what does it mean to take up a social science, methodology, and have that be integrated all the way down.
Sarah Barton: So part of my method which I have to say is
Sarah Barton: is imperfect. I don't think it's a perfect example of a theological ethnography, but a lot of doing ethnography and doing qualitative research.
Sarah Barton: improvisation and trying to be honest and self-reflexive along the way.
Sarah Barton: trying to be prayerful and faithful along the way, but also rigorous and and part of that for me, particularly working primarily with folks with intellectual disabilities, was to make sure that my method was inclusive, and was pulling on best practices of doing research in collaboration with
Sarah Barton: not research on, but research in collaboration with, in partnership with people with disabilities who include people who have different ways of processing information. So I really prioritize kind of inclusive practices. In my research, 250
Sarah Barton: we have breaks and interviews. A lot of visual aids, a lot of kind of more expansive ways of being together and doing participant observation. So not just sitting down for an interview for 60 min one day, thanking them and then moving on.
Sarah Barton: but having relationships and conversations that lasted over months and included a lot of visiting included a lot of sitting in silence, of worshipping together, of just being in spaces together that were comfortable for my participants.
Sarah Barton: and I think another part of the ethnographic turn.
Sarah Barton: and what qualitative researchers who are also theologians and ethicists, are really working on
Sarah Barton: coming to questions of discipleship, of theology, of what it means to follow Jesus.
Sarah Barton: and maybe having some hunches about conclusions, but being open to what the spirit is doing in a certain context or community, and being open to what
Sarah Barton: the lived experience of of particular people looks like, and where that drives us to next. What kind of new questions or perspectives does that open up.
Sarah Barton: So I had a lot of great Well, what I thought at the time were like these great ideas about baptism, and how I could write this awesome, you know, dissertation.
Sarah Barton: And then my research participants kind of showed me these categories of inquiry, and opened up for me these new questions that I haven't thought about questions around participation and community.
Sarah Barton: I had been really interested in thinking about bodies.
Sarah Barton: and I certainly talked a lot about bodies in the book. But for my research participants was much more important to talk, for example, about Jesus's baptism in the Bible. This was a huge theme, that kind of crossed across
Sarah Barton: different folks. I interviewed different people. I worshipped with people with intellectual disabilities, support people, family people, pastors, people from Baptist and Pentecostal contexts, people from Lutheran and episcopal context. And I thought.
Sarah Barton: Okay, there's something here, and I think part of the ethnographic turn is releasing a little bit of that control over the constructive theological work that I had hunches about, and following down these pathways that my research partners opened up, and that were central to their experiences of
Sarah Barton: Christian discipleship. Christian identity being baptized, and what that meant to them.
Excuse me.
John Anthony Dunne: I think that Daniel Daniel is going to go. I was just. I was just going to check in really quick, we should definitely follow up about the what, what is the significance of Jesus baptism at some point here, but also, I think, Daniel about the
John Anthony Dunne: baptismal den denial anecdote, I think, as well. So just just making a note that we need to get to the
Daniel Parham: great.
Daniel Parham: So, Dr. Barton.
Daniel Parham: it's. It's just a fascinating project overall to sit with in
Daniel Parham: Advocate alongside. And
Daniel Parham: I think you talked about the ecumenical elements and the theological perspectives, and grid works, and I I know kind of to
Daniel Parham: 2 elements, I think, in kind of Christian discourse around. Disability is the role of disability tied to sin, and the the difficulties of navigating that because there is assumptions read into the Scriptures, that
Daniel Parham: disability was a result of sin, and to what degree right the the all in this of man, or the specificity of one individuals specific, sinful acts. And so, I imagine.
Daniel Parham: to my question, is the denial of community. How much of that did you see in your in your research was tied to a certain view of sin in relationship to disability, and and and how was that articulated across different theological perspectives.
Sarah Barton: That's a great question. I think I was surprised how little kind of questions of sin came up.
Sarah Barton: I was actually surprised at how many positive stories I heard throughout my
Sarah Barton: interviews, and doing the work of participant observation and worshiping with people.
Sarah Barton: because the way kind of into these questions was through these heartbreaking, awful stories of baptismal denial and of people being asked to leave faith communities and people being just dehumanized on the basis of a diagnosis or a disability, or what someone perceived to be
Sarah Barton: something that was incompatible with Christian discipleship in someone's body or mind.
Sarah Barton: And so I was actually quite surprised that
Sarah Barton: most folks I was talking to
Sarah Barton: had really positive experiences in their church communities, although I suppose, if they were willing to participate in this research, they were active in a in a faith community that affirmed their baptismal identity.
Sarah Barton: And I think it's also an interesting. The question of sin is interesting, because sin, of course, is connected in many Christian traditions with baptism, baptism for the forgiveness of sins, as we hear about in our creed, or one of the main Christian creeds. And so
Sarah Barton: I think.
Sarah Barton: when we were talking about sin, in the course of of coming up with with the material for the book and exploring people's theological perspectives for the book.
Sarah Barton: Folks talked about sin and connection to
Sarah Barton: Jesus in the Gospels, and jesus's own baptism as this sign and symbol of Jesus connection to us, and forgiveness and a call to repentance from sin.
Sarah Barton: People talked about
Sarah Barton: at times the baptism and the acceptance of all Christians, and the support of all Christians in their baptismal ministries and vocations.
Sarah Barton: as a way to repent of sins of ableism, is a way to repent of sins in their previous life as a faith community that may have
Sarah Barton: unintentionally or intentionally excluded people with disabilities.
Sarah Barton: But there wasn't kind of a a thread, at least with the research participants
Sarah Barton: of a big grappling with
Sarah Barton: kind of sin as the cause of disability.
Sarah Barton: And I find that really interesting. And I think maybe part of that is because
Sarah Barton: in this project we were thinking about a Christian practice, and this is a whole. Another conversation, like I don't think Christian practices are exempt from sin at all. They are characteristically deformed as Lauren Winner.
Sarah Barton: my colleague and friend would would remind us really quickly.
Sarah Barton: But I think when we shift away from kind of these more common frameworks and disability, theology, things like thinking about inclusion
Sarah Barton: or friendship, or God's image.
Sarah Barton: And we start asking the questions of like, what are these basic components of the Christian life? What are these basic practices that make sense that are the grammar of what it means to be a Christian disciple.
Sarah Barton: They kind of shift some of those conversations away from like. Oh, well, we need.
Sarah Barton: We need
Sarah Barton: sorry. We need to have this big conversation about sin and the importance of the amgo day, because if we don't, then like, there's no way that we can imagine disabled Christians as full disciples.
Sarah Barton: But when we come at it from Christian practices. At least this is part of my argument in the book.
Sarah Barton: I think people kind of are disarmed
Sarah Barton: and, like, forget these assumptions, and these imaginations that are kind of shaped about how they think about disability like disability, is undesirable. It must be connected with sin. Well, what do you think about what happens when someone's baptized? Do you think the Holy Spirit, you know, empowers them for a ministry? Oh, of course.
Sarah Barton: Okay. So what does that mean for people with disabilities in the church.
Sarah Barton: Oh, my gosh! I never thought about it that way, and so I think.
Sarah Barton: thinking about practices, or having a different way into these conversations about disability
Sarah Barton: can often kind of disarm and reveal what our imagination about disability has been, and maybe kind of like do that work of deconstruction. It doesn't need to be me as a theologian.
Sarah Barton: a theological athletes ethicist coming in and giving these churches like a lecture about how theologically, it's like untenable to think about this connection. That's not really what's happening in the Biblical text, and, you know, have all my powerpoint slides in a big lecture about it. I'm sure i'll do that. I'll do that for my students at Duke. Maybe if they're really interested in this question.
Sarah Barton: But I think coming at it through
Sarah Barton: a different lens makes folks realize like
Sarah Barton: Oh, of course, I affirm that the Holy Spirit is at work, and all people, I affirm that, like our baptismal identity, like somehow is carried forth through the body of Christ through all people, through the sinful body of Christ. As we all struggle in the body of sin, as Saint Paul says.
Sarah Barton: as something that communally affects us, and also individually affects us, but that there's not kind of this disability. Sin connection that becomes so important or prominent when we're shifting kind of the questions we're asking.
Sarah Barton: I don't know if that makes sense.
John Anthony Dunne: So
John Anthony Dunne: So you've mentioned baptism will deny. Oh, sorry! So you mentioned baptismal denial a handful of times, and i'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about
John Anthony Dunne: the the rationale behind that, as would be articulated in certain ecclesial contexts, and also the the problems with it that you that you identify with that way of thinking about baptism, and who gets to participate, etc.
Sarah Barton: Yeah. So I can talk about 2 different kinds of baptismal denial, because I think at the beginning of this project it would be very easy for me as someone
Sarah Barton: in the Episcopal Church, so i'm an Episcopalian. So I come from a Pedo Baptist context, which essentially means that in my church tradition
Sarah Barton: priests baptize, you know, babies, infants, young children. The Episcopal Church also celebrates baptism of adults. We just kind of baptize across the lifespan
Sarah Barton: in comparison to credo baptism traditions which for the most part will ask for an age of accountability, some kind of confession, some kind of later stage baptism
Sarah Barton: and a demonstration of maturity and Christian discipleship and commitment, so that typically excludes infants and small children from from the practice from the ordinance
of baptism.
Sarah Barton: And so the first kind of baptismal denial that I saw in the lives of patients I worked with clients I worked with as an occupational therapist.
Sarah Barton: where folks with intellectual disabilities, be they children, or adolescents, or adults
Sarah Barton: and clergy saying.
Sarah Barton: you don't really understand what it means to follow Jesus, or you can't articulate what it means to follow Jesus, or you are a non speaking person. And so how would you give a testimony when our church requires a testimony for the ordinance of baptism.
Sarah Barton: and they would deny baptism on this basis of someone being a non-speaker or someone not having the requisite knowledge or ability to confess or testify.
Sarah Barton: And many of these church traditions would say it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter to God, it's a symbol. It's it's okay
Sarah Barton: that you cannot be baptized.
Sarah Barton: I think other traditions.
Sarah Barton: while they may baptize
Sarah Barton: people with disabilities
Sarah Barton: as young children, such as my tradition. In the Episcopal Church
Sarah Barton: I see a different kind of parallel kind of baptismal denial going on, and that is the denial that occurs when someone grows up.
Sarah Barton: They've have a congenital disability, and the church, baptized them as an infant, and supported them
Sarah Barton: maybe through preschool elementary school. And then they're going into middle school. And all of a sudden they're a little bit more disruptive, or they're speaking during church at a time when people typically don't speak or they're asking questions that make the adults at church uncomfortable, or their peers uncomfortable.
Sarah Barton: And people say, I think it's time for you to find a new church, or there's a committee convened because there's a quote unquote problem person. Now that's in the Church.
Sarah Barton: And to me that is just as serious of a denial of baptism.
Sarah Barton: Then then traditions that that Don't go forth with the ordinance or the sacrament from the beginning.
Sarah Barton: because in all services of Christian baptism, or nearly all services
Sarah Barton: of baptism, the community is taking part in God's work of calling this person into Jesus's body and marking them as Christ's own forever, as we say in my tradition
Sarah Barton: and the community promises to uphold this person in their discipleship and their faith.
Sarah Barton: and they promise that them that they are an indispensable member of Jesus body.
Sarah Barton: And so when troubles come when they're an adult when they're a middle schooler when they're a preschooler, and suddenly churches say we don't know how to live with a disabled member
Sarah Barton: and our solution Again, Big air quotes our solution to this problem or to this person is to ask them to leave is to say, your needs are too high. Your needs can't be taken care of in this community
Sarah Barton: mit ctl. And I see that as a really serious denial of baptismal responsibility to those who have an equal share in Jesus's body with us. So I always I like to.
Sarah Barton: I like to talk about these 2 different kinds of baptismal denial, because I don't think it's just a matter of which kind of baptismal theology your church subscribes to. I actually think it's a really pressing question for folks who baptize people all across the lifespan.
Steph Judd: Yeah, and I I appreciate the way that in your book you talk about, You adopt this kind of baptismal hermeneutic in saying that
Steph Judd: you know these theologies and practices that
Steph Judd: in church communities we adopt around baptism
Steph Judd: actually
Steph Judd: say, speak volumes about what we believe about
Steph Judd: Christian identity and Christian discipleship
Steph Judd: in those examples where baptismal denial takes place in those contexts.
Steph Judd: what did you find about what
Steph Judd: what was upstream in in the in the waters of that community the things that they believed about Christian identity and discipleship that led to those
Steph Judd: not necessarily thought through actions. But
Steph Judd: what what led to that? In your view.
Sarah Barton: I'm gonna think about that. That's an awesome question.
Sarah Barton: I think a couple things stick out to me as leading to
Sarah Barton: a denial of baptism kind of as a conclusion.
Sarah Barton: I'll just say as a as I know or not as a side. Now i'll just say that
Sarah Barton: through the process of this research.
Sarah Barton: I had really interesting conversations with people who started to say, we're going to do things differently. Are we never going to think about baptism the same.
Sarah Barton: and that wasn't something that I set out to do. I was actually quite careful
Sarah Barton: to
Sarah Barton: guard my own identity to a certain extent and not make this research project about me because it it's not about me.
Sarah Barton: I mean I'm also a baptized Christian, but that's
Sarah Barton: kind of about it. I'm. I'm interested in in hearing stories from other baptized Christians.
Sarah Barton: But I think the process of just kind of asking these questions and noticing like, oh, I notice that this person isn't baptized. Can you talk about that more?
Sarah Barton: That led to.
Sarah Barton: not in the case of my research, but in some stories that I heard from other people people asking that question
Sarah Barton: actually eventually led churches into these discernments around.
Sarah Barton: Why, Don't? We baptize folks with intellectual disabilities.
Sarah Barton: and then ended up folks with intellectual disabilities were baptized because the Church, the Church slowed down.
Sarah Barton: I think one thing that certainly plagues my life and the lives of many Christians and faith communities, although I hate to say it is
Sarah Barton: desire for control and a desire, and to maintain the status quo so resistance of something that seems like
Sarah Barton: we don't know what's going to happen, and how God's going to show up. If we do this differently, we need to cling to this tradition because our membership is falling, and we've, we're living through Covid. And this is just really hard to hang together as Jesus's body. And as the church.
Sarah Barton: And when we're kind of in that scarcity or control mindset.
Sarah Barton: it seems, at least to me. And maybe y'all are much more open-handed about things. But for me it's really hard to do things differently, or to have kind of standard practices or imaginations about what it means to be baptized about what it means to follow Jesus challenged.
Sarah Barton: And so I think you know, people's lives, unfortunately, become like sites of control for church leaders.
Sarah Barton: and become less important than upholding traditions that are kind of unchallenged
Sarah Barton: and uncriticized. I think, of course, tradition is really important, but it's also important that to acknowledge that
Sarah Barton: the spirit works through tradition and traditions are living things that we engage with as Jesus's body as living human beings in this world.
Sarah Barton: So I think one thing is kind of this narrowing of imagination that tends to happen in churches
Sarah Barton: with all kinds of groups of human beings who are together. And that is one thing that's upstream. Someone was taught something about disability like you all talked about with John Swinton in the Intro episode.
Sarah Barton: You know, people think that disability is something wrong with an individual person. It's undesirable. It's something that needs to be fixed. And therefore why would we do anything that seems to celebrate someone's disability? Identity
Sarah Barton: like baptism, saying, this person is equally a child of God, and we're going to like, celebrate who they are, including their disability. Identity
Sarah Barton: that doesn't fit in a narrow imagination that's really shaped by a medical view of disability. So I think that's kind of behind some of these practices of baptismal denial.
Sarah Barton: and I think it's just it's scary.
Sarah Barton: People don't talk about disability in church, and if we have never talked about disability in church, and the only thing we've heard is like from the medical establishment or doctors, or this really tragic story that we heard?
Sarah Barton: Where is the space to imagine disabled joy
Sarah Barton: and disabled discipleship and disabled Christian life that is rich and filled with complexity, just like nondisabled Christian life is filled with complexity and kind of an unwillingness to sit with cognitive dissonance, to sit with complexity.
Sarah Barton: And so I think that can be a really scary place for faith communities.
Sarah Barton: and they think well, if we change our baptismal practices, or if we change the way that we think about what it means to live out discipleship, and that somehow expands to include disability.
Sarah Barton: What are people going to think about us? Are we going to lose our theological footing. Are we going to lose our status in our denomination or our core kind of theological convictions.
Sarah Barton: And that's really scary for a lot of of people. So I think, kind of these fears, these desires for control, and these narrowings of our imagination that have come not only through, unfortunately, things like the medical establishment and kind of social mill use that we're in.
Sarah Barton: But unfortunately, I've also come through the church like we were talking about with this sin, disability connection. Those can really stifle Church communities and their practices.
Daniel Parham: I think it's
Daniel Parham: the complexity, I would say, is sadly enlightening
Daniel Parham: that that we are
Daniel Parham: struggle in our our faith practices in in recognizing
Daniel Parham: the beauty of souls who
Daniel Parham: walk through disabilities. And to think that one will be denied that which is commanded by Christ himself.
Daniel Parham: It's it's complex in all that I could describe, I,
Daniel Parham: and like an angry way that the one will be denied such such a right
Daniel Parham: talking, talking from the traditional standpoint, and then leading down to some of the qualitative
Daniel Parham: moments that you had with individuals potential and were denied baptism. But
Daniel Parham: could you share about the
Daniel Parham: kind of the theological psychological
Daniel Parham: lens that one has to work through when when they see that they are denied something that is so core and fundamental to the ordinance of the Church, and what has been shared in those moments? And if if there's been any thematic like qualitative stances, that that that our brothers and sisters have shared.
Sarah Barton: Yeah, there, I mean, there's so many individual stories, but there's definitely themes that are woven through the book, and also some practices that I think sustained folks who encountered not just exclusion around sacramental practices and ordinances like baptism.
Sarah Barton: but just straight up exclusion from churches in general, and their schools and other community places. The church is not the only place where disabled people face discrimination and face
Sarah Barton: exclusion. This is a society wide and a community kind of wide issue.
Sarah Barton: And so hopefully, our churches, as many faith communities come to grapple more with questions of disability and thinking like a lot more complexly, and we are richly about what it means to be disabled and be a disciple of Jesus. The Church can be a place
Sarah Barton: where a different kind of feature, and a different kind of life together between disabled and non-disabled people is witnessed, too.
Sarah Barton: I think something that really sustains folks who
Sarah Barton: have
Sarah Barton: been in the process of honestly healing and reconciliation with church communities. After experiencing exclusion, whether through baptismal denial, or like, in a very extended period of like, we'll see if your family will fit into our community. Or if this is gonna work out.
Sarah Barton: or we're gonna like, have you around for a few years before we decide if we want to baptize you.
Sarah Barton: but something that really has sustained folks through that or been healing to them in a new faith. Community has been a sense of.
Sarah Barton: We need you here.
Sarah Barton: and this kind of picks up on a key theme and disability theology, which is the the notion of belonging. So it's not just about including people in a room, or including people in a special disability ministry that a church might have.
Sarah Barton: But it's saying, no. You are baptized in the Holy Spirit. You are called by Jesus. You have a vocation, and our Church is the kind of place that wants to take the time, and be with you, and listen to what that vocation might be.
Sarah Barton: And
Sarah Barton: that's not just for disabled Christians. These are the kind of communities that do that slow work of discernment, and of paying attention to the spirits work in the lives of all of those in a community. And I will say I have been a part of a church community who does this very well.
Sarah Barton: and it is not just kind of sparkly unicorn roses all the time. It's discerning what the spirits call and gifts are in life of someone who you really can't stand. And you're really happy when you show up on a Sunday morning, and they're not in church.
Sarah Barton: and usually for me that's honestly a whole bunch of other non-disabled people i'm like Foo. They're not here.
Sarah Barton: but the communities that have been healing, and have often been places
Sarah Barton: where disabled participants and her researchers that I worked with in the book project have found healing and have found belonging are these communities where they're not tokenized?
Sarah Barton: They're not really
Sarah Barton: communities that have, like a specialized disability ministry. There are churches where people are committed to doing the patient and difficult work
Sarah Barton: of showing up and asking, how is God at work in this person's life?
Sarah Barton: What are we missing when this person is gone? And how is God calling us to grow as a community within our tradition, within our denomination within our particular local context, to enable this person for ministry?
Sarah Barton: And I think that's beautiful and incredibly humbling to be a part of these conversations, and to witness this happening in communities and convicting, because I think we can all be invited into greater discernment with brothers and sisters in Christ.
Sarah Barton: who are baptized into Jesus body, or who are desiring baptism into Jesus body, and and turn away from. Oh, I hope they don't show up at church because they're kind of disruptive, or they rub me the wrong way, or I find them very annoying.
Sarah Barton: and taking the time to to understand what God is up to.
Sarah Barton: I think, in terms of
Sarah Barton: kind of practices that have been nourishing
Sarah Barton: or support it for people who've experienced exclusion.
Sarah Barton: I talk about this at the towards the end of the book. They're kind of baptismally themed.
Sarah Barton: but one of them is, is baptismal testimony.
Sarah Barton: So it's kind of the telling of these community discernments.
Sarah Barton: the telling out of what God has been up to in someone's life.
Sarah Barton: One of the lay members who I interviewed for the book
Sarah Barton: was, had just been really convicted in our own church's life about
Sarah Barton: how the Church celebrated what she called cultural successes. So she was describing something that was very familiar to me, which is, you know, the church celebrating marriages and graduations and job promotions and people getting scholarships.
Sarah Barton: and I think that's great like. I want to celebrate those things in my life and in the lives of others that are a part of the church.
Sarah Barton: but she was very confected because she thought about this
Sarah Barton: in the life of her church, which had many disabled members, and recognized that the disabled members did not have these same kind of cultural successes
Sarah Barton: that she was seeing amongst non-disabled church members, particularly youth and young adults.
Sarah Barton: And so she started to think. What would it look like for a church to celebrate something else, or center something else? Maybe not on replacement of cultural successes. But in addition to it. And so I think about
Sarah Barton: many credo Baptist contexts where people give a testimony before they are baptized. What would that look like for all different kinds of Christian denominations in traditions and communities
Sarah Barton: to either at the occasion of someone's baptism
Sarah Barton: have the community write a testimony about this person's presence, and gifts amongst them, and how they've encouraged their discipleship and their knowledge of the living God, and their love of the Tri in God.
Sarah Barton: What it would look like to have that kind of written together as a community, and proclaimed and celebrated in the Bulletin, or as part of the service, or the Liturgy, or afterwards.
Sarah Barton: And what would it look like to also do that same kind of thing, maybe on an annual basis? So on the anniversary of someone's baptism, or even on someone's birthday. And again, not having this just be something that is for disabled people in the church, but something that we could practice, as all Christians disabled or non disabled.
Sarah Barton: that might really beautifully highlight our identities in Christ.
Sarah Barton: which is, I think, so central to what it means to be a Christian. I mean. The one of the most basic definitions of what baptism is is. You are becoming a Christian in baptism, and I think we need reminders of that. We need reminders of that for ourselves to know who we are in Jesus.
Sarah Barton: and we often, because we're human beings sinful and fallen human beings, we need a reminder that other people are in Christ too. And so this practice of writing testimony and of sharing that within faith communities, I think, has been incredibly supportive for for many people that I met through the course of doing research for the book.
John Anthony Dunne: That's beautiful, and I know Steph's going to follow up on qualitative research, but as awkward as this is Dr. Barton. Before Daniel runs Daniel, would you please record your intros?
Daniel Parham: I was jotting down notes. I'm like oh, this is so good. This is so good. What do I want to say? Oh.
Daniel Parham: oh, my gosh.
Daniel Parham: okay. So let me let me frame myself like I like we were at at the end, because I I was immersed in in in your words
Daniel Parham: the beauty of Dr. Barton's research, is it? I think it
Daniel Parham: it examines
Daniel Parham: the true question of what we mean when we are fully baptized into the body. And
Daniel Parham: I think the body language and of itself convicts us right, because
Daniel Parham: Paul tells us we we are a sum of all parts, and if we exclude
Daniel Parham: some who are by nature maybe discomforting for us by nature of their own disabilities. And then we, we we actually have undermined in some ways the beauty of what it is to be the fullest body, and baptism is at the crux of that
Daniel Parham: to to say that we recognize that you are invited into the fullest body right? And even though they already are truly invited. The recognition of that, I think.
Daniel Parham: makes us examine what we're missing out on by being alongside our brothers and sisters, and learning and receiving and and receiving the gift and the blessing that is them not the discomfort that comes from what we see
Daniel Parham: in terms of a disability both visible and invisible. And so there's there's this beauty of examining that it's convicting, and then also it powers us to think more robustly about how our churches operate within our traditions within our ordinances
Daniel Parham: that really examine what the body is meant for in relationship to our brothers and sisters, who struggle with exclusion because of a disability that that God recognizes, seizes, sees, and invites into the space of this church.
John Anthony Dunne: There you go. I rambled a little bit. That's what I was thinking about. I I made it up there, John, so. No, you're good man. You're good, so you'll You'll edit it out. You're good. You're good, thanks, thanks, thanks so much. I've sit and stick around as long as you, you know. Can. I want to thank you. Dr. Barton, my best friend, is actually applying to Du Divini school actually is a waiting.
Sarah Barton: And so I was like I. This this just makes me want to to be a duke even more beautiful. Please connect us to hands up, heading to Durham for coming as a hybrid student. All right, Steph.
Steph Judd: So you've just finished talking about
John Anthony Dunne: the some of the practices that have people found helpful.
Steph Judd: So i'm i'm. I to pivot back to some of the like the kind of
Steph Judd: like method questions, because I think that it's
Steph Judd: that's really interesting.
Steph Judd: I think that yeah, one of the real challenges in in any community that privileges recognition, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is that we kind of default to these assumptions about what it is to
Steph Judd: fully subscribe to
Steph Judd: the kind of the core central kind of commitments of a community that buying the community together.
And
Steph Judd: I think that
Steph Judd: even even kind of hearing you you talk about
Steph Judd: that is
Steph Judd: what was it like? The the testimonies.
Steph Judd: the even hearing you talking about the the baptismal testimonies.
Steph Judd: How how did that play out for people that Don't communicate verbally
Steph Judd: in in your research?
Sarah Barton: Yeah. So
Sarah Barton: a lot of baptism and a lot of things associated with baptism.
Sarah Barton: even though it is like this multi-sensory, really rich Christian practice where we have water and music and we're hearing sermons and songs and hymns, and in some traditions we have oil that you can smell across the room.
Sarah Barton: Baptism often still comes down to a lot of words whether that's asking people about to be baptized, to
Sarah Barton: confess, to give it a spoken testimony, or whether it is kind of the words of the baptismal liturgy.
Sarah Barton: And so one way that my participants, particularly non-speaking participants, really queued me into this more vibrant and expansive way of thinking about baptism, and what it means to participate
Sarah Barton: in church. What it means to participate in aboutismal liturgy is a person who is non-speaking
Sarah Barton: are their witnesses to draw attention to the power of the font or the water, or encountering Jesus's presence in a way that's not represented in words.
Sarah Barton: So one of my research participants.
Sarah Barton: his pseudonym, is Bob.
Sarah Barton: Actually, I do actually remember his real name. I was gonna say I don't remember his real name, but all my participants had pseudonyms. So Bob was a young adult and a part of an Episcopal church.
Sarah Barton: and he is non-speaking; but he communicates in a wide diversity, of rich and beautiful and expressive ways.
Sarah Barton: and
Sarah Barton: during it services of baptismal remembrance, which is a particular liturgy in the Episcopal Church. But many churches will, you know, when anyone is baptized? They might invite the congregation or those gathered there
Sarah Barton: to remember their own baptisms. And this doesn't necessarily mean, you know. Remember when you were 3 months old and baptized because people might not be able to remember their own baptisms.
Sarah Barton: but remembering that Jesus was baptized, and that this is a practice that binds Christians together not only in local communities, but across the church and time and space in Christian kind of ecumenical spectrum. This is one of the sources of Christian Unity.
Sarah Barton: Well, it's also one of the sources of Christian disunity. But we can maybe put that aside for now. But it is this deep well of Christian unity; and whenever the priest kind of proclaims this remembrance
Sarah Barton: a baptism.
Sarah Barton: and takes some of the baptismal waters from the font, and sprinkles them all around the congregation. Bob will stand with his hands raised.
Sarah Barton: and to receive these waters of remembrance, of of his identity in Jesus. And Bob is very solemn. And
Sarah Barton: so I actually witnessed this because I went to a service of baptismal remembrance at this church, and I had also talked to a number of people who are kind of telling me this about Bob like what a witness he was!
Sarah Barton: And Bob is like, very still and silent, and
Sarah Barton: also completely joyful in receiving these waters of baptism that are sprinkled on him by the priest, and sprinkled on everyone else there.
Sarah Barton: and seeing Bob, and witnessing kind of his joy and his open receptiveness to this, remembering of who he is in Jesus.
Sarah Barton: not because he's articulating a baptismal theology in front of the whole church.
Sarah Barton: and not because he's saying that this is what he's experiencing, but because of his embodied joy and receptiveness to this practice of the Church.
Sarah Barton: This has really opened up and
Sarah Barton: made so central and important to this congregation, this practice of baptism of remembrance in a way that people say, if I had not seen Bob like receive this this liturgy in this way, I would think about this totally differently or frankly, I really wouldn't care.
Sarah Barton: because it's just like more words.
Sarah Barton: And so I think that's one story that's kind of
Sarah Barton: kind of amazing. And thinking again about this practice of testimony. Again, we tend to think about testimony as like something I need to write down, or something I need to say.
Sarah Barton: and I really was encouraged throughout the research
Sarah Barton: that
Sarah Barton: we're not. There is this myth of independence, and there's this myth of
Sarah Barton: us being able to do things on our own, whether that's like a baptizal testimony, or just like going around in our day to day lives like one of the great gifts, I think of disability, theology, and the witness of many disabled Christians is to say.
Sarah Barton: Oh, my gosh! We are interdependent upon God and upon one another all the way down.
Sarah Barton: And if we think about testimony as just something that's accessible to non-speaking people or to people who are literate, and who can write
Sarah Barton: that's like that's pretty limiting.
Sarah Barton: If we think about testimony as something that we do together, and we best to do for one another.
Sarah Barton: that kind of opens up some new possibilities.
Sarah Barton: And so
Sarah Barton: at one church, which was
Sarah Barton: a a Baptist church that I worked with, I think I actually worked with more Baptist churches than any other churches in the book, which is really really fun for me.
Sarah Barton: But one of these churches they just had a tradition that
Sarah Barton: people were gave a testimony before their baptism.
Sarah Barton: But at this church no one ever gave their own testimony.
Sarah Barton: It was always a testimony
Sarah Barton: that was written in conjunction
Sarah Barton: with friends and loved ones and family, and then the person about to be baptized never gave it.
Sarah Barton: And so this church had actually baptized quite a few folks with
Sarah Barton: that either really limited verbal communication. People who didn't read or who couldn't write.
Sarah Barton: and
Sarah Barton: that was, you know, not really something that was extraordinary, because this Church was used to the community composing these testimonies of their discipleship and their gifts, and their journey to be a member of the Church, to be a part of Jesus's body
Sarah Barton: to partake in this ordinance of baptism, the symbolic ceremony of baptism as they would talk about it. And that was kind of what they did, for everyone disabled or or non-disabled, and so I think both kind of shifting from
Sarah Barton: more independent or individualized views of what it means to witness or to testify.
Sarah Barton: And then also looking at people's, bodies, and the ways that
Sarah Barton: folks express who they are and how they're experiencing worship before God, and paying attention
Sarah Barton: to those ways of experiencing worship
Sarah Barton: in a following Jesus, that don't include words
Sarah Barton: which often might, might kind of put the onus on people who who like to speak, and I include myself in this group of people. You know, people who, like words, might actually have to
Sarah Barton: use words to say.
Sarah Barton: We need to pay attention to this, like
Sarah Barton: words are so inadequate for this. But our our brother, our sister, our sibling here, has has something to give us, and and i'm going to point that way.
Sarah Barton: And that's really, you know that's at the heart of what sacraments are. They're they're not
Sarah Barton: words. There are practices that
Sarah Barton: that show us God's grace, and that point us in a new way that are assigned in a symbol that are not just meant to be like kind of cool things that we do, but are actually transformative and transforming us into the
Sarah Barton: the people that got wants us to be individually and collectively. So I Also I was really encouraged in the research to be reminded of.
Sarah Barton: Oh, gosh! Like baptism isn't about words, Anyway, at the beginning of the story it's about
Sarah Barton: encountering God in embodied nonverbal or extra verbal or hyper-verbal ways.
Sarah Barton: and I think
Sarah Barton: some folks with disabilities.
Sarah Barton: particularly folks who are non-speaking can really have a prophetic presence in that way of reminding us the insufficiency of words.
Sarah Barton: and also just you know how boring it gets if we're all we're thinking about is just writing or speaking.
The
Steph Judd: Yeah. And I love. I love the way that you kind of
Steph Judd: point out that it's so often the case that
Steph Judd: whether it be theological exploration of disability, or
Steph Judd: the way that we do. Life, together with people with disability.
Steph Judd: can present the opportunity to in live in our Christian practices. If if we're paying attention, because I think, and I think I I come from a highly liturgical kind of at least your background. And I think that one of the the tensions. There is that
Steph Judd: in in liturgy, or in these practices, these rhythms?
Steph Judd: Are you just going through the motions, or are you expecting encounter with God, and often the things that disrupt
Steph Judd: what we. You know, the control that we're seeking, or or the kind of
Steph Judd: the habitual ways of doing things that we're used to
Steph Judd: those moments of disruption.
Steph Judd: Us are so precious because of the way that they open you up
Steph Judd: and rupture things in the ways that you weren't, expecting
Steph Judd: something that I wanted to unpack
Steph Judd: was the way that you kind of situated, situate yourself in the landscape of models of disability.
Steph Judd: and you talk about kind of the coalitional model, and the way that that presents an opportunity for this collective re imagining. Could you talk a little bit about what you mean by the coalitional model?
Sarah Barton: Yes, happy to talk about that framework for a disability, I think.
Sarah Barton: in my reading and understanding, and studies of different models of disability. I really have been formed and draw upon the work of Alison Kafer, who is a disability Study scholar.
Sarah Barton: and she wrote a book
Sarah Barton: a while ago now called feminist Queer Cripp. In in the introduction she gives actually a really nice kind of overview of traditional models. Of
Sarah Barton: what disability is. What does it mean to say disability? What does it mean to have a disability identity?
Sarah Barton: And she talks about the medical model, of course, the social model, the minority model. But then she thinks about this coalitional model of disability which
Sarah Barton: thinks about disability
Sarah Barton: as something that emerges out of relationship
Sarah Barton: and disability is something that's a political identity. So I would say, in other words, like it matters the communities that we belong to the Polis that is oriented toward what the good we're going after is what the good for each other is, what a good future looks like, what it means to have a good body.
Sarah Barton: and that is so important for how we construct notions of what disability is, and what disability identity might be, and something that I really like about this coalitional model
Sarah Barton: is that again it it runs this threat of interdependence through it. So people with and without disabilities are in coalition together. It's not non disabled people calling the shots for people with disabilities. It's not non disabled Christians
Sarah Barton: forming disability ministries and saying, okay, now, just see what people can show up. They can participate in this ROM of our Church, but nothing else.
Sarah Barton: But it's really building
Sarah Barton: God's kingdom together. It's building a future where a disability is a vibrant and important and necessary part of human community and diversity together.
Sarah Barton: And so Capere is not, as far as I understand, a religious scholar. But I've always been really taken by her
Sarah Barton: questions around. What is the future that we imagine, and what are our beliefs and constructions of disability now enable us to imagine for the future? And I mean. John Swinton talks about this a lot and talked about it on the an earlier episode of the podcast.
Sarah Barton: but like what we think about disability in the future, whether that's in God's good future in heaven.
Sarah Barton: in eternity like that really matters for our practices now. And so I find Cafr's insistence that we always come back? To what featured are we imagining as people, and for me as as Christians, and as the Church gathered together in God's good future, but also in the future in like 3 years.
Sarah Barton: and
Sarah Barton: as long as the new creation isn't inaugurated in the next 3 years, what does that mean
Sarah Barton: for how we ought to
Sarah Barton: kind of grapple with questions of disability, and and work together inform coalitions that that seek justice, that seek to dismantle, able as them that look to point out exclusion and oppression, and then do something about it that points toward new creation.
Sarah Barton: and which, of course, is also a baptismal theme. I didn't really mean to do that. But
Sarah Barton: i'm really compelled by Paul's work in Second Corinthians 5. There's a whole chapter in the book about it
Sarah Barton: about thinking about baptismal identity as this new creation identity in our identities in Jesus as primary, not as erasing racial identity or gender identity or disability identity, but as really centering us on. This is amazing what God has done
Sarah Barton: in bringing together all of us who carry these really different identities together, and essentially sticking us with each other like forever. He can't get out of this, you know you are in Jesus's body. What are you going to do about it?
Sarah Barton: And I
Sarah Barton: I love what you're saying stuff about disruption and the importance of disruption, for
Sarah Barton: especially folks
Sarah Barton: like those of us who are from more liturgical traditions.
Sarah Barton: But something my research really
Sarah Barton: brought to mind for me was
Sarah Barton: a reflection that I've actually had.
Sarah Barton: you know, for a long time, which is how people will often talk about. You know, folks with disabilities particularly intellectual disability, as as being a disruption in a church community, or my life was disrupted by my
Sarah Barton: onset, or acquiring of a disability.
Sarah Barton: Or this person, like unexpectedly showed up in church, or unexpectedly showed up in my classroom even.
Sarah Barton: and kind of flipping that on its head and thinking about.
Sarah Barton: No. Am I the disruption in the lives of disabled Christians
Sarah Barton: that's coming in with my narrow imagination and my inability to be open to the work of the spirit, and i'm disrupting all that God wants to do in their lives of discipleship and in this community's life.
Sarah Barton: Maybe I am the unexpected guest in this person's, you know, testimony and baptismal identity, a life story.
Sarah Barton: and I found that to be a really helpful and humbling and difficult at times reminder that any time i'm kind of tempted
Sarah Barton: to
Sarah Barton: think about people's, lives, or embodiments as a disruption to my preferences or my routine, or my theology, or my worship.
Sarah Barton: I try and turn that back around and think about myself as that disruption
Sarah Barton: to the work of the spirit, or think about myself as an unexpected guest in that person's life, or in that community's life.
Sarah Barton: and that's been
Sarah Barton: i'm sure something that I will continue to think about. But something that's been really transformative
Sarah Barton: in my own work, in the disability community and in doing this kind of research.
John Anthony Dunne: Thank you so much for that. Dr. Barton just really appreciated what you shared there at the end, especially this emphasis on on new creation. And
John Anthony Dunne: you know you didn't mention glaciers 3, but it it was sort of implied right, that where you know this great baptismal passage, where these binaries are no longer operative, right, neither June or Greek, slaved or free, etc., and
John Anthony Dunne: you, know Ableism, and you know the able-bodied and and disabled is not one of the binaries you know that Paul lists, but it's some similarly one of these binaries that you know the identity is not erased.
John Anthony Dunne: but the value that one has in the body is not predicated upon where you, where you land in that in that binary and just that that emphasis on the new creation identity that we all take on as we are as we are baptized.
John Anthony Dunne: It's just beautiful, and really appreciate everything that you shared with us. And this this emphasis on baptismal responsibility as well.
John Anthony Dunne: and the Church's community, the the the church's responsibility, a. As as as baptized individuals. To K. To to, to care for, incorporate and and to Co. Co- Was it cold labor? Coco?
John Anthony Dunne: Did I say, cold labor. Is that all right? And what was it? Coalitional, coalitional right? It's coalitional
John Anthony Dunne: and to Co. Labor co coalitionally alongside, and and and to co labor coalitionally alongside all baptized members of the body. It's just a wonderful image, and just so appreciate everything that you shared with us.
Sarah Barton: Thanks so much. It's been fun to talk with you all, and
Sarah Barton: I always uncover new things to think about, you know, like walking away and being like
Sarah Barton: Oh, man, I Haven't thought about non-verbal testimony in a little bit here. I'm going to return to my church next Sunday, and think about this in a new way, so grateful for the space to to talk together today.