Dr. Steve Grcevich sits down and interviews Dr. Lamar Hardwick on his new book How Ableism Fuels Racism. This is Part 1 of a 3-part series!
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Steve Grcevich: Hello. You may be expecting to hear Beth or Catherine or Sandra, but I am Dr. Steve Grcevich, child and adolescent psychiatrist, associate professor of psychiatry at Northeast Ohio Medical University and the president and founder of Key Ministry. I am going to be helping to facilitate the podcast today and I had been approached by our team about doing one or several of these podcasts and we were wrestling with a topic in terms of what we might want to talk about or what I would want to talk to somebody else about. And what had been weighing most on my mind was this book that recently came out, How Ableism Fuels Racism written by the autism pastor Dr. Lamar Hardwick. I ordered a copy or pre-ordered a copy of Lamar's book, dug into it the weekend that it arrived at my house and Lamar wrote a book before called Disability in the Church, which I think is probably the single most important book impacting the disability ministry field and it will likely impact the disability ministry field for the next 10 years.
And so when Lamar has something to say, I'm very much interested in that. I mean, he's a highly valued colleague. The last couple of years has served on our board at Key Ministry and I would very much encourage everybody to get the book. And if you happen to be listening to this podcast before May 1st, if you go to Baker Books and enter in the keyword of the discount code ABLEISM24, I believe you can order the book through their site, through the publisher's site for a 50% discount. Obviously it's also available other places where people go to get books. So Lamar, thank you so much for being willing this morning to take the time to hash some stuff out and to listen to my questions.
Lamar Hardwick: Thanks for having me.
Steve Grcevich: So the first thing I thought we would talk about today and that I wrestled with looking through the book was who is the intended audience for this? I mean, because obviously in light of the things that have happened to our country in the last four years, these are very emotionally charged topics these days. I have a theory about who it's going to most impact, but I'm curious, who did you write the book for and what was the impact that you were hoping for when you wrote How Ableism Fuels Racism?
Lamar Hardwick: Yeah, that's a good question. When you write a book, as you know, they always make you say, who's your intended audience? Who's a secondary audience? And as a author you always say, I think everybody. I want everybody to read it. So that's the audience. But I think realistically, if I could just pull back the curtain a little bit, I actually had a vision for a trilogy of books and so Disability and the Church, the one prior to this, was designed to just be an introductory but also put in the hands of a lot of laypeople who can take that information to the leaders at their church. So I introduced in a small way some of the concepts that I knew I wanted to talk about in the next book, which is How Ableism Fuels Racism. So the intended audience for this book was actually primarily those who are or have been part of churches, parachurch organizations and other faith-based communities that have a justice bent to their practice of Christianity.
And so that typically means the historically black church parachurch organizations, other organizations that tend to in their own words, have a justice bent to the way that they practice their Christianity. Because what I found is a lot of people read disability in the church, but the audience that I wanted to capture was the audience that I thought if I can help them to understand that this is also an issue that they should be interested in by conflating it with what they self-identify as part of their Christian walk, which is pursuing justice, then perhaps I can bring them along in the disability ministry movement, not just within the four walls of the church but within our communities because it would pique their interest. And I think I accomplished that. I have a lot more, honestly, Steve, a lot more historically black churches and African-Americans reading this book, a lot of attention from those communities.
I didn't get a lot of attention from those communities with disability in the church, so I knew I had to present it in a way that helped them to understand that there's, especially in the historically black church and in those communities that work alongside it, there's a legacy there that they would like to continue about pursuing justice. But disability has never really been a part of that. And so I wanted to conflate that. And so last thing I'll say about that is the trilogy of the books was disability in the church, how ableism views racism. And then the one that I'm currently working on now is sort of looking at the historically black church and its relationship to disability, its relationship to civil rights. The civil rights movement was largely a spiritual and religious movement. And disability inclusion seemed to lack what I feel like the necessary spirituality that the historically black church and not just the black church, there were other churches, non-minority churches that were part of that movement, but it was largely led by spiritual leaders.
And what I found is that the disability movement, while you and I know we do this within the church and our culture is not necessarily a spiritually or religiously led movement, and I wanted to see what can we learn from the historically black church and the churches that worked alongside of it and the spiritual leaders and some of the spiritual practices. And so the third part of this trilogy will be sort of looking at that and how we can capture some of the spiritual elements that led the civil rights movement and how do we infuse that in disability rights so that we don't miss what I felt like was the main component of the civil rights movement was it was something that they felt was a part of their Christian duty.
Steve Grcevich: That's interesting because the thought that I had after reading the book is that what you're doing is that you're introducing a rationale for disability ministry to what we would refer to as sort of the progressive wing of the church.
One of the things we had talked about a lot in the early days of our ministry is the notion of who we provide services to. That our organization was basically grounded in a more conservative of evangelical tradition. One of the issues with the whole mental health piece is that oftentimes where that's been most stigmatized has been churches with the most traditional or conservative theology. And so that one of the things that had been important because we want to be able to have influence there is that we want to make sure we presented ourselves in a way that was very trustworthy. But the reality was is that we never really got asked often for help from mainline churches. And the reason was that it seems like historically a lot of the folks that have placed an emphasis and have devoted resources to disability ministry have done it again out of an evangelical bent, and that the churches where that's not important in the context of their theology would see it as being important from the context of pursuing justice. And so I mean, what are you seeing places or what are you seeing more progressive churches? What are they going to do with this and how do you see that unfolding?
Lamar Hardwick: Yeah, I think as you said in the opening, the last couple of years have created what I call a stirring of the waters. And I think that one of the reasons I wanted to jump in is because churches on both sides of the spectrum, so to speak, when it comes to the conservative progressive, are now because of the times having to have these discussions. Now what they do with them is a totally different thing, but we're all having to have these discussions because of what happened during covid and some of the things that you already talked about. And so if I could give an image, I was hoping to be the person who could stand in the middle and pull both of them together close enough to where discussion would happen, ideas would be exchanged, and then not necessarily asking either conservatives or progressives to change, but to be challenged enough by the conversation being close enough to converse with one another, challenged enough to think about some of the things that both sides tend to champion and then go away saying, let's do something about this based on what we already feel is our duty as Christians.
So it's kind of this image of trying to with all my might pull both of them and stand in the middle. And so I'm hoping that especially what we would label or call the progressive side would see, because I very much do believe that when you read the biblical texts, you see that God is a God of justice. But I think there's some ways in which I wanted them to understand that those definitions need to be retaught, need to be in some ways expounded upon in some ways narrowed down, but definitely include disability as a part of those discussions and to be active in that movement and not just making a matter of even the race is important. And this is why I introduced it in disability in the church when I said that the largest minority group in the world are people with disabilities.
So if the focus is going to be on trying to quote, like I says in the book of, I think it's Micah to walk humbly and live justly, the largest minority group in the world are people with disabilities. So what I wanted the progressive leaning churches and theologians to think about is race is important, but part of the reason why we have challenges with race is because disability discrimination lay the foundation for that. And so we cannot continue to spin our wheels and not deal with the largest minority group in the world, but also deal with the issue. And that's why title of the book is How Ableism fuels Racism is to say, some of what has happened in our country was not just a matter of people looking at people with different skin color and saying, I don't like you. It was a matter of them giving people of color a designation of being inherently disabled that allowed for racial slavery to take place.
And so that history needs to be uncovered so that we can as a church say we do want to address the issues of race, but beyond that, there's a reason why that was able to be successful. And disability is a huge part of that. And that needs to be a part of our discussions of justice because we are as far behind when it comes to how the church either side has actually practiced its Christian faith in a way that also looks at the largest minor group in the world and includes them and helps them to belong and helps them to be valuable members of God's church.
Steve Grcevich: So maybe this is a bit of a preview of the third book in the trilogy I'm going to be asking you for, but how important is evangelism in the historically black church in terms of conceptualizing what the response is going to be to the disability community and depending upon that, are there ways that the different organizations, the parachurch organizations operating in this space need to change the way that we talk about this to if we're going to be able to effectively come alongside and support those churches that decide to pursue it?
Lamar Hardwick: I would say evangelism is a huge component of historically black churches. But I think one of the things, and I try to talk about this in one of the chapters about the black church, and I did say in the book that I want to write further about this because I knew I was not going to be able to fit it all in one book, is to understand the conditions in which the historically black church was created means that there's always going to be an element of evangelism that is bent towards addressing the material conditions of people as a part of evangelism. And that's because when the historically black church started, it was because of exclusion. And there were so many post-slavery, antebellum south, there were so many parts of the material conditions of now freed African-Americans that needed to be addressed. So for them, evangelism, even the way that the scripture is interpreted and digested when you read the scriptures and everywhere you see salvation in the original language is liberation.
And that tends to be the bent which the historically black church takes. So for example, one of the premier texts for a lot of historically black churches and para-church organizations is when Jesus's first sermon, Luke 4, the spirit of the Lord is upon me and he has anointed me to bring liberation to the captives and bright and so to help the blind seed to help the poor. And so for them, that is encompassed in evangelism. That's the mission of Jesus to deal with the issues of salvation like he does in the story of the friends who bring the paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven and get up and walk. So it's for them historically, and this is what I'll talk about in the book, it's always been a both. And sometimes the element that's appears to be more pronounced is the justice piece, but I think it's because of the context in which the church was born.
There were so many material needs and conditions. And then you also think historically, I talk about in the book enslaved Africans when they were converting to Christianity, were told that your salvation doesn't impact your material conditions, it only impacts your soul. And so a lot of that is theology that comes out of a black church is a response to being told that salvation is only for your soul and you just have to suffer through being treated less than until you get to heaven. And so a lot of what you see is a protest against that and why it feels like there's a split between evangelism or justice or it feels like the justice piece is more pronounced because black people were historically told, well, you can become Christians, but it's not going to impact the way we treat you or your material conditions.
And that's part of one of the challenges I was hoping to kind of subtly plant that seed in the book is that a lot of things that sometimes we struggle with if we're on either side is a response to the way that Christianity was taught in ways that were either at worst harmful, but at best, not very helpful. And so to tell people we're going to baptize you and you can become a part of God's family, but we're just not going to treat you the same, that's not very helpful. And so the antithesis of that is to focus a lot on justice. And I think that's where you start to see where it feels like evangelism is not important, but it's just a response to being told Your material conditions are not going to change, but you can be a Christian, but you still have to work for us for free. So to answer your question, I think that it's important is just it's rolled into that for a lot of historically black churches.
Steve Grcevich: One of the things I was most struck by, this is I think five or six years ago, I got an opportunity to speak at a conference in Washington. As part of the deal, we got a private tour of the Museum of the Bible, and it was seeing the slave Bibles that were published in the early 19th century that removed any scriptural references that could be perceived as being empowering to folks in that situation and to appreciate the depths to which our forefathers sunk in terms of dealing with some of these issues. It was striking, but I want to move on, to be honest, the biggest challenge I had with any of the stuff that you wrote, which was the concept of viewing Jesus as being disabled. And so if we think about Americans with Disabilities Act and that they define disability as an individual with a disability is a person with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities or have person with a history of such an impairment or a person's perceived as having such an impairment, how is Jesus disabled? Because in what way? In fact, one could argue that the physical trauma that he experienced on the cross was sort of central to his purpose in life. His purpose in coming was to offer himself as a sacrifice and to die for our sins. In what way is he disabled or is a better way to think about it, is to see him as being wounded? And does that make a difference in your argument or how you think about this?
Lamar Hardwick: Yeah. So I think first I'll say that it is challenging just because I write about it doesn't mean I'm not challenged by it, but also to give credit to where idea that theology first period as Dr. Late Dr. Nancy Eastland in her book The Disabled God, I believe it was written in 94. I keep saying 1994, that's the date that sticks out. I think one of the challenges, and I actually tweeted about this a couple days ago, one of the challenges, especially for those of us who have been shaped and formed by a more conservative background is that it feels irreverent to say that that Jesus was disabled. I think one of the things that over the years of reading it that most challenged me and helped me to kind of embrace it a little bit more, at least as a way of challenging the way that I see disability, is it forced me to see how much I preferred the divinity of Jesus and in ways sort of discounted the humanity because that's sort of why I felt irreverent, right?
Well, he's God, he can't be disabled, he can't be limited. But our Christian tradition teaches that he was a fully God and fully human. And so the first thing I'll say is that for me personally, it helped me to see I was leaning way to one side. And the reason that I had challenges with that is because I was neglecting the fact that, well, he was human. He did have a human body. He was a historical figure that did walk around. And so to be human means that I need to maybe look at what those things done to him would've done to a human body.
And doing that, and I'll just speak for myself, I discovered that the reason why it felt irreverent is because of the way I actually viewed disability. And it says less about my theology and more about the way, so to say, that Jesus is disabled felt irreverent because of my own internalized ableism and my thoughts about disability to say, well, I don't want to see God that way, but that says something about how I view disability and how, okay, maybe I haven't wrestled with that as much as I should, even though I would never say that out loud. But why is it that that's a problem for me? So I think one of the things I was hoping to do in explaining Eastland and why Jesus disabled is to say, okay, let's look hard if we could set, I'm not suggesting this, but if we could set the divinity discussion aside for a second and talk about the part where we know that Jesus was also a hundred percent human, and then going back and reading the text, particularly where he tells Thomas put your, and this is in the original Greek, put your hands inside my wounds is how it reads, which suggests that those wounds as we have labeled them, were not healed.
So then I started to study, well, what would that do to a human body? I'm setting aside the divinity for a second. If Jesus is all human, what would that have done to a human body? Well, I discovered medically there's approximately seven to nine tendons in the wrist where they would've put the nine inch spikes that would've severed those tendons. And if they were not healed and surgically repaired, it would severely disable the use of the hands. I also looked at how, and I barely skimmed this in disability in church, which is why I came back to it. I looked at how real Roman crucifixion, so a lot of the images that are depicted, some of those are true, where they would drive the nine inch spikes through the feet, but most often Romans crucifixions, they would turn the legs sideways and drive it through the ankle, which would sever the tendons and the Achilles tendons.
And I've torn an Achilles tendon years ago, and I still don't walk right. And I had mine surgically repaired. So if I'm just looking at what that would've done to the human body, not even counting the punctured wound in which the blood in the water, the punctured lung in which the blood in water ran out of, and I'm just looking at Jesus as a human body, and if I said, if that was done to anybody and those were not surgically repaired, would it be disabling? And the answer is yes. The challenge is, is that Jesus does things that human bodies can't do, right? Well,
Steve Grcevich: Yeah. But Jesus also has a resurrected body, and scripture says that we're all getting one of those resurrected bodies someday. And so as you were talking about this, one of the things that came to mind is that you mentioned the fact that in Jesus's resurrected body, the visible wounds from there in your body, body, I know what I think, but will you still have autism in your resurrected body?
Lamar Hardwick: That's a great question. I kind of touched it a little bit in Disability and the Church, the answer is honestly, I don't know. I have talked about where I know we have gotten the ideas about what our new bodies will look like and that most of that is what Paul talks about. And I've discussed this with New Testament theologians and biblical scholars, and where we get some of those ideas is not, he talks about putting on a new body and he uses Hellenistic imagery, he uses Greek imagery putting on, and what I've discovered in talking to biblical scholars, that's a very complicated text where we get these ideas of the new body, and it doesn't appear that he's talking all the way about how we've interpreted some of that. He's talking about the false apostles and being stripped of their baptismal robes. And so he says that they're not going to get a new body.
It is very complicated. And so I'm not a biblical scholar, but I think one of the things that I wrestle with is to what extent that disability informs who we are as a person remains a part of who we are in our resurrected bodies. So for example, I'm not clear on certain physical disabilities. I know autism is a neurological issue, and I don't know that I would be the same person if that was taken away because it's neurological. It is what makes me who I am. It is what makes me see the Bible. The way that I do it is what makes me preach the way I preach it is what makes me the father that I am. So I struggle with that because I don't know who I would be. And then one of the questions I often ask, is the new body a reward or requirement?
And how do we wrestle with that? Am I required to have any physical limitations, whether it's developmental, intellectual, or physical removed so that I can be in the presence of God forever? Or is it a reward for the journey through? To me, that's the better question. I don't know honestly, because I've never been to heaven and I know I'm going and I'm not in a rush. But for me the question is it a reward? Am I required to no longer be autistic to be in God's presence or is it a reward or is there a certain extent to which the parts of my disability make me, me? Are those things that I, and so that's to me the question that I have, and I haven't answered that one day. I'll find out. Unfortunately I won't be able to come back and tell you.
Steve Grcevich: Well, I hope we can have a conversation about it together there.
Lamar Hardwick: Yeah, it just depends on who gets there first. So again, I'm not in a rush.
Steve Grcevich: Yeah, I mean, but we'll both have plenty of time from what I understand once we get there. But Lamar, I so appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions. If you've got some more time, we will go ahead and continue this conversation on How Ableism Fuels Racism in our conversation next month. So again, I would encourage listeners, if you're interested in hearing more of what Lamar has to say about this topic, if you go to key ministry.org, click on podcasts, you can go back and listen to the conversation that Catherine Boyle from our team recorded with Lamar in late February when How Ableism Fuels Racism was initially released. If you happen to be listening to this conversation before the first week of May, we would love to have you join us at Disability & the Church Key Ministry's national Conference for leaders who have been called to serve in every aspect of disability ministry and would definitely encourage you to stay till the end because Lamar is going to be doing the closing talk of the conference on Friday afternoon, May 3rd, and I would want you to get a chance to meet him in person and to ask him personally some of the questions you have with regard to your book.
So again, thanks so much, Lamar for joining us. We will continue this conversation next month. And thanks so much to all of you through your prayers and encouragement and support through listening to podcasts such as this one. Showing your interest in the work that we do at de Ministry and work alongside us to make the church welcoming as it was intended to be for all people, including families with disabilities. So I will talk to you next month. Thanks so much for joining us.
Lamar Hardwick will be speaking at Disability & the Church 2024 in Orlando, FL, May 1-3. Register and get your ticket today!
