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This week, Krysia, Ian, and Zoe discuss the ways in which COVID and the pandemic made church more accessible for people on the margins, including many autistic people. They explore ways that churches could be more aware and inclusive of people who are once again on the margins now that life is 'back to normal.'
The transcript of the episode is available here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/c1402b46/transcript.txt
Grant Macaskill's lecture mentioned by Zoe: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMZ9UzrhWDk
Grant Macaskill's lecture mentioned by Zoe: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMZ9UzrhWDk
If you have any questions, or just want to say hi, email us at cat@abdn.ac.uk or find us on twitter @autismtheology.
This podcast is brought to you by The University of Aberdeen's Centre for Autism and Theology.
The artwork for this podcast uses the Centre for Autism and Theology Logo, created by Holly Russel.
Creators & Guests
Host
Ian Lasch
PhD candidate at the university of Aberdeen researching autism and the Imago Dei
Host
What is Autism and Theology Podcast?
The Autism and Theology Podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, share relevant resources, and promote ways in which both faith and non-faith communities can enable autistic people to flourish.
Our episodes are released on the first Wednesday of every month. We have a variety of guests who are related in some way to the field of autism and theology. Some are academics, others are people with life stories to share, and some are both!
We also release CATChat every third Wednesday of the month. These are shorter and more informal episodes where your hosts will share news and give you as listeners an opportunity to ask questions and share your stories.
Ian: Hello and welcome to this episode of the Autism and Theology podcast. I'm Ian and I'm joined by Zoe and Krysia and we're so excited you've joined us this week. And this episode, this Cat Chat episode is about, uh, online church and about the impact of COVID then and now on inclusion.
Krysia: We felt this is a really important conversation to have in line with the episode that I hosted with Naomi and Emily at the beginning of April, especially the threads part of our discuss structured discussion on how cOVID actually radically changed what church looked like and who, where the barrier sat and who actually was then included and excluded. Um, and, Yeah, I mean, it's certainly something that I've experienced, certainly as part of various communities I'm involved with. I now, um, attend things online. It's just so much more for me accessible, especially where I have quite severe social anxiety, walking into a building with people I've never met before, or even people who I know.
Even when I went to my parents church, I used to find it really anxiety provoking with, is someone going to come up to me? Is someone going to randomly start talking about something that I haven't Kind of, I'm not comfortable, kind of in the zone, because I'm going to church to worship, I'm going to church to be at church, I'm not going to church, in my mind, to have a chat about what's on TV last Saturday, or, um, how my PhD is going, or if I have a job yet, that, that's kind of chit chat, which kind of, for me, disrupted and actually made it really difficult to engage with what's church was, and actually moving it online removed some of that, um, extraneous conversation, which I think was people just trying to be friendly and welcoming, but I actually found really quite difficult.
Zoe: Yeah, absolutely. And I think even from a non autistic perspective, I can see that as well, like from the point of view of tiredness, like, um, sometimes, like, I think especially with being dyslexic, I get very tired very easily. I find like a lot of, um, Yeah, I can just get quite overwhelmed with trying to process a lot of information.
So I think it isn't even just like an exclusively autistic experience of that kind of church being like a lot and the sort of social expectations and actually having church online, you can then come away from church not feeling drained. And that was a really interesting experience.
Ian: I think part of what's, what's really interesting about it to me is, is Um, is, is seeing it as a, as a clergy person. I see it sort of from both sides, right? In that, there is, there was this moment in time that was brought about by a crisis, which expanded the walls of the church, so to speak, or really sort of tore them down and made it much more accessible, much more egalitarian in some ways, um, made it much, put, put, Put a lot of people on more equal footing, and this is something that a lot of people had been clamoring for for a long time, right?
The, the ability for accessibility that the possibility of, um, of, uh, participation via distance of, of, Being able to sort of engage in ways that don't require being there in person, because there are a lot of reasons why people can't necessarily do that every single time. But there's also, I'm sympathetic, I'll say, to the theological argument on the part of some clergy that says there is something different about gathering, right?
Um, that we are, especially as Christians, we are an incarnational faith, and so there is something good about gathering in the body, at least in theory. Um, and so how do we hold both of those in tension and how do we, how do we make it accessible without, um, without sort of, you know, How can we, how can we continue to learn from what we, what we were forced to do during COVID in making things accessible for everyone while still affirming that there is something good about being together when it's, when it's suitable and when people are able to do it.
Krysia: Yeah, and I guess also, when we think about when people are able to come together, we think, we have to almost think about, and I'm writing something about this, related to this for my thesis at the moment, about what barriers we actually create within churches. So when we say, oh yeah, we should all come together and there's a real argument for us to be physically together.
Often that will come from a place of not necessarily seeing all of the barriers that the three of us will face and also many of our listeners will face as well. So also almost demands a different way of doing church. Um, and I think the COVID pandemic and kind of, as Ian says, bringing down the barrier, kind of the walls of the church, which I think is such a fantastic way of describing it.
has almost forced us to rethink how we can redo church and I think there's still quite a bit of thinking to do and I think there's a lot that we can learn from the people who all of a sudden were inside the walls who were previously outside the walls if that makes sense.
Zoe: Yeah and I wonder if a lot of what you're saying as well kind of relates to that I guess assumption during Covid that people, everyone wanted to get back to normal and like the kind of the assumed kind of, I know when like listening to church services there would quite often be this assumed like, oh, you know, I know we're all just so keen to get back to normal, but we just need to put up with this for the time being.
We just need to make the most of it. And that's a really interesting statement when you did have people who, like you were saying Krysia, were suddenly able to participate in a way that they maybe weren't before.
And yeah, we're those people now.
Ian: Yeah. And that's the thing is I think what we're, what we're, what we're trying to fight against or what we need to fight against is that impulse that a lot of people have of just this sort of almost desperation to get back to quote unquote normal, that our lives as we knew them or, or people's lives as they knew them were disrupted for a period of time.
And that was so, I mean, I don't, I, I don't want to minimize that. That was traumatic for a lot of people, right? The idea that we couldn't even gather. I mean, I was in a community where we had to reschedule our Christmas Eve service because we couldn't gather in person indoors and it rained, right? So like, that's, That's dramatic.
That's significant for a community to have to have to sort of adjust on the fly and not be able to mark those sacred moments. But I think instead of learning from what COVID forced us to do, instead of saying, How can we incorporate some of these lessons? We were just so desperate to get back to quote unquote normal, that that's been all we've been able to do.
And so instead of saying, How can we, how can we. How can we continue to make worship more accessible? How can we continue to include people that are otherwise excluded? Our focus has been on getting away from the trauma and back to what we consider normal.
Krysia: And I guess this also shows just how strong what Thomas Reynolds would say the cult of normalcy is and how it pervasively drives It's a lot of the, almost the in group, out group scenario of how we think about churches.
So when I talk about in group, out group, I think about people who are physically in the churches and people who are physically, are excluded. And also psychologically in with the kind of people who are a part of the congregation and people who don't feel that they're a part of the group. So I think that really much lends, when we think about some of the boundaries and the pull, I think this idea of being back to normal and normal being so prized. possibly is at the heart of this and also is part of the problem that's being caused.
Zoe: Yeah, and I wonder as well if we've lost some of the like creativity we had during Covid in that sense of like bringing people together online, like there were some really creative ways that people came up with of connecting with each other, of um, Yeah, like using the technology and resources that we have and even later on doing like quite cool things outside and having to be more creative and like, I guess a lot of what we're well, we're going to talk about this.
I'm just thinking like, I can't think of the last time there was like a really, I saw a really creative way of connecting different people in a slightly different way. And yeah, I don't know when I've seen that so strongly since COVID. That's not to say it doesn't happen and churches aren't being creative.
But yeah, I wonder if we've kind of, if that's one of the things we've sort of forgotten about.
Ian: Think, I think part of this is that, um, is, you know, one of the fundamental questions we need to, we, I think we should always ask ourselves as Christians, as communities, is what if we're wrong? Right? And I think that's one of the hardest questions to remember to ask. I have never been in a church community of any kind.
I mean, visiting anywhere. I have never been in a church community that did not describe itself or did not consider itself welcoming. Right? So that's a fundamental assumption that everyone has is we welcome whoever comes here. But obviously, that's not true. Because if you did, your community would look a lot different, right?
If you really truly welcomed everyone, but they tend to be homogenous, they tend to sort of represent unspoken assumptions about what this community is. And that can sometimes even be a good thing, right? If you know who you are, you don't want to get too far away from that, right? But. One of the, one of the things that that means is that there are people who are excluded, including some that you just don't even think about excluding, right?
So if you're a, if you're an Anglo Catholic parish, for example, you don't want a bunch of necessarily Protestants coming in and, and guitaring up the place, right? Um, but that doesn't, there are a lot of unspoken assumptions or, or, or sort of implicit exclusions of people who would otherwise be really at home in that parish, but that you haven't even thought about.
And that's the part that I really wish we would reflect more on in the wake of COVID and as an effect of COVID is that we for a time were able to be more inclusive of a lot of those people, um, by being creative and by, and by trying out new things. And then, then we decided it was okay to get back to normal.
And then we were like, All right, let's just, let's do what we do.
Krysia: And I think those almost implicit assumptions on who we include and exclude, in spite of kind of being welcoming, I think if churches did not say that they were welcoming, people would feel quite uncomfortable. So I'm wondering if it's almost a, a culture of we are trying to welcome, people.
Um, and it's something we say, and it's certainly come up in my research, it's something we say not necessarily with thinking about who we actually want to include and exclude and what are effectively our espoused theologies. So how we put what we say in regards to what we believe versus how we put what we believe into action, there seems to be this big disjoint that kind of one, what could, but almost bashes about with inclusion and there's also this cognitive dissonance that people don't realise that there is this big gap between the two.
Zoe: Yeah and I guess it kind of comes back to that idea of um welcoming being a sort of like buzzword and what's that actually mean um and then you've got language like belonging. and thriving, that actually really addresses what people are trying to say when they say that they're welcoming, and then having that language is actually more directed, well, okay, yeah, technically everyone is welcome to come through your doors, but does that, does every single person that comes through have a place where they can belong and a place where they can thrive?
And I guess that's where that more directed language helps in these conversations, and it's, okay, well, how did people who maybe belonged in the church during Covid How do they belong now, when things are back to normal? Um, and yeah, it's It's kind of scary to ask that, I guess, because then you've got to look at yourself and think, how do I, like, how do I, as someone who goes to church, yeah, okay, I can be welcoming, yeah, okay, I can chat to someone on a Sunday and keep an eye out for things that are maybe not so inclusive or not so helpful, but actually, it's, that's a very different thing to looking at the people in the community and saying, who does not belong and what can be done to make those people belong.
Ian: Yeah, I think that's the, that's the, that's the primary question is how do we, how do we look at the groups that we are excluding and actually evaluate our practices and and try to include them more. And this is the frustrating thing for a lot of autistic people or for a lot of immunocompromised people is that this, these are accommodations or, or, or changes that they've been asking for for a long time.
And then March, 2020 hit and we proved that we could do it if we wanted to. Right? We can be inclusive. We can make accommodations if we're so inclined. And yeah, maybe not every single church can keep that up indefinitely because it took an extraordinary effort. By and large, a lot of communities could do more than they are doing.
I think that's just, we have to be honest about that fact, but we got to the point where we thought, well, this is only benefiting a few people, or this isn't really worth our time anymore. Um, and so we've made a calculated decision to say, we're going to go back to excluding those people. We're going to go back to making it clear that those people don't belong.
And that's. That's a tough pill to swallow as a church community, but it's, but it's the truth, right? That's what we've done.
Zoe: But I guess, how do you address that is the kind of big question. I'm just thinking, you know, my church still puts a live stream online, like many other churches do. So, in that sense, yeah, okay, the church service is still accessible, but that doesn't mean that people aren't still excluded just because they can watch the service. Um, so yeah, I guess it's like how, yeah, it's all very well us saying this and saying these very real problems, but yeah, what does, how can the church learn from the stuff that we saw in COVID? Still meet in person, still prioritise that, like, as you said, that theological idea of being together physically, but not exclude people who that creates barriers for her.
Krysia: Yeah, I think it also raises the question around how we perceive online church as well because I think there's certain people who I know of who would think, oh, you're just sitting and watching a service online, it's like sitting and watching television. Oh, you're just consuming it and it's put under this consumerism model, which I think again is why some people may not see it perhaps in the church like that it should. But I guess also inversely there's other groups of people I know who are still as kind of disabled and autistic and neurodivergent in their communities doing this online work and groups of people have found stuff and they're continuing it going. So it's almost like the problems that are kind of are existing are to do with perhaps What we would call institutional churches, churches with buildings but it's kind of those kind of things physical building churches rather than the different kinds of churches that perhaps are more nebulous and more creative.
Zoe: Yeah, so almost like accepting those churches that aren't necessarily that aren't necessarily physical churches as we might traditionally view them, accepting that those are still spaces where people can meet with God and meet with one another and not kind of looking down on those and making unfair judgments.
Krysia: Yeah, because it's almost like how we define church was radically shifted during COVID and I think sometimes we've gone back a bit because there are people who physically can't access things online, um, or perhaps who haven't got access to the internet or aren't perhaps as technology savvy. Um, but at the same time, we can't be saying that we can't do stuff in other more creative ways and that isn't still church.
Ian: I think the thing that, from a practical perspective, that needs to underlie this, one of the things that we need to be honest about as church communities is there is no monolithic church community. If you go to a church, and most churches have, like, two different service times, right, at least in the U. S.,
that's the pattern, is you have an early service and you have a later service, and for all intents and purposes, that means you have two distinct congregations that overlap a bit, they encounter each other sometimes. But it's like two distinct congregations sharing a building. You have like one or two members that may bounce back and forth between the services.
But for all practical purposes, those are two distinct congregations. And then if you have a midweek service, that's another distinct congregation, because it's generally the same people who show up to that, right? So if you create an online service, online only even, rather than just live streaming, or an online Bible study, or something along those lines, you are creating a different sort of community.
You are creating a new community. But we have already done that even in the institutional churches even in the church buildings, right? That has always been part of our pattern is this establishing different sort of sub communities And I don't know. I don't know what what the hang up is with viewing online communities in that same through that same sort of lens as understanding them as a distinct community that's still under that larger church umbrella. But to me, that's a that's a that's a big deal. healthier way to think about it because then we can think about what different kinds of communities that don't exist that meet needs that are in the community can we establish and and how can we go about doing that in in new and creative ways
Zoe: yeah that's such a helpful way to think about
in terms of like the groups that we already create in churches and yeah definitely and i think there's also something to be said for like How many different voices you then bring into the church, like we've talked about this so much on the podcast and autism and Theology, the importance of different voices and theological interpretation and just like informing how we do life and how we Um, yeah, how we live.
And I think that's something Grant McCaskill spoke about at a lecture I attended on, like, the impacts of long COVID. And he was just speaking about that, like, especially in terms of academic conferences and the people who were suddenly getting heard in these spaces when things were put onto online, and suddenly people who maybe wouldn't have gone to conferences were able to present papers and that was informing practice and then suddenly that stopped and I think that translates into this conversation about church.
Like, if you can include a space that is online that is still very much integrated into the church life and is seen as a valuable part of the church, I wonder how we would then see some of those more, um, Institutional change is happening because I wonder if we'd be hearing more voices, um, and if those voices would then inform church practice a little bit more than they currently do in a lot of situations,
Ian: which, and that reminds me of one thing I want to make sure I say before we end, which is.
I said earlier that I'm sympathetic to the argument that, or the theological argument, that there is something incarnational about the church. But if you want to uphold that as a value, if you want to say it is important for us to be together physically, then the bare minimum standard you have to meet to make that a reality is to make this a place that is safe for people to gather.
And if you're not willing to put a mask on, then it is not a safe place for immunocompromised individuals during an ongoing pandemic right? So there are measures if you, if you're insisting that the organ be blaring or that the, that the, that the incense be made so hazy that you can't see up to the altar, then you are making this a place that is not not safe or not, not accessible for some people. And you, you have to live with the consequences of that, right? That, that you can affirm all you want that this is a, this is an inclusive incarnational space. But if you don't meet that bare minimum standard, then, then it's not, it's not inclusive.
Krysia: And I really like the way you framed it, Ian, in terms of it being a safe space.
I think when people think of accessibility, they often think of it as an expensive tag on, or we've got to do X, Y, and Z, and it's extra work. But actually reframing it as safety, which for so many of us, including us three, is just so important with how we experience church. And the friends I have, when they felt unsafe, they've left congregations and left various spaces.
That's almost a much It's a much stronger call to actually be working towards what we're actually saying, rather than just going, Oh, it's accessibility. Yes, it is accessibility. But when places are accessible, we feel safe.
Zoe: Well, this has been such an interesting discussion. I think really helpful. I know a lot of people are probably fed up of thinking and talking about COVID, but I do think that this conversation shows that there are still things we need to address and things that we need to reflect back on as well.
But thank you so much for joining us on today's CATChat episode. It's been a really great discussion. Um, Also, if you have any questions for us, or any other reflections off the back of what we've spoken about today, you can message us at autismandtheology on Twitter or Instagram, or send us an email at cat@abdn.ac.uk
we would love to hear from you, even just to say hi. Our next episode will be released on the first Wednesday of May.