“I Just Didn’t Fit into the Way That They Did Church”: Barriers to Access and Participation for Disabled People in UK Churches

Disabled people have rights to practise their religions under equality and human rights laws. However, access to religious institutions has received little attention in disability studies. This qualitative, participatory study with 30 disabled Christians in the UK explored barriers to accessing church buildings and participating in worship and community life. Disabled people misfit in churches designed for normative bodyminds. In a number of churches, participants faced disability discrimination under the terms of the UK’s Equality Act 2010. The barriers they faced were material and embodied and were underpinned by discourses of the “perfect” body and the ideal worshipper. Pastoral power, which represents disabled people as objects of ministry and care in churches, often exacerbated these barriers, making it more difficult for disabled people to collaborate with their churches on solutions. Given these findings, I reflect on the work of critical disability theologians, who critique normative theological concepts of the bodymind and have called for justice for disabled religious practitioners. I argue that, rather than placing limits on churches, equality and human rights laws are tools that can help religious institutions to dismantle disabling barriers, as an important step towards justice. Without such transformation of ableist structures and discourses, disabled people’s rights to participate in our religious communities may go unrealised.