CATChat 19: The Fruits of the Spirit and Neurodiversity

In this CATChat episode, Krysia and Zoe answer a listener question about neurodiversity and fruits of the spirit.

The transcript of the episode is available here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/fda76080/transcript.txt

If you have any questions, or just want to say hi, email us at [e-mail] or find us on twitter @autismtheology.

This podcast is brought to you by The University of Aberdeen's Centre for Autism and Theology.

Website: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/cat

The artwork for this podcast uses the Centre for Autism and Theology Logo, created by Holly Russel

Articles mentioned:
Grant Macaskill, Joy and Autism: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23312521.2020.1750535
John Swinton, Autistic Love: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1558/prth.v5i3.259
Autistic love and relationships webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wbWPTwg7wM

Register for Religion, Disability and Neurodivergence Conference: https://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/key-bsa-events/religion-disability-and-neurodivergence-reflecting-on-the-socrel-response-day-2025/?fbclid=IwY2xjawI_-v5leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHYiUdgEaA8JTEQjnjXRsee94dZO2COwOIZATN57r051RqtU8ku8a6ufnSw_aem_ABbNUpWQJ0Zx2Acp1xKruw

Creators and Guests

Host

Krysia Waldock

Autistic PhDer: autism, belonging & religion. Assistant lecturer in RS @relstudieskent. Research assistant @UniKentCyberSec. Own views. she/they ;

Host

Zoe Strong

PhD candidate at Aberdeen Uni studying dyslexia and engaging with the Bible. @SGSAH funded. @CumberlandLodge fellow. Autism and Theology Podcast 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.

Zoe: 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. Non communities enable autistic people to flourish.

If you'd like to access the transcript for this episode, it can be found via the link in the show notes. And today on CAT chat, we're going to talk about a question that we've had from a viewer, which Zoe is going to fantastically share with us 'cause it's quite a, a really meaty question we really wanted to get into for our whole episode.

Zoe: Yeah, I mean, as always, we so appreciate when listeners send in questions. I think this one was sent back when we did a general listener question episode, but as Krysia said, we felt it had so much in it that really needed more space than kind of five minutes of chatting about it. Um, so yeah, the listener has written in saying.

As someone diagnosed by the NHS with autism, A DHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, Synthesia, sorry if I've said that wrong and more I often reflect on the intersection of faith and neurodivergence, especially in relation to apologetics. Currently, I've been contemplating the fruits of the spirit, humility and emotional regulation.

Emotional regulation is a significant challenge for me, as it's deeply affected by the executive function differences inherent in neurodivergence. While many people recognize the executive function in terms of planning, organizing, the emotional aspect is often less understood. Even though I hope to live a Christ-centered life and generally consider myself peaceable, there are times where I become extremely emotionally dysregulated in stressful situations without realizing it.

Reflecting later, I often feel a mix of guilt, pride, and conviction over not embodying Christ-like behavior. This can be compounded by my innate drive for justice, fairness, and knowledge, qualities that can sometimes make navigating pride into humility even more challenging. Personally, I'm also retrospectively incredibly embarrassed and want to vanish.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic in a future episode specifically discussion on how Neurodivergence intersects with the fruits of the spirit and the grace Jesus offers us in our struggles could resonate with many listeners navigating similar journeys. So yeah, as Krysia said, a very meaty question, but so much there to unpack.

Um, so yeah, let's get into it. Krysia, I don't know if you had any kind of immediate thoughts about that.

Krysia: I guess one of the immediate thoughts I had were some of, when we think of some of the fruits of the spirits, like faithfulness, patience, kindness, there's an innateness in what we might do, and then there's also what I.

how others perceive that and how wide does society perceives that and what is the right way to be kind, or the right way to be patient, or the right way to have the correct amount of executive functioning. And as someone who has self-proclaimed the executive functioning of a teaspoon, I don't find that particularly helpful.

And I think I find that. They're really the fruits of the spirit. And I think Zoe's, we had some ideas before we responded to this kind of in terms of backwards and forwards. Sometimes the way that churches teach them is quite normatively in terms of this is the best neurotypical way to embody it without using those exact words.

And I think sometimes that that's not particularly helpful for people's. Brains and bodies who are not neurotypical, not able bodied, not this ideal recipient of some of the teaching that might go on in churches. And I think it is almost a challenge for some of the teaching to be more diverse and almost what I would say a bit more flexible to different people's.

Lived ex different lived experiences, different cognitions, different minds and bodies and yeah, that was kind of my initial thought is actually they're really important things, but sometimes how we package them actually sometimes moves away. Sometimes, or sometimes expectations we might have them, sometimes might move away from perhaps the best way.

For us as either autistic people, ADHDers, dyslexic people. Dyspraxic people broadly, more neuro divergent people to be able to. Engage with and do those fruits of the spirit and also those judgements that other people might have in terms of we communicate perhaps more directly that might not be seen as kind, but actually it could be really kind.

You're just not, there's a difference in nice and kind. You could be being really helpful and supportive to someone, and people are looking at maybe the way you've communicated it rather than the actual content, which could be really supportive. So I think there's an awful lot to unpack. I dunno what your thoughts are, Zoe.

Zoe: Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with all of that. I think, um. When we teach the fruits of the spirit often, um, me and Krysia were laughing before 'cause we had to Google them and they've gone out my heads already. All I can think of is the song that the fruits of the spirit's not a coconut. So when we think of the fruits of the spirit, um, which Galatians five verse 22, 23 says, but the fruits of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And like, as Krysia said, I think that was my initial thoughts too, like, um. There's definitely, we know from so much research and autism that value judgments are placed somewhat socially acceptable, and as Krysia was saying, I just wonder if we've kind of developed this social idea in churches of what the fruits of the spirit should look, look like, and I wonder if those normative assumptions of the fruits of the spirit maybe need challenged by autistic and neurodivergent people more broadly.

I was thinking about Grant McCaskill's work on autistic joy, and he kind of, in that article, he talks about how, um. We often have value judgment on what joy means, and like kind of that idea of an able person has more joy than a disabled person, for example.

But actually , that isn't true in the Christian faith. Joy isn't determined on conditions of the individual. And then I was also thinking about John Swinton's work on autistic love. I'll link all of these. And John and someone else, Sarah Douglas also did a webinar looking at autistic love.

Um, and again, it just kind of, his article in the webinar looks at the fact that love might be different for some autistic people, but that is not a bad thing. Um, John Swinton says that sometimes, um, autistic people love differently, but differently doesn't equal worse.

And John also says that we need to be careful, um, of what we see when we say that someone's incapable of love, simply because they don't appear to act in the ways that we see as normal representations of love. And I think both of those things, like the address of like, um, addressing artistic joy and artistic love, which are two examples of fruits of the spirit.

It just shows that sometimes autism and neurodiversity challenges like the root of our understandings of these things. And I think there's something really powerful in owning that. But that doesn't make it easy, and that's very easy to say that. Um. And yeah, I guess all that just to say like what might, what might we find about the fruits of the spirit if we dig a little bit deeper into what people's specific experiences of those are?

And maybe we could learn an awful lot about, um, each of those fruits, um, yeah. And what that tells us about God as well. So yeah, that's my kind of initial streams of thoughts.

Krysia: Yeah. And I guess a thought I've had since you. Said about, about your thoughts is particularly around ones like gentleness and self-control.

So I'm aware there's quite a bit around executive function in the question that we had. And as someone who's just self frame said on the podcast, I have a, a executive functioning of a teaspoon, I feel probably quite in a good place to be able to kind of reflect on it. Um, because I, I guess what I would say is not that we shouldn't have self-control, but maybe.

Self-care isn't, I don't think, discussed enough within church circles in terms of what it looks like, especially what it looks like for lots of different groups of people, and I think part of self-control is being able to look after yourself. And it's not just things like, let's do paint, but obviously stereotypically it might be seen as, oh, let's put on a face mask and paint your nails.

But obviously a lot of people I know won't do that or might not want to do that because that's not their thing. And obviously they're quite gendered things as well in terms of who we might think might do it. And I guess when I'm thinking of self-care, it's part of self-control is looking after ourselves.

So are we teaching people. How to, when they're overwhelmed, be able to notice and move to a place of safety. If somebody feels that they're possibly gonna have a meltdown, are we allowing them to know what this looks like and feels like in their body? And then be able to basically look after themselves and have and commu and if necessary, either communicate that to people around them, if that's the way they work, or other people around them.

To notice, to help support that 'cause I think there's very much, when I think of self-control, the opposite would almost be kind of a lack of control. And I think when we think of stereotypical images of what particularly autistic and A DHD people look like they, it's that lacking control. But a lot of the time it's because we are placed in situations that are really not conducive to how our brains and bodies work.

And I don't think there's enough reflection around that particularly, um, within church circles would be my gut feeling.

Zoe: Yeah, absolutely. And just while you're talking, just I'm thinking like. You mentioned like there's not maybe enough conversations around that, and I wonder if what conversations there are are quite often shaming.

It's like you don't have self-control, you have outbursts. And instead of, as you said, teaching about self-care, it can be a lot of, well, like you need to be better at that. And sometimes there'll be kind of spiritual suggestions for that. Um,

Krysia: yeah, and the fact that there's

almost

a sense of, and I guess this is where we verge towards.

The idea of stigmatizing neurodivergent ways of being because of the way the world is set up and the way the world's set up does seep into our churches, just because it's part of the way the work yeah, because the kind of attitudes and ideas of the. Wider world we might bring with us to church or to our place of religious gathering that actually there's almost a bit of unpacking we need to do there.

And that includes attitudes we might have towards neurodivergent people.

Zoe: Uh, yeah, absolutely. And off the back of that, like just looking at the wider passage in Galatians five, like a lot of it is about, um. Like other people in our, not the entire thing, but a lot of it's about our relationships with other people.

Um. Like after it goes on to say, um, what the fruits of the spirit are and what it looks like to, um, it says like, live and step and walk and step with the spirit. Um, and then it says, let us not become conceited provoking and envying each other. Like a lot of it is grounded in how we treat other people.

And I think what we're saying is almost like the reverse of that is also true. Like how do we develop fruits of the spirit by being encouraged by others and, um. By others taking time to understand us and understand like how neurodivergent people might experience these things or what self-care needs, um, neurodivergent people might have.

You know how, I guess it's like how do relationships and understanding help us to grow in fruits of the spirit, I suppose is also an interesting question. Um.

Krysia: Definitely, definitely because I think a lot of it does come back to this idea of the normative way to do the fruits of the spirit rather than understanding how they might look.

Because as you said, they're all about relationships and obviously one massive area within autistic led autism. Me research in particular at the moment is between about communication, how autistic communication patterns are different, um, where. Uh, autistic pragmatics are different. How chains of autistic people actually don't have the same breakdown communicationally between each other as they as mixed pairs.

So almost neurotypical and autistic people together have that and. A lot of that obviously will take place in our churches as well, especially if we're not aware of it or there are people because we can never know exactly how many people are in our churches. 'cause not everyone's either gonna know or they're not gonna disclose.

Especially when we think of, um, people that, some older people, autistic people call the lost generations. People who've never been identified and caught or say caught almost understanding that's the way their brain and body work. Um, that actually when we think of autistic communication, it is different and it's not any.

Less. It's not worse, it's just as valid. So when we think about things like kindness, goodness, self-control, actually communicating quite in an autistic manner isn't breaking that necessarily. It's how it's interpreted that could be seen to be breaking that and going back to the idea that we all are made in God's image.

Going back to that verse from Galatians, actually, it means that all communication types, as long as there's almost a difference between. Communicating directly and having a neurodivergent communication style and how that's interpreted should be seen as very, very different to someone who's being purposely rude or nasty.

And unfortunately, there's a lot of misunderstanding between the two, and I think it would be really beneficial for us to learn from a place of humility almost in a case when we come from the. Fruit of the spirit outta things like faithfulness and love and gentleness to learn about how different people from different backgrounds communicate.

'cause it's not too unlike having people perhaps in your church who are from a different cultural background, perhaps with different emphasis on different things and communication patterns and greetings and how we might interpret that. It's really important that everyone. Is valued and accepted for who they are and almost go beyond that, that we are all in line with the fruits of spirit.

We are loved and love would mean almost an interest and curiosity in learning about other people as well.

Zoe: Yeah, I love that, like just that idea of curiosity and you're so right about what you said about cultural stuff as well and different, um, emphasis. I'm just thinking of like, a classic example would be like, um, the British people, kindness looks like being overly nice and people pleasing and um, yeah, not being very direct, whereas in other cultures that it's probably not kindness at all.

That's just odd and it is so true. Like what we might. Like what we're talking about in the context of autism and neurodiversity more broadly can just be seen in any difference, as you've said. Um, def definitely. Yeah, because I remember

Krysia: when I used to live in Central Berlin, because I used to teach English to young children.

Yeah. I made the mistake of putting my recycling bottles in the recycle, in the recycling bottle bank on a Sunday and. Anybody who's lived in Germany or who is German is gonna know. That is an absolute no-no. Uh, I was not aware of this at the time, and one of the neighbors shouted out the window, it's Sunday.

See, I was like, what Earth if you want about? And he, that was almost his way of being kind and letting me know that actually this is. That, that that's don't do it. You're gonna annoy other people. But because it sounded so direct, it sounded like I was being told off. So there is that real in kind of relationships and interpretation at the heart of what is seen as some of the fruits of the spirit.

And I guess almost my call would be to reflect and think about what is. We've bought in, in terms of our assumptions and what is neurotypical and normative? Mm-hmm. Or any words that kind of are about kind of fitting. The majority of what we do. Yeah. And what is actually Christ-like, which is probably deconstructing that quite a bit.

Zoe: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is just that maybe when we think of like our like love joy, peace, all the others we're maybe having quite a shallow view of it in a lot of contexts, whereas. Yeah, it comes back the idea of like, what can different people teach us about those things that we can understand?

What love, joy piece, patience, kinda goodness. They thought, ah, you know what I mean? Um, what all of those mean on a much deeper, much, um, like much, yeah, much deeper, much raw level is really interesting. But I think it, I also would be interested like. This person who's written in talks about their feelings of shame, I guess, where they say that they feel when they look back on, um, kind of, uh, maybe like a, their struggles with emotional regulation.

They feel embarrassed and want to vanish. And I just wonder like. I understand, I think we all need to work to be, to develop the fruits of the spirit more and more. But I just wonder if like a lot of those feelings, like how have you been treated by the people around you, um, to make you feel embarrassed by those things?

And I think that raises really interesting questions about how we treat others as well.

Krysia: Definitely. 'cause I think it almost go, it keeps going back, I think in our discussion to being curious about, of how other people understand the world, understanding what we think is normal, what's normative, and what might be constricting or not working in terms of when we think of really what is to be part of.

Church and who is part of the church. Um, and being willing to be challenged a little bit because I think even we can be willing to be, we can be challenged a bit, um, certainly on the podcast, we will discuss things and we will say things to each other and make us rethink things, and that's absolutely, absolutely fine.

I think that's really normal and I think it should be more normalized, I think sometimes because. We are not so used to having difficult conversations in some spaces. Obviously, I think there are gonna be spaces that are better at this than others because every single religious gathering group is different and has different dynamics and different things at play.

So there's gonna be different ways that different things work. But I think as a kind of a broader statement. Across kind of humankind more generally. We, we could be, you could get more used to having more difficult, being challenged is okay.

Zoe: Yeah, definitely. And then that comes back to this person's thought about, um, comment about, um, their drive for justice, fairness, and knowledge.

Um, and I think, yeah, I guess that's kind of segueing a little bit into that. Um. It's such an interesting thing when we think about neurodiversity and so social justice, certainly for me in my research on dyslexia, it's something that's come up an awful lot in my interviews. People just feeling so passionate about social justice and wanting to change things.

And I think that, um. When people from, from the conversations I had, I do think a lot of it is that when people experience injustices themselves, they become more passionate about advocating for others. 'cause they know what it feels like, um, to be pushed to the side, to be told that you're not good enough.

And that gives like a really strong drive to care for other people. A lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time. Um. And yeah, I think I understand what this person's saying about it makes it hard to navigate pride and humility, but equally like, I don't think that should stop you from really pushing for change and yeah, pushing for change and calling out injustices when you see them.

But yeah, I don't, I guess I don't know how you do that in a way, because I know that feeling when you see something like, um, for example, when I'm in church and there's a comment made about reading your Bible that is really normative and I get that feeling of like, you get a bit warm and your heart races and you just kinda wanna like shout.

Um, and it's really hard to regulate your emotions. Um, and yeah, I don't really know what the answer is there to call these things out in a way that isn't. Screaming and shouting and causing more damage. I dunno. How do you call out injustice as while displaying fruits of the spirit? I dunno. Yeah,

Krysia: because I think sometimes we have to be passionate as we are sometimes placed in a position as activists, whether we like it or not as near divergent people, especially if we're in other marginalized groups as well.

Um, and I think. Almost in a way we can, as I've said before, we can almost deconstruct a way that some, sometimes the calling out isn't almost about putting yourself at the center. Sometimes it's actually about putting other people at the center or doing what's right or what's needed or what's just, um, and I think being able to sometimes distinguish and if it is a bit messy and the distinguishing, that's fine, um, can sometimes be a helpful.

Thing to consider, um, because I think certainly in the backdrop of the global world at the moment, we do need people who are going to be willing to put their foot out, to stand up for other people who are marginalized and who are hurting, and who, um, are in a real tight spot for multiple reasons. And I think some of it is not necessarily about breaking away from the fruit of the spirit.

It's almost like Jesus topping over the tables in the temple saying, actually we need to rethink how we're doing this. Is this really okay?

Zoe: Yeah, I suppose it's very easy to like take the fruits of the spirit and say, okay, we always need to be meek and mild and nice and gentle. And yes, absolutely there is space for that.

But there, as you said, like Jesus turning the table was classic example. There is still space for like moments where there's righteous anger and saying, no, like not having this, I'm not gonna just sit and be nice, but I guess it's like. I think it's also like, okay, we're thinking, okay, that's maybe not gentleness and self-control, but it's deep love and it's seeking joy in the world and peace in the world and kindness.

Um. So I guess in and of itself, calling out injustices is a display of the fruits of the spirit because you're seeing the world and saying, actually, I don't believe this is how, how God, what God wants for the world and what God wants for certain groups of people. So yeah, I'm gonna call that out in love and kindness.

And as you said, like putting people at the center of that as well, um, is so important. Like putting the. The people themselves. And, um, using your voice to create space for other people, um, or to elevate other voices is so important.

, as usual, we have gone on way longer than we ever planned for CATChat, but this has been such an interesting conversation and just such a good question.

I'm so glad that we've been able to have a bit more space to discuss it. Um. As always, if our listeners have any thoughts that they wanna share their perspective, if you disagree with anything, please let us know. We would love to have more conversations about this. Um, and if you have a separate question yourself, please email us.

Um, Krysia has one final thing to promote before we close the episode, so I'll hand back over to you.

Krysia: Super. So my colleague, Dr. Rene Ka, and I are organizing a one day conference on religion, disability, neurodivergence. Um, the day is basically for anyone interested in the intersection of disability, neurodivergence, and religion.

So we've got some academics who are talking. We've also got some practitioners, ners. And it's basically anyone who wants to know a little bit more, who's interested. Um, and I know very much that a lot of our speakers have lived experience of being disabled, being neurodivergent, and I think they can, they'd really love the people to come and hear and then be able to feed into the broader conversation.

We have Dr. Naomi Lawson Jacobs as our keynote speaker, and they were one of the authors of the at the Gates book. Um, we'll put the link for booking in the show notes. You can attend in person at King's College London, in the uk, um, at the Strand campus or virtually. And it's 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM um, UK time.

I. And we would absolutely love to have some of our listeners either attend the day virtually or in person, or we're also hoping to do a, um, a resource of all the recordings of the day afterwards. So we'd be very, we'd love you to engage with the wider conversation if that's something you are interested in.

And it's very much not just for academics, we want everybody to be part of this conversation because the, the. Things are going at the moment. We need lots of conversation from all sorts of people in all sorts of roles, really to help. Improve the situation for neuro divergent people in religious groups.

Zoe: Fab, that sounds fantastic. Um, so yeah, a link to that and also articles we've mentioned. There'll be in the show notes. Um, but yeah, thank you all so much for listening. Um, you can message us at Autism Theology on X Instagram, and now Blue Sky. Or you can send us an [e-mail], even if it's just to say hi we would love to hear from you. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for listening to the Autism and Theology Podcast. If you have any questions for us or just want to say hi, please email us at [e-mail] or find us on Twitter @autismtheology.