Ableist Microaggressions in Church Life
Microaggression Categories & Examples
Denial of Personal Identity and Disability Experience
Labeling people with disabilities as ungrateful or troublemakers for complaints about known needs that aren’t met (e.g., emailed agendas).
Making statements like “I know how you feel” or assumptions based on one’s own experiences or those of someone with a similar impairment.
Dismissing concerns and emotional reactions that are shared.
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Denial of Privacy of Body, Space, or Information
Requesting a child’s diagnostic and IEP school documents before allowing participation in Sunday School.
Sharing any personal information or diagnosis without permission.
Asking people about their disabilities rather than about the accommodations needed so they can participate.
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Assumed or Forced Helplessness
Bringing the potluck/fellowship food to one who cannot access the space rather than moving the potluck/fellowship so everyone can participate.
Not asking disabled people to serve in leadership or as teachers.
Removing wheelchairs, walkers, and crutches from the seating area and making the person needing them ask and wait to get them back.
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Secondary Gain – Person with a Disability Inspires, Benefits Others
Wanting major recognition for offering an accommodation or making a minor accessibility modification that has been needed for years.
Commenting about “how much worse someone with a disability has it” to help a nondisabled person put their problems into perspective, and attributing this difference to the grace of God.
Writing a newsletter article about how inspiring it is that kids without disabilities help persons with disabilities at a “special needs” prom.
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Spread Effect – Assuming Multiple Impairments or Supernatural Gifts
Talking loudly to someone who is blind.
Assuming someone with a speech difference has an intellectual disability, or that someone with an intellectual disability can’t understand speech.
Assuming that a Deaf person can lipread 100% of what is said or that a person who is blind can perceive what is meant by a gesture.
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Infantilization / Patronization / Desexualization
Patting a youth or adult on the head.
Applying Safe Sanctuary children’s rules to adults with disabilities.
Placing an older child with a significant disability in the nursery because they “won’t get anything out of Sunday School” with their age-level peers.
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Second-Class Citizenship
Deciding against building a ramp to the chancel, justifying that anyone who can’t manage stairs would not be preaching or serving as liturgist.
Projecting graphics or photos but not explaining them because “they aren’t important” so everyone doesn’t need to know what they are.
Requesting that wheelchair users sit in the back or up front so as not to upset sanctuary aesthetics by removing the ends of several pews.
Using “us” to refer to nondisabled members, “them” for anyone else.
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References
Keller, R. M., & Galgay, C. E. (2010). Microaggressive experiences of people with disabilities. In D. W. Sue (Ed.), Microaggressions and marginality: Manifestation, dynamics, and impact (pp. 241–267). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
By Deaconess Lynn Swedberg, updated 11/11/2024
The Disability Ministries Committee of The United Methodist Church
is a partner ministry of the General Commission on Religion and Race