Zoe: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Autism and Theology Podcast. Brought to you by the Center for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

Krysia: Hello and welcome to this episode of the Autism and Theology Podcast. I'm Krysia, and it's great that you've joined us this week. This podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology sharing relevant resources and promoting ways that help faith and non-faith communities enable autistic people to flourish.

If you'd like to access the transcript for this episode, it can be found in the link in the show notes, and today we'll catch up. We can have a super exciting conversation about autism neurodivergent groups and how churches are kind of, and faith groups can actually almost harness this, how they are harnessing it.

Zoe: Yeah, I am really excited about this discussion. I love it when we do a slightly rogue one. Um, but yeah, I would it be fun to start by like sharing which kinda groups we are all involved in as neuro divergent people?

Krysia: So one of the big, one of the things I like to do on a Saturday or a Sunday is I like to go walking around either South London or Gravesend where I live or some other places and I play Pokemon Go. And what's really, really funny is the amount of autistic people that play Pokemon Go.

I think I've met more autistic people who play Pokemon Go than people who are not. Autistic or not neurodivergent. And I remember once we were up in Bexleyheath and there was a group of young people kind of flexing their diagnoses at each other, which was quite amusing. I didn't get involved. I thought, you don't know that there's another autistic person listening.

But it's so interesting how people, it attracts a certain type of person and group certain groups of people to it, and also how. It then moderates how we communicate with each other. 'cause people generally are quite direct but not rude. So if we need to do something, you would, there won't be any, it'll be just, we need to move on.

You need to do this, you need to have this in your party, this Pokemon, this is the iv. And people would've often remembered all the numbers of the best kind of, um, stats you can get and everything like that. Um. So that, that's one of the main kind of autistic led groups that I am involved with.

Ian: And I, um, I am, I am not really involved in any groups at this time. So much of my life depends on [00:03:00] being sociable, that, uh, for the most part, when I actually have free time, which is relatively rare these days, that I tend towards isolated individual activities. So jigsaw puzzles, um. Video games at, but never multiplayer video games unless it's with my son.

Um, but in the past I've been in, involved in d and d involved in board games, um, those sorts of things. It's, but you know, one of the things I, I just want to. Just want to actually make this explicit, but what we're talking about to some extent is autistic special interest. Right? Um, or at least from an autistic perspective, that, that a lot of times you have a special interest and, and maybe it, maybe it wanes as time goes on, or you, you dip in and out of certain communities or certain activities.

But this is, uh, to me, that's, that's. Part of what we're talking about from, at least as far as autistics are concerned, are what are your special interests? And, and how do those connect you to other communities that are, that are built around those? And you find so many of, uh, of those around, you know, comic books or video games or gaming or, um, you know, any number of things like that.

Birding is another one. Right? Um, and so there are opportunities for faith communities to create space for that if they're, if they are so inclined. 

Zoe: Yeah, obviously I'm speaking as, as I always say, speaking as like a dyslexic person, not an autistic person. Um, but something I have gotten into in like the last couple years is d and d and it's.

The group is predominantly neurodivergent. I'm dyslexic. Um, another member has OCD and um, our DM is autistic. And it's been really interesting. We always kind of reflect on this. Um, Harry who comes and speaks, he's like the leading theologian in d and d as we like to call him. Um, so I'm very lucky to have him as my dm, but he very much like comes into it with a mindset of like, okay, how do we make this.

Um, easy for everyone and I was quite apprehensive about going in 'cause a lot of DD is number bonds, which I have always struggled with. Um, but he's been really mindful of like, like he sent me the suggestion of like having the D 20 as a different color so immediately I know which once a D 20 without having to like look at it and identify it.

Um, and it's been really interesting seeing how like. I think because d and d does attract a lot of autistic and neurodivergent people, it can, people are, there's maybe more out there about how to do it in a neurodivergent friendly way. Um, and yeah, it's been quite fun. And also just like, I mean, yeah, Harry speaks a lot about like.

Being slightly different in the world and then exploring your identity and these things through d and d and yeah, very much sees the value of it within faith communities as well. Although ours isn't a like faith, we're just friends playing it for fun. Um, yeah, [00:06:00] you can see how it would be really beneficial in faith communities and groups.

Ian: Yeah, I think that's the, that's the thing to me is so often faith communities have this shared expected understanding of what it means to build community and what it means to sort of have fellowship. Um, you'll see that term a lot and it often just involves like. I say just this isn't meant to be dismissive, but it often involves sharing a meal together, doing something sociable that doesn't, that isn't built around something specific or maybe as a set of conversations around a topic, but that's still, um, we tend to make the socializing the end unto itself rather than the means to an end.

Um, and, and in reality, a lot of autistic and, and. Neurodivergent communication in general tends to be means to an end, right? That we're not talking just to talk or just to build rapport or, um, just to build relationship. We end up building relationship because we're talking about something specific that we're, that we're interested in together, right?

So. One of the things that I think faith communities ought to consider is, are there ways that we could provide opportunities for Fellowship for community building that are built on a different set of expectations, right? Can we have a, a board game night where everybody brings a board game that they like, or, you know, everybody comes and, and the expectation is just, we're gonna play a board game together, not we're just gonna socialize, right?

Or, um, can you plan an event? That, that gets everybody out and doing something together. Um, maybe that appeals to people, whether that's, you know, birdwatching or a sports event or something like that. You can, you can offer, um, a sort of common ground for, for all sorts of people to share that isn't just built on socializing, if that makes sense.

Zoe: Yeah, that makes sense. And I think it's just like kind of off back what you're saying. I was thinking about like a different context, what we're speaking about, but I was just on my church's weekend away and I would say like the times I felt like most connected to people and most like learned the most about other people's personalities was like sitting down and playing a game of mafia or like doing team challenges.

And actually that was much more beneficial for feeling like part of a church family, um, if you wanna call it that, than. Sitting with cup of tea chatting between the talks and it's that kind of like, you're not, actually, it is weird 'cause you shouldn't necessarily be learning about someone else in a sort of like our, like social ideas of you sit down and have a conversation, but actually through that, like just having fun and being a bit silly and um, yeah, you actually learn a lot about people and feel that sort of like community building and, yeah.[00:09:00] 

Krysia: And 

I think I have quite significant social anxiety, so anybody who wants me to go to something where we are just aimlessly sitting and chatting about small talk is my idea of a nightmare. But if we are going and we can still do talk theology and talk church and talk Christianity while doing things, in fact, some of the best conversations I've had are whilst I'm having a chat about a book.

Or we've gone and done an activity or an escape room or, um. Gone to see some music or something. It's those conversations where you are doing something that then gives my anxiety much more of an anchor, and it also gives me something to be able to contribute as someone who's quite slow to process things.

Because if someone starts talking, I, I haven't even, I haven't prepared or I just go, I don't know, because I'm still processing and getting all the bits put together. But if we are doing something tangible, like. I mean, I'm not a crafty person at all, but if we were sitting and painting together, or I wouldn't sit and sew with a group of people, but my mom and sister go to sewing machine club at their church and they have a whale of a time.

'cause they sit there and they bring their, their sewing machines down the road and say they live about five minutes from the church. And it's such a good initiative from the church that I think doing stuff through the interests that we have allows for really good community building, but also allows us to have those conversations about faith in a much safer environment, I think.

Zoe: Yeah. 

And if we're being like, kind of thinking like, um, from a faith perspective even more, it's like, well if we, um, if we. Or of the opinion that like we're created in a certain way and like, um, the, like the way we think is the way God created us to be, then our interests can fall into that as well. I guess it's like the things that interest us and engage us.

Um, I don't wanna be too like, spiritual about it, but I think like a lot of these things are like part of our God-given personalities and, um. The way that our brains work. And that's something that should also be celebrated in church, I guess, alongside, um, the slightly more, not just celebrated, but celebrated and prioritized maybe in churches, like how we are as people and what we find fun and interesting and engaging as people.

Um, you know, we say like, it's good to think of our own ways of how we engage with God, um, but also just how we engage in communities is also an important thing to. Be aware of and sensitive to. 

Krysia: Yeah. 'cause it's almost like we are past the age of kind of hard chairs and numb bums and everyone's sitting at the front, kind of front looking at the front, at the preacher, at the front.

Because we know in schools that doesn't work. So you'd think that, and we know that from a quite a lot of church things, that actually us being able to. Get involved and do things can really help us build spiritual [00:12:00] life as well and help break down those barriers, especially when we're thinking about how many, when we look at some of the literature and some of the experiences and stories of various disabled and neuro divergent people.

Um. There are significant barriers to getting into church. But when we think about if we do church slightly differently, we then take away all those barriers or some of those barriers and allow us to take the church outside the physical church in a way, be it trundling down the road with your sewing machine, having D, doing D and D, all those kind of different things.

And I think also. The thing I find really interesting about more neurodivergent led groups is they're often quite organic. People don't sit there and go, I'm going to do this and I'm gonna set up this. It's just kind of organically happens. That's certainly what happens in the POGO community, um, where people just kind of.

Group together, and certainly when we think about some of the work that Steve Owens has done and some of the other work, actually, it's been a really organic, natural place from a place of need rather than someone going top down and going, we're going to do this, I.

Ian: Yeah, I, I, you know, um, I don't know if this is helpful, but from a historical perspective, one of the things that always, that always strikes me is that the great ecumenical strides that we made in the church in the 20th century were built around two main things, or it came as a result of two main things.

And the first, in the early 20th century was around mission, right? What can we, as the church do for the world? And we realized. We actually share a lot in common. And when we're working for common purpose, we draw closer together. And the second was around liturgical reform, where we all started looking at historical documents and saying, actually, maybe, maybe we used to have more in common.

We used to do more differently, uh, do things differently than we do now. How can we revise and reform our, our liturgical, um, texts to bring them more in line with, with. The historical practice of the church. And what we found was around those two tasks, when we're working sort of together, even if it's, even if it's very task oriented, very goal oriented, it actually brought us together.

Right. And we felt like, uh, we felt more. Together more in communion with each other as a result of working towards something. And the same thing happens in a church community. I've had, um, faith in action Sundays where instead of worshiping in the church, you break up into small groups and go like rake leaves for neighbors who need, who, who, who aren't able to do that for themselves or help, you know, do minor repairs around houses and do things out in the community.

And those have always. Built more comradery, fellowship, closeness, and, and feeling like I know and am working towards something with someone than, than a month [00:15:00] of Sundays, right? Um, because if we are the body of Christ, well, what do bodies do? Bodies do stuff. Right. They don't just exist and perpetuate themselves or exist to perpetuate themselves.

They do things and by doing things and working together, you realize actually we really do depend on each other. So having those things, you know, even even task oriented things where we say we're gonna have an escape room, or we're gonna have a hockey night, or we're gonna, you know, go do this thing together, offers a chance for people to really.

Sort of pull in the same direction and feel part of a community in a lot of ways. And it can be, I mean, it can be a game night, it can be getting together and doing puzzles together and just sort of chatting over 'em, you know?

Zoe: Yeah. I think like. I really like what you're saying. Ian, I think it's that idea of like, sometimes it doesn't even matter necessarily what we're doing as long as it's something we're like enjoying doing together, um, is a really important part of community building. And um, yeah, as always we could discuss this for hours and hours and hours, but I think that's, um, yeah.

Good time to close the discussion. Krysia mentioned Steve owens if anyone's interested. Um, Steve is heading up a online community aimed at autistic, um, autistic people, and you can find an episode he did with us. I'll put it in the show notes because it's. Kind of expands a lot on these conversations we're having in a slightly different way and focuses on the online stuff and like, how do you be part of a community when it's hard to get to a church sometimes, um, for various accessibility reasons.

So yeah, really recommend the episodes. Um. And everything he's doing. But yeah, this has been so much fun. Um, thank you for listening. If you have any questions, you can email us at cat@abdn.ac.uk or send us a message on social media. We'd love to hear from you, whether it's a question or just to say hi.

Thank you for listening to the Autism and Theology Podcast. If you have any questions for us or just wanna say hi, please email us at cat@abdn.ac.uk or find us on Twitter at Autism Theology.