Krysia Waldock Hello and welcome to this episode of CAT Chat, part of the Autism and Theology podcast at the University of Aberdeen. Ian Lasch Hello. Krysia Waldock I'm Krysia and I've got Ian with me this week as well and we're so excited that you could join us this week when we discussed some of our book and podcast and other media recommendations. So Ian, we were just having a quick braindump before we had this podcast. Are there any particular books that you would recommend that you've been reading recently in regards to kind of autism theology and neurodivergence in general? Ian Lasch Yeah. So and actually just last night I was looking at Leon's book, Autism and Worship, which has in the in the beginning in the introduction, a really good literature review where he sort of summarizes some of the other books about book linked treatments of this topic that have come out pretty recently. Krysia Waldock Yeah. Ian Lasch And because his book is so new, it's pretty up to date. So I looked at that and I was like, this is exactly what I would recommend. So I mean to start with his book is actually really good, right? Autism and worship and liturgical theology. That's looking at autism specifically from a liturgical theology standpoint, and also has some certainly some practical theology, as part of it too. But then he in, like I say in his literature review, talks about several different books, several different book length treatments that have to do with autism and theology to varying degrees, right. So one is Summer Kinard’s Of Such is the Kingdom, which is a more of a practical theology work and more general about disability more generally. But she is autistic and has several autistic family members, so that is that is informing her perspective for sure, even if it's not specifically about autism per see. Krysia Waldock Definitely. Ian Lasch Uh, he also highlights Stuart Rapley’s Autistic Thinking in the Life of the Church. Stuart, of course, is is with us in cat. Krysia Waldock Yep. Ian Lasch So I think we're all familiar with him and his, his work and his, that's a pretty good sort of consideration of how autistic people incorporate or don't incorporate into the church or how they how they end up feeling excluded and why they end up feeling excluded. So certainly worth looking at, he mentioned Cynthia Tam’s Kinship in the Household of God, which is a treatment about more... I think she uses the term severe autism or severe disability. Is that right? I want to use the terminology that she uses. Krysia Waldock Yeah. That sounds like the terminology should would that she would use that she has used in past work, so I believe. Ian Lasch And that's the that deals with several quote unquote severely disabled autistic people and their experiences in the church. So that's another good one. And from a perspective that we don't often hear from in some of the literature and then last is Ruth Dunster's, the Autism of GxD, which I know we've also, I think we've also highlighted on the podcast or have we not, am I thinking of cat? Krysia Waldock I think we have highlighted this book. Actually, I don't think we've had a chat about it, but I think it's certainly been one that has been discussed on the podcast and also kind of between members of CAT as well. And I guess what's really interesting in your list as a couple that I wanted that I thought of it were quite similar, but others that I thought of were quite different. So Leon’s book is fantastic, and when I was reading it for the conversation that we had, that was the CAT episode back in October and it's such a fantastic book and it's really up to date. But the other book I would recommend alongside that info, it's not - it's disability wide. It's not autism specific, it's Erin Rafferty’s From Inclusion to Justice. It's fantastic and it gets as it's really gets to the social justice person in me, there's some - it's a book that I read for some of the work that I've been doing, and some of the stories that Erin picks up in the in her research echo some of the stories that I've picked up when I've been doing my PhD. And it's just so well written and really brings to the heart of actually what the difference between inclusion and justice, which I really, really enjoy it. And I also really enjoyed Naomi Lawson Jacobs and Emily Richardson's At the Gates, and as a little spoiler, Emily and Naomi are hopefully going to be joining us in April, so keep an eye on for that podcast episode to come out. And even go through that again is not necessarily autism specific. There's an awful lot of justice stuff that's actually really, really pertinent to neurodivergent people really specifically, and I guess the other resource, even though it's not a book, I would recommend the Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health and Disability because it has some fantastic it kind of edge fringe, pioneering thinking and work from creative works. It has academic work. It has art poetry in it's really eclectic in the variety of different types of knowledge and experiences that it shares. And there's been some fantastic stuff on autistic people's experiences and other experiences in that journal. Ian Lasch That's cool. Krysia Waldock Umm, I know we will also talk thinking about podcasts and kind of other media as well. Ian Lasch That's right. Krysia Waldock And I know when we were just chatting before we joined Ian, you had a you had a friend who does some TikTok stuff. Ian Lasch Yes. Uh, actually, a seminary classmate and friend of mine is, I think, sort of a TikTok celebrity. She has become disabled as a result of a long COVID and has used Tik T.O.K to sort of document that journey and sort of raise awareness around what she's been going through and by extension, what a lot of people are going through and so her name is Kate Harmon Siberine and @kateharmonsiberine is actually her TikTok name. So she has a pretty like I say, a pretty wide following and it's been, it's been cool to see her talk about you talk very candidly about what she's gone through and the ways in which, UM, her life has been made more difficult by virtue of this per se, but also by virtue of the way that society treats her differently. And so that's a really that's a that's a good resource and one that I would happily recommend. There's also another there is another podcast called the Accessible Altar that I listened to, and it deals specifically with disability more broadly. But disability and ministry specifically, hence the title and they've had a number of different guests on one Full disclosure, I was one of them, but they've talked about the various ways in which disability affects ministry and the ways in which ministry contexts are accepting of inclusive of embracing of or not of disability. And so that's been a really good conversation to be to, to Krysia Waldock In fact, both of your recommendations remind me of someone who I know from other kind of roles I have and she's on TikTok as @JemmaBrown8 and she's done some fantastic - Jemma has done some fantastic advocacy work as a neurodivergent blind creator and also activist in that space. And I think although I think TikTok can get a really bad pep, it's actually really good for getting those bite sized bits of information out to a really, really broad, umm, community, because a lot of the information and kind of the books and the some of the podcasts we're talking about, you have to kind of be in the know sometimes to know that they're there. I find and I think we're in the privileged position that we do know that they're there so we can discern which ones we want to read and which ones we don't and which is why I have, I find, kind of the online activism quite important as well. Ian Lasch Yeah, it also, I mean there's a, there's a I think in terms of raising awareness and raising acceptance it that online advocacy is really important because especially for something like TikTok, which is a video based medium, you actually put a human face to a lot of this, which doesn't happen with the book or with a journal article or something like that. And the thing that affects people most. I mean, you hear this time and again that the thing that changes people's minds is they finally have a personal experience with it. Well, finding someone on TikTok and hearing from them isn't the same as having a friend is going through it. Or anything like that. But it is, it does offer a sort of personal lens that I think brings it home to people in a way that words on a page simply aren't capable of. And so it - yeah, I think can be even more effective in some ways, especially for the average person that doesn't have experience with it, right. Krysia Waldock And I think especially where we work often involves researchers and we kind of write for the academic audience and sometimes we use language that isn't necessarily all that accessible to Joe Bloggs on the street or Joe Bloggs in church. Ian Lasch Right. Krysia Waldock Joe Bloggs, who attends mosque on Friday, Joe Bloggs, who goes to whatever kind of community or congregation or religious space and I think it's this is why I'm really pro kind of us breaking down our research and disseminating it in really different creative ways. I know as part of a project that Leon was part of, he created like Zine as part of it. And I think almost in a way, although that's not really a recommended book, I would almost recommend the way that he disseminated some of his findings for that project on autism and autistic people's experiences of worship. Ian Lasch Yeah, that's and that's the - that's the tricky part, like and one of the things that you'll find if you read book length treatments is a lot of the same ground gets tread because you can't assume anyone has the same knowledge base, so you end up talking about definitions of autism. What do we mean when we say autism? How do we refer to autistic people? Are they autistic people or people with autism? Krysia Waldock Mhmm. Ian Lasch And all of this ground that you have to cover in order to make sure everybody's starting from the same foundation and in reality not that that's a bad thing. Not that that's not that there's anything wrong with that, but sometimes what people need is to have a human being that they can, that they understand and that they that they recognize saying no, don't call me person with autism. Krysia Waldock Yeah. Ian Lasch Call me an autistic person, and when you hear it from an individual, not that that needs to be persuasive or not. That that's universally accepted or anything. But it is, I think, more convincing than looking at survey data for a lot of people, right? Krysia Waldock Yeah. Ian Lasch Right. Krysia Waldock And I guess also in regards to kind of a lot of the ground setting we do when we write about it in academia, we can sometimes we are asked to write things up when at necessarily all that comfortable with saying autism is XYZ when actually for us all being autistic is not you know necessarily what's on might be written in the DSM five or the ICD 11 it's it's it's it has the struggles and there's joy as well. And one of the words I've used when doing training before is it's - it's stimmy to be autistic and had to explain. It's obviously seeing all the patterns and the colours and all the sensory stuff. Actually yes, there are lots of barriers, but it's not inherently - it's how I experience. Ian Lasch Right. Krysia Waldock the world, it's not inherently a bad thing, and I think that's what I've some of the certainly reading Leon’s book. It was really, really respectful and I really appreciated that. And Erin’s as well. So I think there's some really good resources which are pulling on the of breaking things down the way from this academic mould of this is how we should describe autistic people, ADHDers, people with dyslexia, you know, it's opening and challenging the discussion that's going on. Ian Lasch Right. And this is I mean this is the exciting thing about being part of this is this is a really I mean this is a this is a conversation and a subdiscipline that's really sort of in its infancy that really has a long way to go until there's a there's a sort of critical consensus around a lot of these topics. Not that they're ever needs to be necessarily, but the, but the fact is, there's still. There's still a lot to be a lot of ground to be covered when it comes to autism in general, and autism and theology, because we just don't. There just isn't that much out there because we've only been studying this for 20-25 years, really. One of the books I meant to mention too that I'm that I haven't yet read, but I'm excited about is Lisa D Powell's the Disabled God Revisited, which again is one that's not about autism and theology per se, but is a sort of expansion of Nancy Eiesland's really foundational disability theology texts, the disabled, God, and. And so I'm really excited to read that that just came out last year and I think you know all the reviews and everything that I've read have been pretty universally positive. Krysia Waldock That's really good. And actually that's another one or my to read list my to read list is absolutely huge at the moment, especially where I'm tying up a thesis. Ian Lasch Sure. Krysia Waldock I'm having to kind of be quite intentional with what I'm reading and what I'm not reading, but that is certainly one that I think is definitely on my I want to have a look at that. Ian Lasch Yeah. Krysia Waldock I want to see what it's like and how it positions they people and things and it. Ian Lasch So yeah, I mean, there's just a lot. There, there is a lot out there and especially knowing that autism and theology touches on disability theology more broadly, there is a lot of material out there. But at the same time, compared to some other subdisciplines, there isn't right there. Just isn't that much because it's so young. So that's one of the things that I'm most excited about is that we get to see this develop and play hand in it. Krysia Waldock Definitely. And I guess it would also be really great to hear what our listeners think, what books say, like what books they would recommend, any other podcasts or resources as well, because I'm very aware we we're just scratching the surface of some of the resources and all sorts of things that people might know. So if you'd like to let us know about your favourite book or resource, and don't hesitate to get in contact with us at @autism theology on X or Instagram, or to send us an email at CAT@abdn.ac.uk. It's been great chatting today with Ian and we look forward to our next CAT episode.